Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory

""Could'ves" and "If onlys" hold this title back..."

It's truly a shame, really. A perfectly good concept, shot to hell on account of bad control choices and a rushed feel. It is really a shame to, as Rengoku had the makings of a game that just might have been the action/RPG game that set the standards for the new portable wars. Alas, it is not to be.

Concept in hindsight, Rengoku is a great idea for an action game, in the tradition of many 16-bit games: You are an android with a soul, seeking to learn why you must mindlessly slay as you ascend a massive tower filled with souless 'droids, fighting to survive. While this DOES sound like half a dozen Genesis or SNES titles, here's where the game really makes the appeal that made me interested: Each time you slay a foe, they get melted down, and in doing so, you gain an item or elixer. The items range from healing to weapons, and the elixers are stored until you reach a specific spot to spend them on body upgrades.

These spots are Terminals, and are essentially your "hub." You start each floor in a Terminal, and can equip weapons, armor, and accessories, up your stats with stocked elixors, convert excess items into elixors, save your game, or simply view your stats and character (the latter also available via the pause menu).

Once you leave a given Terminal, you must press a button to leave the room, or any other room if you wish. This might not seem like much, as it worked in games such as Tales of Symphonia, but in a game where you might fire a weapon instead of going through a door, it is kinda lame.

Before I explain the system of rooms, let me elaborate on the above. The graphics are of low-PS2 quality, and have a nasty clipping along the seams as you run, move, turn, or just stand around. This might have been excusable if only a line or two seemed to move, but when whole WALLS vanish (especially notable when you are in one-door Terminals), you have to draw the line. Some small walls in rooms will vanish, and if you are not looking, you might be confused as to why you can't pass through these. And we shalt not dwell on getting cornered in a...corner, when the multi-edged walls allow you to be trapped between the wall and your gun-shoot'n foe.

Back on to the game rooms, each "level" is randomly generated when you FIRST enter it. I've returned several times to the first floor from the second, using upgrades to see if any rare items existed on the first floor. Sadly, the level design is the same as when I first started up, and ascending to the next levels only shows that they are the same. Presumably, when you are slain and sent to the base floor, they are shuffled, but I'm not going to sack myself to find out.

One interesting note to dwell on before we move to the rest of the game: every time you equip an item, be it on your head, arms, legs, or body, the character model (both menu and in-game, which are the same) is modified to show it. Quite a sight to see a blade attached to your head, two guns for arms, and a gatling gun poking out of your chest with ammo stocks attached to your legs. Very nice.

Having covered the basics, let me explain the modes available. First is the "Tower" mode, which is the basic story mode, and also the only mode available from the start, unless you downloaded a save state, as saving unlocks the others. And if you have multiple players wishing to have their own files, get a USB cable, as you can only save one file per memory card, and the USB is MUCH cheaper...

"Pancratium" mode is your wireless deathmatch arena setting, which is useless to me, as I have no one else to battle against. Worse yet, you need to have others with their own copies and their own saves. Translation: if one person has risen X floors, yet another has risen only X-5, things are going to be a bit unbalanced.

Also available are the Tutorial (guess what this does), which is presented at the beginning of a new game, whether you like it or not; an Item Swap mode for trading items with other players, and a gallery.

The Gallery is easily one of the main reasons to even BORROW this thing, as the artwork (created by Jun Suemi, an artist I am not familiar with) is worth viewing alone. Once someone loads the images online or in a book, however, this mode will cease to be of use. Still, the images are a very nice option, one that I wish more companies would include in games. This mode alone is worth three of the five points.

"Are you saying that the Gallery kept this from being a 2?!"

Yep. See, I have saved the most abysmal feature for last: Controls.

For whatever reason, and I will never understand this, the programmers deamed it right for the player to control MOVEMENT with ONLY the directional pad, and to have the analog control the camera. Now, under normal circumstances, I have no problem with this, as I usually prefer digital control to analog.

But this is the PSP we are discussing here. When you have a digital pad that creates headaches trying to do a fireball rotation (ie - Capcom/SNK fighting game's Down, Down-forward, Forward rotation of the controller), one wonders why you would try to move a 3D figure through a 3D WORLD with blind spots. And it gets worse - because you have to keep moving back and forth between one direction and another to go diagonal, you might accidentally trigger a dash or roll by double tapping a direction, sending you into a wall, or into a dangerous situation.

The least they could have done was allow the gamer to use the analog as an alternative to this abyssmal set-up. But no, the analog only moves the camera left or right.

I'm serious.

No, really. That's all it does.

L button locks on to your foe, provided one is present, R button targets your camera into the direction you are facing, Start pauses and brings up a small selection of menu options, while select brings up a map. Triangle fires/activates the items equipt to your head, Circle uses your right-handed item, Square the same for the left, and X uses your chest accessory. These work fine, assuming that you are able to make your way through the world. Had it not been for the lock-on feature (and maybe the strafe when you press and hold R, but it's rarely useful), this game would have qualified for a flat zero, excluding the Gallery bonus.

Replay, to me at least, is only saved by the unlockables in the gallery. Multiplayer is too hard (and expensive) to achieve, and the controls make for one heck of a nightmare.

Before I forget, the sound is tolerable. Weapons sound like the types they are (blades, energy, bullets, impacts, etc), the music is good enough not to drive you insane, and...that's it. Just...there.

Final line - Hudson Soft (apparently Konami published, while Hudson programmed) is great at Bomberman, but wait until they release the DS and (eventual) PSP versions of the game they know intimately, and go search the web for the artwork from this game. Save your US$40 and go buy Lumines.

Score: 5/10
*Play if you like: Metroid Prime Hunters (DS), Ape Escape (PSP, PS2, PS1)
*Best Feature: Jun Suemi's Gallery. Nuff Said.
*Worst Feature: Controls, vast areas of nada.
*Guilty Pleasure: Getting the Gattling gun and watching lesser opponent's life shoot down at light speed.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/29/05