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Favorite Games

No More Heroes
No More Heroes
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening - Special Edition
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening - Special Edition
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

206

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009

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Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven

Mar 22

Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins
Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins

Mar 19

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins

Mar 17

Final Fantasy XVI
Final Fantasy XVI

Mar 13

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

Mar 02

Recently Reviewed See More

Tenchu 2 is both frustrating and fascinating since as a sequel, it's not too different from its predecessor and even manages to identify and rectify some of the problems with the first game, but it also misses the mark entirely on the level design which makes some of the faults that carried on from the first game much more prominent here.

There's still a lot of good stuff here though, first off, the game actually has a tutorial this time around so getting into the game is much easier. Secondly, replayability has seen a big boost with 3 characters being available instead of 2 and they go through different stages and even fight different bosses so it's actually worth it to play as them all. Thirdly, the story is much better here, it was basically a non-factor in the first game but here there's plenty of cutscenes with voice-acting that's quite good for the time and its cool to learn things like how Rikimaru got his scar or what kind of person Lord Gohda is. The fact that this game has a tutorial and is a prequel to the first game makes it a good entry point for the series.

Now this game does have more content than the first game, but I don't feel compelled to actually check it out outside of my playthrough with Rikimaru because of multiple reasons. One of which is the level design, whereas in the first game, levels were small but filled with enemies, here the stages are way bigger and are virtually empty by comparison, what makes it worse is that the grappling hooks and items altogether have been nerfed. The grappling hook is way harder to use here unless you're looking straight at the rooftop you want to cling to and if you're a couple degrees off-axis, you'll fall and have to do it again and seeing the same falling animation just put me off from trying to use it, it's too finnicky. As for items, I got waaaay less of them here than in the first game, a lot of them are hidden within stages but with how empty and uninteresting they are I didn't bother to search for them. Additionally, getting Grand Master rank to unlock items is extremely tedious here with it requiring way more kills than it did in the first game, I'm sure once you get these items, the game does open up and become more fun, but I'm just not interested in doing it. With the limited items and the grappling hook being less useful, it really constricts player expression here and what I ended up doing for every stage was just running around behind enemies and stealth killing them when I could, I never enjoyed the game enough to go out of my way to experiment with the tools at my disposal like I did in the first game. A big reason why I found the missions here to not be as interesting is because of the music, or lack thereof, outside of battles, all you get is silence here. In the first game, music helped keep your attention during the downtime, here, you don't have anything to keep you interested (not to mention that there's way less happening in these stages to boot) so I end up being bored for a good chunk of the game.

The other reason why I don't really care to continue playing this game are the bossfights. Bosses now use items here which includes stuff like shurikens, smoke bombs, explosives etc, I can appreciate the attempt to make them more interesting than what they were in the first game, but the core combat is still jank as all hell here so the attempts at spicing it up just serve to add to the frustration since it gives you more stuff to worry about. Keep in mind dying at the boss means you have to redo the stage all over again! Also, it might just be me, but I've had way more trouble with the camera during bossfights here than I ever did in Tenchu 1, whenever you block attacks, you get pushed back, and if you get pushed back to the wall, you basically can't see anything and if you try to move away and regain your view, you'll often just get hit in the process and it gets really fucking annoying. By the end of the game I was just making a beeline towards the boss in every stage since what's the point of trying to play the game properly when I'll just have to redo the entire stage over again since I failed at a part of the game that has nothing to do with the actual stealth.

In fairness, some of the issues I have here were also in Tenchu 1, like the lack of a clear destination in the missions or the clunky bossfights, but the disparity between the quality of the level design acts like a parasite which makes issues that were alleviated by how fun Tenchu 1 was to play, instead feel more pronounced here.

It isn't a bad game, but if I had to explain my journey with one word, it'd be soulless, stages are vast and hollow, most enemies just stand around waiting for you to kill them and there's no music. It improves in the minor areas while completely missing the mark in the major ones and overall the game is just a letdown.

Tenchu can be a difficult game to get into since like many games of the PS1 era, it makes basically no attempt at explaining its core mechanics to the player in the game itself. However, if you're willing to stick with it and watch a guide or two, what you'll end up with is a deeply rewarding experience that I'd consider to be one of the best games that the PS1 has to offer.

Now I'm no expert on stealth games, my experience with the genre starts and ends with MGS, but what I can say is that I had a ton of fun throughout basically the entire game. Playing Tenchu can be a slow burn with how much waiting is involved but that's what makes the game so enjoyable, having to wait from a safe distance, analyze an enemies movement pattern and find your perfect moment to strike and then get rewarded with a sick looking takedown animation never got old. This is also helped by the excellent level design, there's only 10 of them but the game does an excellent job in forcing you to mix up how you approach a stage from traversing primarily on rooftops in mission 1 to being forced to do all of mission 3 on foot to then having to deal with the uneven terrain of mission 8. Missions are usually short and concise and it's not always clear on where you're meant to go but with how well designed the stages are, I didn't mind it, instead I was happy to spend more time than necessary if it meant I could secure a couple Grand Master ranks and unlock more items. Speaking of items, there's a ton of them here from shurikens, caltrops, poisoned rices, land mines etc and they do an excellent job at giving the player a number of options to diversify the way you tackle a mission.

As I already mentioned, there's a lot of downtime when playing Tenchu as you try to get a view of the enemies while putting up with the game's terribly aged rendering system, luckily though, this game has one of the best OSTs to any game I've played so there's always a tune you can latch onto while waiting around. Seriously, it's insane how good the music is here.

Now I've been singing the games praises and rightfully so, but even I can't deny that this games got some flaws. Aside from the fact that the game doesn't explain its mechanics and the draw distance often leads to instances where you try to slowly nudge yourself towards an out of sight enemy but once you see them they also see you, there's also the fact that combat here is really janky. This is fine for normal encounters since combat is something you're meant to avoid so it wouldn't make sense for it to feel good, but the game has a lot of bossfights where you're forced to deal with the janky combat and they're just not that fun. I just cheesed them with items usually since I didn't want to risk having to redo an entire mission from dying at the boss. Also, replay value could've been better. Replaying missions to get Grand Master ranks was fun but more could've been done with the fact that the game has two playable characters. Rikimaru and Ayame basically both control the same and go through the exact same missions with the only difference being their dialogue in cutscenes which doesn't really warrant playing as both of them.

So yes, its not perfect but what game is. What matters is that It succeeds in all the areas that it needs to and even though I tried bringing up some things wrong with it, I'd be lying if I said any of it really impacted my playthrough. It is a fantastic game and the definition of a hidden gem

Overall, I found Dino Crisis to be a decent PS1 survival horror game but one of my main gripes was that it didn't justifiy its title or concept with how few dinosaurs there actually are and the journey often felt a little stale because of it. Luckily, the same can't be said about Dino Crisis 2 since you fight more dinosaurs in the first 5 mins here than you would in all of DC1 and it makes the game so much more memorable.

Gone is the mixed bag of survival horror elements and in their place is action-packed arcadey fun and I much prefer this approach. The gameplay loop here is incredibly addicting. The vast majority of the game boils down to mowing down hoards of dinosaurs room to room which may sound repetitive but the game manages to keep things fresh with constantly giving you new weapons to play around with and the game has a healthy amount of set pieces to keep things fresh though they're hit and miss, I particularly liked the rail-shooting segments but the underwater segment can go fuck itself. It's a very easy game and it's nearly impossible to not be fully stocked up on healing items with how dirt cheap they are, but that's fine, since the fun part isn't beating it but rather, enjoyment from going for high scores, getting your combo meter up and getting those No Damage bonuses which shower you with points if you're able to get them.

A lot of issues I had with DC1 are rectified here. There's greater weapon and enemy variety (some are annoying though like the Inostrancevia), the arduous mixing system is gone and areas are much more open so there is no point where dinosaurs body block you from moving forward like they did in DC1. You also keep the files and memos you read with you so it's easier to get a grasp on the story and thanks to it, I can say, with confidence, that this story is some stupid ass shit. I didn't really care for it all that much and I found Dylan to just be whatever compared to Gail and Rick, but when you get all the revelations in the last 5 mins of the game, I can't lie, it makes it all worth it through how batshit insane it is.

Unlike DC1, the game uses pre-rendered backgrounds and I'd say visually it's a slight visual stepdown because of it, and the fixed camera often obscures the enemies from your view which spawn anytime the angle changes. With that said, this is basically the perfect sequel. It overhauls the series and puts it into a genre which is more harmonic with its concept and gives it a much needed sense of identity while mending most of the shortcomings of the first game. S'good