Kens Rage 2 Review

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If you’ve seen a Koei game, chances are it’s a Dynasty Warriors game, or at least a game that has Musou in its Japanese title.  At this point, If you never liked a Dynasty Warriors game, or any other of the Musou games you won’t kens rage 2 as the controls are the same as before, pressing Square is your basic light attack combo and then you can throw heavy attacks in with Triangle, changing depending on what combo your currently at, and your circle is your special attack. This is a formula that has not changed since the PS1 and has gathered a healthy following since then, so there really is no point to change it, but if you never liked it then unless you’re a diehard fan of Fist of the North star and want a way to celebrate its 30^th anniversary, there will be little here to interest you.

Fist of the north star: Kens rage 2 is a sequel to the quite terrible Kens rage 1, though this game doesn’t seem to  acknowledge that it existed as this game starts right from the beginning of the manga series, and seems to follow it along very faithfully, throwing in a few more fights here and there but follows it at a decent pace, as mentioned before, the game follows the same lay out of other games in the series, you play as some form of demigod in a battle field of people seemingly made of paper, as you run through them punching and slicing  your way through, AI what you expect again, most enemies will crowd around you and attack a few at a time, quite randomly, if you have a AI partner you shouldn’t expect anything from them apart from a combo every 10 seconds, though when they are fighting you most of them are not alive long enough for you to notice the fact they seem to of left their brains at home. Though this will get very repetitive, but more so than other games in the series, mainly down to the fact that in other games you can get new weapons, you can level these up gaining access to higher level combos along with new heavy attacks, this game though lets you gain new special moves as you beat new bosses as you go along, most of these moves are again straight from the manga. The story apart from following the manga well though is not aided by the layout  how these are broken up, each section is usual blocked by between 70-100 unit count and the doors will not open until they are all killed though this is ok, this is mostly all the battles apart from boss fights. Boss fights are the only units in the game that have a different strategy to beat they actually have a health bar which is divided into 3 parts, they get stronger as you deplete each one, and as boss fights are the only ones you need to worry about dealing damage to you, you would assume you need to be careful with them, which you would be wrong as all you need to do is mash buttons for combos and when they are going to be attacked use your special attack to deal some damage rinse and repeat, repetitiveness is the name of the game, but this is something that comes with the territory in Musou games.

Graphically the game is pretty poor, most of the textures are muddy and brown is the common colour palette, though with the world supposed to be a waste land, this was probably more t do with a design aesthetic that due to graphical limitations. Models are as expected some parts of the characters are weirdly higher detailed and high poly than the rest, which causes some weird clashes on the models.

There is two modes to play, Legend mode where you play through the manga’s story line, in the locations, meeting the people and killing the bosses, and Dream mode where you play as a cast of other assassins from the series each doing their own thing, this though is some of the only difference in game play, as well as brief moments in legend mode where you play as another character.

The music is normal rock music from the series,  it suits the theme of the game quite well, but it’s not to everyone’s taste, the main problem with this game is that it plays, sounds and even looks like a Dynasty Warriors clone, there isn’t much separating it from the rest to call it anything else but this, for fans of the series this will seem like a good reason to buy the game, for people who hate this will be turned away, for big fans of Fist of the north star and have long desired to play through the story in this way, your game has been made, but those of you who like variety and different play styles in your games, this is either a game to rent from a friend or just  a miss because once you’ve played the first level for each character, your pretty much done.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.