Punish The Wicked Merchant
This post started as a YouTube comment, but I started rambling, and this is what came out…
I’d like a HD Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, with refined controls and much, much better draw distance. I felt like it was such a unique game for its time with the loadout screen and all different tools you could use, like the caltrops, smoke bombs, poison rice and much more, not to mention my favourite - the grapple, with which you could pull yourself up onto ledges, or roofs to stalk or hide. There was a chi meter, which was an interesting idea, which enabled you to tell how close or far away an enemy or civilian was, but good luck with working that out if you have 3 persons in the same vicinity, all walking back and forth in different directions. There were stealth kills and it was always very satisfying getting a one shot on someone, but in my opinion the actual combat wasn’t great as a result of the controls being kind of sluggish. I would’ve hoped for something a little more fluid. Also, sometimes in boss battles the camera would have a shit fit and jump around all over the place ‘To me, to you, to me, to you…’ It’s like they handed the camera controls over to the chuckle brothers. Anyway, back to Tenchu; Despite how bad my criticisms may have made it sound I really enjoyed the game, and I go back every now and then, and play a few levels. That music on the first level always hooks me in… for a while… then I remember… To be critical again, just for a moment, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like the difficulty really ramps up when the demons appear in the later levels. It doesn’t feel like a natural escalation. It’s like “NOW THERE’S DEMONS BITCH, AND YOU WONT DETECT THEM UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE. DEAL WITH IT!” … and after a near perfect play through up to that point with predominantly “Grand Master” and some “Master Ninja” ratings on every previous level, it’s a bit of a kick in the nuts. I’ll try again one day, because as I’ve said, despite any criticisms I have of the game, I love it.
