85
Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory is a third-person robot action adventure that attempts to engage not only your trigger finger but also your mind. In a lot of ways, the game pulls off a lot of fresh ideas, including the ability to customize your character with a wide variety of weapons placed on the head, arms, chest or legs. Sadly, Rengoku is unpolished and feels as if the game was rushed in order to make the PSP launch. Even with the dissapointments, this is a game worth checking out.
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10
I dont have the game myself but I know enough to know that you should never buy this. It's far too easy, every single enemy is the same. You just bash one button and do the same exact move over and over. You can get ugprades but they don't change anything, you just look different but do the same exact move over, and over, and over. The sounds are horrible. There's only one running sound used throughout the whole game. I guess this is a good game for those 6 year old PSP owners that don't really notice all the horrible things.
1
This is a horrifying nightmare, I felt like living in Rengoku after I played it, it's haunting me. It is the worst game I have ever played in my whole life.
I don't want to repeat everyone elses complaints, I totally agree with you all. The game is easy -- I completed it twice in 4 hours. Why did I play it twice? Because you need to get the actual cinematic ending by completing it twice, that means going through everything once more.
Don't buy this! If you see it in a shop, run for you life.
40
The game is pretty fun and stylish with a dark gothic theme involving robots, with customizable bodies. The Single player is always different and fun while the Multiplayer wouldve brought this to a whole new level, they didn't take it as far as it could have gone.
Only because they didn't plan it as well. The randomly generated levels stop being random after 15 clears. It's the same shapes after you notice them.
49
Worst PSP game I've played.
Pros: Online play (but still blows).
Cons: Bad gameplay, bad graphics, bad storyline, most of it is Japanese.
Thank God I rented it!
20
This game was horrible. I have some friends that loved it and I don't know what they see in it. Don't waste your money like I did.
9
Bad controls, bad graphics, extremely tough. If you see it on the store shelves, SHIELD YOUR EYES!
50
Save yourself the money and don't buy this game. It is just an ok game.
40
The visuals for the game aren't bad and the concept is solid, however the gameplay is really weak, IMO. The robots move in a very jerky and jittery fashion and the controls aren't responsive at all. You always have a hard time aligning your android up with enimies to attack. Overall, it seems like it's made to have impressive screenshots. Honestly I gave this game about 45 minutes of playtime and just gave up on it.
Booorrrrinnng. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't even waste money renting it. It might look nice, but the gameplay ruins it.
85
Ok here is the deal that EVERYBODY is forgetting: RENGOKU IS A MULTIPLAYER BASED GAME! THATS RIGHT AS IN WHO GIVES A FLYING RATS ABOUT SINGLE PLAYER.
Ok, whew, now that thats off my chest let me explain further. There are only 2 reasons why you play the single player mode in this game. To learn how to play and to get badass weapons and upgrade your charactor. So there you have it the truth is out.
The whole concept behind Rengoku is that you go through this small and not too challenging single player mode to quickly upgrade your character and develop it to its fullest potential as well as your skills in the game. Then you take your CUSTOM character and you battle online with up to 3 other people.
Everybody has forgotten that this game is multiplayer based. It is too bad that the single player mode is very average and simply not very impressive. But who freaking cares!? I can take my completely custom, one-of-a-kind character, and kick my friend's butt with it. Or get my butt kicked.
Everyone seems to complain about the controlls and camera views being sluggish or some other word to use to say simply not that good. The reason is because the learning curve on this game is big, like, real big. The controls are designed so that if you pick up the game you can play it, but as you go on you become better skilled at the controls and you learn how to kick more assparagus. This is seen as a drawback by many new players because they don't realize how much the gameplay will improve when their skills do.
The character models in the game are just freaking sweeeeet!!! From the weapons to the actual characters themselves, everythign has a very industrial and futuristic look to it that gives the game a feel and style like none other that I have seen.
Strategy, strategy, strategy, strategy. This game is all about one-on-one combat strategy. You pick what weapons best suit your playing style and the opponent you will be up against. Some opponents you are better off shooting with a long range weapon and then quickly dashing in for an attack then rollign away before they can strike you. Others you should just simply get cloe the them and wail away.
The game can seem kind of bland at times with not much but walls and boxes (which you shold break to get cooldown items). But when you are fighting another borg you simply forget about everything and only focus on beating him and any others that spawn in that room.
I think this game is a must have for any strategy battle game fans. If you like mech fighting games in which you must pick every part of your charactor to your specifications and then unleash all you got then you should like this game.
I give it a 8.5/10 because it is a great game but the single player and the story involved in single player can be repetitive and almost dissapointing, but the strategy and multiplayer fighting is well worth it.
90
Rengoku gives you a simple choice:
1. Kick ass and takes parts later.
2. whine like a baby and trade to Gamestop.
I pick number 1.
I'll give it to the reviewers, this game has many flaws! But, I easily say it's a game to have for those who like a modern game with an old-fashioned feel. If you love pure action with tons of customization, get this! Don't believe the pansy-assed game reviewers who flock like sheep to anything with a BIG brand name on it. Be like me. Be pure. Kill those cyborg bastards. Give it all you've got!
Only old-school gamers would really 'get' this title. I play it ALL the time. Sure you get 'turned around' a lot and the map's your best friend, but it makes me feel like being a samurai of the future, 'cept you can put guns on almost every body-part. Show the 'nouveau-gamers' that GameShark and Action-Replay is for spineless 4 year old Gameboy addicts. Prove yourself.
NO HONOR FOR THE WEAK! COME AT ME!!!!!!!
41
I saw this in my local walmart and decided to give it a chance, after reading all the GOOD reviews on PSP411. But after playing it for 45 minutes, I got sick of this game and couldn't wait to sell it on ebay. I felt like I wasted my time, and money.
I consider myself to be a pretty lenient gamer. When I spend my hard earned cash on a game, I play it and give it a fair chance. I gave Rengoku the benefit of the doubt, but it let me down something fierce. Basically, you're a robot-type being that can attach weapons and power-ups to your body parts, and you kill other robots to get experience and level up your stats and weapons. You do this while ascending a "Tower" of 8 levels to discover the reason for your existence. The concept is good, the execution is terrible...
As stated in the gamespot.com review, this game just felt RUSHED. With only 8 levels, and pretty much identical robots to kill over and over again, this game loses it's replay value really quickly! This game starts out pretty difficult, as the bosses can kill you pretty quickly, but since you only lose your weapons when you die (no lives and no exp lost), it's easy to pick up where you left off, kill some more basic bad guys and get your weapons back! In a nutshell, there isn't much to this game, so you can be finished and tired of it in one day.
Graphically, this game is ok. The weapon effects and explosions are nice to look at. And the character models are pretty well done, despite your characters awkward running motion. The different baddies all seem to look the same, with minor differences. (When you get to level 8, you will fight the same bad guys as you did on level 1, only they have stronger weapons and better stats). The worst part about this game is the level design. Basically, they all look the same. Each level is randomly generated by a set of inter-connecting rooms. But the walls, floor, and ceiling look identical on each level. Boo-urns...
The sound effects are okay as well. The firing effects of the different weapons are unique and powerful sounding and the explosions are nice. The background music (techno beats) gets old fast and makes you just wanna turn it down or off.
Equipping new weapons and levelling up your stats adds a nice RPG element to this game. But this feature is not enough to make this game worthy of a higher rating. This game is fun to pick up and play, but after I killed 10 of the same bad guy, and was forced to read the amateur dialogue of you and the bosses, I didn't have any more incentive to keep playing.
This game is a pure rental, as you will be able to finish it, or be tired of it in less than a day. If you really want to play this game, wait till you can rent it or buy it used/cheaper off of ebay. But dont be surprised if you find yourself trying to get rid of it as fast as you got it.
90
Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory is a very entertaining game that's hard to fit into a genre. It has strong elements of an RPG, action, and strategy game. The story is kind of vague, it's based around the fact that you're in control of a robot that finds itself in the Tower of Purgatory, which is basically a large battleground for robots.
When you start off you immediatly find a magnum you can equip to your arms or head and a claw you can equip to either arm for a special attack. If the robot is unequipped all he can do is throw punches. Fully equipped with big weapons the robot can do a lot more. For example, one possible loadout could fire rail gun blasts from it's head while it's firing mortar shells from it's chest and a changun and a howitzer from it's arms. There's many different weapons and powerups that you can equip as you need them. If the robots on the floor you're on have lots of explosive weapons, it might be better to use a loadout that has some powerful melee attack weapons instead of guns to charge in and go for the kill. If your opponents are usually shooting the crap out of you with machine guns you can equip a sheild to one hand and a sword to the other so you can charge them and dodge their shots, the different strategies you can take are almost immeasurable with the RPG style gathering of weapons, items, and "elixir", which is the stat point system for Rengoku.
The Level layout does seem a bit repetitive, the levels are randomly generated when you start a new game and the auto generation system doesn't ever vary that hugely from one room to the next, and the randomly generated layouts make the game unique every time you start a new game. The levels and objectives are also repetetive, you simply battle robots through each room until you've cleared every room/ Then, you unlock the boss fight in which you fight a powerfull boss robot that usually gives you a sweet weapon when you beat them and the storyline progresses. The gameplay makes up for this repetiveness. Although Rengoku would be more fun with an improved level layout and objectives, it doesn't rely on these aspects like so many games do today.
Fortunately, weapon ammunition is a pretty simple system, whenever you use a weapon its value degrades until it reaches zero and the weapon becomes inactive. The robot will either go back to how it was by default in that area or switch to a different function depending on whether or not you equipped more than one item in the area. In the beginning each weapon area has one slot for you to equip an item, but using elixers you can raise the amount. You still have the weapon at this point but you can't use it. The good thing is that every time you enter the equipment screen all of your weapons automatically recharge, even the weapons you used up completely in battle. The only way to lose an item is to have it equipped when you die, with the exception of the boss battle which takes place between every floor.
The story reminds me of Far Cry's story in that you feel like the story simply compliments the gameplay instead of adding any real story elements to the game, and just like with Far Cry, I think it works.
50
To make this as brief as possible, the controls and lack of interactive enviornments kills this potential game concept. Never mind that it looks ok, the idea of having character models reflect the equipted items, random levels, fast (and few) load times, and an art gallery at the start.
The enemies, once you clear each room, seem to regenerate almost randomly, despite a noticeable pattern that seems to linger in the shadows. This means that you keep running in circles, praying that you stumble onto one to fight.
And fighting is hurt by the absurd control scheme. Even as a gamer who prefers the digital over the analog, the use of the digital in this game is insane. The PSP's digital was awful when trying to do the Capcom Fireball move in Darkstalkers (ie - pressing Down, Downforward, then Forward in one motion), but trying to move in a three dimensional world without randomly dashing or rolling by accident is near impossible.
The concept is great, but, as much as I hate to admit it, the analog would have been far better to go with in this game. Even in lock-on mode, the controls are shaky.
The only reason this gets as high a score from me is that the gallery is so great an idea for this game, and that the character model reflects the equiptment.
91
i just baught this game today. I like it, load times arent too long and most of all you can soup up your android. Bosses are hard for the first few times until you learn their strategy. Overall I bielive this will be a game I wont get rid of. The others I just traded they were too easy. This one is a challenge.
35
This 'review' is only after putting in a couple of hours into this game. I am not touching on the storyline, as it's all narrated in Japanese and I skipped most of it.
Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory features a rather fresh concept for a handheld - the 3D over-the-shoulder action shooter. Like many PC and console games before it, this one attempts to bring its own look & feel to bear, as well as new variations on the theme.
The gameplay consists of your character navigating an array of mazelike maps segmented into individual rooms. This layout no doubt helps the PSP in loading each area without having to stream from the UMD (a concern for open-map games like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto). In each area, you may or may not encounter enemies which may drop items. These items can then be fused to your character's chitin-like armor, creating a new look for each weapon and combination. Items can be added to arms, head, legs, hands, etc.
The flow of the game feels pretty repetitive. Go to new room, fight enemies, get stuff, add stuff to body (or delete), move on. You have a map you can check, but not while the game is running. I'll add that the Japanese content may give some people a hard time with the item-add-on menus (even though I read and speak a little Japanese, it was tough at first). Also, since I haven't played this game all that much, there may be some gameplay variations (bosses and such) that I haven't seen yet to break up the monotony.
The graphics look nice when still, but when moving around, the floor geometry shows separation between polygons and whole wall pieces clip (disappear) if you get too close to them and the camera intersects. The smearing/streaking is quite bad in this game, as well. I'm getting nervous about this aspect of the PSP LCD -- while some games like Puzzle Bobble and Darkstalkers don't show this problem, Ridge Racers hinted at it and this game is nearly ruined by it. Perhaps the new Samsung display will up the response time for USA models, but that's probably wishful thinking.
Even though the game smears and the 3D environment clips, it still looks fairly impressive (few things don't on the big vibrant PSP screen) and the novelty of adding stuff to your biomechanoid hero and seeing it appear is kind of intriguing, at first, anyway.
At this point in my playing of this game, it's an interesting but flawed experience. I just really hope other games don't have such smearing issues. The clipping is just bad coding (there should be limits to the positioning of the camera).
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