Repetitive and not without flaws, still I managed to enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would.
Items in the store become available as you progress or as you find them in the different missions. Before going out on a mission, you can buy some and equip up to six items. You can also change your clothes and accessories to your liking, more will be available for purchase as you complete missions.
You can't explore the village, which is a shame, since it would be nice to talk to people and obtain some side quests, so it basically serves as a connection point between missions. Every time you accept a mission, you are taken to the mission map. Here, you can choose the level of difficulty, and you will also see that you won't have to do all the missions - only a few key ones - to complete the game. However, you will be missing out on a lot of story and a lot of fun.
I was surprised to have found the whole sneaking and assassinating process tons of fun. It really isn't my kind of thing, but it was just cool to see my character drag enemies into the shadows, knock them out or impale them with her sword. Ok, the blood gushing looks pretty cheesy, but my ninja's movements were fun to watch. There's just something about jumping on someone's shoulders with legs crossed around their neck, knocking them down and thrusting a sword through their chest.
The missions don't vary much: go here, kill someone, go there, retrieve something. But it's how you do it that makes them all unique. You can be detected by sight, sound and smell. Make too much noise, and even though they can't see you, enemies will know you're there. Fall into a sewer or get covered in blood, and the smell is bound to attract someone and even dogs. Walk in the shadows for less chance of being discovered. You can climb walls, hop on roofs, wait for someone to pass, jump down and kill them silently. You can crawl under certain places, wait for someone to pass and turn around, come out, assassinate them and go back into hiding. You can hide underwater, breathing through a little tube and wait until the danger is gone. And then you can use the grapple hook to go up great heights or swing across certain spots, darts, arrows and shurikens to take down enemies from a distance, smoke bombs, explosives and other cool things. Unfortunately, aiming properly to use the ranged items is extremely annoying.
There is also a special skill called "Impersonation". Basically, you kill someone and take their form temporarily, another cool way to blend in.
Tenchu Z is a game of patience. You must observe and wait for the right moment to attack. You are rewarded for being invisible and undetectable. Sure, you can storm an area and kill everyone in your way, but you lose points. At the end of each mission there is an "evaluation" of your actions, mostly based on how many stealth kills you've done and how many times you were detected. You're given a score and gold for completing the mission, and back you go to the village for another one.
And while the main adventure is for one player only, you can hop online and play co-op with up to three other players via Xbox Live.
I wasn't expecting to enjoy Tenchu Z as much as I did. Although I think the textures and overall look isn't too spectacular for an Xbox 360 title, the gameplay kept me interested. And while some may not enjoy the waiting game, I thought the observe-sneak-kill process was actually pretty fun. Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screenshots at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=tenchuz