Based on an incredibly long-running perod drama, Hissatsu! sees you taking control of a group of four assassins (or rather, picking two of them out of the group) and traversing platform stages that have their targets at the end. Each of the four fights with a different weapon: sword, fists, poisoned acupuncture needles, and a specially-treated shamisen string. Interestingly, I found that the last two, despite having the least conventional weapons, were also the easiest to use. The needles guy throws them for his special attack, and it uses so little of his special meter that he's basically a long range one hit kill character most of the time, and the string guy's normal atack is weaker than all the others, but it's also slightly longer range. And since a lot of the enemies are "activated" by you coming close to them, range is pretty important.
The game istelf seems a little anachronistic: other than the CD audio, the large colour pallete, and the big pieces of pixel art used for cutscenes, there's not really anything on display here that couldn't have been done on the Mega Drive, and even those three things could have been done when you bring the Mega CD into the picture. I remember this being said as a criticism for various Saturn and Playstation games in some of the lower quality magazines of the nineties, but it was always in reference to games that would have been impossible on the Mega Drive, like Guardian Heroes or Street Fighter ALpha 3. But Hissatsu! really does look and feel like a game that's a few years older than it is. I'm not saying this as a negative, though, that's just how it is. It even uses the same control layout as a lot of first party Mega Drive games: A for special attacks, B for normal attacks, and C for jump!
It's a pretty traditional 2D platformer all round, you go from left to right killing enemies, avoiding traps, and so on, until you get to the boss, then you kill them. An interesting little stylistic twist is that because the player characters are assassins, the people they're out to kill might be politically powerful, but that doesn't mean that they're formidable combatants. As a result, the first stage ends with you killing a defenceless old rich guy with no problems at all, and subsquent stages end with a fight against each target's personal bodyguard, before you do the final deed yourself to end the stage.
At the most basic level, it's a fun game that also looks and sounds pretty nice, but it's also got a lot of flaws. There's little annoying things like how it really feels like you should be able to drop down to lower levels from thin platforms, like in Revenge of Shinobi, but you can't. That's only a little one, but it's annoying every time I forget and try to do it. And there's worse things, like how the game quickly ramps up the difficulty, and does so in ways that feel unfair.
For example, there are enemies that split into three enemies of equal power if you don't kill them before they get close to you, and even worse, in a Rick Dangerous-style display of hatefulness, a few stages in, certain kinds of enemy gain the ability to just suddenly appear right next to you out of nowhere. So you either meticulously memorise the exact pixels that summon them when you step past them, or you spend tedious extra time slowly shuffling along step-by-step so that you don't accidently just run into an attack out of nowhere. There's even an element of randomness to contend with, as there's a chance that enemies will drop a caltrop when you kill them. Most of the time, this is fine: just pay attention and jump over them when they appear. But sometimes it happens in a tight corridor with no room overhead, and you have no choice but to walk into the caltrop and take damage.
Despite its flaws, Hissatsu! isn't a bad game, and I think a patient player who can get into the right mood to appreciate the game's atmosphere will have a pretty good time with it. The only problem is that they'd have to be very patient, a lot more patient than I am, unfortunately.
