Tenchu: Shadow Assassins Review (Nintendo Wii)

When the original Tenchu was released it was a refreshing addition to stealth-based gaming. Gamers were immersed in the world of the Ninja, utilizing an arsenal of feudal weaponry and various terrains to kill without being seen. But, that’s when the delightful world of Japanese based assassination games ended. The next decade was filled with several Tenchu games that felt more like shoddy spin-offs. The designers failed to push the title past its Playstation roots and create a franchise that gamers longed for. Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, for the Nintendo Wii, is the first attempt in over ten years to bring back the flair of the original Tenchu. This Tenchu title is far from perfect, but it does have enough fun features to make it worth playing.

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins immerses you back in the world of feudal Japan, complete with Samurai, Ronin, feuding Daimyo, and of course Ninjas. Under the leadership of Lord Gohda, you play as Azuma Clan ninjas Rikimaru and Ayame. Your goal: protect Gohda’s vision of peace and inter-bakufu unity through assassination. Does life get better? Not really, the story comes with the stereotypical kidnapped princess plot. Lord Gohda’s daughter, Princess Kiku, has been kidnapped.

The moment you begin playing Tenchu you’ll be overwhelmed by the musical score. The music is epic and varied enough to really draw you into this assassin-based world, and make your blood boil as you prepare to snap the neck of your next samurai. There were occasions where I thought I heard the same music replay, but it wasn’t enough to be distracting. Rather, it felt more like replaying music track you just needed to hear one more time.

The cut scenes in Shadow Assassins are a breath of fresh air to the Wii. Despite having a cliché Princess story arc, you’ll easily be won over by animated sequences. Character expressions and background settings give you a feel for how far Wii graphics can be pushed. If only more developers focused on creating Wii specific releases, instead of downgraded games or remakes, we would eventually realize the full potential of this console.

The visually stunning cut scenes are bolstered by an excellent voice over cast that really helps to bring out the emotion of the scene. Honestly, I would have preferred to play in Japanese voice, which would give Tenchu more of a sense of realism. But, once I got past that hang up, I realized the VO acting was performed exceptionally well. The only caveat here is the use of the occasional antiquated British accent, which breaks the tension in the scene. You’ll be more focused on the accent and not on what’s going on with the character stories.

In Tenchu, you’re an assassin first and a fighter second. This means that the game isn’t designed around direct attacks. Most of the time you will need to perfect sneaking up on an enemy before delivering a devastating kill. This involves hiding in the shadows, shipping containers, under walkways and on top of ceiling rafters to name a few. You won’t have any rooftop action in this title, which will come as a disappointment to many. Once you’re in the shadows you can dive to another bush or area of covering to stay hidden and advance. Be sure to look at the moon diagram on your screen to see how close you are to being discovered by an enemy guard.

Once you’ve come in close proximity to an enemy, you can execute a hissatsu. Depending on your relation to the enemy, a hissatsu is any of a number of killing attacks ranging from strangulation to stealing your enemy’s sword and killing them with it. You can also throw a ninja star into an enemy who will trip up and fall into a nearby well, off a tower or into a flame which is just fun to watch. There are a few moments when you can recoup the lack of rooftop action in Tenchu, by jumping up on a ceiling rafter than lowering your upper body down to snap a samurai’s neck. It’s brutal. Unfortunately, there were occasions when the camera shifted and all you saw was a samurai’s stomach and missed the entire killing sequence.

Once you’ve killed your enemy, you can drag them to cover so that other guards won’t see fear a ninja is on the prowl. Well, that’s how the game should have been designed anyway. Sure, you can drag downed enemy to cover, but it is completely unnecessary. The guards will walk by their dead comrades as if nothing has happened. This is a major flaw in Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.

The logic behind the guards AI is simply poor. Once you have been discovered, the guards will either attack you or start hunting you if you dive back into shadows. Stay long enough in the shadows and the guards will simply forget about you. If they do discover you, and attack you’ll quickly disappear into a puff of smoke and reappear at the start of the board. Then everything resets. The guards have just forgotten about you and they’re awareness of a ninja is back to nothing. This drastically takes away from the nature of being a stealth game. There were several times when I killed an enemy standing right next to his buddy, and his buddy just turned around and walked away. One time I hit a guard with a ninja star, and just hid in a box until he forgot about it. In another encounter, I dived into the bushes and the samurai stabbed my body and I remained alive and kicking.

Although you’re not outfitted with a sword, you can pick up swords along the way. If you have a sword and an enemy guard discovers you will try and defend against the guard or have your sword broken and disappear in a puff of smoke. The swordplay is extremely awkward and requires lighting fast reflexes to execute blocks. Most of the time you’ll lose your sword and just end up back at the start of the board.

The swordplay is the only part of Stealth Assassins that makes use of the Wii controller from a not waggle the Wii-mote perspective. You have to match the positioning of your Wii-mote with the on screen graphic in order to defend yourself. Other tasks like shooting your ninja stars or dousing a flame with water are relegated to the analogue stick, while disregarding the existence of the Wii-mote’s aim and shoot design.

If you’re tired of Wii-remakes, cheesy party games and conversely love ninjas and stealth games then Tenchu: Shadow Assassins is one game you’ll definitely want to check out. The game does suffer from an overwhelming design flaw in the stealth genre, but Tenchu still provides a fun experience and will quench your feudal-assassination desires.