Tenchu: Stealth Assassins Review (PlayStation)
~by tankMage (June 2024)
| Tenchu: Stealth Assassins Home Page | PS1 Game Catalog |
Score: 7.8/10 (Decent)
The humble origins of an excellent stealth series.
I often hold the first game in a series in high regard, however, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins is an exception. While I’m not going to deny that it’s a finished game, Tenchu feels like a rough prototype compared to its prequel, which released a few years later on the same console. All of the ingredients that would make the series great are present, but the end result is rough and the game engine is even more janky than that of Tenchu 2. The controls are sluggish, the graphics are chunky, and there are some strange design choices, like not having the save feature active by default.
If you are new to Tenchu, the series primarily focuses on the adventures of two ninjas named Ayame and Rikimaru. Both ninjas serve a feudal Japanese lord named Gohda. The action is split into missions where the player must assassinate a particular NPC or accomplish some other goal. While it’s possible to hack your way through any enemies that are present in a mission, it’s best to use your ninja’s stealth skills to bypass or quietly slaughter your foes.
As a stealth game, Tenchu encourages players to hide behind buildings, scout for guards, and use strategy to complete stages. If you fail to do these things, you’ll likely get mobbed by guards and be killed or get a poor score at the end of the mission. Using stealth to get a good score will award the player with special items, so there’s a lot of incentive to be sneaky.
A story about ninjas doing ninja stuff.
I’ve probably said this a dozen times, but I don’t play games for their stories. That said, I try to think about the overall narrative quality of any game in review, because I understand that some players really enjoy a good tale. If you really like a good story, Tenchu is probably going to let you down. While there is a plot and a cast, both are fairly superficial. Players are given a short mission briefing at the start of each stage and Rikimaru/Ayame talk to the boss of each mission before they kill them.
While the mission briefings are mostly focused on the tasks given to the player, they do manage to provide a bit of background that fleshes out the feudal Japanese setting. Stages tend to be more or less episodic, but there is a main story arc and some of the missions that aren’t necessarily related to the main plot are tenuously connected. I like the air of mystery surrounding the story and it’s fun to try to connect the dots, but the game does not give players much to work with. In fact, some of the missions feel like they are totally out of left field.
Rikimaru and Ayame were given their own dialogue to showcase their personalities. Ultimately, the dialogue between the young ninjas and their foes is one of the most entertaining aspects of the game. Ayame always has a clever insult to hurl at her opponent and Rikimaru’s sense of justice is often demonstrated in his lines. The villains also have interesting personalities and the script can be very amusing at times. If anything, the dialogue is probably the best aspect of the writing, though it is often rather corny.
Graphics that push the PS1 to its limits.
The PlayStation had a hard time generating 3D environments and character models at the same time. Many games that appear on the PS1 used a blend of 2D and 3D to squeeze more power out of the console. Titles that were fully 3D suffered from draw distance issues. Some devs were able to use the limited draw distance creatively as in Silent Hill, but these were the exception.
Tenchu really suffers from draw distance problems being a game where it’s important to spot enemies before they spot the player. If I had to make an estimate, the sight range of the player is maybe about 15 feet or 5 meters, which isn’t much. This gives the game a very claustrophobic feeling that doesn’t exactly match its mood.
Worse yet, it’s very easy to stumble into foes and difficult to scope them out in some areas. The devs tried to fix the problem by adding a “Ki-Meter” that indicates the proximity of an enemy. The Ki-Meter works well and is a creative solution. Ultimately, Tenchu is a good example of a title where graphics directly affect its gameplay in a negative manner, forcing the devs to come up with a creative solution to the problem, which added a new layer of strategy to the gameplay.
Sadly, the terrain, character models, and objects that appear in the game world look bad. Everything is blocky, jagged, and strangely textured even by PS1 standards. The game also lags a lot as the PS1 struggles to generate everything. I particularly dislike how the game engine handles terrain generation; you can see how it spawns in chunks of the environment as you move the camera and the entire process destroys immersion. It’s worth noting that a lot of these issues were fixed in Tenchu 2, but that does little to help this game of course.
It’s almost tragic that Tenchu actually has some very nice settings and a lot of variety when it comes to NPC models. One mission features a snowy Japanese manor, while another one is set on a haunted mountain and every mission seems to have plenty of unique props. If the quality of the graphics had been slightly better, this game would have done an impressive job (by PS1 standards) of bringing Edo Japan to life.
Kill cams galore!
This ties into graphics, but I figured I’d give Tenchu’s gory kill cam its own section. Needless to say, this game isn’t for the squeamish, so don’t play it if you don’t like blood. In fact, blood sprays and splatters all over the place and it’s almost a self parody. There’s also special kill cams for stealth kills that depict Rikimaru and Ayame dispatching enemies fairly brutally. The fourteen year old in me loved it, so I have no complaints. If you like blood and gore, this is the game for you.
Stealth Action Goodness
Tenchu may not impress in terms of story and visuals, but it gets the job done when it comes to gameplay. As I mentioned earlier, the idea is to sneak around killing or avoiding foes while searching for a goal assigned at the start of the mission. These goals usually involve slaying a boss, though a few require the player to cross the map or collect an item. I didn’t find any of the missions particularly original, but they were well done.
Watching guards and coming up with plans to bypass or stealth kill them was fun. Boss fights were also fairly satisfying, though fighting them boiled down to blocking, then counter attacking or using special items to take them out. Adding attacks that had to be evaded to some of the bosses’ repertoires would have improved combat greatly. To be fair, the final boss had attacks that could not be blocked, but this was a case of too little too late.
Exploring the various maps and finding routes through them was a big part of the fun. Players get to explore mountains, villages, castles, and spooky temples to name a few of the locations that appear in the game. Items are often scattered around maps to make investigating more worthwhile. Enemies and items are also placed semi-randomly around stages, so the game is a little bit different with every play-through.
Speaking of items, Tenchu features an assortment of ninja tools. Players can drop caltrops on the ground to injure the feet of pursuers and throw shurikens. It’s also possible to trick guards with poisonous rice balls and even place land mines to blow up unwary sentinels. If that’s not enough, there’s special items which can be unlocked by getting the rank of “Grand Master” at the end of each stage. These items include armor that reduces how much damage you sustain and a spell that allows the player to briefly disguise themselves as guards.
The items were very cool for the most part, but many of them were redundant. There’s not much point in using caltrops, for example, when you can just plant a land mines and blow pursuers off their feet. However, redundancy isn’t such a bad thing in this case, because even the more useless items add flavor to the game which makes it feel like a ninja movie.
Getting a high score will result in a greater number of the player’s items getting restocked and earning the highest rank of Grand Master unlocks new items. On the other hand, getting a low score results in fewer rewards. Interestingly, getting both high and low scores present their own challenges. To get Grand Master, you’ll need to avoid being spotted almost entirely, which can be tough. To get a really low score (I think Thug is the worst) you have to alert enemies and basically hack your way through the stage, which can be tough to do in its own right. Either way, the scoring system adds some much needed replay value to the game.
I praise the gameplay a lot, but it’s not at all perfect. First off, the game engine is so glitchy that it may as well be held together with the digital equivalents of bubble gum and rubber-bands. There have been times when I clipped into surfaces and enemies sometimes despawn, then respawn in some situations. There is a general roughness to the way the game runs that is hard to describe, though some of this can be attributed to lag.
Tenchu is also kind of on the short side, with only ten stages. Two playable characters give it some replay value, but there isn’t a ton of difference between Ayame and Rikimaru in this game. They have their own dialogue, but the missions are largely the same. The only other difference between them is Ayame is more speed based, while Rikimaru tends towards power.
The controls just work.
The user interface is very good in some ways and kind of bad in others. It’s pretty easy to run around using the D-Pad in this game. This may not sound like much of you haven’t played other 3D PS1 titles, but if you’ve played Resident Evil, you’ll appreciate Tenchu’s D-Pad control scheme. Combat and using items are also intuitive. Unfortunately, pulling off certain moves can be tough, because the controls feel a bit sluggish. Performing high jumps, rolling, and thrusting with the sword/knives require players to double tap various directions and I always felt like I was fighting with the game to get these moves to work.
On a side note, the save feature is turned off by default. I found this really strange, because it will probably take anyone who wants to complete the game with both characters more than one sitting to do so. This game was released in 1998 when most PS1 devs had figured out that they could just give players the option to save, so I’m really not sure what the logic was here.
More than the sound of silence.
Tenchu sure has great sound work for a game about skulking around in the shadows. I wish I knew the term for the style of music used in the soundtrack, because it’s a beautiful fusion of traditional Japanese music and more modern techno/pop.* Every track is infused haunting sense of mystery and exhilaration that few games can match. I didn’t quite like a few of the songs, but even those grew on me, so it’s definitely a good idea to keep the sound cranked up.
Stock martial arts clips seem to make up the bulk of the sound effects, which was actually a great decision since they make the game sound like an old martial arts movie. These sound effects became a staple of the series for a long time and I’m pleased they’ve been used from the very start. There are few things as satisfying as the woosh of the grappling hook and the sound of blood splattering in this game.
As much as I love the music and sound effects, I’m kind of on the fence about the voice acting. The VOs for Rikimaru and the narrator are decent. Ayame on the other hand sounded bored, though I imagine they were trying to make her come off as sarcastic.
Then there’s the supporting cast for characters like Onikage. From what I can tell, they kept a lot of the original Japanese actors for the English localization. Some of these actors sound like they learned English about five minutes before they read their lines. This may sound like criticism, but they actually did a much better job than a lot of the native English speakers who did games like Resident Evil, plus it adds to the old martial arts film mood.
*I tried looking it up, but only found examples of musicians
Is Stealth Assassins worth playing?
I spent a lot of time saying this game is good albeit rough around the edges, so it’s safe to assume it’s worth a go. However, the other games are much better and I would recommend starting with Tenchu 2 first of you’re interested in the series. If you like the other games you’ll enjoy this one, warts and all.
Thanks for checking out my Tenchu review!
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