 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: |   |
Mission mode is just as the name suggests. There are ten missions that you must complete in a certain time limit. Granted, most of these missions are repetitive or similar. Most involve killing a certain number of grunts, or fighting your way to the goal in time. While this mode adds a little bit of a diversion to the main game, it's not much.
Combat mode is the standard two-player death match. In combat mode all of the characters are unlocked for you. It’s nicer to see all the characters unlocked, instead of having to get them through the story mode; in this case it would have been too tedious and annoying to keep going through the story mode just to get some extra characters. These death matches can go online as well...sort of. Leaderboards are the only online feature found in Kengo, which doesn’t say much seeing as Xbox Live has a leaderboard for just about everything these days. It would have been nice to have some online versus play, and it would've added a lot to the game. You can however pit your character against someone else’s, but they only fight according to their traits and AI…what the heck is that? Just a spectator match? This makes no sense at all. If I wanted to watch samurai fight, I’d put on a movie instead of "playing" this. Way to add a pointless feature, while leaving out true online play that could've made the game even better.
The game does allow for a bit of customization. You can pick up ‘spirit’ orbs to upgrade abilities. You can change your health, stamina, attack power and defense using these orbs.Also customizable is the nickname of your samurai, mainly used for the online spectator matches. Also, earning experience nets you some new attacks.
The graphics are pretty, but so are most next-gen games. There are some fantastic character models that move fluidly through combat, and the water and trees look realistic. The sound is also quite nice with ambient noise as well as subtle noises, like the crunching of leaves under someone’s feet. It gives the game a bit of depth and atmosphere, which is nice.
Bottom Line:
Kengo: Legend of the 9 has some flaws, but in the end is a decent game overall. Sure, there are better fighters out there, but if you’re into the samurai thing and don't mind a really loose history lesson, or just looking for a cheap fighting game in general, Kengo fills the bill.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 7.0 |
Posted: 2007-12-07 19:07:38 PST