The basics of swordplay in Kengo are quite different from those in Bushido Blade. In addition to your sword combos, you can also perform basic sword techniques by pressing a direction and the attack button simultaneously. You can block incoming sword hits, and you can even parry the blow if your timing is precise enough. In Kengo there are two new gauges to represent your character. The first is a ki meter - a bar that gauges your spirit and increases or decreases depending on the honor of your fighting style. You can recover ki by hitting the triangle button, and when your ki meter is full, the triangle button will launch your special attack. The second gauge is the life bar - a meter that shows how much damage your character can take before he dies. Kengo has done away with the one-hit kills and localized damage of the Bushido Blade games and instead simply has you whale on an opponent until he dies. The game does present a fairly interesting spin on the classic fighting formula: When fighting with actual swords, blows will draw blood and cause bleeding. Characters with heavy wounds will eventually bleed to death, but the bleeding is slow enough to not actually affect gameplay too drastically. It takes several major hits to down a foe, and the fighting is often long and drawn out. This, combined with the tedious number of survival-style battles in the game, makes Kengo a fairly frustrating and boring game.
You move your fighter with the analog stick, which takes full advantage of the analog support. Moving the stick slightly will make your fighter back away slowly, while moving the stick fast and hard will make your fighter dive or roll out of the way of an attack or make your fighter charge at the enemy. Unfortunately, the fighters seem to have a hard time connecting with their blows. The game makes full use of all three dimensions - fighters circle, strafe, and roll around each other, but lining characters up to make a slashing attack is often difficult. Fighters will often stand close to each other but miss their attacks because of the cumbersome control.
The graphics in Kengo are slightly subpar in terms of current PS2 standards. The characters look mediocre, and the animations are sometimes a bit unconvincing. While there are plenty of characters in the game, you spend most of the time fighting the same character model over and over again. The game has only one sword model, so all of the weapons look exactly the same. The bleeding effect is poorly executed, and the fact that physical damage isn't carried into the next round really kills the realism of the game. The backgrounds are the one nice aspect of the graphical presentation. The dojos all have a unique look and feel to them, and the backgrounds are nicely rendered. The game features no in-game music while you're fighting, and the sound effects are a bit trite. The sword and shuffling-feet sound effects make up most of the audio, along with the horribly repetitive birdcalls that ring out painfully often in every dojo level.
Kengo fails not only as a knockoff of the Bushido Blade series but also as a sword-playing game. The game has a weak fighting system, and the lack of a compelling storyline makes Kengo just a series of boring, repetitive battles. The game abandons both the characters and the gameplay formula of the Bushido Blade series and ends up being a disappointment on all fronts.
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