My experience with Tenchu DS

WARNING: The following may be hilariously silly or annoyingly serious, or somewhere in between, changing tone without warning. Reader's discretion is advised. Do not drink, eat or operate heavy machinery while reading the following

Yeah, an old game. Remember I buy used or get ROMs otherwise (we're globalized, but still NO Export For You, huh?!)

I saw the PlayStation games ( and lately, the Youtube Stealth Kill Exhibitions, too) and found them cool, but never tried them myself. I am not very good at most action games, and while there were not Pitfalls of Death in Tenchu (as far as I know) you had another thing to worry about: DO NOT RUSH IN SWINGING! You might survive a bunch of samurais, but the next time you might not! While some games have stealth missions, I wonder why isn't there some Ninja FPS out there...

BTW, I just read in Youtube of another game from the makers of Tenchu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZcoISS_0DE

Well, the DS version seems more to me like Tenchu: Ninja's Deception.  After all, you need to make combo kills to get some stuff, and thanks for the utter lack of FAQs, I almost don't find THAT out! I did figure out Combo Kills thanks to getting scored for them after every mission, but that it was the ONLY KEY for the other stuff?! That's almost worthy of Seppuku...

The bottom screen is for managing your items (faster than L or R at times) and to see the map and the direction of nearby enemies. Pretty helpful, at least the way I happen to play. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a bit limited, in my opinion. The only way to eliminate any opposition is by trap combos, 1-trap Rinse-Repeat or BackslashSpamming:

Trap combos are clear for anyone that played Tecmo's Deception, Kagero or Trapt. Set up traps so that the victim falls on one, straight to the next, while you watch silently how they fall dead at the end. Laugh evilly after the mission is over :evil:  Another option is setting them up a bit farther from their patrol route, then bait them with a poison treat, either let them take it for an extra combo or Backslash them into the trap combo before that so you can pick and reuse it on another victim. Fall and Water kills are the best, since they are FREE XD (Backslash+high fall+water= 150 points for free) I put the biggest combo WAY at the bottom!

1-trap Rinse-Repeat : Put on trap in their way, hide, hear them scream, them limp away (Swamp gas explosion... ugh... nothing happened... ow, back to my patrol... ) Rinse, repeat.

BackslashSpamming means slashing them once from behind, then keep attacking before they can call for help. The weakest mooks go down form one Backslash, but after that... good thing you can interrupt their call for help and their slowest attacks.

The missions I hate are Cannot Be Seen, Mainly because they usually mean I had to throw away bait, and i'd rather reuse it because it's not easy to get the materials to make more. Sure, you can sale the photos from the Combo Kills, but  when you make the items there's a change to make them +1 or +2, and you can't buy those!


I still haven't beaten it, since I went back to it not long ago, but at least it's a fun game to pass some time with.  clearly no match for the big consoles, but it's not a bad game, either. I'll try it again with Ayame after I beat it, for sure!















Spoiler: Super Max combo theory!

Poisoned/laughing/beartrap/caltrops victim + Backslash + spike trap + mine + hi-fall + water= 300 points and Video Game Cruelty Max (Note: haven't tested if you can do a Sub Zero by hitting them into caltrops to slash them again, and there's throwing poison/explosives at them if it does work...)