 Review By: Eric Rehm |
Developer: | Genki |
| Publisher: | Majesco Entertainment | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Xbox Live (leaderboards) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Kengo: Legend of the 9 is a fighting game developed by Genki and published by Majesco. It follows 9 swordsmen; Musashi Miyamoto, Jubei Yagyu, Sanako Chiba, Ittosai Ito, Izo Okada, Soji Okita, Kojiro Sasaki, Ryoma Sakamoto and Yasubi Horibe, through a history lesson loosely based in reality. Each samurai has a different fighting style and techniques, as well as an unique story.
There is no tutorial for Kengo. At all. Even after reading the manual, it’s still confusing initially, and in a game like this some type of tutorial is really needed. You’re thrown into the game without knowing what kind of attack is harder, or weaker. You haven’t a clue how to block, or how to push the enemy back when you’re in a standoff situation. This often led me to instant death, as the boss of the first level can cut you down in one blow after knocking you back.
After a longer than wanted learning period (about an hour to do simple combos and attacks) things finally started making some sense. Not much sense, but enough where I could start playing the game. However, at this point it also became apparent that the only people that stand a chance against you are the bosses, as the peons are way too easy to defeat. They get cut down in one or two shots, and several can be brought down with a decently placed combo.
The combat is enjoyable on the whole, once you figure out the controls. The game has a simple lock on function that works nicely with the one on one combat, letting you go after one NPC at a time in large groups. The lock on can be slightly annoying though, moving the camera angle around in odd ways, but nothing to the degree that it breaks the game in any way.
That leads to another problem: why one on one combat only? More often than not, I was surrounded by enemies. This was a problem at first, before I knew the controls well enough. Well, that is at least until I realized that they only attacked me one at a time. What’s the point in having so many enemies surround me if only one will ever attack me at a time? It’d make the lower ranking enemies a bit more entertaining at least, but I guess that is hoping for too much.
In the beginning, you only start with three of the nine samurai, and have to unlock them later on via the story mode. The game is split into a few modes. The ever-lovable ‘story mode,’ ‘mission mode,’ and ‘combat mode.’ Story mode (main mode) allows you to follow each samurai through his training, and eventually becoming of a great samurai. The stories of each samurai are loosely based on historical events, like the raid of the Kira mansion and the battle of Ganryujima. Loose is an understatement, as the events are really only shared in name… the creators of the game sought fit to add some creative license to each battle, but most likely for the best, as they probably weren’t too interesting anyhow.
Posted: 2007-12-07 19:07:38 PST