Tenchu: Fatal Shadows Review

The Tenchu game that is pretty much forgotten about, I did buy it at a Flea Market on PS2 back in 2012 but I never got far in it. I only bought because it was a Tenchu game and I was interested in the series but I didn't know how emulation worked so this was the Tenchu game I actually could play. I didn't get very far in it but after playing through the PS1 Tenchus and Wrath of Heaven again a few years ago through emulation and me wanting to play random games in a game series I enjoyed, I decided to play Tenchu Fatal Shadows from start to end.

The best way of describing it is that Fatal Shadows is pretty much just a very iterative sequel to Wrath of Heaven, it's about as much of one as you can get. It almost feels like a Wrath of Heaven DLC than a sequel that improves upon it. The fact that Fatal Shadows in North America released one month before Splinter Cell Chaos Theory also didn't do the game any favors either, it just highlights how dated and awkward Fatal Shadows played even for it's time.

Before I describe the gameplay, I might as well just mention the story, it is supposed to be a prequel to Wrath of Heaven but outside of Tesshu popping up, it might as well just be shonen anime filler arc because nothing of geniune value even happens, nothing that gets brought up in Fatal Shadows adds any furthur context to what happens to Wrath of Heaven which is the bare minimum a prequel should do. The anime fan in me did find the mission/episode previews that plays at the end of a level to be pretty amusing but the production value is lower than WoH since many the cutscenes before a mission starts has these weird slideshow like cutscenes and then transitions to more traditional cutscenes.

To put it simpily, WoH didn't have a good story but that felt like a shonen anime with a poorly written canon arc where Fatal Shadows feels like a dull filler arc that was made because the anime had to keep up with the manga.

Gameplay of Fatal Shadows can at times provide the fun that Wrath of Heaven and by extension the Tenchu series brings but it is marred by issues that while there in WoH, the devs did not do nearly enough to fix upon that game.

The stealth kills still look awesome and even to this day, Tenchu's stealth kills is some of the best gaming industry has to offer and Fatal Shadows delivers. The stylishly over the top ways enemies are killed and the detail each kill animations is something that gives me a "hell yeah I did that" when successful taking out an enemy from behind, from the side, the air and occasionally from the front. The parts where it takes place small cities is still as fun to do since using the grapple hook or double jump to reach higher ground and stalking enemies from above is still provides the feel of being ninja predator. Thing is, WoH already gave a version of this fantasy with the double jump, air kills, and bigger draw distance.

However with all this said, there now comes plenty of problems that while WoH had are excerbated in the this game and introduces new issues not present in the former.

I'll describe the latter first, WoH had plenty of long corridor stretches where enemies would patrol in a straight line and the player often had to use cover to avoid their line of sight, the thing in WoH is that the enemies would never walk past the wall the player was hiding behind but in Fatal Shadows, they now do so there will be plenty of moments where you think a guard will eventually turn around but they are going to walk past the player and get detected. The lack of corner takedowns of any kind makes the lack of any changes to WoH's mechanics all the more obvious. The lack of ledge takedowns and being unable to hide behind waist high walls when crouched being two other big examples. This just makes Splinter Chaos Theory look that much better since you can do both in that game.

Another big issue with Fatal Shadows are the guard placements and if you are playing the game for the first time and you want to play the game to see cool looking stealth kills, the game will often chastise you in doing so becuase 9 times out of 10, there is a guard above, around or next to the guard you are trying to kill often leading to detections that felt like you couldn't have anticipated. The camera still doesn't let you turn the camera around your character and the look button doesn't give you enough of a bigger to view to locate nearby enemies, so it becomes the usual Tenchu game of running away when detected and then the guard loses interest in you when running away long enough.

The combat still isn't good which is fine but the bosses are too challenging for the game being based around stealth. Bosses block your attacks too much and they even have unbreakable scripted grab moves straight out a Team Ninja game. The Black Box Assassinations from Assassin's Creed Unity is far more fitting for Tenchu than the awkward 3D beat em up boss fights.

Overall, I can see why FS is such a forgettable game.