The Mark of Kri is an action-adventure game developed by SCE San Diego Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment exclusively for PlayStation 2. The game was followed by Rise of the Kasai, which was released in April 2005.
Background:
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| I loved the Disney-esque art style for this game. |
The game also featured elements of adaptive music, with techniques developed specifically for the game, and "incredibly tight synchronization [with] on-screen state changes."
The Plot:
The story begins with Rau Utu, a great and noble warrior in a new generation of warrior protectors of the bearers of the Marks of Kri called the Rakus, trained by his mentor, adopted father, and the last of the older generation of the Rakus, Baumusu.
Accompanied during his adventure by a raven, Kuzo, his chronicler and narrator of the story, he was taught stealth and extraordinary skill with his sword. He was also taught to be a hero to help those in need rather than act as a mercenary. Rau was being asked for a favor by the village innkeeper, Rongo, from the north of Tapuroku, who says that bandits are keeping business away and asks Rau to look into it. After Rau takes care of the bandits, news of his prowess as a warrior and his heroics spread far and wide.
This leads to a mysterious man showing up in the tavern, who offers Rau money for his services. Despite the uneasy feeling that Rau has about the man and Baumusu's suspicions regarding the necromancer, he accepts his offer. He then travels to the forest of Heiadoko, where he retrieves a piece of parchment from the tomb of Sambu-usu. This parchment, however, is actually one of the Marks of Kri - human skin. Rau returns home from his job to find that he's been taken advantage of by the mysterious man known simply as the "Dark One".
The man later revealed turns out to be the Ganguun Priest, a member of an evil organization, the Kasai, and is devoted to its efforts to rule the world, as well as subverting Rau's true destiny. Furthermore, Rau then is told by an elderly woman, the fortune teller named Simka, that the money Rau received from him was a counterfeit, a curse marked by the Kasai. He then is told to head north to a place called Vaitaku, to find a tree and eat its fruit, knowing that this special tree is an oracle.
After Rau eats the sacred fruit, the oracle tree informs him both of the Mark of Kri, and his destiny to protect a captured boy. The boy, the oracle says, holds the fifth mark, which the "Dark One" will soon have in his twisted possession. Furthermore, it is revealed that Rau not only has a great destiny, but will be among the gods, as his name will be used and whispered to quiet the children on stormy nights, and songs will be sung and written in his name. Finally, Rau is told that the sixth and final mark is well protected.
He then travels to the heavily guarded temple of Meifiti, to save a boy from being sacrificed. However, when Rau reaches the boy, he is already sacrificed by the Dark One, directly leading him to a trap, designed by the Dark One himself. Upon returning to the Inn, Rau discovers that his village has been attacked and destroyed as part of his devious trap. When he discovered the carnage the Kasai had wrought, Baumusu, tells him of his path in life, and that Rau must find his sister, Tati, who has the final Mark of Kri, had been taken during the attack on the village, before dying as a great noble warrior and as a Rakus.
As Rau's soul and heart demanded vengeance for Baumusu's death and his village's destruction at the hands of the Kasai, he travels to Rahtutusai, and encounters the Dark One. After Rau defeats his horde of Zombies and the Kasai troops, the Dark One asks him to join him on his quest for world domination. Rau declines by throwing an axe at the Dark One's head, killing him, avenging the deaths of Baumusu, the innkeeper, the destruction of his village, and succeeds in rescuing Tati at the end.
However, there was more work to be done between them, according to Kuzo, that Rau and Tati, now vowed to confront an old enemy long forgotten, and save the Three Kingdoms from world domination at the hands of the Kasai. "But all of this is a different story, for another time." Kuzo said before flying away.
The Verdict:
The Mark of Kri is rather interesting creature and personally one of many "white whales" that I have been chasing for years until I acquired a copy of this title and it's sequel, The Rise of Kasai (which I'll cover at a later date), via a flea market find for PlayStation 2 a few summers ago. After getting my PlayStation 4 a few years ago, I pretty much put most of the games from that console generation on hold while I focused primarily on that console. Luck may have it that both titles would go on sale rather cheap on PSN, so I figured why not when I do most of my gaming currently on that platform so it would be easier to tackle.
That being said, my review of this game will be from my experiences on the PS4 digital port of the game, even though I have experienced the first two levels (out of six) on the original PlayStation 2 platform.
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| Stealth takedowns on unaware enemies are a highlight of this game with the sheer brutality of these executions. |
Right off the bat, I have to mention some of the janky performance issues. During executions, stealth kills, and the switch from enemies being unaware to complete aware of your presence, there's ALWAYS this slowdown and/or hiccup in performance that was prevalent in this game all the way to the final moments of the game. I always assumed that it was the game loading resources from disk, but it's odd that even this digital copy does this as well.
I'm not going to knock the visuals at all, especially for something two-going-on-three console generations ago. I did like the Disney inspired visual art style though to the character models and cutscenes. That was the most visually appealing thing to me when I initially sought the game out. It's a constant aspect of the game that remains appealing from start to finish. The art style lends itself to the visceral execution animations as well.
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| Once the "X" button prompt stopped flashing and solidified, you would be able to land a headshot to instantly kill an unaware enemy. |
Throughout the game, you have to master 4 different weapons - your basic sword, a bow, a spear, and finally a battle axe. You don't acquire the powerful axe until the final level of the game, so you will have to familiarize yourself with the sword and bow for the bulk of the game. The bow was a necessity against archers scattered throughout the levels from afar that couldn't be reached easily with your sword, so mastery of your bow would allow you to maintain undetected in stealth to eliminate tougher enemies with stealth takedowns. This game had a lot of creative ideas for that too, especially for a game during this console generation. You could perform stealth takedowns on a singular or multiple enemies at once (up to two) from traditional approaches from behind, above off ledges, or around corners.
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| You can perform modified combos on a singular enemy by combining inputs from unused face buttons into your combo strings. |
The melee combat in The Mark of Kri was an unique creature all on its own and it's the most distinct gameplay trait that I'm sure that most people will remember about this game. The right analog stick can circle around your character with an arrow that will highlight each nearby threat with a button prompt that will allow you to attack them. Range and proximity took priority over how you were able to attack these targets as you will lunge towards far away foes and keep your strikes more focused on nearby opponents. This was the hardest thing to wrap my head around, especially coming from traditional action games with simple lock-on button. Once this unconventional approach to melee combat clicked, I honestly couldn't see this game working any other way. The melee combat gets even deeper once you unlock the spear and finally the axe in the later levels, which both weapons allow you to tag multiple enemies to a single button press. I personally found the axe to be the best of the available melee weapons at your disposal over anything else. Once you acquire that weapon at the start of the final level in the game, it's hard to put that weapon down in favor of your other weapons - at least until you're forced to use other weapons once those "imps" in the final level rob you of your weapons. I swear those are easily the most annoying enemies in the game to deal with and will be the source of your frustrations in the final level until you learn where they are going to approach from.
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| The "imps" that only appear in the game's final level that can steal all of your melee weapons from you if they swarm Rau at once. The only way to retrieve your weapons is to kill them and take them back. |
I have seen people compare the melee combat in this game to the Batman: Arkham themed series of video games, but I wouldn't necessarily regard it as the same. This isn't button-masher friendly and there's moments where you really have no idea whether or not your attacks are doing enough damage. Plus this game has no "redirect" button to catch your breath and "reset" the enemy mobs in a sense, leading to a LOT of moments, especially towards the end of this game where you will game over EASILY from enemies swarming you to death without any window for retaliation. On the flip side, this game has a "counter" of sorts. You have to be completely unarmed without any weapons equipped and to tap the "block" (L1 on PS2 and PS4 controller) button at the exact moment an enemy attempts to strike you. The titular character will then disarm the enemy and use their own weapon to kill them instantly. This is a VERY overpowered ability, especially late into the game, despite the fact that the in-game tutorial/hints will mention that the technique will get harder to execute the more times you do it in succession, but I never noticed any difference in execution when I did it at least a dozen times in one enemy encounter. I'm just saying that your experience may vary. I should mention that the game has a major issue with hit detection too. Enemies can damage you during executions/finishers on other enemies (as well as your slow as hell animation to put away your weapon to prepare for a disarm), but there's instances where you can just run past an entire mob and just go to the next room without even bothering to kill a single one of them. Even that isn't foolproof as some enemies can chase behind you with ease, sweep out your legs from underneath you to allow the surrounding enemies to pummel you with attacks before you can even stand up again.
It's moments like those that made me laugh in terms of game design. I got through a lot of "troublesome" areas of the game (namely the end of Level 3: Heiadoko) by merely saying "Fuck this, I'm out..." and just running to the next checkpoint/area with save scroll/health refill. I should mention that the game doesn't auto-save until the start and ending of levels. If there is a cutscene mid-level, the game will provide a checkpoint after that plays out, otherwise the game expects you to acquire save scrolls (up to six) across the levels to save at your own leisure. Otherwise, you will be doing a LOT of backtracking if you die on these levels.
There are only six levels in the entire game. You will think that's short, but after the first level, each stage is pretty long, depending on how you approach them. The last two to three levels took me anywhere from two to five hours to complete on their own in a setting. The game has a pattern that goes like this when you start the game. You start off at the inn in the village that you call your home. You speak to all of the NPCs in the inn, usually ending with training with Rau's master, Baumusu, who teaches you the basics of how to play the game or whatever new weapon/technique the game wants you to master to its fullest in the upcoming mission. These tutorials provide a training space of sorts to hone those techniques before being tasked with the next mission to undertake in the upcoming level. Each level has "Baumusu Challenges" to complete for a reward (the ability to use all of your acquired weapons in any level of your choosing in replays) while there are hidden treasures to find along with other optional power-ups that will augment your maximum health for the duration of that level. Once you acquire the bow, you are going to have to keep a steady supply of arrows too, but as long as you're landing head shots, then you shouldn't have any issues with running out of arrows. After completing the corresponding stage, you return to the inn and start this cycle all over again. By the end of the third stage, this cycle got pretty redundant for me. Fortunately, things change up before the story comes to an end, but I won't spoil the rhyme nor reasoning behind that. You traverse each level cautiously, especially in the later levels, using Rau's raven, Kuzo, to scout the area ahead. Rau can see through his pet's eyes and see upcoming threats and plan accordingly how to approach them best. Kuzo can also be used to trigger hidden glyphs and switches in the environment and to receive far away items close to his perches. Your survival in the later levels depends on using Kuzo to scope out your surroundings before heading into a new area blindly. Otherwise, you risk alerting horn blowers who will alert all surrounding enemies to your presence while summoning more foes to deal with for your trouble. When this happens, you can pretty much guarantee a game over, so I found myself not risking getting caught at all by horn blowers.
It's moments like those that made me laugh in terms of game design. I got through a lot of "troublesome" areas of the game (namely the end of Level 3: Heiadoko) by merely saying "Fuck this, I'm out..." and just running to the next checkpoint/area with save scroll/health refill. I should mention that the game doesn't auto-save until the start and ending of levels. If there is a cutscene mid-level, the game will provide a checkpoint after that plays out, otherwise the game expects you to acquire save scrolls (up to six) across the levels to save at your own leisure. Otherwise, you will be doing a LOT of backtracking if you die on these levels.
There are only six levels in the entire game. You will think that's short, but after the first level, each stage is pretty long, depending on how you approach them. The last two to three levels took me anywhere from two to five hours to complete on their own in a setting. The game has a pattern that goes like this when you start the game. You start off at the inn in the village that you call your home. You speak to all of the NPCs in the inn, usually ending with training with Rau's master, Baumusu, who teaches you the basics of how to play the game or whatever new weapon/technique the game wants you to master to its fullest in the upcoming mission. These tutorials provide a training space of sorts to hone those techniques before being tasked with the next mission to undertake in the upcoming level. Each level has "Baumusu Challenges" to complete for a reward (the ability to use all of your acquired weapons in any level of your choosing in replays) while there are hidden treasures to find along with other optional power-ups that will augment your maximum health for the duration of that level. Once you acquire the bow, you are going to have to keep a steady supply of arrows too, but as long as you're landing head shots, then you shouldn't have any issues with running out of arrows. After completing the corresponding stage, you return to the inn and start this cycle all over again. By the end of the third stage, this cycle got pretty redundant for me. Fortunately, things change up before the story comes to an end, but I won't spoil the rhyme nor reasoning behind that. You traverse each level cautiously, especially in the later levels, using Rau's raven, Kuzo, to scout the area ahead. Rau can see through his pet's eyes and see upcoming threats and plan accordingly how to approach them best. Kuzo can also be used to trigger hidden glyphs and switches in the environment and to receive far away items close to his perches. Your survival in the later levels depends on using Kuzo to scope out your surroundings before heading into a new area blindly. Otherwise, you risk alerting horn blowers who will alert all surrounding enemies to your presence while summoning more foes to deal with for your trouble. When this happens, you can pretty much guarantee a game over, so I found myself not risking getting caught at all by horn blowers.
Play It or Don't Bother?
The Mark of Kri is definitely a creature unlike anything else at it's time when it was released for the PlayStation 2. Even though I have minor issues with the occasional slowdowns during gameplay and some iffy hit detection, my biggest gripe with the game personally is my own stubbornness of waiting so long to play it. This is a game that has a lot of interesting ideas, even years after the fact that I could easily see making a splash if the developers were given the opportunity at a current generation remaster or sequel. Speaking of sequels, I'll cover The Mark of Kri's PlayStation 2 sequel, Rise of the Kasai, at a later date.
If you are unable to hunt down a copy of this game for PlayStation 2, the digital copy for PlayStation 4 tends to be on sale a lot for less than $10. I played the majority of the game for this review using that version of this game and didn't run into any gamebreaking issues.
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