Tenchu: Stealth Assassins

"Play like a real ninja"

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins gives you the chance to be a ninja, and unlike Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this involves actual stealth.

At the beginning, you choose a young, brash female ninja named Ayame, or the somewhat less young male Rikimaru. They each have their own play style, but the levels are very similar. There is a story that runs through the missions, but many of the levels stand on their own. Since the main plot line doesn't start until a few levels in, revealing much about it would spoil it. Basically, there's this ninja who keeps causing trouble for your master, Lord Gohda, and you have to straighten everything out.

You choose your ninja and use him or her to climb around on rooftops, sneak through alleys, etc, trying not to be seen. If you do well, you can sneak up behind your enemies and kill them without alerting anyone. If they see you, they yell for other guards and you have to fight them head on.

Rikimaru is strong and does a lot of damage. Ayame is fast, making her more ideal for creeping up on people. Getting through the levels is a little easier with her, but you'll have a hard time with the bosses unless you're packing inventory.

In each level you are given a rank from thug to grand master, based on how much you were seen, how many enemies you killed, whether the bodies were discovered, and so on. Grand master is difficult to achieve in any level, and near-impossible in a few. However, your hard work is rewarded.

The sneaking works better than the fighting. Camera issues and some control problems make this difficult. The main problem with the controls is that it can take your character a moment to block after you hit down on the D-pad, and attacking isn't always quite instantaneous either. If you wait until they wind up for an attack to block, you'll often get hit. In reality, you really can't block until you see what they're doing anyway.

The camera can cause a few problems when you're fighting, as you can't see what's around you very well. Sometimes, a tree or door gets between you and the camera, and you have to get clear without being able to see whether you're running straight into the enemy.

There are a couple problems with sneaking as well. The stealth kills are scripted-sequences, so you have no control over your character once you hit the attack button. Another guard can spot you and get in a few hits before you recover, and if you're near a ledge you can fall off and possibly die. There are a few other ways to accidentally step off, so be careful.

Additionally, it can be tedious to stand against a wall for several minutes waiting for a guard to turn his back. The game moves rather slowly because of things like this, and unless you've earned resurrection leaves, you have to go back to the beginning of the level if you die. It can be very annoying to lose twenty minutes or more of play because you misstepped and fell to your death.

In addition to your sword, you carry other useful items. You always have a grappling hook, which you use to climb and navigate the roofs. It's indispensable, but it also has unfortunate control problems. Sometimes, your character just will snag on some invisible force field, and can't go anywhere until you take a step forward, then relaunch the hook. In a few cases, this can send you falling to your death.

There are various selectable items like grenades, poisoned rice, caltrops, smoke bombs, and of course shurikens. If you get a grand master ranking in a level, you are rewarded with a new kind of item. These include disguises, resurrection and flaming swords. Some of these are more useful than others.

Overall, the game looks pretty good. It starts and ends with some beautiful CG, and the game in between isn't bad either.

Character models are well-animated and designed, with the possible exception of Echigoya, who has horrible corners on him. He's only in one level, so it isn't a big deal. They have as high of poly counts as you can expect in a full 3D game on the Playstation, and know how to put what they have to use.

There aren't significant pop-up problems. Your line of sight extends far enough that it's perfectly believeable the darkness keeps it from extending farther.

The only real problem with the graphics is the textures. As with many full 3D games on Playstation, they had to be done at a low resolution in order to fit in memory. They're a bit blocky, and have a small color palette. The game takes place at night, so it's supposed to be dark, but it also comes off a little drab.

The music is wonderful. It's a mix of traditional Japanese and various other Eastern and Western styles. I can't think of anything else that sounds much like it.

The voice-acting is often cheesy, but that was done purposely as far as I could tell. It lends sort of a dubbed-samurai-film feel to it.

The effects are nothing special, but they sort like what they're supposed to and get the job done quite nicely.

Tenchu is fairly short. Rikimaru and Ayame's levels are essentially the same, and there are only ten of them. It's hard enough that it should take a while to get through and you can always replay the levels, trying to achieve grand master status.

In summary, go out and buy Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. The problems are all minor and the design and presentation are brilliant. It's been out for a while, so you should be able to get it cheap.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/00, Updated 11/09/00