Product Description

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins uses the Wii Remote to fight, dash, jump and kill like a true ninja. Players will continue the saga of Rikimaru and Ayame, elite ninjas who must use their lethal skills to keep the peace in feudal Japan. Playing as both stealthy Rikimaru and aggressive and acrobatic Ayame, players will fight their way through more than 10 missions and 50 side quests and experience the thrilling adventure of being the ultimate ninja.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2584 in Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Model: 008888174905
• Released on: 2009-02-03
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Dimensions: .36 pounds

Features

• From the creators of the original Tenchu
• Fight your way through dangerous territory and complete thrilling missions as the ultimate ninja
• Use the Wii Remote for a complete ninja experience
• Master the art of death
• Experience an epic adventure

Amazon.com Product Description
From the creators of the original Tenchu, Tenchu: Shadow Assassins lets gamers master the deadly techniques of a real ninja. For the Wii, Tenchu: Shadow Assassins provides an authentic experience by using the Wii Remote to fight, dash, jump and kill like a true ninja.

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins continues the saga of Rikimaru and Ayame, elite ninjas who must use their lethal skills to keep the peace in feudal Japan. With much blood shed throughout their master’s land, Rikimaru and Ayame must unmask the face of the enemy behind a treacherous kidnapping. Fight your way through dangerous territory and complete thrilling missions as the ultimate ninja.

Features:

Use the Wii Remote for a complete ninja experience:

• Succeed in your adventures by using over 17 historically accurate ninja weapons and tools, each with its own Wii motion.
• Use your Wii remote to dash, jump, attack, and toss projectiles.
• Kill your targets through a wide variety of stealth assassination techniques using your Wii remote.
• Experience Shadow Mode, an advanced level option where you put your Wii ninja skills to the ultimate test.

Master the art of death:

• Fight as both Rikimaru and Ayame, elite ninjas skilled in the art of death. Rikimaru is stealthy and silent, while Ayame is aggressive and acrobatic.
• Move silently and use your environment as a camouflage to sneak in behind your targets and accomplish your missions.
• Battle your enemies with katanas, throwing stars, daggers, smoke bombs and more!

Experience an epic adventure:

• Explore the highly detailed maps of feudal Japan and interact with your environment.
• Unlock hidden levels by collecting special artefacts during your epic adventure.
• Over 10 missions and 50 side quests allow for hours of immersive gameplay in a world of fierce combat and authentic tradition.

Customer Reviews

A solid stealth game with stiff controls and a steep learning curve
Tenchu for the Wii is a mixed blessing. The game gives adult players a stealth based challenge which is fairly rare on the Wii. On the other hand the game is really challenging, partly because it is intended to be hard, but partly because it has some of the most unforgiving controls I've been exposed to in a very long time. Not bad controls, just unforgiving. I would snarkily describe this game as Resident Ninja Solid: Manhunt Edition since it feels like it is incorporating elements from many older stealth based games with a huge dose of Resident Evil controls.

First off, Tenchu is a game where the player takes the role of two stealthy assassins who have to do a lot of dirty work for their mostly good-guy boss, Lord Goda. Save the princess, assassinate the bandit leader, and so-on. The entire game is based upon stealth and environmental problem solving. Combat is entirely based on quicktime events and motion controls, which works pretty well with a few exceptions.

NINJA-TASTIC STUFF:
+++ Graphically, this game looks good despite the fact that it only runs in 480i. In fact, it looks better than most other games on the Wii right now. Lighting and shadows are well done. Backgrounds are detailed and richly colored despite the fact that nearly 100% of game appears to be taking place at night.
+++ The 10 story missions and 20+ assignment-missions are solid with quality voice-acting, but mostly the story serves as nothing more than a convenient excuse to drop your ninja into a scenario to acquire equipment and kill people.
+++ A lot of the assignment missions are unlockables, leaving a fair amount of replay value, especially for perfectionists that want to get high scores.
+++ Well-done quick-time style combat.
+++ Lots of ninja gadgets. James Bond would be proud.
+++ Gorgeous music (but it does get repetitive)

Some game design decisions leave me scratching my head though...
--- No pointer control when so many parts of the game scream to use pointer control.
--- Stiff Resident Evil style movement controls. The ninjas can do cool scripted gymnastics and stuff, but only in certain context sensitive scenarios. Prince of Persia is far more ninja-tastic in that respect. The ninja's are not very fluid or smooth in comparison.
--- No in game brightness controls. Instead the game instructs you to adjust the TV brightness instead every time the game boots up. I'm sorry, but I'm not fiddling with my television when every other game developer has figured out brightness controls. This feels lazy and really annoyed me for some reason.
--- While the in-game cut-scenes have captions, the rest of the game lacks captions. A minor quibble, but problematic if you're forced to play the sound turned completely down.
--- Frustrating difficulty level. One hit, you're dead. Or have to restart from the least checkpoint. This game is brutal.
--- Functional but un-fun swordplay mechanics using the Wii remote. Luckily, swordplay is not that common in the game.

The gameplay itself is very odd because you never directly engage in combat with anyone unless you get caught. Instead, if you manage to trigger a stealth kill you will be prompted for a quick-time button pressing/motion-control sequence. As far as I'm concerned, this actually works really well and usually feels a lot like Prince of Persia: Two Thrones handling of stealth kills, but actually a bit easier to pull off. Swordplay is rare, and when you do have to actually fight, you use the Wii remote to block enemy attacks and swing it to attack. Levels are a departure from the more open, roof-top hopping designs of previous Tenchu games and are instead crafted and broken-up into a series of mini-levels. It works well, but I miss the more open design of the earliest Tenchu titles.

All in all, I am having fun with the game and I recommend this game to the hardcore audience with a word of caution that it isn't perfect, but still enjoyable. To anyone else, I only recommend it as a rental, mostly due to the occasionally frustratingly hard difficulty level.

Tenchu shows good ideas but loses the freedom from its roots!
The Wii does not have many adult games, so I was anticipating the release of Tenchu:SA. The Tenchu series has always been my favorite since the original on playstation. I have been a loyal fan owning every US release with my favorite being XBOX Tenchu:Return from Darkness.

Tenchu:SA has not lived up to my hopes and expectations. While it is not a bad game it improves the series in some areas but corupts others.

The graphics and sound are excellent along with cinema cut scenes to tell the story. Some new ideas such as blowing out candles, torches, and shaking the wii remote to slide from bush to bush work well. Hanging from the rafters to execute a stealth kill or usiung the enemies own sword for exectution is also exhilirating. Sneaking from gaurd to gaurd anticipating the stealth kill is still exciting. Other new ideas work but are lost in the ultimate problem that you do not have as much freedom and control as in previous Tenchu games. This version feels confined to almost a single path with hiding places or items specifically placed and required for you to use to advance past an enemey guard. It is also frustrating because if you are spotted, puff! You are transported back to the last check point. If you are equiped with a sword you can fight which is just as difficult and frustrating. I am over half way through the game and have only won a couple of sword fights. Oh, and you don't use your own sword to preform stealth kills, heck you can't even walk with it in hand, what is that? There is no grappling hook, crouching, rolling, double jumping, or other acrobatic ninja moves you would expect. The controls are slow and bulky feeling, I mean really, no manual crouch button?

One of my favorite things about the Tenchu series used to be entering a new level and using the grappling hook to climb roof tops where you could observe the environment and decide how you would progress through the level. This version does not allow for that freedom, it is slow and scripted forcing you to play the levels by design.

In closing I believe the graphics and other new ideas are there but to many key elements that made the series a hit have been removed. My review score of the game is 2.5 out of 5 only because the game looks great and sneaking up on enemies to preform stealth kills is still fun. Fan or not this is probably one to rent prior to purchasing. I am a fan who is half way through but not sure if I want to continue because of the frustrating controls and lack of freedom.

Solid tenchu title, much needed for hardcore crowd on wii
Ive been waiting for this for so long and I just cant believe someone reviewed it after playing only 1 stage. You have to play the entire game to get the best of it. Anyways the series returns to its roots. The same developer(acquire) that made the first tenchu (stealth assassins) for ps1. In a simpler way of explaining it, its basically metal gear solid but ninjas in feudal japan (sorry no guns). You start as rikkimaru and at the halfway point switch to ayame. Though the game is pretty good in my opinion no game goes flawless.

The good:
+ The graphics are some of the best on the wii.
+ The setting is very accurate and beautiful.
+ Top notch voice acting. Liam O'brian (gaara's voice from naruto) totally fits rikkimaru.
+ The story actually is good this time around. I will not spoil it.
+ Very cool ways to assassinate enemies. Example: swimming and pulling a guard down into the water drowning them.
+ Classic controls make the game more user friendly.
+ Clever tool mechanics.
+ Just the fact that its a hardcore title on the Wii.

The Bad:
- During assassinations the camera is wonky and sometimes you wont be able to see your kill at a good angle.
- Dead bodies still move like crazy after being killed.
- Not much variety on the kills, there could have been more.
- When you do kill someone there is little to no blood at all. (good/bad? you decide)
- Setting someone on fire is just plain ugly.
- Gimmicky wii controls which is sometimes unresponsive.
- Sword play is really hard it requires you to react in a split second so its best avoided.

Minor flaws aside I think this game is a pretty solid hardcore title for the Wii. I finally dusted off my wii again and started playing once this came out and it was worth it. There is such a drought of hardcore titles on the Wii this finally had me get use out my wii. It is so satisfying to kill guards in this game and you will have fun.