Game:

Sengoku Basara 2 (2006)

Duration: 1:20:25

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Now we move on to Heroes, which made a few changes from SB2 such as making the entire SB2 cast playable and changing a few things about the game to make it better.

Kojuro is now playable and is front and center for SB2H. Rightly so, because his story is my favorite out of this whole game. His playable moveset is pretty great, with a satisfying S-string and an effective Basara. Pretty much all of his specials are solid, his first being a strong two hit combo and his second being a thrusting attack which gets more thrusts as it levels. I only unlocked one other skill with him, which is one of his Priming attacks. The first hit Primes the enemy and launches them, you can hold it to follow up for air combos or press the attack button again to hammer them back down.

That's right, Priming from Devil Kings has returned. The good news is that they used it effectively in SB2H. Now there are multiple specials on each character that can Prime the enemy. Hitting a Primed enemy increases your combo, guarantees crits, and increases your Basara regen upon hitting them. Unlike Devil Kings however, you still gain Basara normally and Priming isn't required in the slightest, it's just here for you to take advantage of if you want to. Which is how it should have been from the start. Nice that they brought this mechanic back and made good use of it.

Kojuro's first stage is brand new and unique to him, where you chase after the new NPC villain Matsunaga Hisahide. This stage has some ice block our way, but you can destroy them with basic attacks. We run into a trio of Hisahide's goons that serve as sort of mini-bosses here. Two of them use spears and the other uses a sword. They have the normal movesets that generics do, as well as at least one unique attack where they send shockwaves like the Onimusha enemy types do. They may have more unique attacks and I just never noticed.

We fight Matsunaga at the end, who has his own unique moveset and everything, but still won't be playable until SB3's expansion. He's got a really fast dodge and he's smart about weaving in and out of your combos to hit you. He can also use gunpowder and sparks to attack with trails of fire from a distance. He can even stun you to guarantee the explosions hit their mark, so he's quite dangerous to fight.

2nd stage has us fight through some generic Takeda soldiers until we reach a bridge at the end. Once we get here, we get the objective to Zhang Fei it up and not let anyone past. This gets harder to accomplish as more enemy types appear, more bridges are lowered, and more enemy gates are opened. So long as you don't let too many get through, a few are fine and will still get you the stage bonus. Once Yukimura arrives, you just need to defeat him to win.

3rd stage is a duel against Masamune. Since he doesn't have all of his swords, his moveset is limited, but we have to defeat him twice and he's buffed on his second HP bar so he's still pretty deadly even with less attacks to work with.

4th stage is another unique one where we fight the Matsunaga trio again and then end against Kotaro, who now has a new moveset. I dunno how hard it is to actually fight Kotaro in this game because Kojuro gets a special buff for this battle where he goes into a powered up state for the entirety of it. Apparently it's called "Slaughter Mode." This stage changes his S-string to be really heavy hitting and buffs him in general. I pretty much beat the shit out of Kotaro and stunlocked him before he had a chance to do much. You can also still use your Triangle attacks and Basara in this mode, so it's just beneficial for you.

5th stage is my favorite in the entire game, where Kojuro attacks Hisahide once more. It's a pretty long stage to go through, where you can rescue people Matsunaga has kidnapped and deal with a variety of enemy types. Urns release a mist that heal the enemy so you will want to destroy those first as you proceed. Destroying all of them in the stage is the bonus objective. We also get our last fight against the Matsunaga trio, who are being healed by the urns. Once we get past them and progress, there's a cutscene that triggers where Masamune appears with his one sword moveset to act as a bodyguard for the rest of the stage.

During this, the opening theme starts to play up until we reach Matsunaga, which I absolutely LOVE when games do this, cuz it's fuckin' hype. How can you not love this?

Things get serious when we fight Matsunaga, and fighting him was the hardest thing I've done in this game. I legitimately struggled when he started to regen health once he got to 50% and then when he calls reinforcements and gets a new health bar out of nowhere once you deplete it once. I actually had to rely on Masamune to hold him off while I healed in his second phase. Really fun fight and the best moment I've had in this game personally.

I'm out of space now, so I'll just end by saying I really enjoyed Kojuro's story. WHY WASN'T HE PLAYABLE IN SB:SH AAAAGGGHHHH

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