Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins

"I wish the ninjas killed the camera man first"

It has been a number of weeks since I last played Tenchu 2. I tried and I tried to get excited about this game. It has such potential for greatness. But after last night I'm not so sure that my time wouldn't be spent better elsewhere. Here my issues with this game.
GRAPHICS: First I must let you know that I also have a Dreamcast, and I'm spoiled by 128 bits. However I don't think this is why I find the graphics in this game are sometimes so painful. Activison also made Tony Hawks and V8, games that hold up very well. And the playstation can produce good looking graphics, just look at Soul Blade. But someone dropped the ball on the ninjas here. For example, Ayame looks so flat and boxy, and her face is a un-even pudgy mess. If you think this is nitpicking just go look at Taki in Soul Blade and imagine. Forget Takki, just go look at Ayame from the first game. Shes better than this.
THE CAMERA: Oh how I hate the camera. Never mind how hard the final bosses are in each level because the truth is that the camera is what is going to beat you. Several times during key battles I've had my view of the enemy just vanish. Suddenly instead of being in 3rd person with the enemy in front me, I'm in first person with a boss hacking
away at me from behind. Talk about killing the fun!
BASIC GAME ISSUES: Smarter guards.... OK you're walking down a hall, you pass another guard. When you return you find his intestines spilling out all over the tatami...what do you do. In this game they go on alert...for about a 45 seconds, then they go back to business as usual. I don't know about you but I'd scream bloody murder and have that place on full alert all night. It's cool that you can drag the bodies away but they just didin't give you enough of a reason too. Imagine if hinding the bodies meant the difference between still beeing able to sneak around or having guards constantly swarming, and rushing to every little sound. Oh yes...the sound. Also imagine if you not only had to worry about being seen, but also being heard. I've made some pretty sloppy noicey kills right in the thick of things. Nobody seems to hear well enough.
Because the guards are only slightly brighter, the only way tension was added was to plop a couple of over healthed bosses at the end of each senerio. After all these years I'm really looking for a little more than this old and tired solution. Boses just bore me. I would like having more challenge in the missions in themself. Mission with stealth and time limits do it for me, not big boxy white tigers.
SAVING GRACE: The mission editor is where this game shines. I do go back to the mission editor most of all. Being able to enterlock the guard rotation, pair them in groups, adding stealth, limiting time...makes it feel more like a silent, undetected stike with something riding on it. Its true that a lot of the graphic/camera issues are due to the fact that Activision did try to pack a lot in here. But try to improve the game. There was certainly room here to make it a more intellegently challengeing game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/18/00, Updated 09/18/00