Because I Have To: Kengo – Legend of the 9

When I first saw Kengo on the shelf, I was attracted to the pretty packaging, in all its glorious red and white. My inner weaboo  jumped for joy, Japan, samurais, swords, yes… this could be the foundation of a great game. It could have. Sadly all of the building blocks were thrown out the window after the foundation was built, and they decided to use sticks, mud, and banana leaves to construct the rest of  it.

The main campaign section of the game focus you on beating up anonymous ninjas, samurai, fishermen, and the like, then you face a boss battle at the end of the stage. You wont get a tutorial, no move list, no hints on how to do anything, you just have to figure it out, with your mind powers. Usually that’s all good, and most games will give you time to learn before it scales up, but no. Even on the first stage you will have 5min of useless npcs thrown at you to slay, which all die in 1-2 hits, then when you get to the boss all your stamina will be gone, then the boss will be able to give you a fantastic one hit kill if you make the wrong move, even if you’ve been chipping his health away all battle. Every stage is like this, except for the last one… before you beat the game… where you fight peons, then a boss, then peons, then a boss. I think I see a pattern here.

In mission mode you will have various trials you can pick from. I decided to go with the one where you must defend a lovely damsel in distress from ferocious pirate samurais. Now… when you create an npc co-op mode, you’re suppose to make it so you don’t attack each other, Kengo missed this memo. What is even worse is that she tries to fight as well, we probably did more damage beating each other up trying to kill the enemies than anything else.

If anything, I thought maybe the Xbox Live modes would be alright. Maybe it could save the game. Also a sad disappointment. Probably the worst multiplayer mode anyone has ever come up with for the 360. You don’t even get to play, you pick an AI to pit against someone else’s AI, and then get to WATCH them play it out. At this point I can only give it points for the fact that you CAN watch it. Oh yes, there are multiplayer modes you can’t even watch, but we’ll get to that fantastic game later. I never want to see Kengo again, in fact I think that it needs to commit seppuku for its dishonor.