Developers: TT Fusion, Traveller's Tale
Publishers: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, The Lego Group
Platform: Nintendo 3DS, Playstation Vita
Tested on: Nintendo 3DS
LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin – Review
As the years come and go, so do the LEGO games. As expected the popular LEGO Ninjago franchise received a new installment as well, namely LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin. Go on a whole new adventure together with the well known characters from its prequel and fight off the bad guys who stole their powers.
Story
The game serves as a sequel to the 2014 game Lego Ninjago: Nindroids and carries on with the characters that were present in that game. You will be playing as multiple characters with each their own abilities while they face a new threat called Ronin, a bad guy who is aiming to take over the world of Ninjago.
Our good team of well trained ninjas, who also possess the ability to make you crack a smile, were having a good time telling stories to each other when their sensei tells them that they need to train even more in order to compensate for the departure of their friend Lloyd. In order to help them train, sensei Wu invited a “friend” to help them practice their Spinjutzu skills. This friend who calls himself the “Brown Ninja” takes a group of specialized ninjas with him to train against our friends, however, without knowing, these ninjas are actually part of Ronin’s group and are aiming to bring them down.
The Spinjitzu masters successfully fend off their enemies while chasing down Ronin, which they are able to corner. Without knowing what Ronin is up to, they keep on trying to get answers out of him when he suddenly attacks them with a special weapon, the Obsidian Blade. This weapon appears to have taken away some of their memories, resulting in them losing their experience and therefore some of their power.
And so their quest for regaining their memories and their lost abilities begins by going on an adventure in search for the other special Obsidian weapons which will help them defeat Ronin and save Ninjago from his evil paws.
Graphics
The graphics do their job just fine. They capture the LEGO theme quite well. However, it isn’t something impressive. The one problem that you might find annoying is the fact that your screen is quite small, sometimes making it difficult to see where you need to go. Everything is viewed in a third-person perspective and the missions take place in rather varying surroundings.
There are a lot of cut scenes in this game, and they actually look pretty nice.
Sound
The sound is something that won’t be that noticeable. Every tune in this game seems rather quiet and don’t really have any enjoyable factor to them. They aren’t very unique and you’ll get bored of it pretty quickly. Even the sound effects sound pretty bland.
There is voice-acting available during the cutscene’s and even when playing through a mission. While not too impressive, it does its job just fine and is a good addition to the game.
Gameplay
Much like its sequel, LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin’s gameplay is pretty linear. You have the option to choose between quite a number of characters, each having their own special abilities that will be needed in order to complete a mission or defeat a boss.
Missions are pretty much repetitive: you choose during the mission as what character you will be playing, being free in changing your character. You go with two characters at once, one that you yourself control and one AI. You will need to reach the final goal in a mission to complete it, while solving simple puzzles to unlock a path to that one goal. These puzzles require the special abilities of the characters, for example: Cole is a character with quite a lot of power. This allows him to pick up huge rocks and throw them against breakable walls, something that the other ninjas cannot do. This allows you to further progress through the mission. You can switch between the pair of characters by a simple push on the button, which is sometimes necessary as a puzzle might require you to use two characters.
The combat system in this game is pretty repetitive and not very varying as all our characters have the same combos and Spinjitzu. The Spinjitsu ability allows you to spin around at high speed, being mostly invulnerable when fighting against small enemies while capturing them in a vortex. When you stop your spin, the enemies will fly around and pretty much die instantly. This makes it so that combat against smaller enemies is rather unchallenging, and might become quite boring after a while.
Bosses are a little bit different from smaller enemies, as they can only be beaten when using certain characters with their special abilities. If you cannot seem to figure out what you have to do against a boss, then you should probably try out multiple characters as one will be necessary in clearing the fight.
The game allows players to do a bit of collecting. You will be given smaller objectives during a mission, which will allow you to find special LEGO blocks. You can use these blocks to unlock new content in the store, like special costumes for your characters or even new playable characters.
Conclusion
Not much varying in gameplay compared to its prequel, LEGO Ninjago Shadow of Ronin is a rather linear and non-challenging game which might not be something that everyone will enjoy. The fact that the game is not hard at all might form a problem for people to come back to.
However, the game offers players enough things to do to keep them busy, like repeating multiple missions in order to unlock every single content that is available. The fact that you need to use multiple characters in order to complete a mission makes it so that the characters have importance to the game.
If you are looking for a simple and relaxing game that makes you laugh quite a bit with its humor, then this game might be something to consider.
LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin - Review,
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