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For some reason, the Nintendo DS has been overwhelmed with "roguelike" adventure games lately, which is a pretty odd state of affairs for a mainstream platform. Usually a console will see one, maybe two of these games in a generation, but dungeon-hack fans have an embarrassment of riches to pick from on the DS. There's Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (two of those now, actually), and lately a second Izuna game by way of Atlus.

If you missed the original Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, and the odds are you probably did, it was a roguelike with an original visual style and a quirky sense of humor, both of which are qualities these games are usually short on. Normally roguelikes stick very to the genre's roots, at least as far as presentation is concerned – simple, straightforward Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy worlds are the order of the day. Izuna broke the mold with a cartoon riff on medieval Japan and a big cast of off-beat cartoon characters.

Now we have Izuna 2, which builds on the original's strengths with a whole lot more character to go around. The big change in the sequel is that you can take two characters into the dungeon at once, picking from a selection of several adventurers who develop independently and use powerful team-up special attacks together.

Not Unemployed, Freelance

For starters, the obligatory explanation of what a "roguelike" dungeon-hack is. These are usually characterized by randomly-generated dungeon environments and turn-based movement and combat. Taking one step around the dungeon, using an item, or making an attack uses up a turn, during which the many monsters wandering around the dungeon can also perform one turn's worth of action. Games like this have their own peculiar tactics, where the trick is to anticipate an enemy's movements and mount your own offense in as few moves as possible.

Izuna builds on the basic formula with a couple of twists of its own. It's designed to encourage repeated trips into any given dungeon, of which there are many – for instance, our heroine has a limited inventory, so she can't just build up a gigantic collection of loot the way you usually do in Nethack and the like. Only the storehouse in the town at the top of the dungeon can permanently archive useful items, so there's some strategy involved in picking the right suite of equipment for each trip down into the depths (and leaving enough room to pick up new items along the way). Most of the items in the game have multiple uses – you can expend a talisman for a one-shot effect in combat, for instance, or attach it to a piece of equipment for a sustained benefit – but there’s never enough room in the inventory to be prepared for absolutely every eventuality.

It's important to keep a reserve of useful items in the storehouse, because if you die down in the dungeon, your entire inventory goes bye-bye. This is not actually quite so catastrophic as it might sound, though – the way that loot is distributed in the dungeons, it's not that hard to dive back in and collect more stuff. The individual floors of each dungeon are relatively small, too, and the difficulty level ramps up gently, so it doesn't usually take long to get back to where you died.

Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

Even so, you're probably not going to be able to plow from the top of a dungeon to the bottom in your first trip. This may rub some players the wrong way – if you want to be able to speed through each area without having to level up over multiple trips, Izuna may prove a frustrating experience.

It's not as bad as you might think, though. Nearly every dungeon in the game has a very diverse population of monsters, so there are many different challenges that might pop up at any given moment. The tag-team system helps vary things up too, because it gives you more characters to build up and play around with. Those two characters still only get the one limited inventory between them, which can make for a tight squeeze if you set aside separate equipment for both, but on the other hand, being able to switch out one character in a pinch can save on the need for a big stock of healing items. The team-up special attacks provide some more tactical options as well – besides, as Izuna herself points out, special attacks are just inherently entertaining.

Intelligence, Charisma

Izuna's one-liners add a lot to this game, which has received a generally excellent localization from the editors at Atlus USA. The written dialogue is very snappy, and while the spoken lines that go along with it are still in Japanese, their emotional content comes through whether or not you understand the language.

That extra touch of personality is what makes this different from the other roguelikes on the DS. Chun Soft's Mystery Dungeon is a landmark achievement in game design, but nobody's going to argue that it's not a touch dry in the atmosphere department. Izuna 2 is fun to play and occasionally just plain funny as well, which is why it shouldn't get lost in the middle of its suddenly crowded little niche.

Review by: D.F. Smith