Legend of Kage 2 is pretty short on story, which might seem odd considering the Square-Enix logo on the box. There's a princess with magical powers that is captured by demons. Apparently when her powers are used the world will be destroyed, so it's your job, as either the ninja Kage or the ninja trainee Chihiro, to rescue her and stop that from happening. The story is shallow and generic and acts more as an excuse to put you in a number of scenarios than as the driving force to keep playing the game. But Legend of Kage 2 is trying more to channel the 8 and 16 bit era where polished gameplay and solid level design were all a game needed, so the lackluster story is forgivable.

Legend of Kage 2 does several things differently from similarly styled games. The first thing I noticed was that you can walk right past any enemy without taking damage. Enemies can still attack you, and they do frequently, but you'll only take damage from being hit by their sword or weapon instead of taking damage just from touching their sprite. It's not bad, in fact it's an improvement over most side scrolling games, but it takes a while to get used to, especially during boss battles. The second thing I noticed was that you can jump ungodly high. There's a good reason that the game uses both screens as a combined vertical display, because you'll be constantly jumping 20 or more feet in the air so you'll need to see what's above you. And that's just with the basic jumping ability, which can be upgraded to level 4 where you'll be jumping two screen heights in a single jump. Once in the air you'll also be able to do a midair dash to travel some extra distance on your jump. You'll probably be spending a majority of your playtime with Kage in the air.

When you aren't soaring through the skies, Kage is still very agile on the ground. Any wall can easily be climbed by simply jumping toward it to automatically grab on, and then by pressing up or down you can run up or slide down. You can also grab any ceiling in the game just by jumping into it, allowing you to climb across. It's all very simple to control and makes the game very fluid in its acrobatics. Sword and shuriken attacks are mapped to different buttons for easy access to a variety of attacks with with the fourth face button used to cast spells. Spells are created between levels by matching different combinations of colored orbs, which can be found hidden in the levels. Magic ranges from fire and lightning attacks to healing spells and buffers to raise your defense, attack, or speed. You have very limited use of magic during the levels though, so I found myself saving my magic for healing spells during the boss encounters that end each stage.

All of these elements combine to make for an interesting play experience. It's possible to beat almost any level simply by jumping and doing midair dashes to get through. There are a few levels that take place indoors so you can't jump as much, but since you can run past enemies without taking damage, there's very little incentive to actually stop and attack anyone and risk taking damage yourself. It's fun the first time through, leaping everywhere like a grasshopper on steroids, but the problem is that the game forces you to replay each level several times. After a while the jumping gets tedious and you'll try going through a level on foot, but the game can be punishingly difficult at times. Not difficult in a rewarding Mega Man "one more try and I'll get it" kind of way, but in a "the enemies are respawing right after I kill them and hitting me with shurikens from off the screen" kind of way. It gets frustrating fast and you'll soon go right back to leaping through the levels.

Actually, to be fair the game doesn't force you to replay levels, but it's strongly encouraged. Sometimes after completing a level you'll be rewarded with a new skill. It's completely random when you'll get new skills, so it's in your best interest to keep replaying levels to try and get new skills. You'll also receive a grade at the end of each level saying how well you did, but it doesn't seem like this has any bearing on which skills you get and when you get them. On my first play through I only unlocked about 8 of the nearly 20 skills. Playing through a second time with replaying past levels several times I was able to unlock about 15 skills. It's not rewarding at all to get a new skill because there's no sense that you actually earned a new ability. It's just given to you in an arbitrary manner, which greatly reduces the sense of accomplishment of going through the game.

As I mentioned before, you can play as either Kage of Chihiro, and they do both play in significantly different ways. The biggest difference is that Kage has a longer reach with his weapons, although they do slightly less damage. This allows him to attack most enemies and bosses just barely out of their own reach, with Chihiro providing more powerful attacks that guarantee that she's in the range of danger in order to perform them. This difference really comes into play during boss battles where you'll need a much more strategic approach with Chihiro since she can't attack as well from out of harm's way. There's also the difference that Kage has more health while Chihiro has more magic points, but the ability to cast more healing spells balances that issue.

While the graphics aren't terrible, they aren't really anything particularly special either. Characters are well animated and backgrounds look nice, but the details in each character sprite look muddy like an early SNES game. There are very nice anime style still character portraits that appear on screen when characters are talking, but it just emphasizes the lack of detail in the actual game sprites. I would like to give credit to Legend of Kage 2 though for starting what I hope to be a long-running trend in character design: having male characters wear significantly less clothing than the female counterparts. While the women in Legend of Kage 2 all wear various colored kimonos, Kage knows that a true warrior goes shirtless, even when wearing a cape.

The music, though played with low quality midi sound bites, is surprisingly strong. The music is catchy and fits the feudal Japan theme well while staying up tempo to keep up with the fast paced acrobatics of the game. I've actually searched out and downloaded several of the game's songs, a right normally reserved only for games with Mega Man, Zelda, F-Zero, or Sonic (pre-3D) in their title.

With so many stellar games available this holiday season, it's hard to recommend that you spend your money on Legend of Kage 2. It encourages you to avoid combat, the graphics are muddy, and the skill upgrade system is just plain broken. But even despite the game's faults, I have to admit that I had a fun time playing it. Wait until this one hits the bargain bins and snatch it up for some mindless, fast ninja fun. But even at the game's low $20 price tag, you'd be much better off with half of a Chrono Trigger than Legend of Kage 2.

6 out of 10