Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja at least peppers its twelve-hour drum solo with some personality, in the form of its eponymous perky, pink-haired ninja girl, who's traveling quite contentedly with her distant fellow kunoichi Shino, a luckless trainee named Mitsumoto, and her doddering old “grandboss” Gen-An. When the four arrive in the bucolic Kamiari Village, Izuna and Gen-An waste no time in violating the sanctity of the local gods' temple, and the townsfolk are smote with a variety of neurotic curses from on high.

After somehow eluding said curses, Izuna heads through six nearby dungeons, each controlled by a different deity. It's here that the game shows its heritage: it's very much in the style of the Mysterious Dungeon series created by Chun Soft, which also includes Torneko: The Last Hope and Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon (all of which, of course, hearken back to Rogue). And in that grand tradition, Izuna navigates randomly structured and relatively primitive mazes stocked with traps, items and enemies. It's all quite simple; foes don't move until Izuna does, and attacking them is just a matter of pushing the directional pad their way.

Of course, Izuna wouldn't be much of a dungeon hack if it weren't a grueling, drawn-out kick to the crotch. The challenge spikes quickly as Izuna descends through a dungeon's levels, and it's easy to die at the hands of a rogue tadpole or one-eyed umbrella. And then you'll encounter the wonderful surprise of Izuna being dumped off at the town's inn, missing all her supplies and weapons. Damn.

But you'll learn quickly. You'll figure out how to use warp-out talismans from the village store, how to build an arsenal at the local storage shed, and, most importantly, how explore a dungeon and escape it several times before taking on the boss. And though it's not essential to finishing the game (you can always grind up to level 99), you'll also learn about the customization system, which allows you to slap various talismans onto weapons and armor, giving them all sorts of special abilities. Go over an item's numerical limit, though, and it'll break.

As dungeon hacks go, Izuna's smooth and colorful, with a perky soundtrack and anime-ready art that spruces up the otherwise bland graphics. It's also surprisingly quick; dashing about is not only easy, it's encouraged as an easy way to refill your life meter. The dungeons, with the exception of the seemingly bottomless final leg, are also fairly short. It's just a shame that the random levels grow tiresome after you've seen their components a few times. And once you're done with one, there's no reason to go back.

Izuna's greatest appeal lies outside of those dungeons. There's no real story, but Kamiari is stocked with all sorts of amusing stereotypes, including a picky, husband-hunting woman of the sea, a hideous yet noble samurai, bratty kids, psychologically unstable shopkeeps, and a bunch of goofball deities. Izuna herself is a captivating lead: plucky, manipulative, and self-confident enough to smack around gods and village lechers alike. And everything's held together by Atlus' exceptionally well-fit localization, from glib conversations right down to rote gameplay descriptions like “Izuna came to her senses…such as they are.”

In fact, Izuna holds disappointment only for those led to expect some soft-core sex farce. While Atlus' advertising campaign and downloadable wallpaper may suggest lesbian escapades, there's nothing like that in the game.

I repeat: THIS IS NOT IN THE GAME ITSELF. And no, I'm not complaining.

Izuna's not terribly long or engagingly deep, and it's worth playing only because it's so damned winsome at every turn. The dungeon-hack crowd will find this a fair diversion, and those who resent the genre will see a rare appeal in the offbeat and largely innocent atmosphere. Even with its ribald affiliations hovering overhead and a repetitive structure piling up around it, Izuna's enough of a charmer to get by.