Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage Review

Full Disclosure: I have had no experience with the original manga before playing this game. I played it with a fresh pair of eyes and a lighthearted approach. I cannot say I ended the game in the same way.


Click the link to see the full audio and text review. 


 

Story: Fist of the North Star does not have a good story, that's all there is to it. Whether it's poor narration, repetitive dialogue, unintriguing cutscenes or repeated events, nothing about this game's story is compelling. Each level begins with a narrator explaining the situation while the text lazily drifts across your screen, leaving you bored and unintersted. You are then treated to the exact same introduction of the main character who spouts some bad one-liner, every single time. The manga may clear some things up, but having not read them, events seem disjointed or largely unimaginable. Playing the game left me wondering time and again just who the main villain is, seeing as the game has a new antagonist for almost every chapter. Other examples would be characters seemingly have the ability to rise from the dead with no explanation or afterthought, riddling the already addled story with incongruencies.
 

Gameplay: Ken's Rage feels like a sluggish God of War without ever using any weapons. Light and strong attacks are chained together to fight countless enemies all the while filling up meters which allow you to perform special signature moves. The game fails at delivering tight, fluid gameplay and feels slow and clunky. Many times I felt as though the character was working against me, turning around slowly, punching and kicking air while an enemy is standing two feet from him. The signature moves do, however, offer up some strategy pertaining to when and whether or not to use them, possibly saving them for stronger enemies later. The game does have a level up system, allowing you to customize your character's abilities and attributes, and this works fine, though being able to stop a mission midway to level up and restart the mission again seems to dampen this experience. Boss battles are largely the same, once you've figured out a pattern for one, you've figured out a pattern for all of them.
 

Graphics: The game's visuals are bland at best. While the main character models look nice, everything else is stagnant. The levels often repeat textures, and in some cases, entire levels are repeated. Buildings, fences, and other structures seem half done, all of which are repeated ad nauseam, often popping up mere feet from you. The only part of the game that offers any visuals that are pleasing to the eye is the opening cutscene.
 

Sound: The voice acting in Ken's Rage is bad. Whether through the fault of the game's poor writing, or through the actors lack of enthusiasm upon delivery, the voices in the game seem forced and doesn't improve the overall experience. In some cases it seems to simply be poor translations from Japanese to English, yet other times points of dialogue seem out of place no matter what. There are many points in the game where the same sentences are repeated and this happens fairly soon in the game. Punches and kicks, although augmented by some super force only anime can explain, sound realistic but doesn't really add anything to the game. The music consists mostly of the same generic rock song looped over and over. Nothing about the game's audio design stands out in a positive way.

Replayability: To be fair, there is a lot of game to be played here. Multiple characters each with their own point of view of the main storyline. They all play the same, however, the only differences being different signature moves and variation in animation. Leveling up each character to their full potential can take some time, requiring you to replay levels to unlock new moves, special powers, and abilities. Challenge mode allows you to fight strings of battles judging your skill as a player. Dream mode allows you to to play co-op but this is largely unenjoyable as it there are no real cooperative elements in the game. Many hours can be spent playing with these things, but none of them have any appeal to make you do so.

Pros: 

• Deep leveling system
• Opening cinematic has nice visuals
• Many hours of gameplay

Cons: 

• Poor Story
• Bad writing, repetitive dialogue
• Twitchy camera controls
• Sluggish gameplay
• Repetitive cutscenes
• Bad platforming segments

Editor: Raymond Segal

3/10 Poor

Value: ($10)