Box Art

War games have always had their fair share of fan bases. There were the Command and Conquer series and the Dynasty Warrior games which brought Eastern Asian elements to the formula. Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is Capcom’s offering with a Japanese anime twist.

In SBSH you are given a choice of several characters as you progress through their storylines. Each characters are given their own cut scenes and they all intertwine together. This is only the start of a long list of negatives though.

The voice acting is so terrible and cheesy throughout each scene that you can’t help but laugh. The often over exaggerated screams that some characters give are pure comedy rather than pure drama.

Even though the character’s stories intertwine with each other, there are points where they seem random and pointless. Often you’ll wonder why certain events came up and it seems the developers did this just to try and justify the story links but it fails.

If you’re looking for a challenge then you’ve come to the wrong place. The game takes minimal effort to play through. You can just keep pressing A and it seems the character will do the work for you. It seems like there’s no need to add any other type of button. There is no strategy involved at all. The boss fights are the only time when a degree of thinking is needed. Even then once a strategy has been worked out, you’ll find that it becomes repetitive and easy.

The use of a points system to level up and customise your characters gear is a nice touch and there’s a decent amount of it but it just doesn’t help the games repetitive nature at all. The game’s easy enough as it is without customising your items.

Visually SBSH’s graphics are nice. These are let down however by the linear nature of each level. Just walking in what seems like a straight line is all it takes to get through a level. Even though the overall environment is nice to look at, like the rest of the game you’ll get bored as you go along.

SBSH has to be one of Capcom’s more poorer offerings. The half decent customisation and points system aren’t enough to save the game from poor controls, boring and repetitive game play and horrible character acting. If I had a time machine and this was feudal Japan, I think I’d give it a miss.

+ Decent customisation options
+ Nice visuals

- Boring and repetitive
- Negatively simplistic controls
- Horrible acting

Score 4.5 / 10