SenBasa 3: Final Heroes Evaluation [Part 2]

In the last part I ranked the heroes in Sengoku Basara 3 according to a few things, from Rank S (I like to use the most, or simply just too strong) to Rank D (I least like to use). This time, I'd like to give my reasonings, or at least some comments about those heroes and the way I play them. Note: the skill listed was arranged as it is in the skill menu: Triangle, direction+Triangle, R1 and L1+Triangle

Saica Magoichi (RANK S)
Weapons: firearms
Skills: Shotgun, Pistol, Hand Grenade, Machine Gun.
Specials: Spread Bazooka, Demolition Tools, Covering Fire

The only hero in God Tier rank, because I feel there is no other hero that come close to Saica’s awesomeness when it comes to wiping out enemies swift and fast, be it the mass of soldiers in Sekigahara Intrusion, or the tough-you-need-to-run-away bosses like Muneshige and Tadakatsu. She started with a fairly normal pistol (good for one on one) and shotgun (good for crowd control) modes, and as she levelled up, she learn machine gun mode (PIERCE enemies, racking up combos and basara gauge FAST); hand grenades (useful in tight situation as it stun/push back bosses); homing Bazooka that deal HUGE damage if you can aim all of its rocket on a single target – most likely OHKO a boss in easy/normal if you have high Attack stat; a land mine skill (Demolition Tool); and an air support skill (Covering Fire) that provides continuous air attacks followed by a massive cannon final attack that looked like a meteor fall. For extra kicks, her pistol and shotgun attack can be charged to deal even more damage than they already are. I remember in early level I always had difficulty playing on Kannagawa stage (the Utsunomiya tigers) with many other heroes, but not Saica because for some reason, her pistol can kill the tigers easily in 4 or 5 hits. In term of combo chaining, there’s nothing special about Saica (though she can still rack up tons of hits with her rifle), but her individual weapon shots are powerful enough to deal with all kind of enemies in the game. Her joke weapons was some kind of wooden slingshot that made a funny sound when you shoot, but other than that, it didn’t have any other special effect.

Anyway, if you think her arsenal of weapons are already overpowered, wait until you unlocked her sets of personal accessories (equip 4 of them to take effect). With these accessories equipped, it literally turned Saica into a demolition machine, an annihilator because those items changed her pistol bullet into MISSILES that home on their targets, explodes upon contact and deal tremendous damage. Extremely powerful and broken that made Saica truly a God-Tier hero. Now you might ask what’s the point of using her once you unlocked her personal accessories (since we need to finish her story 4 times to unlock them)? Well, for one, you could play your least favourite hero on Hard mode (Kanbe, Tsuruhime or whoever it is) and just co-op with Saica so that she can clean the floor for your least favourite hero. Or, you can just beat the crap out of Hard mode for the lulz, showing who's boss in the game.

My choice for her Special: usually Cover Fire (just for some extra pointless damage, but it's really cool when you can time your attack so that the final Cannon attack from Cover Fire finish off the boss), but sometimes I switch to Rocket Launcher if there’s many 1v1 fight in the stage.




Mitsunari Ishida (RANK A)
Weapons: katana
Skills: Condemnation, Lamentation, Vexation, Depression
Specials: Extermination, Decapitation, Reverence

Isn’t his skill name cool? Mitsunari is one of my favourite senbasa3 heroes. On my previous hero evaluation notes, I wrote that there’s one word to describe Mitsunari – FAST. And he certainly is. But there’s another thing about him that made me really like to use him. Many of his attacks have a rather long initial startup, but these can be cancelled with his Flash (directional+Triangle by default), a skill that allowed him to teleport to nearby single target and chain another skill instantaneously, removing their initial startup delay. The three skills that I often Flash-cancel with are Vexation (bread and butter for high combo chain, at high level it sucks enemies in), Depression (wide area crowd control skill) and special Extermination (really cool skill that can hit machine’s weak spot even from the front). Basically a typical play of Mitsunari on many stages went like this – Flash-S attack move to nearby crowd/base, teleport in with Flash -> Vexation -> Flash -> Depression -> Flash -> Vexation/ Depression/ Extermination -> Flash (to bosses/generals) -> Condemnation/S-string chain combos -> Hero Time -> more Flash cancels -> Ultimate Basara.

It is worth noting that Flash combo chaining also made Mitsunari nearly untouchable because of his constant teleport, therefore he is one of the few heroes (other than Saica of course) that I dare risk equipping High Risk; High Return accessory (1.5x damage dealt, 3x damage received) on Hard mode because once you’re comfortable in using him, you will rarely get touched by most enemies. Just watch this video if you want to see how cool and awesome Mitsunari is when used at his full potential. Obviously my timing isn’t as perfect as the guy in the video (especially when it comes to consistent Flash-S attack chain to move even faster than his dash run), but you got the gist of how his Flash works.

As for his Specials, there’s really no argument for me: I’d almost always pick Extermination any time ahead of the other two Specials. Decapitation is kind of awesome but is useless against certain heroes (Yoshitsugu, Honda). The skill is also bugged in that you can’t properly use it on the Fugitives or against Kanbe in Hetsugigawa Heroes stage. His final Special, Reverence can make him walk much faster, but I’m not in favour of its slow startup and the fact that it can’t be Flash-cancelled. His personal accessory removes the time limit of Reverence (meh, not worth it), while his joke weapons (a magic wand) made him do some kind of magic trick when you taunt…lolwut.




Date Masamune (RANK B)
Weapons: six swords
Skills: Dragon Slash, X-Strike, Revolver Blitz, Azure Storm
Specials: Dragon Eye, Six Claws, Zero Point

Hm…where to start. First, I would say that Date is ranked 5th on my fave 5 Senbasa3 heroes. His S-string attacks and the rest of his skills (X-Strike, Dragon Slash, Revolver Blitz and Azure Storm) can connect easily, so chain combo with him should not be a big problem. On top of that, you can reduce the recovery time of his attacks (like the sword backswing) by dash cancelling (ie, double tap directional button just as you finish your combo), and this allowed you to immediately start a new chain combo. On Hard mode though, at first I find it difficult for him to beat base captain and boss in reasonable time. Until he got to level 30+ and learn Six Claws. For me, using Date is all about utilizing his Six Claws. At early level, he will be in Six Claws mode for a short moment after he finished his basara attack, but the time frame is too short for me to do anything significant. With Six Claws special skill though, Masamune will remain in this mode for a much longer time, and that was the time where most of my Hard mode problem with him was eliminated, and at the same time, making him much more fun to use. As you might know, in Six Claws mode Masamune fight with all his six swords (Ronoroa Zoro was strange enough with 3 swords, now Date with six?), which changes the attributes of his skills, made his attacks noticeably stronger and more importantly, made him harder to knock down. Azure Storm for example was much more effective in killing base captain, and against enemies (and most bosses), this skill allowed Date to juggle them midair as long as you keep mashing the S-string button. On a side note, activating Six Claws on land will make Date emit a shockwave that damage nearby enemies, while activating in midair removes the delay time (ie no shockwave damage).

One interesting thing about Masamune Date is his joke weapon, a set of light saber made him run MUCH faster than even the fastest hero in Senbasa 3 (I assume Kotaro is the fastest), he might be even faster than a horse! And the funny thing is with the joke weapon equipped, his sword scabbard become a set of bike mufflers (remember his bike horse in the anime?) and while he dash run, smoke will appear from his scabbards/mufflers. Anyway, his personal accessory will put him in Six Claws mode permanently. Worth the 4 slots? Probably not, because Six Claws made him unable to block or parry attack, and you don’t want that when suddenly the boss on Hard mode unleash his basara attack and kills you. But if you also equip the Six Claws special while equipping his personal accessories, you can deactivate the Six Claws mode by pressing R2. Still, I don’t think his accessory is worth using because Six Claws from Special skill is already long enough once it reach max level.

All this time I’ve been writing about his Six Claws special, but what about his other 2 Special skills? Previously I was in favour of his first special, the Dragon Eye that made him launch energy beam forward ala kamehameha in dragon ball. It was a strong skill especially when charged, but I favour Six Claws much more than Dragon Eye, for many reasons I elaborated above. His third Special, Zero Point is a very strong single target skill that can kill a boss if you charge it for a whopping SIX seconds. Honestly the only time you can pull it off is when you’re in Hero Time, and unlike Yoshihiro’s Lighning Sword, you can be interrupted while charging the skill, making it a tad bit useless.




Tsuruhime (RANK C)
Weapon: bow Skills: Pinpoint Shot, Rain of Arrow, Mindstream Shot, Nayuta Issen Specials: Infinite Arrow, Pure of Heart, Bubble Maker

I know many people hate Tsuruhime because of many reasons – irritating voice, ignorant miko girl, shitty battle skills, lame boss combo, senbasa3 is for fangirls etc but I personally do not mind Tsuruhime as she is. Okay, maybe her voice needs some changing, but that’s about it. When I first use her, I was impressed with her crowd control ability (with Rain of Arrows) which made her shot arrows upwards, then struck the enemies, binding (stun) them to the ground for several seconds. Comboed with her giant charged arrow shot Nayuta Issen (do the translator purposely not translate this skill?) that push enemies and boss backward a looooooooong distance, she was the first hero I use that was able to beat Muneshige in Hetsugigawa Memories stage. Problem is, this combo is rather boring after awhile (but still very effective against virtually any bosses in the game), and on Hard mode where the enemies are more aggressive and surrounds you quickly, she can’t really rely on this combo all the time. Her other skill, Pinpoint Shot is a regular arrow shot forward, and Mindstorm Shot is a more or less a multiarow Pinpoint Shot, without aim, shorter range and made her jump backward. Basically these skills have limited practicality on Hard mode, where the aim is to clear the enemies without getting hurt too much. I should also say here that you can charge her attacks (except Mindstorm Shot) and release it right when her arrow glows to gain maximum effect. But then, the only skill that I often charge is Nayuta Issen, because charging the other 2 skills (Rain of Arrows and Pinpoint Shots) doesn’t produce significant result than the uncharged shots.

Nevertheless, I think Tsuruhime was more tolerable to use on Hard mode once we got either her Infinite Arrow or Pure of Heart specials, depending on situation. Most of the time I favour Infinite Arrow – a skill that made several arrows surround and protect her from any damage once (immensely useful on Hard mode), and modify her attack skills. Her S-string for example become multitarget attacks (best thing to happen to her S-string), while Nayuta Issen was slightly more powerful. However if I were to play a stage with many enemies in groups (Sekigahara Intrusion, Hasedo castle), I would switch to Pure of Heart – a skill that can charm a large number of enemies when hit, and those charmed soldier will cheer for her (duh) and made her basara gauge fills VERY fast. Since she has a relatively short Basara gauge, you can spam her Basara attack over and over again while your charmed enemies fill the gauge (as long as they didn’t die from the attack). So all in all, not really a bad skill, but situational at best. Her third Special is a fun skill that can caught enemies in bubbles, but it barely has any purpose on Hard mode. Even worse, her personal accessories were centered around this skill…Oh, and her joke weapon: it’s some sort of crane origami made into a shape of bow…what the heck?

p/s I still wonder why Tsuruhime was so strong (annoying?) to fight with so many of her attacks can stagger when we’re the one facing her in Noshima stage.




Yoshitsu Otani (RANK D)
Weapon: flying seat? (though his actual weapon is the floating beads)
Skills: Shani Returns, Navagraha Strikes, Galaxy Fades, Ketu Splits
Specials: Comet Races, Rahu Weakens, Mikaboshi Rises

What a weird skill name. I’ve said it before, and I say this again – I don’t like using Yoshitsugu. Sure, he can stamp people with his beads, he can kill crowds quickly and can suck people in like Oichi with his Mikaboshi Rise. But I don’t like the fact that his movement is so restricted, cannot make a quick turn like a moving boat on water. That, and the fact that he really didn’t have a good, interesting 1v1 combo against bosses. And because he sat on that floating thingy, he can’t ride a horse. So how the hell am I going to beat Date’s horse race stage if I didn’t equip Comet Races special? Anyway, I’ve read tips and stuff from gamefaqs about some combos I can pull with him (auto-fire beads, Shani Returns -> Ketu Spirits -> Galaxy Fades chain loop), but in the end…I just don’t have any fun using him. So in most case, I just play him the lazy way - first casting Mikaboshi Rise (imo was worse than Oichi’s Ocean Wisp because he’s more prone to interruption than Oichi when he cast) everytime, let the pit suck all enemies in and just hit any button that I feel like mashing. And against bosses, I save my Hero Time/Ultimate Basara and finish to finish them asap. Nevertheless when it comes to crowd control and cleaning the floor quickly (hello Sekigahara Intrusion), Yoshitsugu is one of the few hero that can do this job extremely well (other than Oichi).

From the above paragraph, you can see that I favor his Mikaboshi Rise special than anything else. His first special, Comet Rise turned his beads into wheels that allowed him to move much faster. And as I stated above, the only way for him to win Date/Kojuro’s race in Oshuu stage is by equipping this. Big deal huh, winning the race only give a small bonus experience points. His 2nd special, Rahu Weakens strengthen his attacks and marked all visible enemies on the screen. Powerful skill for boss fights I guess, but I haven’t use this skill much to give a more elaborate comment. His joke weapon is a flying kotatsu (!), and his personal accessories made his marked attack do 3 extra hits. Not worth the 4 slots.


that's all for part 2, to be continued.