Game #953: Tenchu - Stealth Assassins

 I did like a Ninja... and cheated my way through. Sue me.

 I'm delving into PS1 classics now with Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. While often highly regarded, my only experience with the Tenchu series were with the third game, which I adored... and I played using cheats every single time. I'm not good at stealth games, OK? Something that this game very quickly reminded me. Thankfully, Tenchu came at a time when Cheat Codes were a thing, so even stealth-impaired people such as me can have fun with it.

 The game is made up of 10 missions, and you can play as either Rikimaru or Ayame. Rikimaru favors strength, while Ayame favors speed. The game is so clunky that pretty much either option is fine. If you cheat your way through, like I did, missions will be pretty brief... even though you're given no instructions whatsoever most of the time. 'Kill the Merchant'. Fine, but where is him? That's for you to find out by exploring through the stage. There's no radar, so your only help is a Ki-hint that shows you how close an enemy is to you. From which direction? Who knows. What this means... is that the game requires patience. You must explore slowly and carefully, heck, level 3 is laden with traps, just so that you'll fall to your death for going to fast. Clearly, this isn't my kind of game. I'm trying to scratch off as many games from my backlog as I can before I'm forced to work on my Uni's final project, so sue me for taking the easy way out.

 Before each mission you are allowed to pick from various tools, and there are plenty of fun stuff, like a poisoned rice ball, call traps or even grenades. I think there's a lot of depth with the fun stuff you can do to your enemies, so it deserves praise in this aspect. Independent of these, you'll also bring a grappling hook with you, and it's actually fun to use, if a bit clunky. Clunky keeps being the key-word when it comes to this game, as future games, at least Tenchu 3, would make it much simpler to use the grappling hook to move around. But hey, considering it's a PS1 game, it works relatively well. These items can be replenished either by finding more on the mission or by getting good ranks. Good luck, I just used cheats.

 But if an enemy catches a glimpse of you you'll have to do battle and... combat is very clunky. Combining the Square button with different directional inputs on the digital pad will produce different attacks, which is kinda neat, but it's easy for you AND your enemies to just miss strikes. And moving is ALSO fairly clunky, since it uses tank controls, so repositioning yourself after you went over your enemy with your attacks is a bit of a chore. It's just clunky, y'know? And for as cool as most bosses look, they can tear through your health bar in seconds, and bosses are mandatory fights, no stealth-killing your way through them. In other words, it's a hard game, and a lot of the challenge comes from how clunky it is.

 It may sound like I was harsh on the game, but leaving its age aside... Tenchu has a certain je ne se quois that made it endearing to me. I don't think I'll be playing this one again, but I'm glad I gave it a go.

 5.0