I'll give Shadow Dancer some props, visually it's an improvement over Revenge of Shinobi (which is a huge compliment). In every other category it comes up short. It returned to the play style of the original arcade version of Shinobi, this was a step backwards. It replaced the magic system with some dog-based attack reminiscent of Samurai Shodown. It was lame in Samurai Shodown and it's lame here too.