Kenseiden tells the story of Hayato, a brave samurai that's locked in combat with an army of demons. These demons are under the control of seven master warlocks, monsters that have seized five ancient scrolls and a powerful sword. Hayato must cross the sixteen provinces of ancient Japan, slashing through minion after minion, such as skeletons and weird pillbugs, en route to these difficult boss battles. After defeating one of the bosses, Hayato picks up one of the stolen scrolls. These scrolls teach him a new attack move, such as Kara Take Wari (attack straight up) or Ran Sha To (lets you run while swinging your sword in a wheel).
I can easily remember being wowed by those giant bosses -- they were huge, especially the Benkei Warlock. The game was also exceedingly dark. Unlike the day-glo romps such as Wonder Boy or Fantasy Zone, Kenseiden was pretty grim. The burning pagodas, the creepy runs through the crumbling castle, and the walk through the dark caverns were all somewhat icky. But that's a good icky, though. The stuff Kenseiden is building upon, the myths and legends of old Japan, aren't exactly uplifting fare. The manual sadly gave the player little explanation of Kenseiden's inspiration, which is too bad, because I was one of those kids that if inspired by a videogame, would research everything about it.
Kenseiden was a pretty tough game. You had a pretty limited life bar, but there were training rooms that -- if survivied -- you could up your health. There were also no save points. If you wanted to continue, you had to seek out hidden diaries that allowed you to keep going. These diaries are not plentiful, but the number of numbers and the severity of each boss' attack sure are. Even worse, if you do die and have to continue via a diary, you lose all those previously learned moves. That's just mean.
So, not only were you ground down by lop-sided difficulty, but the game isn't exactly a thriller either. This is primarily a run-right-and-kill game. Save for the learned moves and the large bosses, there aren't a lot of standout mechanics. Enemy patterns were sometimes sloppy. The precision jumping was occasionally cruel. This seemed designed as some sort of answer to the NES side-scrollers like Castlevania, but it just doesn't have the same level of bite. Where are the projectile weapons? The cool power-ups?
Oh, and on a small side note: I'd like to apologize to Kyle Bolton for something. Remember when you were doing really well at this game and I told you I knew a secret route? I believe the conversation went something like this:
"Kyle, jump off the edge of that roof... into the River of Death."
Yeah, that was mean of me.
