Monday Morning MAME Club #9 - Sengoku

[scooterb23]

Monday Morning MAME Club Week 9: Rise of the Machines

Hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day. And if you took the day to spend with family, and are catching this on Tuesday...well that's good too :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/scooterb23/mameclub.jpg

Club Rules

01. You do not need to sign up for the club. If you want to participate, simply download the game of the week and post about it!

02. At the end of the week, I will randomly select a game from a list of nominations.

03. The current MAME Club Pick of the Week can be found every Monday stickied at the top of the Arcade Alley.

At the request of Vor][ex, who wanted some side-scrolling beat 'em up action...and at the suggestion of Arasoi, this week we have the SNK game Sengoku! Now, I know he actually wanted Sengoku 3, but I felt a 40+ Meg file was too large for me to pass along the intertubes to both the sources, and too big for some folks to have to sit and DL (I feel for our 56k'ers out there :) ).

So I'm giving folks an option.

There are 3 games in the Sengoku side scrolling beat 'em up series. All three games are up for discussion this week! Compare and contrast them! Talk about how the series grew! Talk about changes they made that you didn't like. Go crazy this week.

Without further ado: ROM sources! Now, I only sent out the first game in the series...so that's what you should find at these sources. If you want to find the others, just ask. I'm sure we can point you the right direction :)

Flack is hosting at http://www.robohara.com/mameclub/

and 2DSkillz can haz teh ROMs at http://www.retrogoggles.com/

Kick, Punch you know what to do!

Previous MMMC choices: Jump Coaster, Rampart, Jungler, Ninja Emaki, Port Man, Psycho Soldier, Metamoqester, Gunbarich

[Arasoi]

Okay, this is Sengoku week. Awesome! I think I'll review all 3 and spread them out over the week.

Starting off with the first game. I fired up my MVS1F and my Sengoku cart today for the first time in a week or two and got a fresh perspective playing through the game. This is a pretty good beat em up for it's day. It brought some pretty interesting things to the table for it's genre at the time.

In addition to a good selection of weapons to pick up, you have the ability to transform into several warriors/ghosts when you free their spirits. They come with a time limit, but you can save them for more important areas like swarming enemies, or bosses. You also get to travel to a different stage if you choose by touching the right kind of orb, sort of a cloud city.

The art style if you want to call it that is eerie, with burnt out abandoned cities, and a giant ghostlike Japanese temple always in the background. The enemies fit the motif, resurrected feudal warriors who turns to bones and dust when defeated.

My complaints about this game would be mainly that the gameplay is a tad sluggish. Your character moves slowly through the stages, and this causes a feeling of repetition. The boss fights can also be very bad on certain levels if you don't have a spirit helper saved to defeat it.

Overall, I guess this game should get a 6/10. Definitely worth playing and very enjoyable, but not in the upper tier of beat em ups.

[BetaWolf47]

The Sengoku series was hit and miss when it was out. Like Arasoi said, it was good for its time, but still fell a bit short. Gameplay-wise, it was decently satisfying to hit enemies, and it took a lot of skill to hit enemies without being hit by them. Everything else about it was average to good, except for the annoying swaps between worlds. It's very confusing to the player what the actual setting is. It's a lot like Fist of the North Star, except erratic.

Without a doubt though, Sengoku 3 is the best of the series. Though it bears little to no resemblance of the first two, it's amazing how big the gap in quality is between Sengoku and Sengoku 3. Sengoku 3 is an incredible game, one of my favorite Neo-Geo titles of all time, and maybe even my favorite beat-em-up of all time.

[Trebuken]

Sengoku 1 and 2 play much the same. The enemies move in different patterns in 2, they sort of circle you; but what I have seen (so far) they are much the same.

The third allows you to choose your character and has a stage select. You also start with two lives instead of three. The enemies are tougher; in the first wo game starting enemies could be dispatched with a single attack -- not so of 3. Fortunately you have more moves and combos in 3, which I suspect makes it more enjoyable for others -- though it is also less retro in feel.

They are fun and the challenge is winning without adding additional coins. You could easily play through it in MAME with unlimited coins...I can't get myself to do so...

[Vor][ex]

Ok, so here we are, another Monday mame club Entry, and i thank the power that be for putting up with my constant requests for a beat em up[ aciton !

Ideally I wanted Final fight.. but in seeing I have it already and playefd it to death, I found myself wanting to just play it..... so i did.. Then i realised i had to review Sengoku

So after playing final fight.. the quintessential beatemup from whcih a;l;l beat em ups are based I put in my money and stareted with my credits.

Sengoku 1 we played for a while, and loved it at first.. the graphical elemtns and style were very neogeo circa 1993 and as a result were a little dissapointing.. but for its era its not to bad. - FGood selectino of chars.. and weapoins. although could they make the gameplay and slower or repeditive?

SDK SAYS :
I don't have a lot to say about the first two in the series.. I felt they contained some nice ideas that weren't fully fleshed out such as the Altered Beast-esque changing to another creature, which could have been a lot more progressive with more of a choice of what to change into. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of moves either. In some ways these played like Final Fight with ninjas, except slower.

The third was a lot more polished and refined then the first two with a uch better grphical appearance and better animation.

Ratings: 1 = 5, 2 = 5, 3 = 7.5

That is all.

Vor][ex says :
Ok for 2 and 3.. Im not sure iof I can be bothered with 2.. it was basically the same as number 1.. but I loved a few little touches that I hadnt really seen before..
Flying skulls, fighting on horseback, stage entering deamons .. from afar.. , cuttin goff fhead, fat men with swords.. and a rocket powered wolf..

I mean really.. other than that , the game was repeditive and a little boring, but we did after all play 3 games in one.

I really wanted to see more of a finalfight/ golden axe element where you could clear stages when the actino got a bit much.. instead all i could do was morph into a wolf.. and scratch with my paws.. or.. jet pack somewhere..

Number 3.. What can I say a HUGE improvement.. we all loved it.. Again very simiplar to final fight in feel and flavor but considereding it was 2001.. and not 1990!! not alot of movement .. I would havbe liked to see better bosses.. I mean even the bosses from Metamoqester whatever it was.. had better bigger badder hotter sexier looking End of level guardians.. sure they were hard to defeat but they just looked like everything else.

Where was the bouns stage?? - anyway all that aside.. Number 3 was defently a great game to play.. i would have just prefered to see a little more variety.. I would have told the developers this.. !
My ratings.
1: Its a good 5 mophing levels out of 10
2: Slightly better 5.5 sequels out of 10
3: I give it a solid 6 jet pack powered wolves.. out of 10.

[Trebuken]

So after playing final fight.. the quintessential beatemup from whcih a;l;l beat em ups are based I put in my money and stareted with my credits.


Is this the popular opinion? I'm sure this has been debated before, and do not wish to debate it, but how much of that statement is opinion. There are beatemups that predate Final Fight, are well remembered, though perhaps not as evolved.

For me Double Dragon started it, but even it is predated by Street Fighter -- and likely others.

One concern I have about Sengoku 3 is that it seems to have been designed to be more 'quarter munching'. Gameplay was altered, made tougher it seems, to get you to empty your wallet, and to do it quicker. Alters the gameplay some but the pacing seems better and more natural.

[BetaWolf47]

Sengoku 3 had a completely different developer than the first two. It was developed by Noise Factory who had previously made Gaia Crusaders. This seems to be a finer piece of work than Gaia Crusaders as it is more balanced and the animation is much better.

I wonder why they even used the name "Sengoku" in Sengoku 3? It has a different developer, different characters, different plot, different setting, and was made 8 years after Sengoku 2. The name is the only thing in common with it. They should've just gave it a fresh name.

[Vor][ex]

Yes,

id have to say final fight in my opinion was a great beatemup.. I was not a fan of doubledragon, although it was good and it was the 1st .. Final fight introduced us to bonus stages, something lacking in double dragon , this was important in the evolvment in the beatem up and fighting genre's.

Street fight 1 was kind of crap.. SF2 was surely the best fighting 1on1

[Ed Oscuro]

I've visited this topic before, years ago. Sometimes my impressions don't change, and my views on these games then is pretty much exactly the same as it is now - but now I have the power of SCIENCE!1 behind (some of) my observations.

But I'd better mention right away that I'm terrible at beat-em-ups; always have been. Can't time my hits or read enemies for anything. Even so it's blindingly obvious what the gameplay faults of some of these games are.

I last played Sengoku 1 and 2 some years ago so I forgot some details (I also don't remember the ending of Sengoku 2 - I realized that what I was expecting was actually the final boss of Tecmo Knight, which is different).

Sengoku 1
...is pretty bland much of the time, but they threw in great details when they could - like the two advertisements on the bridge. Who wants to drink some WILD SODA?! I do!

I hate playing "follow the dot" and waiting for enemies to come down from the sky. I REALLY hate enemies being able to take cheap shots when you're switching weapons, and getting whisked away from a magic orb by the level transition. The game also has a propensity to drop orbs and then follow up with an enemy rushing onscreen, boom, no time to use it 'cuz you're flat on your back again. Green orbs didn't seem to do a darn thing. All that said, it too me a long time to realize that I didn't need to switch back to the guy when I got a powerup orb - I found out that the shinobi-lookin' guy + purple orbs = hilarious attack. It seems the developers weren't paying attention to all the details when making this one - but there are still some nice details throughout the game. For whatever reason, I think I own three copies of this one (two English AES, one new + one paper box JPN AES)

The final boss is ridiculous, both forms. Especially the second where you have no idea where to line up most of the time. Enough said.

By the way, it's interesting that the whole thing seems to take place in a New York-like city, but the game is like RETURN OF BADMAN. Would be interesting to read the original story intro for this. Shades of Castlevania! The big building with two airplane light masts (two red lights each) is seen in the sequel too. Also, what the heck is up with P2's sprite? And what knocked over that gas tanker (by the way, I managed to dodge the flames this time by standing far inside to the right - silly game won't let you completely pass through for a while though)?

Time for completion: 59:36
Difficulty: Animal mother..!

Sengoku 2
This is the one I wanted to own. Right off the bat, BOOM, stuff is exploding, people are getting chased, dragons are yelling in your face - and you notice lots and lots of enemy types coming at you. Level transitions happen really quickly early on, but it beats scrolling past tons of garbage and brick walls / sewers. Everything has its own personality, much better than the original game's legions of ugly leather-faced wenches and dehydrated juicers (also groups of poor pikemen who die as a group from a single slap). The P1 sprite looks skinnier (not intolerable though) and has a poor death animation, but most everything else is pretty awesome. No more flying around and bouncing off invisible barriers 10 feet up when you get smacked this time.

The "fake history" angle is one that the Neo Geo (and before that, other SNK arcade games) milked relentlessly, and I think this is pretty much the (silly) apex of that format. I love the 194X - THE WORLD WARS stages' style though, and the rest ain't bad. The (three) horseback scenes are pretty awesome, and the boss with a big spoon is a favorite, if gruesome. Side note, I managed to beat him with just one life down the tubes. That's success...at least by my currently low standard.

The main boss is a waste of time though; not even his laugh makes up for what a ridiculous waste of time he was (and his many useless cutscenes too). The final boss fight was over dizzyingly quickly, though, especially compared with the original.

It's crazy, but this time they decided to use ALL FOUR buttons. Wow! I guess you could play with just the three if you had to. Now, instead of mashing the button frantically hoping to grab an enemy's blade, I can block (which actually works occasionally). I never did see the point of high/low attacks, though, since the game doesn't really make it clear when to use one or the other (if indeed it matters at all).

Personal favorite here. It may not be Final Fight, but I enjoyed it. Lack of barrels and baseball bats is a bonus.

Time for completion: Just 42:27.
Difficulty: Somewhat easier than the first.

Sengoku 3
I'd rather not talk about this one.

After some pretty decent digitized work, and some good fullsize portraits (but then again that's the easiest part to do in the age of scanners and professional artists in games - paradoxically, when in the old days the big portraits were often (except in Sengoku 1) ugly as sin while the sprites looked good - I picked the kunoichi again and was treated to eight minutes of the worst stuff.

8:46, actually.

Maybe you want to argue that having (for all I can tell) basically just four attacks and two throws is much better range than in the original. Fine. But don't come up here and tell me that this game is more enjoyable than even the original Sengoku.

Strike one, can't make heads or tails outta what's going on. You wanna complain about the bizarre orb system of the original Sengou? I'll raise you a "I just found a CARTOON BLACK POWDER BOMB in this CHAIR." Yeah, Noise Factory obviously wasn't interested AT ALL in making this game look compelling. They figured if the portraits could hook you, maybe you'd forget that kunoichi has the most awkward-looking jumping animation in memory. Or, somewhat more importantly, that the stages are basically devoid of landmarks, scripted sequences, interesting vistas - basically everything.

Just to make things a bit clearer if you managed to play the game with your eyes planted firmly in the center of Kurenai's eleven-pixel-wide-chest:

Throughout the first few minutes of Sengoku 2, you see:
a princess and (five, I guess, of) her consorts bowing
a DRAGON yells in your face
bats fly around
People getting chased around (later in the game an enemy hides in one group during their approach, tricksy)
You fight green (or brown? maybe both) swordmen. These guys circle you and sometimes rush.
You fight two kinds of monk. These guys hop around, teleport in, or toss off stylish capes (later on though, I think); they attack either with fists or awesome chain things.
You fight big armor guys (again I think two kinds) with swords.

In Sengoku 3, just to be cool, I chose Italy, one of the Hard stages (I know I was there before) and played for...a while.

Dear goodness, in NEARLY NINE MINUTES Sengoku 3 only showed me
two varieties of popcorn swordsman (green and red)
yellow up-armored swordsman
and female ninjas
and also some of the blandest and generally worst background stage design I've seen in a game this side of the '80s. Riot City doesn't look much worse.

On the other hand, I had to go left one time. Hooray innovation!

I'm really happy I can throw those guys and switch my throwable weapon type now!

So yeah, I've always HATED Sengoku 3 with a PASSION (mainly because everybody else seems to love it but dump on the first two - there really isn't anything in the game itself to prove much feeling in me, besides apathy). If I'm gonna be stuck playing a brawler I'd at least like to feel that the developers were at least trying.

How the heck do you manage to take a 364 megabit game and make it less memorable than a 55 megabit one? Beats me, it really does.

Can you slice a fish in half and watch as its eyes first go blank and then it falls over? No, you can knock a table out from underneath a pizza though!

Can you whack noggins off big samurai while riding through a forest of slowly-falling leaves? No, but you can pretend that Kurenai is "an extremely hot ninja babe" Mr. DeRienzo does here (http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sengoku/sengoku.htm). That's not the picture waddling through the screen during actual gameplay, sucker.

Speaking of waddling, some more gripes:

Yeah, I'd say that Sengoku 3 is headed in the right direction in the gameplay department when the yellow swordsmen throw up clouds of dust as they run in place before rushing you - at least you can tell what's coming. But they're completely tone-deaf in how they do it. It really does nothing for the atmosphere to have those cartoony puffs of dust and the Wile E. Coyote-style running in place animation.

I gave the dang game eight minutes (less this time than before - I know I let it drag on far longer last time since I got to the neon lit city, and I remember how wretchedly boring the China stage was last time) to throw something interesting out there, and it utterly failed. So yeah, screw you Noise Factory, and the bland stages you rolled across on (because there's probably no horse riding in this game - nothing vaguely interesting, in fact).

Now, if they could've sucked it up and increased the intensity (to more than something like three enemies onscreen at a time), done away with the cartoony blandness and excess, and done away with the thrown weapon attack in favor of a "switch to one of the other characters" just to increase your moveset, that could've been something interesting. Didn't happen though, so in the garbage it goes.

Completion time: zZZzzz
Difficulty: This could be the hardest beat 'em up of all time and it would FEEL easy. Noise Factory are masters of making the exciting bland, even in 2001 and with over six times the storage space of the first game in the series. Good job! Oh yeah, the game doesn't reset the score counter when you continue. Hard to say whether this would be the most shameless credit-feeder as a result when the first two push you over the highscore just for beating the final boss, though.

Final thought courtesy of tonight's whipping boy, David DeRienzo:


Combine all of these elements and you have [in Sengoku 3] one of the best beat'em ups ever made and quite possibly the best non-fighting game for the Neo Geo.
There you have it. Better than Blazing Star, Ninja Commando, the Metal Slug games, Shock Troopers, and Neo Turf Masters; on par with Final Fight, The Combatribes, Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga, Alien Storm, and so on. Good night Irene!

If y'all want to see a TRULY sub-par Neo game, though, there's always Ninja Combat. Thank goodness ADK went on to better things - like Ninja Commando, and a fair number of quite decent games.

[BetaWolf47]

Ed. Oscuro: Wow, damn that's harsh @ Sengoku 3! While I disagree with you about Sengoku 3 being a bad game, you put up a good argument here.

You seem to have a very high priority on level design. Every aspect of a video game is important, but for a linear beat-em-up, level design is quite possibly the least important aspect. No matter where you put it, it's just going to be a straight path with a bunch of pretty pictures in the end. Either way, the backgrounds aren't devoid of landmarks. The Japan stage has a shameless plug from Noise Factory. You can actually see their studio in the second scene. Not to mention the docks and interior of the temple in the China level.

You left out a lot of detail in this argument as well. For instance, this game has a lot of extra things that most beat-em-ups lacked, things which make the game better thanks to their inclusion. It has serious cutscenes and a decently involving story for a game of said genre. It also features some unlockable characters complete with unique weapons and attacks. Compare this to other beat-em-ups where unlockable characters, and even alternate characters, are just variations of other characters with different attributes. It really keeps the game fresh: when you start to get sick of the original four, they throw a new character in for you to use.

For animation, you only touched on the worst animation in the game. I'll agree with you about Kurenai: she is the worst character in the game, but for more reasons than her jumping animation. That aside, other characters have extremely good animation, such as Kagetsura's running and basic slashing, Kongoh's wide-area special attack, and Falcon's jumping. In fact, pretty much all of the animation is good other than that jumping animation.

You're right about the enemies and bosses. The difference in difficulty between a large group of enemies and just a single boss is staggering, though mainly because a boss cannot be juggled. You really have to exercise your special attacks with them, because you cannot exploit throws like you can in the Final Fight games. You also need to learn your combos; see which combination of punches and weapon strikes causes the most damage.

Nobody in this thread mentioned the music. Besides the Japan music, none of it is that special. A lot of beat-em-ups share this flaw: one level, usually the first one, has great music and then the rest just sounds like filler.

It's not a perfect game, but still within my top 5 for the system. I've got no idea what you mean by "You cannot tell what's going on, even the first 2 games with their level switching make more sense than this." Something tells me that your experience with Sengoku 1 & 2 have conditioned you to anticipate erratic level shifts.

[Arasoi]

Well, Obscuro's loquacious rant about Sengoku 3 got me to thinking I should do it's review sooner than later. Rather than counter argue I think I'd just rather express my own opinion on it overall.

Sengoku 3 is probably one of the best, if not the best beat em up I've played. And I've played quite a lot of them.

It's quite different than the other games of course, Noise Factory wanted to create something a bit different and succeeded fairly well. You get 4 characters with different attributes and weapons, and a good variety of locations to fight in. The artwork style I enjoyed a lot. Typical animu fare I suppose, but done pretty tastefully. The backgrounds are mostly static, the music for the most part is nothing special save for the brilliant Japan and Ending themes, and the enemy variety is somewhat lacking. This is all forgivable because of the gameplay.

The gameplay has several layers of complexity which make it enjoyable for casual beat em up fans or those wanting something with a bit more substance.

You can just jam on the attack button for a good combo, and jump like a standard beater. There's also a non melee attack button as well, and there is a standard clear enemies around/escape attack with a fun ninja twist.

By mixing up the attack buttons and learning the right combination you can actually get the character to perform different moves not available from just the button jamming. You have a super bar as well, like a traditional one on one fighting game that let's you power up your standard attacks and use entirely new ones with the proper controller motions. One would think this would be hard to do as you have free movement but in the middle of a combo it's incredibly easy and you can pull of some pretty wicked moves. In addition if you have earned a whole super move stock you can perform a fancy screen clearer unique to each character by pressing down, up + AB.

Frankly, there are so many fun combinations of moves and complexity to the gameplay that when a swarm of enemies comes onto the screen it's a joy to run at them and just go nuts with all the combo possibilities and try to get the combo meter to go as high as possible. As an avid fan of fighting games I just enjoy this game to no end because of it's depth.

The game is best played at difficulty 4-6, arguably as it can become slightly tedious on 7-8 staying in the same area fighting tons of the same enemies.

8/10

Let's get some suggestions for next weeks game in here, folks. Daylights a'burnin.

For next week I found a pretty.. bizarre game indeed that as far as I know never got a console port. Snacks'n Jaxson. I won't mention anything about it particularly, I'll just let scoots decide if it's too weird for Monday Mame.

[scooterb23]

Just bouncing in really quickly. I haven't had a lot of time to play this week...all of a sudden I've had a ton of stuff coming down on me.

I have to admit, I'm not the biggest beat 'em up fan in the world. I can see why people do like these games, but they don't really seem to stand out in any substantial way. I need to play some more, maybe that's what Sunday will be for.

Also, since the nomination ball is now rolling (and no game is too weird, but man...that one is weird!) let's hear 'em folks. Like I mentioned last week. I'd kind of like to see a game this week that perhaps you saw in arcades back in the day, but has never seen a home release...or hasn't been seen in a long time.

I think I'm going to nominate a game this week (again, remember, picks are random...so I have no more a chance than anyone else). I nominate Ataxx. I *think* a similar game came out as a Cool Spot puzzle type game on the NES, but I spent tons of hours playing this at my old bowling alley.

Keep the ideas coming!

[Ed Oscuro]

I've got no idea what you mean by "You cannot tell what's going on, even the first 2 games with their level switching make more sense than this." Something tells me that your experience with Sengoku 1 & 2 have conditioned you to anticipate erratic level shifts.
That was poorly worded and I considered editing it out (should have). The way the level shifts happen in S1&2 do make sense if you follow the story along (the usual "help from beyond" cliche at work). As I said, aesthetically the erratic level shifts of Sengoku 2 make sense and keep giving it that movie feeling; they also give a much-needed breather while looking cool - Noise Factory obviously spent their time elsewhere. I certainly like the level shifts more than watching my character shuffle along the ground (but on that note, LOL @ the two minibosses of Sengoku 2 right before the final boss). I also mentioned (I think your quote is referring to the point near where I said this) that I like the magic orbs system (except for the lack of choice, which is critically important) more than picking up random crap through levels and even more than using the usual stick-activated fighter combos.

Again, I think that seeing three different generic enemy types with embarrassingly limited movesets and bland personalities in nearly nine minutes of play is unforgivable.

I think you found exactly the right word when you said much of the music was "filler," but I'd extend that throughout most of the game.

If all there is to the game is mainly boss fights, why even bother padding out the rest with uninspired and frankly ugly junk? The game could've benefited if they made it more along the lines of Metamoquester, or Warzard, or Kyuukyoku Sentai Dadandarn, and focused their energies on making stuff not boring.

@Arasoi:
Sorry bro, nothing personal, but I have to check off some of the list here:

You get 4 characters with different attributes and weapons, and a good variety of locations to fight in.
As opposed to, say, Ninja Warriors Again? Many other games (like Warzard) come to mind as well. Variety of locations...Italy is the lamest stage I can think of, and China is pretty close. At least Sengoku 2 threw in some (pretty funny) stage-specific enemies so it didn't feel entirely like a cast of clone extras showed up at the wrong audition. Really not digging those wide expanses of intensely flat paving stone in Sengoku 3 either.


The artwork style I enjoyed a lot. Typical animu fare I suppose, but done pretty tastefully.
I have the feeling they didn't quite reconcile their wish to pay homage to Sengoku 2 (with the swordsmen's bones flashing through - incidentally this looks far better in Sengoku 2, even with the palette being strangely off) with using an "up to date" artwork style. If you put the sprites from S3 next to a King of Fighters or one of the Last Blade games, though, it becomes pretty dang evident that these are nowhere near the same quality. All they've done is used the palette limitation trick to avoid the grainy look of the older Neo titles, but to make good art you have to start with a good design. Again, there's some pretty inexcusably bad animation in here.

The smart aleck in me says that 75% of the artwork (visible at any one time) is actually the hideous backgrounds. Oh boy, I can't wait to interact with some tables and chairs! Incidentally, the yellow swordsman has a really silly grin fixed to his face the whole time.


The backgrounds are mostly static, the music for the most part is nothing special save for the brilliant Japan and Ending themes, and the enemy variety is somewhat lacking.
Only four enemy types in nearly nine minutes is merely "somewhat lacking?" I'm a boring enough person as it is; I don't need that kind of patience. ;)


This is all forgivable because of the gameplay.
I'm thinking it's mainly appealing because it seems to take the tightness of a vs. fighter and apply it to this genre, but again I point towards Warzard or any of the boss fighters, or (probably showing my inexperience with the genre again) games like Ninja Warriors Again which certainly feel tight enough.


You can just jam on the attack button for a good combo, and jump like a standard beater. There's also a non melee attack button as well, and there is a standard clear enemies around/escape attack with a fun ninja twist.
Generic fighter movelist: don't leave home without it. This establishes that it does meet the baseline for fighters such as established by Golden Axe. There's actually a bit more variety on account of the two main attack buttons but I haven't parlayed them into lots of combinations yet. I always felt the domino effect from throwing enemies in this game was pretty cartoony, even though Final Fight and similar games have basically the same thing (as I remember).


Frankly, there are so many fun combinations of moves and complexity to the gameplay that when a swarm of enemies comes onto the screen it's a joy to run at them and just go nuts with all the combo possibilities and try to get the combo meter to go as high as possible. As an avid fan of fighting games I just enjoy this game to no end because of it's depth.
It's pretty clear that Sengoku 1 & 2 lead you by the nose most of the time. S2 felt better about making the variety of available heroes more balanced and useful (although I could easily be wrong there; the staff Tengu is usually the better choice simply because you can keep enemies at a distance) than S1.

There's no question that the range of moves available (even factoring in the character change) in S1 & S2 is pretty limited in scope compared to S3, and there's the needless frustration of getting smacked around when you're trying to change (I saw this even in S2, though not nearly as much) and the orbs system does lead you by the nose a bit much. Still like these much more even so: I'd rather do something simple enough in a beautifully rendered environment than fight generic enemies in a generic environment.

I wouldn't say that I prefer simplistic games, though, certainly not when looking at shooters where I like both simple and complicated titles. My problem here is that S3 is an unbalanced game, in terms of keeping the excitement going: Waiting a good fraction of an hour for the first unusual enemy to show up doesn't really strike me as quality time.

I can't think of another game which is renowned for its depth of gameplay such as S3 which is so obviously lacking in polish across most of the game experience. Some people are making an argument close to that about Battle Garegga getting the top spot in this year's Shmups Top 25 poll, but I can't agree there.

Then again, I'm terrible at fighters so dump on the salt. :popcorn:

[Arasoi]

Hey there Ed. No offense taken, just let me sort of respond cordially here.

It's somewhat tough to say much more about the game to be honest, it's flaws are evident, I like it for the gameplay, the same way I can tolerate the ugly fucking horrible mess that is King of Fighters 2001, for it's superb gameplay(want to see some bad backgrounds? look no further). Sengoku 3 is a lot more tolerable to me in the A/V department than that one. It works fine.

I think your expectations of beaters are a bit different, and.. frankly playing a game for 9 minutes isn't really long enough to understand the gameplay depth. I understand the visuals aren't exactly a 3 ring circus of entertainment like the older Sengoku titles (I actually like playing both of these, they're quite enjoyable. I own Sengoku 1 on MVS) but this is a different game.

It seems like your complaints seem to primarily stem from the fact that game is called Sengoku, and your expectations are different. This is a somewhat reasonable point of view as it bears little resemblance to the crazyfun weirdness that was 1/2.

In closing I actually would recommend giving Gaia Crusaders a try. It's the predecessor to Sengoku 3 by Noise Factory in style, but actually has a lot more interesting visual elements and characters.

[BetaWolf47]

Gaia Crusaders is great in every aspect as well, once you get over how the characters move like mannequins.


In addition if you have earned a whole super move stock you can perform a fancy screen clearer unique to each character by pressing down all 4 buttons.
The screen clearing technique is done with just the punch and sword buttons, not all four at once.

[Arasoi]

Noted, and it's apparently d, u AB. I generally use the 3 button combination for the "NINJA VANISH" escape maneuver if I'm in trouble instead, I like saving energy for ending Falcon's combos with fire =)

[Ed Oscuro]

Thanks for the follow-ups, guys. I think what it comes down to is that I'd have to learn to play these better before I can get any mileage out of them. I don't think the 9 minutes is an issue; it's mainly that I wasn't able to tickle any depth out of the game, and I wasn't really feeling compelled to try to work at it (in the way that say Warzard would be inspiring).

[scooterb23]

Just poking in to remind everyone to nominate games for next week. I'll let this run tonight, since my sources are so awesome for getting games up quickly. Just remember, looking for some good obscure arcade games that we haven't seen much at home (and are under 10 Megs in size please :) ).

[BetaWolf47]

I'm a bit of a Taito fanboy. Let me nominate a few Taito games:

-Rayforce (known as Gunlock on MAME)
-Space Invaders '95
-Gekirindan
-The New Zealand Story
-Dungeon Magic

If I can only nominate one, then Dungeon Magic.

[scooterb23]

I'd prefer one at a time, so save those others for future weeks :) Your vote has been counted though.