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May 05 2005
Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Review
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| Summary: Good outweighs the bad
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.
Your character is controlled via the D-pad which actually feels a little cumbersome. We couldn't figure out why they wouldn't include support for the analog stick. The Left shoulder button is used to lock-on to enemies and the right shoulder boulder is used to center the camera to where your character is facing. When not in a menu, the action buttons serve to access the slots you have equipped. For example, the left arm corresponds to the Square button, the head to the Triangle, right arm to the Circle and X fires the weapon in your chest.
As you progress through the levels, you can equip different weapons to balance out your particular style of gameplay, whether you like to fight from a distance or up close, there is a weapon to match.
Depending upon which weapon you use to make the kill, that weapon's skill will be upgraded. For example, if you use a laser gun, your beam skill will increase. If you use a rail gun, your bullet skill will increase. There are five of these skills, and levelling them up is not unlike improving stats in an RPG.
Also, by defeating enemies, you gain 'elixir skins' which you can use towards improving your character capabilities. For example, you can increase the number of slots available on an arm as some advanced weapons require two or even three slots. You can also improve your defense, health and a variety of other player stats. Over time you will gather up unwated weapons, all of which you can 'restore', which basically means you melt them down into elixir points which you can also use to improve your stats as noted above.
There are eight increasingly more difficult levels in the Tower of Purgatory. Your mission for each level is to visit all the rooms, the status of which you can track via your map (press Select). Annoyingly, the top-right corner radar doesn't show a map, just your direction and a blip of enemies in the current room. Once you've visited all the rooms and beaten all the enemies on the floor, a warp point appears at which point you can go to fight the boss. Dying is a frustrating process as you lose all of your equipped items and start at the base floor. Rather than provide a load screen, you have to press the Home button on the PSP and reload the UMD. Fortunately, loading times are minimal.
Your character is on a hunt to find out the purpose of his robotic existence. Beating each levels boss further propels the rather slim dialogue and story. Suffice it to say, the game is interesting and if you are patient enough to get your head around the gameplay, you will get drawn into the story and finding out what the point of all this fighting is. Not to mention, finding better weapons on each floor becomes an engaging part of the game as you strive to build the ultimate fighting robot.
The graphics and music are just decent. Although the quality is ok, the variety is very small. Each level has a new soundtrack, but they're of the annoying movie-trailer-techno variety with loud drums and squaking synths. This all gets a little old, and there is no way to change the volume for the music without muting everything. The character and enemy graphics are decent, but the environments are incredibly bland.
Rengoku is a great concept, from the interesting character customization to the unique storyline, but it falls a little flat in execution. The controls, graphics and thin dialogue feel a little chintzy. Overall, the good outweighs the bad -- there are enough unique features to make this game worth a try. The multiplayer features should be fun for quick matchups with friends, see who has the strongest character and best fighting skills. Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory could've used a bit more work, but for all its letdowns, it will still leave you intrigued and curious.
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Comments
WHY!? Why are so many games ignoring the analogue. It's a 3D game, why give you such a crap method of controlling 
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i think they should've included 2 analog sticks on the psp so we could play katamari damacy handheld :P
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It isn't an optimal method, VgSlag, but you do get fairly used to it after awhile and it becomes less noticeable.
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Yeah, as you do with THUG2. It just seems so crazy to do it that way though. Ride, that would have been great, Ape Escape would have been wicked 
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The game is so repetitive and tedious. All of the rooms are square, the maze is square, you wander through and blast crates, kill other robots, try not to get killed. There were times I felt "Brotherhood of the Blade" to be repetitive, but occasionally it threw the user a bone so they felt like they were getting someplace, accomplishing something. Getting to the next level to hear a few lines of "Nietzsche as told by a 6th Grader" isn't an accomplishment.
I think the game had potential. The solitary robot able to change configuration and appearance questioning existence was cool enough, but better if he were stuck in a Doom or Quake engine with something besides boxes and square rooms. That it's a series of square rooms and hallways with a D-pad as your sole means of movement is kinda apropos... the developers were trying to warn us.
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Well put promethh. I see a lot of potential in Rengoku, and couldn't shake the feeling that the developers were rushed to finish the game. It's a pity.
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Wasn't Rengoku originally supposed to be a PS1 or PS2 game? Everything I've seen and heard about it seems very familiar. I swear I've seen it before!
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