Overclocked On Caffeine v.1.1

Rengoku II: Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N.

PSP

14:52 Hours


I don't do it on purpose y'know. It's not like I actually go out of my way to track down really obscure games. I just sit and think 'I'm bored of all these cod-Tolkein RPGs set in the same pseudo-medieval realms. Why can't I find something in a more modern or futuristic setting?' Then, ten minutes later, I'm playing Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, and finding myself utterly addicted to a franchise that's offering me everything I've ever wanted in an RPG. It's not just role-playing games either. I go out looking for an FPS - arguably the most mainstream genre today, outside of sports - and walk back with two Russian games, one based loosely on a classic of impressionist cinema, the other one of the most crushingly depressing games you'll ever play. It's not deliberate, it's just that, more and more, I find myself having to venture off the beaten track to find games that scratch the gaming itches I'm afflicted with.

Take Rengoku II. The original, Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory was a launch title for the PSP. It sucked. The graphics were tiny and pathetic, the stages consisted of boxes with uninspired textures, the combat, while hiding a few good ideas, was laughable at best and with a name that literally translates to Purgatory: Tower of Purgatory, owner of the most redundant title since Manos: The Hands of Fate. Sure, the ideas were great, the story was fantastic, and the music was solid, but the execution was abysmal. In a better game, they would've been something special. Thankfully, someone at Hudsonsoft agreed and gave us Rengoku II, an infinite improvement on the original that delivers everything the first game promised, but failed to deliver.

I tried explaining the story to a friend of mine recently. Didn't go down too well.

Friend: So, tell me about this game.
Me: Okay, there's these combat androids inside this tower. They're relics of a war long since ended, but they're functionally immortal, so they can't be destroyed. So, mankind, in its infinite wisdom, puts them in these towers to endlessly fight for their amusement. Except mankind, by this point, is pretty much extinct. With me so far?
Friend: I think so...
Me: Good good. So, the droids are made of this kind of malliable resin called Elixier Skin, that lets them mold their limbs into weapons, like swords, revolvers, railguns, flamethrowers and the like. And when they're defeated, they simply melt down, only to reform some time later.
Friend: Uh-huh...
Me: Now, when the game opens, the main character, Gram, is showing signs of self-awareness. Which is unusual, because the droids - they're called ADAM units, by the way, did I mention that? - aren't supposed to have any real memories or anything. Yet every time he's defeating one of the floor guardians in the tower, he's recovering memories. So he climbs the tower trying to work out who he is, and why he knows the guardians so well. Also, the whole thing's based loosely on The Divine Comedy.
Friend: The band?
Me: No, the classical poem. All the levels are named after the various circles of Hell, there's a chick named Beatrice and a guy named Dante shows up on occasion, and some of the bosses have names similar to characters in it.
Friend: But there's robots.
Me: Well, obviously it's not a direct adaptation. That would, admittedly, be cool, but no, it's just influenced by it in terms of references and maybe atmosphere.
Friend: Meep-! *sound of a water balloon exploding quietly*
Me: What was that?
Friend: Either my brain or my suspension of disbelief, I'm afraid to look.

The story, as weird as it is, makes a lot more sense in-game, thankfully, rapidly turning from a quest for identity into nothing less than one of the most twisted love stories this side of Twilight. It's scant, drip-fed between chapters, but fantastic stuff that really deserves to be developed further. I'd kill for an expansion on the story alone, but sadly, no novels or manga were ever released alongside it in Japan.

As for the game itself, it's simple, but effective. In each floor, there is a map. In each map, there are several challenge rooms containing harder than normal enemies. Clear all the challenge rooms to open up the way to the next boss, kill the moss, move onto the next level, repeat. There's no out of place puzzles, barring a few one-way doors, no forced stealth sections, and absolutely no fetch quests or escort missions, just walk into a room, wipe out everything, then move on to the next. It's a distillation of the action genre as a whole, and something we could do with more of these days. After all, if the action is fun and polished enough to begin with, do you really need to break it up by shoehorning in elements that don't belong?

The combat is frantic. Imagine playing Devil May Cry 3 on fast forward, in the middle of a caffeine rush, while a relentlessly booming techno-industrial metal soundtrack pulverises your eardrums into sawdust. Things start off slow, giving you a chance to get your bearings on the first few stages. There, you'll only fight one reasonably weak enemy at a time. Though it's not long before you're taking on several at once, dodging and rolling desperately, waiting for an opportunity to slice the enemy from hell to breakfast. Though, crucially, you never feel overwhelmed. It's tough, make no mistake, but never to the point of frustration or where you're crying foul. This is because, in one of my favourite aspects of the game, anything the enemy can do, you can do as well.

Gram starts the game naked. In simple terms, this means you have no weapons equipped. First goal of the game is to rectify this post haste. Beating an enemy droid makes them drop one of two things. The first is Elixir Skin. This is used to increase your health, defence, and so on. The other thing they may drop is their equipment. Every enemy in the game, with the exception of the bosses, is made of several random pieces of equipment, and you can take and equip all of it. Not all at the same time, obviously, and the item they drop, if they even drop one, is chosen at random, but its possible to assemble a pretty formidable arsenal fairly swiftly.

Weapons can be equipped on the arms, head, torso or legs. Some weapons have restrictions on their placement - heavy weapons are often restricted to the torso, shields can only be placed on the arms, and legs are restricted mainly to defensive equipment such as speed and evasion boosters - but aside from such restrictions, there's nothing from stopping you assembling the deathbot of your dreams. Head-mounted revolver, a chainsaw on each arm and a Gatling gun sticking out your chest? You can do it. Dual-vibroblades twinned with a railgun and flamethrower? Works remarkably well. There's 300 different weapons, broken down into about 40 different types, with about four or five different levels of power for each class. The more powerful the weapon, the more likely it has additional effects: extra attacks, stun damage, knock down, launching the enemy for air combos, all are things to take into consideration when outfitting your robot.

As if that wasn't enough, weapons can also be powered up further through repeated use. Weapons have limited ammo/usage before being rendered unusable. Attacking with them repeatedly can increase their ammo count, raise the number of times special features are triggered, and lower the heat generated by their use. Y'see, every weapon raises the temperature of the body part its equipped to. If the temperature gets too high, it's rendered unusable until it cools down. Certain weapons, such as napalm grenades and heat swords, can further raise your temperature as well if successfully attacked by them. Of course, this works both ways, so there's nothing to stop you busting out a relatively weak flamethrower and leaving your foes unable to shoot, strike or even dodge properly.

To further sweeten an already impressive deal, the presentation is superb. While the first game featured such stunning locales as 'warehouse with dirt floor', 'slightly different warehouse with dirt floor' and 'shiny warehouse with shiny dirt floor', the programmers wisely decided a little more variation was in order. So while the game starts off in a shiny (though more graphically interesting) warehouse, it's not long before you're thrown into blast furnaces, industrial forest-like areas, cyber-gothic castles and an idyllic domed garden, filled with ponds and waterfalls in stark contrast to the havoc you've wrought over the last few stages, the whole thing feeling like the videogame adaptation of BLAME! we've always wanted, but never gotten. The weapon designs are similarly outstanding, just the right side of wrong, organic in ways that chainsaws and shotguns really shouldn't be. You wouldn't think they could successfully implement the body horror aesthetic in a game featuring virtually no humans whatsoever, but somehow, they found a way. The designs are reminiscent of the Guyver in many ways, and it's easy to cobble together the biomechanical monstrosity you've always wanted, and it helps that many of the weapons are already insectile to begin with. The fact that you can change your character's colour on the fly is a nice touch, the end result being that, before the end of the first stage, I'd accidentally put together a teal droid with swords for arms, an oddly familiar-looking chestplate and legs, and a wicked blade sprouting out of the top of my head. As I said, completely unintentional, but the moment of realisation was so worth it.

And finally, we have the music. As mentioned, its all fierce electronic beats, the perfect accompaniment to the tale of a droid trapped in an endlessly repeating hell. The second stage music is worthy of note, a dark piece that I can't get enough of, as is the challenge room music, a theme oddly reminiscent of Breed by Nirvana. Crowning moment has to be the final boss battle theme, a driving remix of the opening title theme. It's a damn shame that the OST seems unavailable anywhere online, as it's easily one of the best I've heard in a while.

Upon it's release, Rengoku II pretty much tanked. Perhaps the first game was still fresh in the memories of those that reviewed it, but somehow, the game managed to slip under the radars of virtually everyone out there. It's sad, because this is truely a game worthy of greater acclaim. It's Armoured Core-levels of customization, as reimagined by Tsutomu Nihei, with a soundtrack by Alec Empire, back off his meds, but more than that, it's the single biggest improvement to a series I've ever seen in my life.

There's a third game, End of the Century, supposedly on the way for the PS3. Hopefully, with this one, the series will finally receive the respect and admiration it deserved in this instalment.