Everything that tenchu could have been. If you liked tenchu then you will love Shinobido.
The biggest letdown in the voice acting which is attrocious and I would reccomend that the first thing you do is set the sound to japanese.
The game plays almost exactly like tenchu but wsith greatly increased number of missions a strategy component that I was not expecting.
Within the story you find yourself working for 3 oposing lords and you can chose which to help and which to hinder, or even juggle all 3 of them at once. The difficulty increases progressivly through the game by allowing you access to increaingly difficult missions which you can select from. While there are ample missions to choose from, the nature of which are affected by what missions you have chosen and who you have worked for, the number of maps is fairly limited, I would have liked to see a few more variations, however the different nature of the tasks and the way that you choose to play it give you a great deal of freedom to decide how you would like to progress. No penalties for deciding to wade in and slaughter everyone face to face like in tenchu. If thats how you wish to play then you can do it that way, if instead you wish to swoop in and take the objective out then you can do that to.
Being a fan of tenchu I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the tenchu. This is not a game for the impacient.