Overview
Rengoku is a series of two titles, each of which is futuristic dungeon crawler where androids are trapped in a tower and are programmed to fight each other indefinitely. One of the gameplay premises of the series is the fact you are reanimated after meltdown. (i.e. death) Dying simply results you being down to the bottom of the tower, with your stats and inventory intact, and you can even teleport back up to where you were. The only penalty incurred is that any equipment you were currently wearing were lost, but in Rengoku 2 even that penalty is diminished by allowing you to return to where you died and get your equipment back. The exception is if you die during a floor boss, in which case you get to keep your equipment.
A peculiarity of the series is that the two titles differ tremendously in quality, aside from the sequel adding things to the formula.
Plot
The story in each title is standalone rather than one being a continuation of the events of the other. However it can be speculated that the two games take place in the same fictional universe.
Rengoku's story
Androids fight in a combat arena originally intended to serve as entertainment for human spectators. The combat program still runs autonomously, forcing androids to fight each other, and recreating them each time they are defeated so they can fight again. You play as an android that has became self-aware and questions the reason for the his and the arena's existence. He hopes to reach the top of the tower in order to find answers.
Rengoku 2's story
A virtual reality combat program was created in order to create an AI for an ultimate fighting android, using the memories of human soldiers who died. Beatrice, the scientist who runs the program discovers that her fallen lover, Gram, is one of the people whose memories was placed inside the program.
It is later revealed that Gram died while his team was using experimental AI cell combat suits, which led to a team member betraying and killing some of the other members in order to gain control of all the AI cells. This led the remaining members to turn on each other, resulting in a bloodbath. Gram finds himself reanimated as an android, trapped inside a tower where he must fight his fallen comrades all over again, who have themselves taken on monstrous android forms.
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