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
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
2 Comments
Nice review! This is one of those classic PSX series i somehow completely missed, and every time I catch someone praising it I mentally raise its rank in my backlog.
BigBossHayabusa
1 month ago