Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Review (no fat)

Game Description

Set in the third person perspective, you maneuver A.D.A.M through the dark recesses of the tower, gathering experience and weapons as you progress. Throughout Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory, the dark atmospheric ambience, and cast, feature some breathtaking artwork by the renowned Japanese artist - Jun Seumi -- whose fantasy artwork rank among the best in the world.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Gameplay

The game's objective is simple and straightforward but it suffers from serious implementation woes and repetition.

There's A.D.A.M, the battle android equipped with a range of weapons, that include ones that are attached to his body. Level after level A.D.A.M, the android, encounters other killing machines and has to engage in combat with them. Once an enemy has been slain, it's weapons can be used or attached to A.D.A.M's body. Occasionally, A.D.A.M encounters a boss creature, here he pauses for a moment to deliver a short spiritual message and then unleashes his fury on the enemy.

The game does not have any depth that adventure games normally have. There are only a handful of things that are there to be done, gathering weapons and killing other androids (see, not even a handful…). Even the combat scenes suffer as they are rather weak and in the likely event that your opponent slays you, you have to start all over again with the basic weaponry that you began with.

As if that wasn’t enough…

The graphics mar progress at times with the blotchy backdrops making it hard to remember places. The androids are dark and ugly and have clunky movements. The worst part of the game is that levels look like they came out of the recycle bin and are unimaginative and non intuitive. Although A.D.A.M's arsenal can be supplemented with new weapons, there's serious lack of variety.

The game is also fairly easy to get through and offers no replay value. Rengoku had a lot of potential but suffers terribly from poor implementation.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Graphics & Sound

Barring the artwork, the rest of the game is quirky and devoid of any memorable graphical elements. The randomly generated levels are uninspiring and character behavior and design is not up to the mark. The saving grace here is the background score which does have it's moments and helps supplement the dark atmospheric scenario of the game.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Summary

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory is a game that fails in every department due to shoddy work by the developers. The game does not have enough content or hours of gameplay to elevate it nor does it have a rich plot that most adventure games boast. The only element that stands off is the pointless carnage and that too suffers from repetitiveness and unimaginative sequences. The game comes nowhere near tapping the potential of the PSP.

It is an uninspiring title, one you’d do well to steer clear of.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory Cost

The game retails for $29.99 at the time of writing this review.