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Tenchu: Fatal Shadows 
Release date: 15 Feb 2005
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Mygamer review
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Patience is a Virtue
Covert missions, personal vendettas, and sleek specialty kills make up Tenchu: Fatal Shadows’ prominent gameplay. The leading femme fatale ninjas, Ayame and Rin, lead you on a voyage full of vengeance taking place in feudal Japan. Prepare to deceive your opponents and slide by them unnoticed, for this game embraces the secret art of the ninja. Tenchu: Fatal Shadows is a stealth-based game keeping true to its lineage. But do not expect many drastic renovations or many new additions in this sequel. Tenchu: Fatal Shadows may have remained accurately faithful to its predecessors, but lack of a new flavor will leave many of its fans with a bitter aftertaste. Nonetheless, get ready for an experience filled with evasive action as you take a step into the world of refined ninja etiquette.
In this latest edition of Tenchu, one must develop sly stab-in-the back tactics to succeed, as opposed to the usual hack-and-slash at full force action game. Gameplay fully revolves around the same central technique: remain unseen by your enemies at all times, attack and kill quietly, rinse thoroughly, and repeat. This is common with many stealth-technique games, where one constantly remains undercover and must attack from the bushes and rooftops. However, the missing element of adrenaline-rushing enemy encounters may leave you asking for more. Tenchu: Fatal Shadows takes a more passive gameplay route, where you must wait and analyze your enemies’ moves and then attack accordingly. This requires much trial and error because if you are spotted, even once, points are automatically deducted from your performance score and may affect unlocking certain story events.
The stealth theme in Tenchu melds well with the strong alluring storyline. The lethal leading ladies, Ayame and Rin, meet at an unfortunate moment where everyone in the village is slain by the notorious Kuroya clan. Ayame and Rin, enemies at first, later join forces after several inconvenient circumstances and betrayals. Throughout the game you get to fully explore each character’s persona and agenda. The action-filled cut scenes throughout each chapter will compensate for some of the absence of it during gameplay. Of course, Tenchu’s trademark SK (Stealth Kill) FMVs are the highlight of all gameplay.
The game’s downfalls weigh quite heavily, however, since they are incredibly unavoidable. For those entering the Tenchu realm for the first time, many may find the controls a touch challenging to get accustomed to. Expect anywhere from thirty minutes to a full hour to discover all possible moves and for them to subsequently become second nature. The poor camera angles add to the difficulty of maneuvering successfully throughout the premises—including during fight encounters where one must keep pressing the R2 button to readjust the focus to the enemy. Both crouch and stealth are controlled with the same button, which makes it impossible to crouch by a wall without your character automatically standing up into stealth-view without your controlled consent. Prepare for frustrations left and right, because you simply must tolerate these control flaws rather than learn ways to get around them.
Stealth kill after stealth kill...a sweet but now redundant task. This being the aim of the entire game and completing each level to a high rank, will become a highly tedious routine. There is a lack of variety in this repetitive gameplay to wake up players from the monotonous ‘wait and kill’ trance. Since characters' mediocre fighting abilities are unmatched to their mastered stealth-killing technique, melee combat is an inconvenience. The fighters are specifically structured to stealth kill and return to hiding, but this set-in-stone formula leaves no room to explore other options.
Tenchu: Fatal Shadows is not grotesquely flawed, but there are quite too many annoyances that were overlooked. You’ll find it interesting the way you can jump about 10-feet high out of water, but can barely reach a high ledge when on land. To conceal any remains of one’s fatal kills you dispose of the visible bodies to avoid being discovered by the remaining guards. Although you effectively move the corpse out of sight, a massive blood puddle stains the scene of your victim’s demise. But, fear not, the A.I. in Tenchu: Fatal Shadows isn’t sophisticated enough to pick up on it—as all enemies, innocent bystanders, and animals will walk right past the fresh bloody décor.
You have the option to set the language in the game to either English or Japanese. Those who prefer to play videogames in their original and intended state will be satisfied with the Japanese voice acting throughout the levels and cut scenes. Though the same can't be said for the English version, where the voice acting may come off as hard to believe thanks to the use of phrases like "I dunno." in feudal Japan, as well as having actors struggling to pronounce Japanese names. Every time one turns on the game the language setting must be manually changed, and it becomes a nuisance when forgetting that you can’t permanently set your preferred language to Japanese.
Tenchu: Fatal Shadows strafes away from the standard fancy cinematic graphic opening. Although it is extremely action-packed, it lacks several elements in an opening game trailer that are necessary to immerse the player into the zone for the rest of the game. Instead, it consists of actual gameplay fighting scenes and several cut scene glimpses all compiled together with no real lead as what to expect from the game you are about play. All it tells the viewer is to expect extreme action, which we now know is extremely misleading. The opening lacks the classic ‘blown-away’ effect after watching it. The graphics also tend to help set the monotonous feel throughout the game. The colors, climate, and scenery are very gloomy, but it becomes a problem when it remains constant. Forget ever seeing the sun shining down because Japan seems to be stuck in hurricane season for eras to come.
All of the prologue movies are identical for all the chapters with the exception of one or two new characters being added each time they’re shown. They cannot be called movies, but are more like a sequence of still images. The art in the stills is classic and detailed, however, it is just a repetitive flashing of the same old images when revealing a new story. But the ultimate factor adding to the curse of redundancy, is having to view the stealth kill animations so many times that it rids such deadly moves of their beauty. The CG cut scenes are not too large of a step above the FMV footage. They do indeed portray a realistic samurai feel that has often been seen in films. Yet, the graphics are not very sophisticated or detailed for a present day game. The animation reflects that the game developers might have been feeling a little lazy.
The most noteworthy aspect of the game is its sound. The music during the opening creates a samurai-era ambiance. There are Japanese female vocals to go along with the orchestral piece, both of which are impeccable. Classical oriental instruments play in the background of all the levels as you creep around and explore. But the downside is the way the songs play in short intervals and keep repeating. The music in Tenchu: Fatal Shadows is not miraculous, but it certainly stands out from its other features.
Other than going back to unlock several chapters and trying to obtain the highest rank for each level, Fatal Shadows doesn't have too much to offer its second-time-around players. There is a bonus Boss Battle feature where you get to battle all the bosses ever encountered along the story in a one-on-one fighting mini-game. If going on an unlocking spree isn’t your cup of tea, then start creating an eBay auction for your copy since you won’t be playing again…aside through pity.
Tenchu: Fatal Shadows becomes bewitchingly addictive once it has been played past the first overbearing hour. You’ll feel obliged to see what happens next in this ninja adventure story. And much kudos is deserved for incorporating strong female leads instead of your usual inferior victims of lechery. More than anything, Fatal Shadows is a game of suspense and tactics. The key lies in the memorization of enemy moves and patterns. Always keep in mind the virtue of patience at all times, since it is the essence of the gameplay.
When the rose petals fly across the screen after such a bloody intro, you know Tenchu: Fatal Shadows will be an extreme, if somewhat flawed, mixture of beauty and death.
Review by Diana Gonzalez on 12 May 2005
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