Kengo: Master of Bushido Review

Kengo: Masters of Bushido is the first next-generation development from Light Weight studios, the development house most known for its Bushido Blade games. The development team is no longer affiliated with Square, the publisher and owner of the Bushido Blade license, and Kengo isn't an official entry into the Bushido Blade series. Still, a remarkably similar premise and gameplay mechanics vaguely reminiscent of Bushido Blade make Kengo an obvious but not official progression of Light Weight's last two games.

Kengo has three gameplay modes. The single-player mode has you pick a lowly dojo apprentice and make him into a famous swordsman. The tournament mode has you pick one of the game's 20 characters and fight a seemingly endless string of warriors until you either defeat them all or drop. And the versus mode lets two players battle it out on the field of their choice.

The single-player mode is the meat of the game. First you choose one of three budding warriors and one of eight dojos, and then you train your character in the ways of the sword through training minigames and practice lessons with the dojo master. Your fighter's ability is represented by six stats, and these stats can be raised through training and actual fighting. As you complete various forms of your training, new challenges will be opened to you. Eventually you'll beat the master of your own dojo, at which point you'll be able to challenge the other dojos in the game. The game continues in a seemingly endless string of battles and practice sessions and doesn't appear to follow any sort of solid storyline. Unfortunately, the single-player mode boils down to a series of tedious practice battles fought with wooden swords and boring training sessions with repetitive puzzle-game mechanics. There is no actual quest mode in the game - your samurai never leaves home to search for worthy opponents, and he's never given any motivation to fight beyond merely improving his skills. And while the game's intro sequence shows a weathered swordsman sleeping under the moonlight and fighting ghost warriors, this isn't actually a part of the game.

Kengo's gameplay is a drastic departure from the Bushido Blade formula. Light Weight has abandoned the multiple weapons of Bushido Blade, and each fighter in Kengo uses a basic katana. Additionally, the stance and combo systems have been completely changed. As your character progresses through the game you'll learn new sword techniques. These moves can be strung together to form three-move combination attacks. You can edit your sword combos between matches, and you can store up to 16 different combinations. Each combination is activated when you change your stance and is initiated when you hit the attack button three times while in the appropriate stance. While this system lets you customize your combo attacks, it forces you to use your combos as your primary form of attack. As such, the battles in Kengo consist of button mashing, not the strategic attack and counterattack moves of the Bushido Blade series.