A Solid Stealth Action Game Underrated By Gamespot.

User Rating: 8 | Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen VITA
By azumabob | Review Date:
Shinobido 2 CAN seem very easy early on, and to not have many maps, but if you play it through past the first chapter, you will see how well thought out each map is and why some enemies are just simple fodder and other enemies are aware of you closing in behind them and some can just plain sense you as you sense them. If you do play a lot of Tenchu games, you will instantly know that scoring an A or B rating is as good as failing the mission, although you can carry on playing at that level of ability, if you are happy with that, but you can score an S or SS rank! This is where the game lives and breathes, in the ability to perfect a mission, which you can keep restarting, until you feel you did your role as a deadly Ninja justice. There is no feeling of accomplishment quite like scoring a SS rating on an oxcart attack mission and being completely invisible whilst you do it. Pure bliss and very hard to do against other Ninjas. The difficulty increases as you pick higher star rated quests, and you can only get those quests from keeping the Daimyo's for whom you work happy. There are numerous mission types to give the game a good deal of variety, and each Daimyo has their own twist on the missions they give you, and gifts you may receive for doing a good job. You can successfully complete tasks for them or give them a suitable gift, such as a relevant book you may have found on your travels, to garner their trust. You have to make some tough choices over who you want to get powerful weapon blueprints and weapon skills, so sometimes your hand will be forced for your favourite Daimyo lest you end up fighting far tougher foes. Other missions from unknown sources can turn up and in one quest arc with an incredibly hard mission in it, you can meet some old friends. The game has a few story building cut scenes that are quite good with the revenge of Zen being the driving force behind these cut scenes, and you have to make critical choices that lead you down one path or another but this is no Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven/Return From Darkness (the best stealth games ever made IMO) but more like Tenchu if it were made on today's systems, still very good and the choices are hard to make.
You receive arrow messages throughout about the state of the Daimyo or sometimes completely random messages not meant for you. You also get tips from old alchemists on how to make special tools (little tip! You only need one left in the jar to take out the 'special item' so it is worth taking out all the others as flasks or spheres or sushi, and using or selling them)
As mentioned, there is an alchemy system and a tool system, and a shop to buy more tools or alchemical jars and ingredients (other ingredients need to be found during missions at the expense of valuable time) the alchemy has great depth and usefulness, and you can trade out tools mid-mission (which may have made the game a little easier than it should have been)
The touch screen controls also lessen the difficulty as you can touch an enemy icon and get a general lock on to the direction that they are from you, which inevitably allows you to be a little more prepared and do a little less scouting than you would expect to, although you do need to scout around in buildings and can still be caught out. Enemies WILL sound alarms too if not dealt with in short measure.
The game has a levelling system, that allows you to improve upon your abilities, with higher XP for higher mission ratings.You learn skills throughout the game such as gliding and parrying (both lots of fun to pull off and master the use of) To summarise, all the elements are here for a great and fast game where the swift and the accurate WILL be paid off and the sloppy WILL be punished. That IS the essence of a stealth game, and DLC has been announced, although what form that will take is anyones guess as of yet. Worth mentioning in the EU at least that you get a eight pounds or ten euros discount code for digital download versions of Ridge Race and Katamari in the box that expire in December 2012, along with an actual game manual! (how rare is that!) Now go and stealth kill ten yojimbos or ten bears or ten enemy ninjas, score an SS and tell me the AI is stupid, Gamespot! For Tenchu and Shinobido fans, it is what you expect it to be, and to me at least, has proven to be great stealth action with an addictive nature. Gametailers gave the game a 73 out of 100 and the metacritic score is 55, with a user score of 6.3 out of 10. Gamespot gave the game a 3.5, the lowest score I could find on google for this game, and failed to even provide a video review for such an important launch game (Gamespot's user's lowest score was a 6.0). Don't miss this good stealth game based on Gamespot's official text review, see what others think too.

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