Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory

Rengoku comes to us care of Hudson and Konami as a futuristic action game based around cyborg combat. The PSP hasn’t seen much attention from action games so far, so there was a fair amount of pressure on Rengoku to be a worthy entrance for the genre. Unfortunately many may be displeased.

Rengoku The Tower of Purgatory, as the full title states, takes place within The Tower of Purgatory. This tower serves as a robot battleground where an army of now-useless cyborgs fight to no end. Our hero begins questioning his own existence when he finds himself at its base. You control a ‘borg known as A.D.A.M., able to manipulate Elixer Skins to create weapons out of body parts.

This sort of game doesn’t even need a story, so it felt very out of place and almost pointless. It seems they should have spent more time on improving other aspects of the game rather than implement a needless story. As you progress through the tower, the main character asks why he fights and begins to wonder where he came from.

You begin the game in an empty room facing a portal. Taking the portal moves you to the terminal room one floor above. Each floor is equipped with a terminal room, and at these terminals you can equip new weapons, upgrade individual stats, save your game, move up one floor, or move down one floor.

The upward portal will be locked on your first visit to a floor. To unlock it you must defeat all the robots on your floor. At first you will only be able to punch, but after defeating some enemies you’ll begin earning weapons. Taking these back to the terminal and equipping them will produce immediate visual results. There are equipment slots on each arm, the chest, head, and legs.

One of the coolest aspects of the game is creating your own custom battle droid, because the weapon isn’t just “equipped” but actually morphed into the body in a way. Weapons may even look different depending on which body part its equipped to. Many impressive cyborgs can be created by trying different weapon combinations.

Enemies won’t just drop their weapons; they’ll also drop what’s called an Elixer Skin. Elixer Skins are very much like experience, since you use them at terminals to upgrade different statistics. You can use Elixer Skins to upgrade your max health, physical and electronic defense, number of slots for each body part, and the max heat resistance of each body part. Even though your character won’t get stronger, he will be able to sustain more damage as well as use weapons for longer durations without worry of overheating.

The biggest problem with Rengoku is its terrible level design. I understand that Hudson was trying to create a very industrial and mechanical setting, but every floor is the same basic layout. There could have been floors with battle damage, floors with moss or vines and so on, but instead every single room contains stacks of boxes within the same square or rectangular layout.

After leaving the terminal room you find yourself in a square room or hallway with drab, plain textures and breakable boxes stacked in various places. All the doors lock and you are forced to fight one or two enemies at once. After they are all defeated the doors unlock and you repeat this process. Once you have cleared a room like this, the doors will stay unlocked forever.

By pressing select you can see a map of the floor you’re on. You can only see the rooms you’ve been in, but it’s very helpful and keeps you from getting lost in some of the bigger floors.

Another issue with Rengoku is its controls. They’re pretty bad at first, but as you get used to them combat becomes less of a hassle and more entertaining. The first problem is that you must use the d-pad to move around. The analog nub is used to look left and right only, and since you have to take you thumb off the movement buttons to use it, it becomes totally useless.

Movement is pretty straightforward when you are just traveling. Some tricks are holding the R button to strafe, double-tapping a direction to quickly dodge, and pressing L to lock onto an enemy.

Once engaged in combat the game feels a little like Virtua On. When locked on, left and right will strafe you around the target and you will stay locked on until either you press L again or the enemy uses a knock-back attack. To attack, each body part is assigned to a different button. Pressing triangle uses the weapon on your head, square for the left arm, circle for the right, and X for the chest. Since the legs don’t support any offensive attachments they are passive and don’t have a button.

After learning the combat and progressing a few floors fighting grows more intense. Enemies grow much stronger and dodging becomes a necessity. At this point the combat becomes very fun.

After clearing a floor the portal to go to the next opens up. Before you can get to the next floor, though, you have to defeat a boss. Boss fights are identical to any normal fight, aside from the fact that boss bots are much stronger.

The overall game is very short, but you are presented with an extended challenge once you’re finished.

Rengoku has some prominent flaws, but the core gameplay is fun. The level design and graphics are very bad, but character design and animation is done extremely well. The controls are poorly planned, but the combat is fast and entertaining. Not everybody will enjoy this title, but if you can overcome cosmetic issues to enjoy a game’s gameplay then I recommend you try Rengoku before buying it.              

Gameplay: 7.2
The controls feel very limiting before you learn them, and still feel slightly restricting after, but Rengoku’s combat is still very fun. If only they allowed the use of the analog nub for movement this wouldn’t be an issue.

Graphics: 6.5 
The overly bland background really brings down this score. The character models and animation are very detailed, but the poor levels are too distracting to ignore.

Sound: 8.0
All the battle sounds fit well, even though they won’t amaze or astound. The soundtrack is full of electronic, drum and bass, and orchestral songs that fit the action well.

Difficulty: Medium
During the first few floors you’ll find that enemies are fairly easy to defeat, and as long as you keep your stats and weapons updated you shouldn’t have trouble staying alive. However, later floors pose more of a challenge, and you’ll have to blend skill and strategic equipment placing to survive.

Concept: 7.8 
There are many action RPG’s out there, but Rengoku paid a little less attention to the RPG elements and put more work into the action. With more work in certain areas this could have been a very good game.

Multiplayer: N/A
Unfortunately I had no one to challenge, so I can’t accurately review the multiplayer portion of the game. There’s both a deathmatch style of game and an item swap mode where players can share augmentations they’ve stocked. Both seem like nice additions to the game.

Overall: 6.8
With the poor controls and boring levels Rengoku doesn’t feel nearly as fluid as it could. Combat doesn’t suffer much, but could be much more epic with more creative levels and smooth controls. It’s still a fun game to play, but not many gamers will feel they got their money’s worth with this one.