|
I’ve been after this one for a
while now. While it’s not exactly rare it never seems to turn up in
complete mint condition. So you can imagine how happy I was when this
(was) factory sealed copy came along (June 2005). Sengoku Blade is the
follow up to the Psycho vertical shooter Sengoku Ace. However Sengoku
Blade is a horizontal shooter for which I’m quite glad since all of
Psycho’s vertical shooters all use the same engine making them all look
quite similar.
Sengoku Blade comes on two discs. One being the game and the other being a
digital gallery but more on that later. The game as mentioned is a
horizontal shooter set in ancient Japan. Graphically it’s pretty nice with
plenty of detailed sprites and backgrounds. While there’s nothing
incredibly impressive as far as special effects go it sill manages to
satisfy. The audio is your typical arrangement of kotos and other Japanese
instruments. These tunes help present that ancient Japanese period that
the game takes place in. Character wise there is your typical big breasted
woman (Koyori), a Buddhist priest (Tengai), a samurai robot (Hagane), what
possibly could be a young female ninja worrier with no pants (Yuunisu) and
a real Samurai (Shoumaru). It’s their job to stop the evil demonic forces
from taking over Japan. The first level alternates depending on which
character you choose. Plus you get an option to take the upper or lower
path for the final level. This will determine what type of ending you’ll
get for your character.
The play mechanics of Sengoku Blade are pretty simple really but don’t let
that fool you in to thinking it’s not fun. As with most shooters you have
to collect power ups as well as bombs. Each character has an option or
helpful demon creature that will perform attacks for you if you hold down
the shoot button. This can come in very handy for boss battles. Over all
it’s a pretty nice shooter and quite a challenge on the harder settings.
Before I mentioned the special gallery disc. This disc fully runs in the
Saturn’s highest resolution and features over 500 pieces of fan art as
well as some special guest art by famous Japanese character artists. Also
included are arcade “how to play” card scans and video previews of Sengoku
Ace, Strikers 1949 and Gunbird. One of my favorite extras though is the
official art and sketch sections. It’s worth making sure that if you buy
Sengoku Blade that it comes with this disc even if it’s for the odd buy
funny Samurai Fortune section (^v^) |
