One of my favorite stealth games from one of my favorite devs back in the 90s to early 2010s, Shinobido is basically what was born after Tenchu and Way of the Samurai got very much into each other and went to a motel to spend the night. Shinobido offers a gripping story involving the political struggle between three powerful feudal lords for the province of Utakata intersecting the personal story of main character Goh the Crow, an amnesiac ninja from the nearly-extinct Asuka clan who needs to look for mysterious glowing stones known as the Soul Fragments, each revealing a piece of his memories as he finds out what happened to his clan and the villains behind the incident.
While Goh's story is linear, the political plot surrounding Utakata is completely molded by your decisions as you're free to accept missions from any of the three feudal lords Ichijo, Akame or Sadame anytime you want, the more missions you accomplish, the more a feudal lord will trust you and the more you'll get to know about their faction and even them as people. You can be loyal to one of them, you can just accept whatever mission pays more, you can betray any of them, it really is up to you to decide what to do when it comes to this part of the game. The journal shows how your choices mold the outcome of the war for Utakata as it greatly affects each lord's army, their thoughts on the matters that get highlighted in the journal, as well as their thoughts on you personally.
Shinobido's gameplay has a bit of that PS2-era jank with dumb enemy AI, camera issues in areas that are too cramped and some collision-related oddities. However, I got used to that jank in a few minutes as I was replaying this game and found myself stealth-killing and fighting without any major issues. Honestly, that was my main concern at first, I feared Shinobido might not be as good as I remembered, since quite a handful of PS2 games I used to love back then (Drakengard, Chaos Legion, Sonic Heroes, Cold Fear) don't really hold up. Regardless, Shinobido's combat is simple, but competent enough, you have a few sword combos which do a decent job at dealing damage to enemies, but being a stealth game, what Shinobido really expects you to do is being stealthy and using tools to deal with enemies instead of just charging at them with your sword like you're Ryu Hayabusa or something.
Shinobido has a variety of tools you can use for a lot of purposes both in and out of combat. Shurikens, caltrops, grappling hooks, potions you can use to heal or buff yourself, as well as spheres you can use to either explode on enemies and cause damage that way, or cause debuffs, which comes in handy when there are a lot of them in one place. Be careful however, because if you're close to the sphere's smoke, you'll get debuffed yourself. You can also use food as bait to lure enemies to a specific place, use a remote-controlled magnetic chick which can either distract enemies or be used to recon the area while it lasts before you decide what to do. Hell, there's an alchemy system where you use ingredients to create your own potions and spheres with unique effects, but I suck at that and got too lazy to look up a tutorial to see how it works, but it's cool that this is there!
Where Shinobido actually falters, however, is in the variety of the missions you're tasked with. It may seem varied at first since there are many types of missions like total destruction, assassination, theft, kidnapping, rescue, attacking supply carts, defending supply carts, defending generals or even one of the feudal lords... However, a lot of these missions end up getting repetitive and samey after a while, even when the game does spice things up after the first few chapters by introducing other ninja clans in the enemy's ranks. I totally understand people who get tired of this game because of the repetitive missions, as well as the pace-breaking enemy invasions on Goh's hideout, which has to be the most poorly-hidden hideout ever since everyone can find this place, apparently.
I personally did get bothered by that, but not enough for my experience to be negatively affected, I was still very much invested the whole way through. Maybe more mission types or more unique missions would have done wonders to make Shinobido feel less tale after a while, but eh, I'll take what I'm being given, plus I had a great time playing around with the ragdoll physics of the enemy corpses, as well as turning Goh himself into a ragdoll with one of the cheat codes that get unlocked when I beat the game, it's hilarious.
That being said, Shinobido is also pretty good-looking for a PS2 title, main character models are surprisingly rich in detail, the environments and the amazing soundtrack manage to create this tense atmosphere in each mission, enemy encounter and boss fights. The game's presentation overall does a fantastic job at selling the idea that you're in the dangerous underworld of Sengoku-era Japan and you'd better watch out because your own throat can also get cut out there. Oh, and do yourself a favor and switch to the japanese voice acting as soon as you start this game... The english dub is quite bad.
In spite of the repetitiveness preventing it from being a masterpiece, Shinobido is still one of my favorite PS2 games and probably my favorite Acquire game as well. I'd love to see a modern installment of this game, which people seem to say Sekiro kind of is exactly that, which makes me interested in trying it out someday. But yeah, definitely worth at least checking out, especially if you like either Tenchu or Way of the Samurai, or both. If you don't, then you just need to get a better taste in video games, sorry.
While Goh's story is linear, the political plot surrounding Utakata is completely molded by your decisions as you're free to accept missions from any of the three feudal lords Ichijo, Akame or Sadame anytime you want, the more missions you accomplish, the more a feudal lord will trust you and the more you'll get to know about their faction and even them as people. You can be loyal to one of them, you can just accept whatever mission pays more, you can betray any of them, it really is up to you to decide what to do when it comes to this part of the game. The journal shows how your choices mold the outcome of the war for Utakata as it greatly affects each lord's army, their thoughts on the matters that get highlighted in the journal, as well as their thoughts on you personally.
Shinobido's gameplay has a bit of that PS2-era jank with dumb enemy AI, camera issues in areas that are too cramped and some collision-related oddities. However, I got used to that jank in a few minutes as I was replaying this game and found myself stealth-killing and fighting without any major issues. Honestly, that was my main concern at first, I feared Shinobido might not be as good as I remembered, since quite a handful of PS2 games I used to love back then (Drakengard, Chaos Legion, Sonic Heroes, Cold Fear) don't really hold up. Regardless, Shinobido's combat is simple, but competent enough, you have a few sword combos which do a decent job at dealing damage to enemies, but being a stealth game, what Shinobido really expects you to do is being stealthy and using tools to deal with enemies instead of just charging at them with your sword like you're Ryu Hayabusa or something.
Shinobido has a variety of tools you can use for a lot of purposes both in and out of combat. Shurikens, caltrops, grappling hooks, potions you can use to heal or buff yourself, as well as spheres you can use to either explode on enemies and cause damage that way, or cause debuffs, which comes in handy when there are a lot of them in one place. Be careful however, because if you're close to the sphere's smoke, you'll get debuffed yourself. You can also use food as bait to lure enemies to a specific place, use a remote-controlled magnetic chick which can either distract enemies or be used to recon the area while it lasts before you decide what to do. Hell, there's an alchemy system where you use ingredients to create your own potions and spheres with unique effects, but I suck at that and got too lazy to look up a tutorial to see how it works, but it's cool that this is there!
Where Shinobido actually falters, however, is in the variety of the missions you're tasked with. It may seem varied at first since there are many types of missions like total destruction, assassination, theft, kidnapping, rescue, attacking supply carts, defending supply carts, defending generals or even one of the feudal lords... However, a lot of these missions end up getting repetitive and samey after a while, even when the game does spice things up after the first few chapters by introducing other ninja clans in the enemy's ranks. I totally understand people who get tired of this game because of the repetitive missions, as well as the pace-breaking enemy invasions on Goh's hideout, which has to be the most poorly-hidden hideout ever since everyone can find this place, apparently.
I personally did get bothered by that, but not enough for my experience to be negatively affected, I was still very much invested the whole way through. Maybe more mission types or more unique missions would have done wonders to make Shinobido feel less tale after a while, but eh, I'll take what I'm being given, plus I had a great time playing around with the ragdoll physics of the enemy corpses, as well as turning Goh himself into a ragdoll with one of the cheat codes that get unlocked when I beat the game, it's hilarious.
That being said, Shinobido is also pretty good-looking for a PS2 title, main character models are surprisingly rich in detail, the environments and the amazing soundtrack manage to create this tense atmosphere in each mission, enemy encounter and boss fights. The game's presentation overall does a fantastic job at selling the idea that you're in the dangerous underworld of Sengoku-era Japan and you'd better watch out because your own throat can also get cut out there. Oh, and do yourself a favor and switch to the japanese voice acting as soon as you start this game... The english dub is quite bad.
In spite of the repetitiveness preventing it from being a masterpiece, Shinobido is still one of my favorite PS2 games and probably my favorite Acquire game as well. I'd love to see a modern installment of this game, which people seem to say Sekiro kind of is exactly that, which makes me interested in trying it out someday. But yeah, definitely worth at least checking out, especially if you like either Tenchu or Way of the Samurai, or both. If you don't, then you just need to get a better taste in video games, sorry.