Game Over: Kemono Heroes

Kemono Heroes is an arcade-style hack ‘n slash game full of fast-paced ninja action. With four worlds consisting of three stages, Kemono Heroes isn’t a super long game, and that’s even with the surprise of having to replay all the stages again to get to the ending. Still, it sure is satisfying to defeat the final boss with your martial arts skills to obtain the ending. If you are planning on checking this game out, turn back now if you want to avoid spoilers.

There isn’t an obvious story here; instead, we see animations that show an evil moon turning the residents living in the forest into stone. It is up to four animal assassins who fight their way up to the top of Mt. Fuji to break the spell and save everyone. You select which animal ninja you want to play as: a fox named Fudemaru, Miyuki the cat, the flying squirrel named Hanako, and finally, a monkey named Yu. There are three difficulties to select from: Easy, Normal, and Hard. With that decided, it's time for some martial arts action!

Your fuzzy shinobi, you will travel through four different worlds consisting of three stages to get to the top of the mountain. The one level you challenge shows you the power of this evil moon, it plays like a round of red light green light, the children’s game. If the moon's eye spots your character, they will be turned into stone for a few seconds, causing damage to your ninja. To avoid being seen, you will need to hide behind any scenery you find, like a tree trunk or bush, before the moon turns around to look. All while battling the smaller enemies you encounter with your melee and secondary ranged weapons. 

As you progress through the levels, the difficulty ramps up a bit, especially when you are swarmed by multiple enemies all at the same time. Luckily, all the ninjas have a ninpo attack available, which, when used, will annihilate all the foes currently on the screen. You need to use these wisely, as you only have a few large attacks to use before you deplete your stash. As you defeat enemies, they will drop coins and items, so you can collect more ninpo orbs for your inventory.

 

After defeating the strong guardians of each of the three worlds, I was ready to take on the final boss at the end of the fourth. The battle was very challenging, and after finally lowering their health bar to zero, I was successful; the final boss was defeated. Or so I thought… There was a bright flash of light and the screen changed to a place I had previously visited, the first stage of the game. But this time around, the colours were different: my flying squirrel changed from grey to red. The stage music was messed up and creepy sounding and instead of the ghosts and spirits floating around and not being able to interact with them, I was now able to attack them.

I had finally figured it out: I must have died in that battle, and now I am in a ghost world; that’s why everything was messed up. It was interesting to play through the same stages I had previously visited, some were desolate and felt abandoned, especially when I got to the area where I was hiding from the moon to avoid being turned to stone. There was no one there; I was alone. However, others were teeming with ghosts and angry spirits that wanted to attack my fluffy ninja, so it was challenging. 

Once I finally defeated the final boss and got to see the real ending of the game I checked out the achievements page to see how many I unlocked with that playthrough. Out of the 46, I had only got 22, so slightly less than half. Some of the ones that I had missed were incredibly easy to get, like using your first continue, and since I had died only a couple times, I never needed to use one. A few are character-specific achievements, so since I beat the game with Hanako, I will need to play through with the other shinobi to earn those.

If you are looking for a hack ‘n slash title with tons of martial arts action and entertaining characters, Kemono Heroes may be a title for you, especially when you don’t have a lot of free time. The game lets you play with up to four people, but there is only one save slot, so once you start a file, you will need to continue with those same people, or else you will need to start over again.