I’m torn a bit as well. I want to buy it to see for myself what it’s like as an out there game but at the same time what if I don’t like it and wasted $2.99 even if I have tested it?
While i’m one of the people who would gladly pay more for the games here, even I have to say that for the price it’s kinda…disappointing. It was too short, a bit too stereotypical, but by far my biggest gripe are the characters. They could have been fleshed out more, made a little less like caricatures. It wasn’t exactly bad, just meh. Though I suppose it could have been intended to have a sequel sometime.
Playing through again I’m finding it not as good. Choices don’t seem to affect anything. I’m having to compare it against Heroes Rise. I enjoyed the first play through then repeated ones reveal it to be a bit shallow.
I plan on getting the game next week. I try to get all the games in support of CoG and its writers. Even if it is not always the best. Heck I waste three buck on sodas a day so I can afford to but a 3 dollar game every few weeks. 
In the demo, when sensi is telling you about your first mission, everything was double. I played again, but It didn’t happen twice.
Heroes Rise is one of the top 5 games imo
i hate heroes rise a no choices matters its a book not a multiple choices game replay it was the most disappoint experience i have with a choice of games
@MaraJade
In that case I wouldn’t recommend Choice of the Ninja. While Heroes Rise had it’s issues and was linear, it also had the length I’d expect from linear games and at least during the story your choices had more influence compared to Ninja (different sidekicks, how other characters perceived you, slightly different epilogue).
In Ninja I didn’t see a single choice that influenced anything for more then five pages (well, there was this one scenario where you have to choose how to get into a castle. That played out about twenty pages with different text, but the outcome at the castle itself was exactly the same. So… yeah). The game is also quite short (that demo was up to the first of four missions), so I’d say Heroes Choice trumps Ninja anytime.
Heroes rise, all day everyday, as soon as the second part comes out I’m getting it
I haven’t got Choice of the Ninja yet, but I think I may, if only to see if it matches up to what I’ve heard about it. Heroes Rise seems a bit like marmite- people on the forum either love it or hate it. Although at first I didn’t like it, now I actually think it’s really good.
After playing this a few times I’d have to drop my score to 3/5. I liked the story but I doubt I’ll play again.
I have to ask, when is this game coming out on the kindle because im not allowed to buy stuff online. the pains of being 11.
My Review: I thought the game was decent, for what it was, the characters were very 1 dimensional, I bought this at the same time I bought Paradox Factor, so maybe it’s because I keep comparing them, but, in any case my rating is 4/10.
This was my experience of the beta. I haven’t purchased the game and won’t unless it becomes clear that there’s been substantial improvements made.
I think it’s unfair to compare it to Heroes Rise, since although Heroes Rise also had a linear plot, there was far more meaningful choice in it. You could choose which sidekick you had, and who you saved. Heroes Rise did also improve with some patches, and you had a small choice of who to romance. And Heroes Rise was at least long.
Choice of the Ninja was extremely short, taking less than an hour to complete. It had absolutely no replayability, once you’ve played it once that is it, the plot has no deviations, everything is railroaded. There are no meaningful choices. Nothing yo do will make any sort of impact on the plot. There’s no choice to fail, no choice to die, no choice to mess up, no choice to make people hate you or treat you at all differently.
The most replayable section of Choice of the Ninja was that first scene, which is the demo, where there’s multiple methods of acquiring the coin. None of those methods matter since there’s no chance to fail and no one remembers exactly how you did it, even if you defeated them.
If it had been a novella, then I still wouldn’t pay £2/$3 for it.
Romantic Options are an easy way to introduce replayability with minimal effort. Even if it had been implemented like the JJ romance in Slammed it would have been an improvement. The JJ romance has absolutely no impact on the plot, it’s only achievable in the last scene but it’s nice that it’s there. So being able to embark on a romance with one of your friends (or even set them up together) would have at least provided some different endings.
If Choice of the Ninja had just tracked a relationship variable for the NPCs, taking note of every nasty response you made, and every nice one with a -/+1 system. Then if you hit a certain number gave a short romance scene at the end it would have at least meant that some dialogue choices mattered. As it was in the beta I could be as nasty as I liked to the NPCs and it had absolutely no impact on the characters being my friends, plus they never seemed to remember past interactions.
I strongly suspect that the author wasn’t quite comfortable setting variables and using the *If command since most of the choices resulted in branches with minor differences that then converged back to the same point.
I wanted a choice to fail but there wasn’t any when I played. I would have liked each chapter to have a “You have Failed!” ending since that would have at least given my choices significance. I think a game that short can get away with having multiple bad-endings (especially if well-written) because it’s not too much effort to replay and try and get the good end. It would have added an element of danger to being a Ninja. Some of the best scenes of Slammed! were the premature endings, and they meant that when I did succeed it felt worthwhile, like I’d earned it, knowing that I could also fail. But I wasn’t disappointed in failure because they were fun.
I thought there was a good structure there, but as things stood this wasn’t a very interactive story. I think it could be. It just needs some more work.
As Jason said on the 2013 Games releases thread, Choice of the Ninja is having an update pushed with +Mission +Romance. Once the update’s happened I was wondering if anyone could say what the more exact changes are, and if they’re an improvement to the game.
I was trying to playthrough and the opening test has changed slightly I didn’t get the undefined error but after choosing how my feel about a npc called Kaora (sp?) Then it showed the play again button the actual mission never started. I have emailed support about it.
The update is out on iOS, and I was able to play through the game with no issues.
I didn’t see an altogether new missions, but there were several changes to the existing missions:
- The opening scene (with the coins) now has a second part, where the character has to sneak the coin back past the masters. Nothing particularly profound here.
- The second mission (steal the message) seems unchanged.
- The third mission (rescue the boy) seems unchanged.
- The fourth mission (recover the plans / rescue the architect) has been drastically altered – your love interest turns up on the opposite side, and your are offered an opportunity to become a double agent. If you go this route, there is a real chance of death – it looks like high honor is required to survive.
- The interlude between the fourth and fifth mission plays out differently if you are a double agent (but not /that/ differently).
- The fifth mission (save your patron / kill the bad guy) is /mostly/ unchanged unless you chose to become a double agent – if you did, then this plays out dramatically differently. It looks like the double agent approach is a dead end, though – if there is a sequel, it will assume that you were loyal.
There appears to be a bug in the fifth mission: The player is offered an opportunity to convince his/her love interest to join the “good guys” – if you choose this option, the text (for me, at least) initially indicated that I was successful, but the love interest ended up fighting on the other side.
While the changes are welcome, the game still has two fundamental flaws:
- The player, with the exception of choosing to be a double agent, can’t fail if he/she makes any effort to play to his strengths at all.
---- To address this issue, some checks would need to be added that can only be passed by a single character type, who has worked throughout the game to optimize a single stat. As a corollary, such decisions should allow the player to continue to play even after failing. - It is a highly linear game – a single play-through will reveal the vast bulk of the content in the game.
---- The player could be asked to select between two missions – the one not selected would have to be seen on a future play-through.
---- The player could receive a special mission from his/her “shadow patron” (either the Lady Simo or Lord whatver-his-name is – the one that your love interest follows) instead of the interlude between the fourth / fifth mission.
Still, the patch is definitely a step in the right direction, and there /is/ potential in the game’s concept, but… 
I pretty much agree with the last statement @mreed made. I’d say the update is a definite improvement, but it wasn’t worth much more than two or three playthroughs to see the new content. If they keep doing updates like this, though, the game could certainly get a lot better.
There DO appear to be some bugs with the new ‘double agent’ storyline, though. I forgot to write them down when I was playing through it last night, but there were a few instances where the game acts as though you took certain actions, even when you didn’t…