Reviewing again for Sengoku Basara, the original japanese version.
Holy smokes (and not the cigarette smell that follows my devil kings copy) this is actually good! For some reason the western version removed 4 playable characters and downgraded them to NPCs??? I can't really make sense of it at all, why they'd choose to do it at all.
The four you miss out on are actually pretty fun to play as (bar matsu who is a clone of Kenshin). Especially Shimazu who sports a comically oversized sword that is very satisfying to use.
The other big change is aesthetics, most obvious is the change of character names and settings to blander more stupid ones in devil kings (Toshihiro Shimazu to 'Zaan' urgh), and a confusing mish-mash of troop redesigns and locations, where you fight demon knight dudes, and Egyptian temple looking stuff, and also POUNDING DARK TECHNO.
Basara is a more consistent whole. The whole thing is styled after it's source material; namely the Sengoku period, you have japanese art-print style character potraits, music that feels more correct to the setting, and troops and places are more variations on different japanese locations with a exaggerated anime spin on them.
I think one of the characters in particular that comes off better in Basara is Francis Xavier, or 'Xavi' (Q-ball for devil kings, fuck knows) who in Basara is portrayed as a crazed cult fanatic preaching love and peace at the end of a gun barrel, surrounded by japanese converts in poofy pants and frilly neck collars. The satire actually works really well, there's a cutscene where you see Xavi's vision of Japan, and it's just a series of stereotypes and half-understood japanese stuff.
Eitherway, if you can import (i got a nice collectors edition very cheap) or emulate this version, i highly reccomend.
Holy smokes (and not the cigarette smell that follows my devil kings copy) this is actually good! For some reason the western version removed 4 playable characters and downgraded them to NPCs??? I can't really make sense of it at all, why they'd choose to do it at all.
The four you miss out on are actually pretty fun to play as (bar matsu who is a clone of Kenshin). Especially Shimazu who sports a comically oversized sword that is very satisfying to use.
The other big change is aesthetics, most obvious is the change of character names and settings to blander more stupid ones in devil kings (Toshihiro Shimazu to 'Zaan' urgh), and a confusing mish-mash of troop redesigns and locations, where you fight demon knight dudes, and Egyptian temple looking stuff, and also POUNDING DARK TECHNO.
Basara is a more consistent whole. The whole thing is styled after it's source material; namely the Sengoku period, you have japanese art-print style character potraits, music that feels more correct to the setting, and troops and places are more variations on different japanese locations with a exaggerated anime spin on them.
I think one of the characters in particular that comes off better in Basara is Francis Xavier, or 'Xavi' (Q-ball for devil kings, fuck knows) who in Basara is portrayed as a crazed cult fanatic preaching love and peace at the end of a gun barrel, surrounded by japanese converts in poofy pants and frilly neck collars. The satire actually works really well, there's a cutscene where you see Xavi's vision of Japan, and it's just a series of stereotypes and half-understood japanese stuff.
Eitherway, if you can import (i got a nice collectors edition very cheap) or emulate this version, i highly reccomend.