Reviews
It’s been almost 10 years since Tenchu: Stealth Assassins appeared on the Playstation to a ninja hungry market. Since then, there have been numerous iterations on a wide variety of hardware. K2 has now released Tenchu’s venture on to the next generation market with their samurai sword slasher, Tenchu Z. As fans expect more from this new version on Microsoft’s latest box, has this version of Tenchu delivered another stealthy hit to the gaming market?
The game begins with the creation of your young ninja character. This is the first deviation from the Tenchu titles that have gone before in that this time you are not playing the role of Rikimaru and Ayame. Rikimaru is instead the source of your missions as you work your way through feudal Japan. You can select between male and female, select a face type, hair type, etc to create the character that you will use in the game. You also get to create your partner who will be of the opposite gender to your main character. Both characters use a katana, so there is unfortunately no dual dagger wielding in this version. You can also adjust your characters statistics and trade one attribute off in favour of another. You can also change your characters clothing, and add various accessories. With the exception of gender and face, you characters attributes and appearance can be altered before every mission. After creating your character, you go through the tutorial which introduces you to the techniques and abilities available to you. Once you have completed your training, you then arrive at your base. This is effectively a camp with a couple of tents. Rikimaru resides in one and that is where you can select your missions. The other tent is where you can both buy and equip skills and items. You must equip before the start of every mission as your inventory is reset once a mission is completed. This can be annoying if you have a kit that suits your needs, and you simply want to get straight into the action. It’s more annoying in you start a mission and forget to stock up on goodies. You have a wealth of ninja gadgets and gismos available to you to aid you in completing your mission, most of which are familiar to fans of the genre. A strange oversight regarding items of clothing available to buy is that you never get to actually see what the various items look like before you buy them. You just see them all listed with names that don’t really convey how they differ from other items in the same category (like bandage 1, bandage 2, etc) You don’t get the chance to see your character wearing the item of apparel to see if it’s for you. However, you do get to view the item on your character after it has been purchased as it appears on the list of items you can select, so the ability to view the item on your character is certainly there. To not provide that view prior to purchasing the item is just bizarre.
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