Rurouni Kenshin: Enjou! Kyoto Rinne is a 3rd person action adventure game for the Playstation 2, based on Nobuhiro Watsuki’s popular manga and anime franchise, Rurouni Kenshin. The story follows the series closely, taking you from the start of the series (with Kenshin’s fight against Jin-E serving as the tutorial) all the way to Makoto Shishio’s defeat.Let’s get this out of the way first: Rurouni Kenshin: Enjou! Kyoto Rinne is quite possibly the best Rurouni Kenshin title to date (even besting the two PSP fighters) when it comes to adapting the series into game format. However, it can also be inaccessible to people who can’t read Japanese, despite being an action title. The reason lies in the fact that the fights are framed by a story mode that requires you to walk around town and talk to people, with some parts of the story requiring you to talk to the right NPC and say the right thing in order to advance. Saitou Hajime’s story mode, for instance, will stump non-Japanese speakers because it requires you to solve a murder mystery.
Thankfully, there are translations and FAQs floating all over the net, or if you just want to unlock the survival and boss rush mode, you can just download/copy a save with all the characters unlocked (since the game is playable on PCSX2, this becomes an easy task.)
When it comes to gameplay, once you get past the story parts, you can start enjoying the meat of the game. As mentioned above, it’s a third person action game that puts you in control of either Himura Kenshin, Saitou Hajime, or Sanosuke Sagara (with Aoshi Shinomori also available as an unlockable character.)
Each of the playable characters stay true to their anime/manga counterparts both in look and fighting style, requiring you to change strategies depending on the character you use. Anybody who’s watched the anime will understand the differences. Controls are responsive and let you bust out lengthy combos and impressive dodges once you learn what each of the buttons does. Think of the game as Devil May Cry 3 SE with Rurouni Kenshin skins. Button mashing works, but only up to a certain point. Bosses and enemies towards the end are brutal and will punish players who don’t know how to block and dodge (some bosses actually have instant-kill attacks regardless of how much health you have.)
There are a number of unlockables in the game, such as the aforementioned leader of Oniwanbanshu, Aoshi Shinomori (you just need to finish Kenshin’s story mode without using Hitokiri/Desperation mode) and several modes such as Survival mode, which pits you against wave after wave of generic henchmen before facing off with a boss character. Additionally, repeating the story mode the second time around will let you play a couple of extra scenes and fights, so there is incentive to keep playing even after finishing the story mode.
As for recommending Rurouni Kenshin: Enjou! Kyoto Rinne, it depends. If you can read Japanese and are a fan of Rurouni Kenshin, then get this one. It’s your best chance of experiencing the series in game form, and the survival/boss rush mode gives you a ton of replayability even if you don’t want to bother with the story mode more than once.
It can be a little bit harder to recommend this game if you can’t read Japanese, because doing something as simple as navigating the menu can be tedious. There’s nary a sign of English in the entire game, and even the menu is oddly sequenced (for instance, Options – which is usually at the end of most menus – is the third option in the menu list.) If you don’t have a Translation/FAQ handy, you could spend even more time blindlessly navigating menu and dialogue choices than you would on the actual fights. So if you belong to this second group, you might want to try it out first before purchasing.
