The Bottom Line
Pros
- Amazing android designs by famed artist Jun Suemi
- Unbelievable amount of weapons, armor and combinations
- Unique head and right/left arm attacks assigned to each button
Cons
- Dismal textures/level design
- Very repetitive gameplay
- Virtually no story
Description
- Graphics: 3 Rengoku has amazing androids stuck in a very blase world
- Sound: 1.5 Each level has it's own repetitive soundtrack, they took the purgatory thing way too far
- Concept: 5 Rengoku certainly was original, and major props for the button scheme and weapon variety
- Control: 4.5 I love Rengoku's button configuration, but want to use the analog nub more
- Difficulty: 3 You will get sent to the bottom of the tower, naked, but that's half the fun
- Replay: 2.5 Hmmmm, really, the game never ends... so there is no replay, it's more like ever-play
- Portability: 5 Yeah, this is one that takes very little thought, pick it up and put it down at will
- Multiplayer: 3 The item swapping is great, but the combat isn't deep enough for multiplayer mayhem
- All scores are out of 5. The overall rating is not an average of the above scores
- Rated: Mature - It's all about guns and combat, but they are androids, not people, if it matters
Guide Review - Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory, Review - PSP
The android design is superb, Jun Suemi is an artistic genius. Every weapon you pick up, or armor you don, drastically changes the appearance of A.D.A.M., your android avatar. The first time I chainsaw to my head my jaw dropped as I watched my android charge into battle, head saw grinding through my opponents. Unfortunately, the same loving care did not go into backgrounds. You wander from one brown room to another, then on the next level they'll mix it up and be grey.
As far as gameplay goes, you fight in a room filled with a few boxes against one or two other androids. The combat system is inventive, your head weapon fires with triangle and square and circle fire your arms. Unfortunately that is the entire game. Kill a robot, go to the next room, do it again. If you die, in a nice twist, you lose what weapons you had equipped and start at the bottom of the tower again. What little story there is happens in cryptic messages delivered by level bosses, and really, poor A.D.A.M. gets few answers to his philosophic quandaries.
In the end, I couldn't stop playing. Collecting weapons and upgrading A.D.A.M. was addictive for me,despite the fact that there wasn't a whole lot of game here. It became like Pokemon for me, but I was collecting rail guns instead of fur balls.
