The battle over, Momiji mysteriously appears at Ryu's feet and is unharmed. They return to the Hayabusa Village and after Momiji visits Kureha's grave, promising she will become stronger to better protect herself and the Eye of the Dragon, joins Ryu to continue her training. "Ninja Gaiden" series director Tomonobu Itagaki has stated that he decided to make the game for the Nintendo DS because of the originality that the platform allows, which he feels is the most important aspect of a handheld platform, and also to create a challenge for himself. Itagaki also claimed that his children wanted one of his titles on the platform. One of Itagaki's goals with "Ninja Gaiden DS" is to create a game that can be played by all gamers everywhere, saying that his other titles "have traditionally targeted men above the age 18 and Westerners." An example of this is that the characters that are traced to perform ninpo magic, were originally kanji; this was changed to the more "culture-neutral" Sanskrit to make things more fair for non-Japanese audiences. The English localization was overseen by Team Ninja member Andrew Szymanski, in collaboration with AltJapan Co., Ltd.  "Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword" has received generally positive reviews. Aggregator website GameRankings received an average score of 82.80% based on 53 reviews while Metacritic received an average score of 83/100. Reviewers praised the good visuals and intuitive controls, but a common point of criticism was its short length, six to seven hours, and lack of the difficulty compared to previous games in the "Ninja Gaiden" series. "Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword" was named by IGN.com as the best Nintendo DS action game of 2008, also awarding it as having the best graphics technology for the Nintendo DS. It was also nominated for the best Nintendo DS game of 2008 award and was nominated for the award for the best original score on the Nintendo DS in 2008. It was also awarded Best Use of Control Scheme by GameSpot in their 2008 Special Achievements video game awards, and nominated for Nintendo DS Game of the Year as well. N-Europe gave the game 9/10, citing "flawless presentation" and an excellent control scheme.