Thursday, September 17, 2015

Review #252: Shinobido 2 - Revenge of Zen

 Move aside, Phantom Pain. Or not.
 Shinobido 2 is a third-person action/stealth game for the PS Vita. It has the distinction of not only being the third Shinobido game, but the first one released in the USA!

 The story is terrible. At first, I thought that the reason everything was explained so poorly, and that it seemed as if I was missing some information was because I should've played the previous two games. I was wrong, I just did some reasearch, turns out the only returning character is on a support-only role. But what's the gist of it? You play as Zen, at the beginning of the game his girlfriend, Sen, is killed while Zen survives, albeit not without a scar. Early on, it is discovered that Sen is alive, she is on the game's cover after all, kinda, seems like there are these mirrors capable of creating 'mirror people', thus Kaede, San's 'reflection', was born. She has as much personality as a cardboard. As far as the main villain goes, his motivation is very dumb. The there are the three Daimyos vying for control of the land, and you must pick from missions sent by them. The game suggests serving only one Daimyo, but you are given no information about any of them, besides one line each explaining why they want control. There's the evil looking woman, the evil looking kabuki dude and the unreliable looking guy, so just pick whoever looks most appealing. Everything about the story is dumb. You shouldn't play this game for the story.
 The game progresses by having you doing missions by these different Daimyos. Basically, just complete missions until a cut-scene triggers letting you know that the next story mission is available, not that you need to tackle it immediately, as you may complete missions ad-nauseaum in order to level up Zen or Kaede. Zen and Kaede play exactly the same, but you must level them up separately, so you could potentially raise their stats(Stamina, Strength, Defense, Hook Length, Special) in different ways. There's also an Alchemy system, which is kinda convoluted to explain, but easy to use, in order to create tools out of items you may find on missions or earn as rewards. Or you can just buy them. There's a decent amount of tools, from healing items, to Shuriken, caltraps and mines, but, playing on Normal, I never felt the need to employ any item. I just let my Katana and hook do all the ninja-ing.

 Zen and Kaede are Ninja, so they're pretty nimble. They can dash, crouch and jump, which isn't very surprising, but they've also got a hook to grapple onto buildings or ledges(Which doesn't always work very well, the clinging can be a bit spotty), a cloth to glide and access to a special insta-kill move. This Special move consumes 'energy bars', but will kill any enemy(as many as energy bars you've got, although stronger enemies require more Special bars) in a nearby vicinity, without moving you from the spot(Although you can opt to stay on top of the corpse instead of defaulting back to where you were when you initiated it). Or you can just sneak behind them, or above them, and instantly kill them with triangle, your choice. If seen, you can either run for dear life, or engage them in swordplay. Square produces a three-hit combo, but combat is a bit... clunky, enemies always seem to be able to avoid your third hit, even if they got hit by the first two, however, roll around, while they block, and hit them on their backs and they won't be able to do a thing while you mash Square. It works on the last boss.
 As far as the missions are concerned, there's a lot of variety: Assassination, in which you must kill a specific target. Obliteration, in which you must slay every enemy. Transportation, in which you must take something from one place to another. Scouting, which is self explanatory. Kidnapping, in which you must find a target and carry them to the exit. Stealing, in which you must find and steal certain something. Transportation, in which you must transport a person from one place to another. Rescue, which is like 'kidnapping' but the target doesn't fight back. Duel, which are one-on-one fights, Assault in which you must destroy an Oxcart, and Guard in which you must guard one. Variety, there's a lot of it, buuuut... there's only about six different levels. The goals might be different, the enemy layout might be different, but you'll be Ninja-ing through the same, few stages all the time, so it gets repetitive anyways. On it's defense, there's 'New Game+', which also you to unlock skins, like a Bear, to put over Zen or Kaede, as well as a harder difficulty setting... but then again, it's a four-hour long game.

 Still, one of my biggest gripes with the game are the controls. For example, rolling is done by: First, Targeting the enemy(Hold L), then hold R(Crouch) and the press X+the analog stick. It would've been much easier to do away with having to hold R. Speaking of crouching, for whatever reason, the right analog stick turns YOU around while crouching, instead of moving the camera, which is endlessly annoying. While the hook predicts correctly where you'd want to grapple most of the time, so you can just press down on the directional pad, sometimes it won't come out, so you need to manually aim(X+O) and then shoot it. None of these are too cumbersome, but they do get in the way.
 I don't usually care about graphics, and it's not like I expected Uncharted - Golden Abyss-level graphics, but Shinobido 2 is a bit... lackluster. It looks like a PS2 game, a very sharp PS2 game, but a PS2 game non the less. During cutscenes there's also a ton of graphical bugs over Zaji and Zen's armors. The game could've used more 'instakill' animations, as seeing the same stab every single time gets old after a while. The music was fitting, but unremarkable, while the voice acting was passable at best, seems only Zen was decent, but even then it felt a but phoned-in.

 Shinobido 2 is a decently fun game. It has a few flaws and shortcomings here and there, but overall it's a decent game to have on the go.
 7.0 out of 10

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