"Just frustrating"

When people heard of Rise of Sin Tzu, they were kind of expecting something along the lines of Vengeance, but to some dismay, the gameplay is quite different. As I've played through this repeatedly, I can't tolerate the monotonous gameplay nor can I tolerate the choppy techniques and maneuvers that ultimately prevent picking up the controller and going through this shaky ride again.

Graphics-7/10
They're decent, some of which can be mediocre when it comes to some of the thugs and backgrounds alike. The character designs are spot on so are the wonderful boss's, along with the new boss character Sin Tzu. The boss battles were really paid attention to, it's great to see that the returning nemesis's haven't lacked any motivation after having their ass's handed to them over a decade now, with the exception of Sin Tzu who's based off of one of the greatest Eastern strategists known as Sun Tzu, but of course Sin has just met Batman, so he's neither insane or psychotic in the sense of being deranged with having had such a losing streak like that of the rest of Batman's fan club.

Story-7/10
The story as simplistic as it is, was done quite well. I'd expect nothing less from such good writers from the animated series that are capable of fantastic plot development. Sin is out to rise all sorts of hell by controlling his puppets to twist Batman every which way that ultimately leads him to a final showdown between the two.

Sound-8/10
The voice actors do a wonderful job for their respective characters, especially Kevin Conroy who voices Bat's and to my surprise Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa, (who was Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat the movie) who voices Sin Tzu, he couldn't have possibly done a better job than what he did, he voices Sin Tzu down to the T with perfection. The music in gameplay on the other hand is not memorable and very passable, there are some good pieces, the character select screen comes to mind, but it's not available while you partake in ass kicking, go figure..

Gameplay-5/10
Pure brawler here, if done right, they can be awesome to play, but must keep variety to keep it from getting boring. Unfortunately, RoST lacks fluidity, has some variety, but not enough, neither does it pull off fluent animation to integrate any 'wow' factor from watching the moves in action.

The core of gameplay consists of combos, every character has combos which sprout mostly from delays. For example, Batman has his uppercut---square, square, delay, square and later you can add onto this with new techniques by adding another delay with a kick or punch. That's the bulk of where the gameplay lies is mastering the delays in order complete lengthy and chainable combos.

Another core part of gameplay is utilizing the techniques right, the throws, jump attacks, using gadgets on enemies and the interactive backgrounds and combos in streaks, by hitting as many thugs without being interrupted (smirks) as possible, which racks up points depending on what rank of combo you completed, i.e, fair, good, awesome, perfect, etc. The more points you receive the more you have to unlock, new moves, gadgets and coins for your trophy room. This feature is nice because it keeps the play somewhat motivated to beat off the everlasting amount of baddies.

As I said earlier, it's just frustrating , perhaps once you pick up the controller and start to play, you might see what I mean, but I'll explain anyway's. There seems to be a problem in defensive measures that this game lacks badly in, as whatever character you may be, you can't block in all directions, your block can't completely nullify all damage nor can you defend against hundreds of projectiles flung in your direction, these instances take up about 99% of gameplay which is terribly frustrating. This is what's known as 'cheese', extremely cheap enemy A.I that can kill you almost instantaneously with projectiles and surrounding tactics. Your only saving grace is the dash attack, smoke pellets which have to be resupplied and power attacks that have to be built up. However, not even these can really save you in some circumstances of extreme frustration that can no doubt bring about the psychopath in you.

Another gripe, is that of the mission based objectives which are either diffuse bombs or rescue civilians that end up in the damndest places. It sounds simple, but dealing with a barrage of thugs in all directions that attack simultaneously impeding your attacks altogether and having to do this before the timer reaches zero can induce a very long chain of incoherent curse words. One last gripe is that the techniques and animations could of been A LOT more fluid, which detracts greatly from gameplay, because it's not cool to witness the gang beating up thugs and looking as if they're muscular system has seized up causing rigor mortis. Fortunately, what makes up for some of this maddening gameplay difficulty is co-op.

Replayability-3/10
Co-op is rather fun, completing missions and beating up thugs together using 'buddy' moves is slightly entertaining. There are numerous unlockables as well, including the purchaseable moves, the coins that unlock extras in the trophy room, along with seeing how our main villain was created by the renowned Jim Lee. All these bells and whistles are cute, however, they don't even come close to make up for the lack of everything else this game suffers from. After completing it once and unlocking the extras, there really isn't anything to warrant another play through.

Over All, it's a title that's not necessarily compromised by it's infuriating difficulty, the same redundant timed mission objectives and lack of fluent animations, no, wait...it is compromised by the above.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/03, Updated 10/23/03