Good Robot Action on the Portable. Check here for some analysis.

User Rating: 7.5 | Rengoku 2: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N. PSP
I never saw anyone mentioning in any site or magazine about Rengoku II. I became aware of the game thanks to a friend of mine who loves robot games and stuff, and I must say he's quite right about this one. Rengoku packs some good action on PSP and will not let shooters fans down in this title. Let's see:

Graphics 8/10: The character models are quite solid and impressive, especially if you consider the lighting effects showed by the surrondings as you walk through many chambers during your adventure, you can spot many of the details of each ADAM(this is how the robots are called in this game) even in the face as you can observe the very sintetic, yet robust moveset for the characters, wich really looks like an automaton in action. The scenarios have great light effects(specially weapons lighting/flame effects), you can spot some sunlit sector that makes the feeling of realism toward the scenarios and some of the spotlight giving the impression that you are cornered in a high-tech labyrinth. Unfortunally the scenarios, despite being separated in floors with distinctive arquiteture, suffer from uses of the same pattern, making somehow confusing to walk around them, and sometimes you may fell some claustrophobia by the continous surrondings that you must craw during the game(althoght we can deduce that this could be the intetion if you check about the game's history), what can compromises it's functionality.

Sound 6/10: There isn't much to complain neither to praise here. It's possible to hear the mechanicals walking throught the scenarios and deduce if they are walking, dashing or jumping around, but not much have been added here, weapons in other way showed a reasonable uses of sound for each kind of weapon but nothing that apprend the player in it's ears. Music in game are well implemented, a track with a good length is used in each floor and since there's plenty of robots on it to keep you busy you might not notice or be annoyed by the limitation of this lack of soundtrack.(In later floors you might be annoyed by the overheat blip of your ADAM), but nothing that you can complain for much.


Gamplay 7/10: The game is a mix of dungeon crawling/third person shooter/RPG in a balanced, althought not perfect, fashion. There's plenty parts to customize your ADAM that you get by destroying your opponents that changes the appearance of your robot depending on the part, also you get after trashing each opponent(and some "energy pillars") some materials that you use to level up attributes and parts of your robot making him harder and "cooler" for facing more dangerous enemies. The biggest issue here is about the Dungeon Crawler aspect, what I mean is how players can be frustrated by geting theirselves lost(even having an radar system) in the scenarios who are divided in chambers separeted throught doors only to be marked as opened or waiting to be oppened for the first time, but the radar is innefective as it doesn't show where to go in order to advance the game. For doing such, without spoiling much of the fun, you must destroy some thought robots on each floor to make it possible to warp to the next one, and so on, this may look like totally repetitve, but it's not as you can use a lot of customization throught the game making each "kill" unique during the process. Despite these flaws, the game is very polished in these mechanics that compose it. Multiplayer I only manage to get throught sharing and the game offered solid(still limited in this mode) experience, but will not let down those who seek fast paced action.

Replay 7/10: These one here is up to your call, actually I found the game two-faced in this concept. If you enjoy hack-n'-slash in a futuristic fashion you would love to keep this UMD around you, however, if you are looking for dept-history game, you may find this one very weak, since the history is straightfoward and there's nothing much to be explored about that, however multiplayer can be very fun to play, and it's worth a shot.

Overall 7,5/10: Rengoku II is not a perfect action/shooter title, but can pack a lot of fast pacing action experiences for those who seek to destroy everything in your path and it's looking also to develop an self made character. May not please all audiences but I recomend give it a shot for robot's sake.