With the recent generation of handheld consoles off to a blasting start, people began to realize the potential that has been brought to the handheld industry. Fans started to roar for a portable Tenchu that was worthy of the original on the Playstation, and From Software has answered those calls with Tenchu: Shinobi Taizen. With a game like this, you have to immediately compare it to it’s console counter-part. Surely the developers could have done a great job porting correct? Partially yes, and partially no. Many issues arise when developing for the PSP, mainly camera issues and the amount of content.

The game takes place immediately after Tenchu: Fatal Shadows and picks up where the game left off. Instead of having the missions be played out in their entirety, the missions are now chopped up into small pieces for a more pliable handheld experience. From my play through I found that these chopped up pieces didn’t present much a problem and were perfect for on the go, or at home. Another thing worth mentioning is that load-times although unprevalent during gameplay, are frequent between levels and setting up your equipment. Just something to keep in mind if you are an impatient person.

Issues still arise though, especially since you would have high expectations for a game like this. The game graphically is very similar to the PS2 versions. I was really impressed, especially with how detailed the character models are. But with the positives, there comes negative. In order to be a proper ninja, you have to have a very good line of sight correct? Shinobi Taisen has issues with the line of view as you can only see a few steps in front of yourself. It presents a huge problem as you will actually encounter a few times where the enemies seems to spontaneously appear in front of you. I guess it’s an unintentional feature to help you take your time. For fans expecting some more stealth in the game; although the game is stealth based there is now a lot more action-based fighting in the game. But the choice is still there on how you like to go about doing your business; I myself prefer the stealth method, as I hate the music that goes off when an urgency occurs.

The camera in the game had to take a beating as well. Without a free-form camera it is really difficult to tell where the enemies are. Although the developers took this in mind when designing levels and placing the enemies, it is still rather difficult. You can run into a room but have trouble seeing where the enemy is, which in turns leads to more troubling issues. To try and solve this the R button is used to center behind the character. In theory it would be sufficient but with my experience in the game it hasn’t worked well enough and becomes obsolete during fights.