Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage Review

    When I first started Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage, the game offered me two prompts. “Do you want to enable Easy Mode?” Of course not. “Do you want to enable extreme violence?” Of course I did! In the words of the game’s main protagonist Kenshiro, I was already dead. And then I contracted mononucleosis, so I was quite literally dead, or at least I felt like it for a few weeks. For that I feel I should apologize to Xugo members and readers, because this review comes almost a month later than it should have. The extra time I spent recuperating and recovering meant I had extra time to spend with the sky whale hack donuts game, and as I spent more time with it, I began to better appreciate just how much this game has to offer.Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage is a faithful reimagining of the original Japanese manga Fist of the North Star, an old classic that could easily be considered a cultural icon in Japan, and a long-standing cult hit among Western audiences. Ken’s Rage reboots the franchise with state-of-the-art visuals and current-gen gameplay, while still retaining the same dark, gritty, dog-eat-dog storytelling of the original work. Along with that, it offers many fan-favorite characters as playable, a non-canonical side-story mode, and multiple difficulties that will challenge the toughest warriors.

Because it’s a faithful remake of the classic manga, anyone familiar with the original series should already know the storyline. The only surprises fans of the series should expect are just how many story arcs the game covers: surprisingly little has been cut from the original story as far as important main characters go. For those that aren’t familiar with FotNS already, the game makes a basic effort to brief the player on the details of the story, but this is mostly done through text-based narrative descriptions between missions. These days, gamers more or less expect fully cinematic, movie-quality interludes in narrative-driven games, so the presentation of a long wall of text scrolling up the screen with a few character portraits transposed over it may be underwhelming to gamers that can’t fill in the blanks themselves. 

I personally thought it was satisfactory, but having seen the anime long before this game was even announced, I was able to fill in the blanks. My only real problem with the narrative delivery is that text-based narration can’t compare to actually reading the manga or watching the anime—Ken’s Rage should be considered thoroughly complimentary to the original series rather than a new retelling of an old story. You won’t get the full FotNS experience just from the game.Many gamers have compared Ken’s Rage to Koei’s Warriors series, and not without reason. Ken’s Rage was, after all, more or less openly billed as a Koei Warriors title in Japan, and only slightly less so here in the States. Though some might see this as a detractor, and may simply write Ken’s Rage off as yet another Warriors game, it’s actually contradictory to think Ken’s Rage is a bad game just by this association. The very nature of Fist of the North Star (the original manga) demands that a game based on it almost must be a game like Koei Warriors titles. Kenshiro wanders the wastes fighting hordes of enemies by himself: sounds familiar, but it’s also exactly what the series is. 

On the contrary, it is this familiar style of play that makes Ken’s Rage so wonderfully similar to its parent series. You wander vast expanses and, on occasion, fight hordes of enemies, just like in the manga! How that could possibly be a bad thing is beyond me.Unlike many Warriors titles, gameplay in Ken’s Rage has a surprising amount of depth. I often found myself drawing parallels to Capcom’s God Hand, if only briefly, as I further leveled Kenshiro’s abilities. Normal combo attacks can be chained together and finished with a strong attack, canceled with a jump, a super art or a strong attack, and many strong attacks can be immediately followed up with another or a new normal combo. If you’re a fighting game fan or just enjoy complexity in combat controls, you should happily spend your time on Ken’s Rage attempting to build a mighty infinite combo or loop that devastates regular groundlings better than any basic combo or attack.Gameplay between characters also changes quite thoroughly, so much so that latent abilities and status effects inflicted by your attacks differ between playable characters. 

Playable characters not only all feel and play completely differently, but they are divided into those that use Hokuto Shinken and those that use Nanto Seiken martial arts. The former inflict a state of paralysis on enemies, while the latter can enter a powered-up state with a different moveset after an unobtrusive QTE mid-battle. Boss battles are often little more than glorified battles against groundlings, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t entertaining nor challenging: they require a surprising level of skill, health and special ability conservation, and situational awareness. Not to mention the finishing technique against bosses is an incredible payoff: a lengthy multiple stage QTE sequence accompanied by a flurry of punches and Kenshiro’s satisfying trademark “AAAAATATATATATATATATA!” that finishes with a signature move and the boss’s explosive, violent death.  

     Oh, the violence, did I mention the violence? Gratuitous amounts of violence abound if you choose to turn it on. Enemies explode in one of a handful of preset death animations, and special fodder enemies like “corpulent fighters” (freakishly muscular and/or fat enemies) rarely have more than one animation. Despite the lacking variety, it’s always satisfying to watch enemies that aggravated you not seconds ago explode into a cloud of unidentifiable entrails and gallons of  blood. A cool HUD blood splatter effect dirties the screen if the camera is too close to an exploding enemy. It’s ridiculous and over-the-top and absolutely beautiful.I can’t say enough good things about Ken’s Rage. It’s a great game and fans will be delighted with how much raw gameplay is contained in one title. The amount of sheer playtime you get for your dollar is huge. Multiple playable characters with their own stages in the main story as well as unique side stories, and a Challenge Mode offer countless hours of entertainment. 

This is a game that you can marathon for one entire weekend and then play for 15 minutes every so often and still enjoy just as much as the last time, every time. That said, I’m a fan of the series, so I wonder how much of that enjoyment translates to gamers not familiar with Fist of the North Star. The story mode’s brief narrative leaps from story arc to story arc and may be confusing for anyone not already familiar with the parent series. In that regard, this may not be a game for everybody. Anyone that enjoys mindless violence will love this whether they understand what’s going on or not. Fans of the series will be delighted with how surprisingly accurate the game is, and how fun it can be to assume the role of their favorite characters.Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage (PS3 and 360) earns an 8 out of 10. I completed Kenshiro’s story mode, started on Rei’s, and played as every unlockable player in Dream Mode before writing this review. 

Overall I think I clocked around 34 hours of total playtime, and I’ve still got a ways to before I’m completely done with the game.  I should note that I encountered a glitch on the 360 version that basically made 45 minutes of playtime disappear, but I don’t think it’s something that can be reproduced very easily, so I’m not too worried about other readers encountering it.Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage Review

    When I first started Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage, the game offered me two prompts. “Do you want to enable Easy Mode?” Of course not. “Do you want to enable extreme violence?” Of course I did! In the words of the game’s main protagonist Kenshiro, I was already dead. And then I contracted mononucleosis, so I was quite literally dead, or at least I felt like it for a few weeks. For that I feel I should apologize to Xugo members and readers, because this review comes almost a month later than it should have. The extra time I spent recuperating and recovering meant I had extra time to spend with the game, and as I spent more time with it, I began to better appreciate just how much this game has to offer.Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage is a faithful reimagining of the original Japanese manga Fist of the North Star, an old classic that could easily be considered a cultural icon in Japan, and a long-standing cult hit among Western audiences. Ken’s Rage reboots the franchise with state-of-the-art visuals and current-gen gameplay, while still retaining the same dark, gritty, dog-eat-dog storytelling of the original work. Along with that, it offers many fan-favorite characters as playable, a non-canonical side-story mode, and multiple difficulties that will challenge the toughest warriors.

     Because it’s a faithful remake of the classic manga, anyone familiar with the original series should already know the storyline. The only surprises fans of the series should expect are just how many story arcs the game covers: surprisingly little has been cut from the original story as far as important main characters go. For those that aren’t familiar with FotNS already, the game makes a basic effort to brief the player on the details of the story, but this is mostly done through text-based narrative descriptions between missions. These days, gamers more or less expect fully cinematic, movie-quality interludes in narrative-driven games, so the presentation of a long wall of text scrolling up the screen with a few character portraits transposed over it may be underwhelming to gamers that can’t fill in the blanks themselves. I personally thought it was satisfactory, but having seen the anime long before this game was even announced, I was able to fill in the blanks. My only real problem with the narrative delivery is that text-based narration can’t compare to actually reading the manga or watching the anime—Ken’s Rage should be considered thoroughly complimentary to the original series rather than a new retelling of an old story. 

You won’t get the full FotNS experience just from the game.Many gamers have compared Ken’s Rage to Koei’s Warriors series, and not without reason. Ken’s Rage was, after all, more or less openly billed as a Koei Warriors title in Japan, and only slightly less so here in the States. Though some might see this as a detractor, and may simply write Ken’s Rage off as yet another Warriors game, it’s actually contradictory to think Ken’s Rage is a bad game just by this association. The very nature of Fist of the North Star (the original manga) demands that a game based on it almost must be a game like Koei Warriors titles. Kenshiro wanders the wastes fighting hordes of enemies by himself: sounds familiar, but it’s also exactly what the series is. On the contrary, it is this familiar style of play that makes Ken’s Rage so wonderfully similar to its parent series. You wander vast expanses and, on occasion, fight hordes of enemies, just like in the manga! How that could possibly be a bad thing is beyond me.Unlike many Warriors titles, gameplay in Ken’s Rage has a surprising amount of depth. I often found myself drawing parallels to Capcom’s God Hand, if only briefly, as I further leveled Kenshiro’s abilities. Normal combo attacks can be chained together and finished with a strong attack, canceled with a jump, a super art or a strong attack, and many strong attacks can be immediately followed up with another or a new normal combo. If you’re a fighting game fan or just enjoy complexity in combat controls, you should happily spend your time on Ken’s Rage attempting to build a mighty infinite combo or loop that devastates regular groundlings better than any basic combo or attack.Gameplay between characters also changes quite thoroughly, so much so that latent abilities and status effects inflicted by your attacks differ between playable characters. Playable characters not only all feel and play completely differently, but they are divided into those that use Hokuto Shinken and those that use Nanto Seiken martial arts. The former inflict a state of paralysis on enemies, while the latter can enter a powered-up state with a different moveset after an unobtrusive QTE mid-battle. Boss battles are often little more than glorified battles against groundlings, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t entertaining nor challenging: they require a surprising level of skill, health and special ability conservation, and situational awareness. Not to mention the finishing technique against bosses is an incredible payoff: a lengthy multiple stage QTE sequence accompanied by a flurry of punches and Kenshiro’s satisfying trademark “AAAAATATATATATATATATA!” that finishes with a signature move and the boss’s explosive, violent death.  

     Oh, the violence, did I mention the violence? Gratuitous amounts of violence abound if you choose to turn it on. Enemies explode in one of a handful of preset death animations, and special fodder enemies like “corpulent fighters” (freakishly muscular and/or fat enemies) rarely have more than one animation. Despite the lacking variety, it’s always satisfying to watch enemies that aggravated you not seconds ago explode into a cloud of unidentifiable entrails and gallons of  blood. A cool HUD blood splatter effect dirties the screen if the camera is too close to an exploding enemy. It’s ridiculous and over-the-top and absolutely beautiful.I can’t say enough good things about Ken’s Rage. It’s a great game and fans will be delighted with how much raw gameplay is contained in one title. The amount of sheer playtime you get for your dollar is huge. Multiple playable characters with their own stages in the main story as well as unique side stories, and a Challenge Mode offer countless hours of entertainment. 

This is a game that you can marathon for one entire weekend and then play for 15 minutes every so often and still enjoy just as much as the last time, every time. That said, I’m a fan of the series, so I wonder how much of that enjoyment translates to gamers not familiar with Fist of the North Star. The story mode’s brief narrative leaps from story arc to story arc and may be confusing for anyone not already familiar with the parent series. In that regard, this may not be a game for everybody. Anyone that enjoys mindless violence will love this whether they understand what’s going on or not. Fans of the series will be delighted with how surprisingly accurate the game is, and how fun it can be to assume the role of their favorite characters.Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage (PS3 and 360) earns an 8 out of 10. I completed Kenshiro’s story mode, started on Rei’s, and played as every unlockable player in Dream Mode before writing this review. Overall I think I clocked around 34 hours of total playtime, and I’ve still got a ways to before I’m completely done with the game.  I should note that I encountered a glitch on the 360 version that basically made 45 minutes of playtime disappear, but I don’t think it’s something that can be reproduced very easily, so I’m not too worried about other readers encountering it.