Kengo: Legend of the 9 is a third-person-action game that focuses squarely on the simplicity and elegance of samurai-era sword fighting. It sounds like a cool idea, but suffers from repetitive combat and braindead AI and a single-player game that takes all of an hour to beat. Kengo does have some good things going for it, but even at a budget price of $39.99, it is hard to recommend for anything more than a rental.
Quick Hits
- Title: Kengo: Legend of the 9
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Majesco
- Developer: Genki
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Third-Person-Action
- Pros: Environment based kills; combat mode; price
- Cons: Simple and repetitive gameplay; bad camera
Features
The subtitle, Legend of the 9, represents the nine playable characters you’ll find in Kengo. Each one has their own story, and if you are into the whole samurai setting, you’ll find the stories fairly enjoyable. Unfortunately, each story only takes about an hour to play through, and the levels all play basically the same no matter who you are playing as, so you see pretty much everything the game has to offer in just one playthrough.
In addition to the story mode, Kengo has a couple of other modes to keep you busy. Mission mode gives you different objectives you have to beat in a limited amount of time. Street Rumble has you go through a village searching for enemies. Combat Mode is the best of the extra modes, and plays out like a traditional fighting game. You pick your character and duke it out 1vs1 style. It is actually quite a bit of fun, but suffers from the same core gameplay problems as the other modes. Fighting with another human is more fun than fighting the AI, but you’ll tire of it after only a couple of matches.
Gameplay
Majesco
The gameplay in Kengo isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really do much to hook you either. It is a game of precision attacks and trying to control your opponent more than anything else, and while samurai fans or martial artists might dig it, it moves at such an incredibly slow pace that I can’t see anyone other than hardcore fans getting into it. Your attacks consist of combos with the Y and B buttons, and as you play through the game you can unlock new moves and combos. The enemy AI is so stupid, however, that you really don’t have to use any of the new attacks and can literally finish the whole game with just the one combo you start with. You can also block with the A button, or lock swords with the enemy by holding X. When you lock swords, you can then direct the enemy towards environmental hazards and objects in order to perform environmental kills. These environmental kills are easily the highlight of the combat, but once you have seen them a few times the thrill starts to wear thin. Most levels are laid out in a predictable pattern where you use your one combo against a dozen or so minor enemies, and then face a more powerful enemy that is only slightly more difficult to take down. It all becomes really boring and repetitive after a while. Another issue is that camera movement is left completely in the hands of the player, and unless you have three hands, keeping the camera in a good position while trying to fight is pretty tricky. The poor camera coupled with the repetitive combat make Kengo pretty hard to take seriously after the first hour or so.
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, Kengo looks surprisingly good. It isn’t pushing anything in terms of what “next-gen graphics” look like, but the characters are sharp and detailed and the environments look nice overall.
The sound doesn’t really stand out, but it isn’t bad. The music, sound effects, and dialogue all have that bad kung fu/samurai movie feel to them, but they all fit in perfectly here.
Bottom Line
Majesco
Overall, Kengo: Legend of the 9 is a game that will certainly click with some people, but it just won’t gel with most gamers. For a samurai or martial arts fan, opening up all of the moves and using the different stances as well as the sword grappling will all seem pretty cool. But you’ll have to be a pretty hardcore fan to overlook the cruddy camera system, short main gameplay mode and lackluster secondary modes, the simple controls and overall slow and repetitive gameplay. Nothing here is really broken or bad, but it just isn’t all that appealing either. Give it a rental if you are interested.
