Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (PSX) - Guest Post

ZXLink brings his ninja skills to the PlayStation to take on a 3d stealth action pioneer.

Time to continue the ninja action! This time around we've got Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for PS1. It's a stealth action title, and it preceeded Metal Gear Solid by a good 7 months in Japan. I've seen it referred to as a "ninja simulator", which may or may not be an apt description. Let's find out!

The main menu has options, training, and of course start. No continue option, meaning I probably won't be saving. Training more or less goes against the principals of this blog, so we're going to jump right in with start. Unfortunately I thought I was screencapping my first play, only to find out afterwards that no shots were taken, so all of the shots are from a second play where I had some idea of how things worked.

We're given a character select screen, and since Rikimaru is already selected we'll go with him. After that, the game loads up a map where you can select your mission. There's only one, so we're going with that one. Apparently we're going to punish an evil merchant.

Next up is an inventory screen, you can take 15 items with you on a mission. There's an array of typical ninja stuff, grenades, a healing potion, and a bunch of empty spots for stuff that we haven't found yet, I assume. Since healing potions are for sissy-babies, grenades are anti-stealth, and I've been playing Ninja Gaiden games for the past 3 days, we're going with shurikens and nothing else.

The loading screens contain some tips to help you complete the mission. In this case, it basically says "don't forget that this is a stealth game, don't kill people who don't have weapons, and you have a grappling hook, you're going to need it." Finally we're in-game!

Alrighty, after fudging with the controls for a bit, square is attack, cross is jump, circle and R1 make Rikimaru take the fetal position while managing to stay vertical (it also seems to make you stick to walls ala Metal Gear, if you're close enough to one), L1 is your look button, L2 and R2 scroll through the available items, and triangle uses said items. I walked around trying to get a feel for it and immediately got into a fight with a guard. I won, but he took off a fair chunk of my health.

The game seems to use tank style controls, and Rikimaru backpedals extremely slowly (pressing down seems to block attacks if you're looking directly at your opponent, but it can be touchy). The camera is typically clunky for a PS1-era action title, never seeming to look exactly where you want it to. Coupled with the short draw distance, this makes enemies very dangerous, something I found out the hard way after Rikimaru ended up laying face-down in a pool of his own blood after falling off a roof and getting stuck in a fight in a small alley. Luckily the AI is pretty basic and will hit other enemies if they happen to be in the way, so if you get caught fighting 2 people you can position one in between you and another guy to even out the odds a bit.

The trick, of course, is to stay on the rooftops, drop behind your enemies, and attack them before they notice you. Rikimaru will do a stealth kill if you're close enough, resulting in a lot of bloodspray and sometimes decapitation. If you're a bit too far away, you still kill them, but without the stealth kill animation.

FATALITY! FLAWLESS VICTORY!

Anyway, my mission here is to locate and assassinate the merchant. Unfortunately this is easier said than done, as it's easy to get turned around without looking at the map, and the map itself doesn't tell you where you've been or where you should be going. The draw distance really doesn't help matters, since buildings often only half appear when you're on the roof, thus causing you to miss doors and whatnot.




10 Minutes Later...


The game seems to have a single music track looped during the first two levels, I can't speak beyond that because that's as far as I managed to make it. It's not terrible, but not particularly interesting either. Anyway, I finally found the merchant, which gives me an unskippable cutscene.

What an ugly bastard. I'll be honest, for a PS1 game the graphics aren't too bad, but the animations are stiff and awkward, even moreso than one would expect.

The merchant notices Rikimaru, who decides to answer the question "What? Who are you?" by doing an awesome ninja front flip toward the merchant, and then stops to tell him he's going to take revenge for all the poor folks he's been screwing, rather than, oh, I dunno, stabbing the bastard in the face.

Mr. Evil Merchant (Edogawa or some such) calls for help, and a lone samurai with a really stereotypical Japanese accent pops up out of nowhere to fight Rikimaru, allowing the obese midget to escape. It ends about the way you would expect, given that I don't have to fight the camera in such a large room:

Pictured above: I cut out his accent, and he proceeded to fidget around for around 15 seconds before actually dying.

After the battle, it's time to find Asian Fat Bastard again, but there's no indication of where he went. I spent the next half hour wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out which building he was in, and on the first play I did find him and kill him. Second time around, I got bored after 20 minutes and started hunting down the rest of the guards so I could walk around freely.

Rikimaru is apparently pissed at this point (or the game somehow let's you sneak up on people from the front, not sure) and has taken to jamming his sword through people's throats instead of simply slicing them. Immediately after which he starts posing for about 15 seconds. Which is pretty anti-ninja to me, but it does look neat.


30 minutes and several dead guards later....

Ugh, I got anally violated by a guy with a polearm, and worse yet, I never even found the fat guy who was molesting that geisha. I could retry the mission, but any items you had on you when you died are gone, and there are no checkpoints. I did make it to the second mission on the first play, however. You are to deliver a message in a town filled with stereotypical ninjas. Said ninjas are much more difficult to kill than the samurai or the guards from the first mission, and can climb up to the roof tops. It's not the worst thing I've ever played, but I have little interest in continuing at this point.

"WAIT!" you say, "What about the other character, Ayame?" Well, she plays more or less exactly like Rikimaru, except she uses two smaller blades and somehow manages to be even more awkwardly animated. The game is sluggish, the draw distance is terrible, the camera is shitty, and the music I've heard is wholly uninteresting. In '98, this might've been pretty good, but in 2011, it just doesn't stand up. As for being a ninja simulator, I suppose in a sense that's correct. The outfits and weaponry don't fit, but being a ninja was all about being stealthy and assassinating targets, and the game has that in spades, if you can get past the camera and controls. A ninja game where your character was dressed like a farmer and never so much as picked up a sword would probably be more historically accurate, but where's the fun in that?