First of the North Star: Ken's Rage
Before we begin, I made a video about Ken's Rage years ago. Several videos, in fact. But you don't need to watch any of the others, because at least one of them is just me throwing shade at professional journalists for sucking massive donger. The only one that you might want to watch is this:
https://youtu.be/H1AyMb9rAng
Here I go over some advanced techniques for Ken's Rage, including jump cancels, resets, basic frame info (I don't have counters, just a mention of positive and negative frame enders) and some other unimportant stuff (such as musou attacks) that "professional" gamers rating Ken's Rage at the time never bothered to learn. So, there's the info if you care.
That out of the way, let's begin.
Introductions
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is Tecmo Koei's licensed adaptation of the Fist of the North Star, reimagined as a video game. Although made by K-T, it is not a conventional musou game. Without wishing to delve too deeply into the mechanics of the Musou genre, musou games are a "1 vs 1000" light action simulator focused primarily on strategic genocide on a massive, ever-changing battlefield. The Musou genre began with Dynasty Warriors 3, and it still strongly resembles ancient epic stories of a lone general racing from place to place, on horseback, slaughtering every foe in his way. A battleground in which only the bravest and hardest of the REAL MEN, the "army generals" are worthy to face each other in 1vs1 combat. In musou games, the "underling" enemies, or "common soldiers," exist primarily to get in the way, rather than to cause serious damage. It's possible to die to a grunt in a Warriors game, but very unlikely.
Ken's Rage is not like this. There is no massive battlefield in Ken's Rage. Ken's Rage is divided into discrete stages which function as linear levels. In that respect, it is no different from, say, Ninja Gaiden II. You enter zones, enemies spawn, you kill them and proceed forward. There are various level gimmicks, sub bosses and end-of-stage, multi-phase boss fights with changing arenas. Furthermore, a grunt in Ken's Rage absolutely can
murder the fuck out of Kenshiro. Each enemy type has specific behaviors and they can all be deadly to a button-mashing, stationary scrub player. To succeed in Ken's Rage requires knowledge of positioning, physics objects and the limitations of your own moveset (as many attacks put you into negative frames of recovery if blocked or avoided.)
Gameplay
The first thing to understand about Ken's Rage is Kenshiro himself. Kenshiro is a practitioner of Hokuto Shinken, the Fist of the North Star. In this game, there is a debuff this martial style places upon your opponent once certain conditions are met, known as "spiritual shock" iirc. In this state, enemies suffer various debuffs such as being unable to block or taking extra damage. Kenshiro can also block, jump and dodge roll. Jumping works like Devil May Cry jumping, and proffers generous i-frames upon initiation as well as allowing Kenshiro to cancel out of strings at any time by jumping. Blocking is a limited resource which pulls from a recharging shield gauge. It's not an instant win button and you must employ blocking only when no other method will work for avoiding damage. Bosses have some unblockable (but not undodgeable) attacks. Kenshiro can also roll. Rolling is the most advantageous form of damage avoidance. When rolling, you enjoy extreme amounts of i-frames. However, only Rei and Kenshiro can dodge roll. The other characters are not able to do this, meaning they are forced to jump cancel or jump reset if they want to extend their combo strings or evade damage.
For those wondering, Rei is the strongest character in this game, by far. The reason is because he has both the Nanto Shinken "counter" attack as well as a ridiculous dodge roll. Imagine the bloodborne dash, except in a game where enemies can't react half as quickly. That's Rei's evasive move. His air game, being a Nanto practitioner, is also batshit insane. Many of his air musou attacks deal insane damage or AoE, and his air combos are long as hell. Air combos are quite nice in Ken's Rage, assuming you can land them, as I don't believe enemies typically block while airborne.
The Nanto Shinken "counter" attack I mentioned is hard to describe. Sometimes, when attacking an enemy, being blocked or being attacked, a button prompt will appear on screen. If you hit the button, Rei will activate Witch Time and become Super Fucking Unstoppable, gaining mad damage and penetration on his moves. The fact you can just do this shit for free, without spending any meter at all... It's kinda bullshit. But in a good way.
As I said, the game is balanced around Kenshiro. It's too easy if you play as Rei, but certain fights are pretty rough if you're playing as a low-tier like Jagi.
Why this game fucking rules
First off, it faithfully retells the HnK story with decent voice work and visuals. I still cry when Toki die.
Second, the gameplay is rock-solid. Thirdly, there are some extra modes where you can fuck around with the other characters, like Mamiya, Jagi and Souther. The included "musou" mode (which plays like a warriors game) is kinda shit compared to the campaign, but it is fun to mess around with. Fourthly, YOU WAH SHOCK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_Z7KoIQo4
The music includes Dope As Hell remixes of classic HnK music.
Bro this game sucks wtfbbq I keep getting bodied! That cocksucker Shin!
You gotta learn to Git GUD! The combat seems, superficially, like a musou game. You have two-button combos with light and heavy attacks. However, completed combos tend to end on negative frames, leaving you at a disadvantage. So what do? You gotta learn to hit confirm and cancel out if you're fighting a strong opponent and they block or counter. The easiest cancel to learn is a jump cancel, since it doesn't use any resource. Just jump any time during your combo. You could still get caught while in recovery, coming down from your jump, but the recovery on that is small compared to finishing a combo. Another cancel you can do is a musou (super move) cancel. Start a combo and then hit that supa button. You can musou out of ANYTHING in Ken's Rage. Boss comboing you? About to die? Raoh chain-firing hadoukens covering the entire map? Just musou, bro. Musou cancels whatever is happening on screen. So if shit is happening and you don't like it, spend a bar and musou out. It's just like superjoys in Final Fight. Save your musou meter for boss fights. Kenshiro obviously also has the ability to dodge out of combos. Keep in mind that all of these methods for keeping yourself safe can also be used in a reset environment to get a longer combo. If the enemy is stunlocked, you can often start a combo, jump or dodge reset, restart the combo and keep it going. But this only works if you know which hits in your strings jail.
FRAME DATA IS IMPORTANT! If you don't know what moves are true combos vs which the bosses or enemies can block/musou out of (they have musou moves, but theirs aren't as OP as yours,) then trying to extend your combo could get your ass beat. In general, light attacks jail and heavy attacks do not. If you go light, light, light, heavy with your combo, the light hits are usually guaranteed if the first hit connects, while the final heavy is not. So don't throw out heavies unless you
know they will hit.
Additionally, certain moves in your combos will guard break. It differs by character. This is just something you have to learn by playing. Ken's light, heavy uppercut kick is a guard breaker and I believe it also jails.
Some Negatives of the Game
You might be thinking, "holy shit this game sounds awesome!" And it is. It's one of my favorite xbox 360 games, alongside Bayonetta. But it's not perfect. The major problem this game has is QTEs. Yeah, it came out during "that" era of Modern Gaming. When you knock a boss into critical health in the campaign, you are given a context-sensitive prompt to initiate an ATATATATATATATATA punching finisher. Kenshiro will wail on them while you punch in a series of buttons under a time limit. The main problem with this mechanic, as cool as it can be, is the QTEs are not easy. The final one, on Raoh, is hilariously difficult. The QTEs start manageable, but they become obnoxious quickly. It's an unfortunate stain on what could have been a perfect game. There's no workaround for these either. If you fail the QTE, the boss gets motherfuckin' health back. Not all of it, but enough to piss you off.
This is the primary negative point of the game, but there are a few other disappointments. The visuals are rather drab and colorless. The models look great, but environments are gray and concrete-colored, rather than the dusty tan bathed in setting-sun-red we know and love from the tv show. Bit of a shame, but nothing too awful.
Conclusion
So, there's the game. It's a favorite one of mine, and I hope you may try it and enjoy it. The game still shouldn't be expensive or hard to find, as it's regarded as mediocre to this day by the Mainstream Majority. If I were to rank it, I'd still solidly place it in a 9/10, taking off a point only for the god-awful QTEs (which, btw, are only present in the campaign mode iirc.) There are quite a few more characters than I mentioned, but the length of the stories varies by character and Kenshiro and Rei feel the most fleshed-out. Both in gameplay and story.