And I thought that Ninja games couldn't get better than Tenchu!
Well I start my review from gameplay. Of course I found it hard at first, but instantly found Crow's running much better than than in Tenchu where running was always too slow for my taste. Buttons aren't so complicated and within a hour you should be able to play this game very good controlwise. Never wanna go back to Tenchu after played this. As for the missions, I'm very glad that I can accept so many missions allthough they get repetitive but there ain't same way you are handling missions, because there are so many elements and things in gameplay to get you think what do to this time. For expample I was on a mission where I should have eliminate all enemy soldiers. Suddenly I heard fighting from the distance. There was 2 bears killing the village soldiers!I just sat back and watched bears annihilate almost all soldiers. And this is just one expample. There are so many things to do and check out in this game, you will have long while playing it.You can make your own items too, and there are lots of them. You can even name your made items like in Vagrant Story.
As for the graphics the game ain't so good. But it certainly isin't PS1 level either. But I have seen much better graphics in many PS2games to date. Shinobido is lacking little in the visual department but it makes it up with good athmosphere and freedom of the missions.
Sounds are mostly good thankfully you can put on Japanese voice acting which really pumps up the feel of the game.Other than that it's really standard screamings and sword slashes, but they do their work.
Only negative points I found are few things in mission editor.I can't add any cutscenes in my own missions (WTF?). It would have been good to have samekind of cutscenes like in real missions, you know, start and ending cutscene. For Example at start showing the merchant walking or talking whom you suppose to kill and after killing him cutscene showing Crow saying "Learn from mistakes" etc.And there ain't compass in own missions . Also you can't make very big missions, if u dont make the missions 10m wide and 250m long :( other than that the missions editor is very good tool.After all this the game is very good VERY VERY good. I really hope they improve the mission editor (hell you could have ur own cutscenes in PSP tenchu why not in far superior PS2?)This is the best ninjagame around and you will spent more than 100hours with this if you really get into this. I highly recommend to get this game if you can.