Tenchu 2

Compare to the original Tenchu, Tenchu 2 is lacking some areas.

Music: There is no music in Tenchu 2 except from the sound of crickets and owls. This is disappointing because the Japanese music in the original Tenchu set the mood of the game.

Graphics: I felt that the character models got downgraded a bit compared to the original Tenchu. Ayame looks so ugly now. It looks like she needs a nose job. Compared to the original, her outfit has no appeal. All the characters look very blocky composing of rectangles and ovals.

In Tenchu 2, there are larger outdoor environments compared to the original, but this illustrates the weakness of the PSX hardware and the Tenchu 2 engine. With the limitations of the PSX hardware, not a lot of polygons displayed and the outdoor environments look bland. The textures are of poor quality so the trees, houses and ground looks patched together.

The drawing distance isn’t very far; you can only see a few meters ahead. This is a problem in a large environment when you are trying to figure out where are you going. I also find that the enemies can see you before you can see them.

Gameplay: The camera angle is the biggest drawback in the game. In close combat, sometimes the camera would draw in too close to your character making it difficult to see the enemy and attack properly. This can get you easily killed. There are also traps, which the camera angle blocks you from seeing so you end up stepping into the trap.

The grapping hook got toned out from the original. You can no longer grab on anything anymore. It’s only good for certain ledges now. What’s good being a ninja if you can use certain tools?

The cool feature in this game you can swim around but you make a lot of noise doing this.

For these screenshots I have up the resolution to 1024x728 to the frame rate isn’t that good.. Usually I operate at 640x480.

Plugin: Pete's D3D Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
GFX card: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400

Resolution/Color:
- 1024x768 Fullscreen - [32 Bit]

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 1
- VRam size: 32 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limit: off
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 3
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: hardware

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]



BTW, is there a way to take screenshots using just Pete’s graphic plugin?