Tenchu 2 Birth of the Assassins
Reviewed by Aristotle
Quick-start here; Tenchu 2 rules. I have not yet beaten the
second level yet so many of you will call me
?inexperienced?; true, but I write reviews based on the
game's fun level. So far, Tenchu 2 has not failed me yet.
The sound is PERFECT, I repeat, PERFECT for this game and
creates the best atmosphere possible; suspenseful. That is
just what this game is, because you never know what is
lurking around the next corner. Maybe nothing, maybe a trap,
maybe a ninja ambush. You, Rikimaru, must utilize many
stealth moves of the ninja way of life and emerge victorious
on all of the levels. If you do not, you die.
The Graphics can leave a lot to be desired, though. While
colorful and somewhat sharp, they are not sharp enough.
Rikimaru's head looks triangular, and when you kill an enemy
their body falls almost through the ground. As for the
FMV's, I'll be short; ouch. Other than that, because I do
not really care about FMV's, the graphics are good enough
for me. These graphics in my opinion are worthy of an 8.
Like I stated before, the Sound is absolutely perfect. Each
sound effect has been precision engineered to sound exactly
like the real thing, and it has succeeded all too well. The
music, or lack thereof, is good too, because you are too
involved in the game to care about the music; all you care
about is the Ninja KI Meter going THUMP? THUMP? THUMP? to
let you know an enemy is nearby. This sound deserves a 10.
The Gameplay is near perfection as well, a couple of minor
flaws though. The biggest flaw would have to be the camera
angles. On the first boss, pretty modest difficulty level, I
was hacking away at him and winning; all of a sudden the
camera zooms off and I can't see cra*. The boss starts
hacking away at me and he kills me. Can we say cra*py camera
angle??? That is the only bad part of the game. The rest,
such as the mission editor, levels, characters, bosses, and
controls, are perfect and suit the game very well.
The Controls could have been worked with here; the sheer
number of moves Rikimaru and Ayame have at their disposal
does not work well with the Playstation controller (but hey,
it's better than the N64 controller!), but it is near the
best they could have done. Kudos to Activision for
increasing the amount of tricks from the first Tenchu to the
second. They have added many more tricks, such as the long
jump and the fast swim. In times of battle the need for
these extra tricks shines.
The Replay Value is excellent. As if the game itself weren?t
enough, they put on a Mission Editor feature. You can select
the level layout, your starting position, even the
objectives! I love putting enemies unsuspecting behind an
obstacle, and then coming up behind them and slicing their
throat open.
To Buy or Rent? I think the answer is just a tad obvious;
BUY. Or if you're not that crazy about adventure games, go
ahead and give it a rent, although I guarantee you'll be
buying it sooner or later. Activision has done it again, but
this time not with Tony Hawk!
Overall: 9 out of 10
