The Platinum Series: [9] Sengoku Basara 3

Following Final Fantasy FFXIII platinum last month, I was left with not so much ps3 games to play – Vanquish, which I doubt I ever platinum (though I recently got back to it), Star Ocean 4 (same case with Vanquish), the unplayable Tales of Vesperia (Jpn), Front Mission Evolve (bored me to death, not going to bother playing), and FIFA11 which I've always played (aside from dota) whenever I was bored. Other games, I’ve already platinumed or lent to friends. So the only game that I could play to spend my every other night time is, Sengoku Basara 3: Samurai Heroes.

When I first bought the game, just like FFXIII, the thought of platinuming the game never really crossed my mind, because the seemingly large amount of work and hours needed. But I still resumed my play anyway because the gameplay was fun. And fast forward after nearly ~180 hours of playing, I finally achieved the long awaited platinum for Sengoku Basara 3. And honestly, I feel Sengoku Basara 3 is worth the odd 200 hours spent, at least if you're fan of Dynasty Warrior/Sengoku Basara-like action game.

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


Platinum Difficulty: 5 – 8 (varied)

For the first time, I couldn't really give a specific rating platinum difficulty rating for this game. On one hand, the game didn’t really require you to be a skilled combo/timing freak (cough*vanquish*cough) to survive even the hardest mode, therefore skill-wise, I’d put it on about 4 or 5. On the other hand, the some of the collection/grinding trophies can be quite time consuming, ie the bulk of the 200 hours of your play will come from trying to get these trophies, so in a sense, it’s a 7 or 8, farming-wise. But if I had to stamp a single rating (to platinum) for this game, I would give it a 6.5. Not really hard, and even the long hours needed to platinum the game doesn’t really feel THAT long. And I’ll explain that later.

Some of the easier trophies require you to simply complete each heroes (16 total) story once. Then, a trophy will also be granted for completing the game on Easy, Normal and Hard mode. Then there’s miscellaneous battle-related trophy which are easy enough to obtain, like finishing the battle on horseback, finishing the battle with a basara attack, performing 500, 2000 and 10,000 combo hits.

guess what theme did I use for my dashboard ;p

Then comes the “harder” trophy in the game (collect all ally; collect all weapons; collect all accessories; all heroes level 100; get 1,000,000 zennys etc) that require you to spend 100+ hours of playing. And it doesn’t really feel that long because of a few things. First, these trophies can be achieved altogether as you played through the game, without the need to focus of aiming for a single trophy. For example, we need to play each hero story at least 4 times to get their personal accessories, and there’s also guides that allowed us to get all allies on a maximum 4 playthrough for each heroes (except Ieyasu), so these two trophies tied neatly altogether. And since we need to play the story mode at least 4 times, we can take one playthrough on hard mode to farm their required 5th tier joke weapon (which is only available on Hard), and along with some fugitive huntings (which grant huge amount of experience), you’re pretty much guaranteed reaching level 100 even before you finished your 4th playthrough (my Mitsunari reach level 100 in 2 playthroughs, though I did play Sekigahara Intrusion on Hard with him twice, going from level 60 to 100).

Second reason that these “collection” trophies didn’t feel that long is because throughout these, you are playing 16 different heroes with unique skillset, across over possibly 30 different stages. None of the 16 heroes in SB3 are identical to each other when it comes to combat ability, and once you played a new hero, you have the chance to experiment and use a totally different skillset and combo than the hero you previously used. Granted, there are some heroes that you might not like for one reason or another (I know many people who hate Tsuruhime and Kanbe Kuroda), but hey, suck it up. I personally do not like using Yoshitsugu and Motochika, but I still managed to finish their story mode at least once on Hard.

The thing I like about the heroes in Sengoku Basara 3 is that almost every single one of them has a shining point that made them “special” or interesting to use. For Tokugawa Ieyasu, it’s his charging fist and super strong Headbutt. For Mitsunari Ishida (one of my favourite), it’s his Flash/teleport skill that made him so fun to use. For Yukimura Sanada, it’s…well, endless, easy chaining combos. For Masamune Date, it’s the Six Claws and dash cancels. For Tsuruhime, it’s the untouchable Rain of Arrow+Nayuta Issen (even Honda and Muneshige can’t come close to you). For Kotaro Fuma (also one of my favourite), it’s disperse, shuriken, counter, counter and counter. For Kanbe Kuroda (at fist I totally hate him, but then I like him), it’s the boss annihilator Criminal Smasher with my favorite 10 German Suplexes. For Motonari Mori it’s the manipulation of Decoy+Archer+Trap that made every boss looked like a fool. For Yoshihiro Shimazu, it’s OHKO Lightning Sword. For Saika Magoichi (my choice if I want to go through hard mode unscathed), hell, everything about her screams broken, imbalanced and overpowered, especially her personal accessories that made her pistol bullet changed into homing missiles (!). For Keiji Maeda, it’s his broken R1 dash attack, cancellable skill and super art that allowed him to recover health easily. For Oichi, it’s her crazy crowd control with Ocean Wisp+Demon Hands-free. For Nobunaga Oda, it’s his shotgun+demon dual mode and the unkillable Scorched Earth. Unfortunately I’m not so much of a fan of Motochika Aniki (his net fishing is only useful for taunting at most), as well as Yoshitsugu Otani (great crowd control but lack 1v1 boss battle capability). As for Tadakatsu Gundam, he absolutely wreak havoc in normal (especially with his L1+Triangle, the first hero I got 99,999 combo hits with), but I find him boring to use on Hard.

And the third reason, which probably isn’t really as important as the first two, is that each heroes has multiple story route, and within the same route, there are multiple branches of stages that you can choose to advance the story. Overall, it’s hard to get bored with the game as you try to platinum it, and even better if you had fun with the gameplay. Unlike, the overused example – Star Ocean 4 where you spend 80-100 odd hours just killing enemies over and over again to get that ridiculous 30,000 kill BT for Edge and Arumat. Now THAT is a boring trophy, despite how enjoyable the gameplay is.

*image source: gamespots