Sengoku Basara: "the" Samurai Warriors

After such a loooong year, I finally finished my thesis and just 2 steps closer of finishing my honours year. Now that I got some free time, I decided to try a few games that I've planned to buy since quite some times, and that include Front Mission Evolved [PS3], Vanquish [PS3] and for this impression entry, Sengoku basara: Samurai Heroes [PS3].

Title: Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes
Developers: Capcom
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: action-adventure hack-and-slash
Release date: July 2010 (JP); October 2010 (ENG)

Samurai Warriors fan, and especially Sengoku Basara fans wouldn't need introduction to Sengoku Basara series. First appeared some few years ago in Playstation 2 as Devil King [English version], sequels and spinoff were made, and finally it's turn for the third installment to appear, for PS3. As usual, the game features the warlords in Sengoku Period fighting for power, with Yukimura Sanada and Date Masamune become the focal point for Sengoku Basara. I personally haven't completely finished playing the old Sengoku Basara 1 [and didn't touch the sequel Sengoku Basara 2]. Due to subbing issues, I also temporarily stopped watching the anime adaptation halfway through, so there are quite a gap of information missing from my book. Putting the story aside, my impression toward the game so far:

Pros:

• Neat graphics, [awesome] special effects in battles were improved to fit PS3's capabilities. That being said, I feel Capcom could do better to made the graphic even better.

• Awesome gameplay. The game pretty much retains the basic Sengoku Musou's battle concept, but with some additional features like Hero Gauge combo'd with Basara attacks. The combos and special attacks seems to be smoothly executed. Having allies in a mission is a great bonus, from the bonus in Basara attacks, and the fact that as we can revive each other, hence less likely for game over.

• It's...funny. Some of the mission stage was quite humorous [yes, I'm looking at the Matsu and Toshie Maeda] that I wondered how did they end up stuck in the middle of this warring period. The way some of the bosses/mini-bosses were introduced were also quite funny :3

• Capturing base is fun. I don't know about SB2, but in SB3 bases are captured by defeating a certain enemy officer that stand still, guarding a base mark. Upon beating him, he will switch to our side and more allies officer will spawn at the captured base to, well, help defending the base from any possible enemy that tried to reclaim the base.

• So many routes in story mode. At the start of the game you can choose one from up to 6-8 characters to do their story mode. At the beginning of each mission, you can choose to attack one of the two or three given choice, and depending on your choice, your target on the next mission might change, which opens to even more routes. Though in the end, all these branches rejoined together.

Sengoku Basara 3 gameplay demosntration

The Cons:

• No Japanese voice option is quite a let down for me. Granted, as far as I remember the old titles on PS2 also didn't have this option.

• Easy and retarded AI as usual. On Normal mode, the mobs are quite merciful that they love to sit back, doing nothing and hand over their bodies to be slashed by the player. This haven't changed much since the very first Samurai Warriors series I've played. On Hard mode, the enemies are harder to kill, but they still wasn't as aggressive as I expected them to be.

Overall thus far I could say that I'm really enjoying Sengoku Basara 3. The game was much more appealing to me than they were in PS2. I haven't fully explored the depth the game offered, hopefully more story characters can be unlocked as we go through the game. This game is definitely recommended for Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara fans.