Tenchu: Fatal Shadows

"A vast improvement over Wrath of Heaven"

It seems to me that no Tenchu game has yet captured the simplicity, yet authentic feel of the original Tenchu: SA. Sure Tenchu 2 was a step in the right direction, but even with its new features it fell somewhat short. Wrath of Heaven delivered a graphically superb game, but again lacked the cohesion of the first game. And now Kurenai picks out the best in all games to create near perfection.

The game plays really well, with it being accessible by Tenchu-fanatics and new comers to the series. This is achieved by 3 different difficulty settings which reduce/increase the enemy type and number. The controls are easy to master, identical to Tenchu:Wrath of Heaven (WOH). The three levels of difficulty make the game as easy or as hard as you want it to be, I myself a veteran of the Tenchu series was having diffculty on the Normal setting towards the middle of the game.

This time the story involves Ayame and a new female character called Rin and you take it in turn with each character as the story unfolds. It begins with Rin mistaking Ayame for the culprit who massacred her village, so at the start the two main characters are enemies. As the story unfold the true villains reveal themselves.

The engine seems the same as WOH but the level design seems a lot fuller. More time has obviously been spent to adding extra details suchas, wooden flooring that reflects, other lighting effects and plenty of foliage to stealthy hide bodies. Thats right, the ability to move bodies has been brought back as has swimming and the water phantom technique. Its is clear K2 have gone back to the roots of Stealth Assassins by recreating several lavel layouts from the original game.

The music as always is fantastic, lots of acoustic japanese feeling tracks really adds to the ambience. Apparently Asakura (former Tenchu-composer) only provided 1 track for this Tenchu game, but the game doesnt suffer as a result.

The replayability of Kurenai is amazing, all in all I have counted 324 variations of levels that can be played although there are only 12 mission maps in total. The game also features a training mode, a free roam mode and a boss fighting arena sub-game. There are also images, movies and cut-scenes to be unlocked - certainly enough to keep everyone bust trying to achieve a recordable 100%.

You make the game sound so good why only a 9? I probably would have awarded Kurenai a 10 except for one thing. I own the Japanese version. No Tenchu fan could wait for a US/EU release. As we speak it has still yet to be announced. Do us a favour next time and lets have a global release so we don't have to either wait in agony or cope with the Japanese language.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/04