Nutty Fun
I came across Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes looking for bargains on Cheapass Gamer. It had just dropped to 20 bucks on Amazon, so I looked it up on Metacritic and found the same abysmal scores every Dynasty Warrior game gets. I've never played one of those, but I'm interested in this period of Japanese history so I figured if I was ever going to start on those kind of games this would be a good one.And anyway, $20 is the price where I'll try just about any video game so I ordered it.
The Sengoku Basara series is set in the warring-states period of feudal Japan. This edition is primarily having to do with the events leading up to the battle of Sekigahara, after which Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate. If you're familiar with that period and the people involved, you'll see a lot of familiar names with very strange faces. The various daimyo have been turned into super-powered anime characters. Ieyasu, for example, is protrayed as a noble-minded boxer with one arm covered in chain mail and magical golden bracers. Sorin Otomo, the first major Japanese convert to Christianity, is portrayed as the blonde-haired effeminate boy leader of the cult of Xavism. It's bug-nutty in just the right ways.
Gameplay centers around controlling one of the daimyo through a series of battles leading up to Sekigahara. There are hordes of enemy soldiers to plow through, objectives to secure, camps to attack and defend and a variety of bosses. After each battle, the character gains experience and items to unlock new abilities and upgraded weapons. There are branching paths for each character, and the story is laid out such that you won't get the whole picture after playing through with one or two different characters. There's a lot going on, and part of what makes the game compelling is following all these threads.
The combat itself? To be honest, it is pretty mashy alot of the time, but every character gets a unique assortment of normal and special moves, and there is a combo system of sorts. And even with the lack of sophistication, there is something viscerally satisfying about swinging around a giant ball-and-chain, taking out 50 dudes at once. Still, if intricate, difficult combat is what you're looking for, this isn't the game you want. Go play Ninja Gaiden again.
I won't say every character is a blast to play, but the large majority reward a little patience if can you stick with them long enough to learn how they work. You have everything from plodding behemoths to speedy ninjas to the truly bizarre. Leper dressed like a moth who floats around on a palanquin fighting with prayer beads? Check. 10-foot-tall robot samurai with a rocket pack who fights with a giant drill? Sure. There's something here for everybody.
All in all, I had a great time and it kept my attention for a good 30 hours at least. I certainly feel like I got my money's worth and then some. Can I recommend it? Well, if you're looking to use six swords at once on a geriatric member of the Hojo clan while an enka ballad plays in the background, this is pretty much the only game in town. And it costs about as much as a month of Gamefly.
