Game:

Kaze Kiri (1994)

Duration: 1:04:27

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4

It's a bit baffling how few videos of this are around where people use actual strategies against the bosses, so I thought showing some more cosistent ones during a playthrough might be interesting.

Timestamps for the bosses:
04:31 - Boss 1 (Yoshitsuna)
10:04 - Boss 2 (Hiei)
14:51 - Boss 3 (Iori)
20:11 - Boss 4 (Hiei on kite)
22:36 - Boss 5 (Hayate)
27:11 - Boss 6 (Houka armed with Naginata)
31:24 - Boss 7 (Houka armed with Sais)
35:55 - Boss 8 (nameless machine golem)*
41:52 - Boss 9 (Shiren)
46:11 - Boss 10 (Genbu)
51:05 - Boss 11 (Genei)
54:27 - Boss 12 (Kasumi & Sumire)
57:01 - Boss 13 (Takanobu)
58:54 - Boss 14 (final battle with Hiei)

* (I actually messed that fight up. If done correctly, you can just pin him down in the corner and mash the slash button without him ever doing any of his spike or fireball attacks. Dunno what went wrong there)

Though there are a lot more enemies around on Hard with them also being more aggressive, clearing the game on this difficulty is actually not a big deal. This is mainly due to the fact, that you can still abuse two quirks of the game. One being the (very quickly) regenerating health, the other being the fact, that you can easily de-spawn enemies during stages. So if you're low on health, you basically just have to run away for a while until you're safe - which is what I did during the rooftop stage with all those archers. The latter probably being the most annoying and dangerous enemies besides the sliding purple Ninjas. Bosses stay mostly the same regardless of difficulty I believe.

I think to remember the game to have somewhat of a mixed reputation, partly due to the fact that it is somewhat repetitive. Despite this being a valid claim, I myself still like it very much and especially on the PC-Engine, where you - though there are a lot of great Shoot'em ups on the system - won't find that many well crafted sidescroll Action Games, Kaze Kiri imo stands out. Audiovisually it's a remarkable game and also very impressive from a technical point of view, with lots of line-scrolling effects and it throwing up to eight (or even more?) enemies simultaneously at you at times. Makes you wonder what the deal was with the PCE-version of Double Dragon II…
It's of course not only the presentation which is good about the game. It also sports a very unique and fun gameplay, reminding me of hybrid belt-scrollers like for example Ninja Warriors Again. But with your Ninjas being much more mobile here, Kaze Kiri leans more towards speedy action instead.
There's some neat mechanics like the i-frame somersaults and the fact, that you don't have to mash the button for a 2- or 3-hit slash (instead you just hold the button down for it). There's also an air throw I always forget about and need to play around with a bit more in the future to see, if it's viable for certain situations.
The input recognition can be a bit finicky, when for example the slide just won't come out for no reason or when the game eats your slash inputs, probably because of the context-sensitive nature of it. Also enemies can sometimes just ignore hit-stun and the barrage of arrows or shurikens can be a bit annoying at times. But other than that, it plays really great. It's just a bit sad that it overall gets somewhat trivialized due to the aforementioned regenerating health and the de-spawning. Bosses are also very prone to crossed up sliding attacks (which I tried to refrain from using too much in this video for it getting very boring quickly and also making boss fights take ages) and theoretically, after having cleared a stage of enemies, you just can stand around and wait for your health to fully recover before entering the boss area, making it seem that an incentive to force the player to move forward was somehow forgotten.
It seems like a missed opportunity, that the devs apparently weren't able to come up with a better way of balancing the game other than this kind of health mechanic. The bosses make up for this though, since they're well designed and fun to fight for the most part.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the difference is between Suzu and Kaze: there is none gameplay-wise - as far as I know at least. It's just cosmetics I believe.

Note: this was recorded in one sitting with no editing, so the original loading-times are all present. Just in case you're wondering why the transitions take so damn long. Also you might notice that I sometimes start the next screen with slightly less health than before the transition. I have absolutely no clue why this happens and first thought this was because of me using the vanishing skill (which costs life). Apparently it has nothing to do with it though, since it also can happen when not using it. Well, whatever I guess. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

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