Sengoku BASARA Samurai Heroes for Wii Reviews by Gamers

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Capcom's Keiji Inafune -- creator of Mega-Man and head of global research and development and global head of production at Capcom – stated that Japanese game development is at least five years behind and that, "Capcom is barely keeping up. The ideas, game play, design – there's no diversity, no originality."



After playing Capcom's latest release, Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, I can see why he'd say this. Sengoku Basara perfectly underlines Inafune's concerns. This mindless hack and slash is yet another rendition of a formulaic gameplay design that's been beat to death both in this franchise, and more notably in Koei's various Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors games. Sure, Samurai Heroes stands out for being better than the innumerable versions of the same basic game Koei's put out, but that really isn't saying much.



Sengoku Basara allows you to play a number of fantastically re-imagined historical characters from Japan's warring states period, taking them through a campaign in an effort to unite the country under one ruler. Every level you play – no matter which character you pick – basically boils down to the same few actions: run around, kill hordes of enemies, and then kill a few named heroic enemies to end the stage. Combat is completely mindless. Repeatedly mashing the same few attack buttons over and over again until you build up enough power to unleash a special move is not fun. And while the special moves look cool the first few times you see them, you end up doing them so often that they lose any of the impressiveness they might have had after the first level.



Sengoku Basara is slightly more entertaining when playing the game cooperatively (because who doesn't prefer to suffer with a friend), but not enough to keep this snore fest from lulling you to sleep. The enemies are boring to fight, presenting little to no challenge as they group up around you en masse so that you can hit them at your leisure. Seriously, save for the random heroic enemy, the rest of my foes seemed to serve little purpose other than help me build up yet another ridiculous combo score. Having lots of enemies on the screen was impressive about eight years ago, and could be still, but not at the cost of having a game with downright awful AI.



Not that the hordes of enemies on screen in Sengoku Basara are much to look at; in fact, they're pretty damn ugly. While a lot of the hero characters have enough detail put into them to be passable, the regular enemies are bad carbon-copies of one another. Granted, the Wii version actually looks pretty good considering how many things are on the screen, but the graphics on the PS3 game look, as Inafune said himself, "at least five years behind."

Between missions, you can see how much experience your mindless mass murdering has yielded as well as equip your character with a few special items, but this isn't nearly deep enough to be more than a passing distraction. Basically, you find the heaviest hitting weapon in your arsenal and equip it, then move on to the next battle. The options simply aren't diverse enough to make you think about what you're doing, and they don't have a dramatic enough effect on your performance to compel you to stay on top of it.



©2010-10-12, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved