Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage Review

You know that you are playing a bad game when the characters don’t attack, the mission objectives never change, and the graphics look like they are about five years outdated. Regrettably, that is a pretty apt description of Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage. Based on an anime, this Dynasty Warriors clone is a subpar beat-em-up that can entertain for short bursts, but manages to drag on monotonously after a while of playing.

You start off playing as Kenshiro, a buff character based off of the anime series. They do an extremely poor job of explaining things in the game, so I am not exactly sure what is going on, but from what I’ve gathered there is a nuclear apocalypse where the world is over-run by powerful men (in the physical way, not political). Essentially they are starving populations in order to feed themselves in a world that is rife with famine.

The main character does not seem all that concerned with what is going on in the world around him, although he acts the hero part on occasion throughout the game, saving civilians and whatnot. His ultimate goal is to find his wife. Along the way, you run into multiple bosses and characters, some of which you can play as separately. These other characters help to advance each of their own side-stories, but as I said before, nothing about this is all that intriguing and half the time you don’t know what is going on anyway.

Gameplay in Fist of the North Star consists of punching, punching and more punching. You get the occasional explosive barrel that you can throw (or drop on yourself if you aren’t careful) and hilariously misplaced missiles lying on the ground that your character can launch without effort; most of the action is still just straight-up brawling. The game would be slightly more interesting if they let you pick up the enemy weapons, but of course they don’t. Instead, they just magically disappear.

The boss fights feel cheap. One of the guys, I believe his name was Shen, came at you and could fly around corners in physic-defying ways. This attack was unavoidable if you were in its path. Half the time they do not even attempt to attack you, but when they do, the problem is that you cannot dodge it. One of the bosses, Mimaya, has projectile attacks that literally go through walls.

If you like to play games that make you want to either fall asleep or pull your hair out in frustration, then Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage is the right game for you. Most of the action will lull you to a false sense of infallibility, until you reach the boss fights. Then you go from being nearly invincible to fighting someone that feels nearly impossible to beat. This wild swing in difficulty would be forgivable if the game were actually fun. It is anything but. Save your time and money on something else.