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Title: Sengoku
Author:SNK
Rom Player: NeoRAGEx
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Synopsis: SNK proves that there are evil samurais, lots of them. Sengoku puts you in the ass-kicking boots of a warrior, who is supposed to be a samurai despite looking like a colorful character from Mad Max. The second player guy, on the other hand, looks like some sort of flaming gigolo cowboy. I don’t know what “Sengoku” means, but apparently, my Spellchecker does. Getting back to the story, the problem is that four hundred years ago, this evil warlord and his magically rotating, floating castle were causing some trouble. Two samurais, only two, manage to take out his entire army and either kill or banish him, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, he says that he’ll come back in four hundred years and sure enough, he did. Judging from the landscape of the game, he had a little bit of time to mess up the surrounding city. You set out, punching and kicking whatever weird ninja or ninja-like things come in your way. You get these different colored orbs that give you some different kinds of swords for a short time with which to julienne your foes. One orb gives you a single “samurai sword,” another gives you two of such swords, and yet another one gives you this two handed sword called the “holy sword.” There are two other colors, one gives you an extra life if you get ten, and the other is a mystery (It lets you shoot crap from your fists, sorry to ruin the surprise). Along the way, killing certain foes will release spirits that will give you health, let you shoot stuff out of your fists briefly, or join you. This is interesting, as you can switch with these guys at any point in the game. Unfortunately, there are only three, a samurai with a sword, some weird ninja who flips instead of walking, and a really tough dog. The problem is that you all share the same life bar, and you can only have a spirit helping you for about a minute’s worth of time. After that, they vanish until you find them again. If you die without spending all of their time, they stay with you and their times refill. The beginning enemies are easy enough to take out with your bare hands, but as the game progresses, you quickly find foes that are much stronger than you. The most prevalent, and most dangerous, are these multicolored evil samurais who always have a sword, without exception. Life sucks for you if you don’t have one at the moment. There is, in fact, a way to catch and break their sword in your hands, but it requires incredible timing and will most likely be accomplished by tapping the crap out of the attack button. After that, they start punch you, and unfortunately for you, they punch farther than you. That’s just one guy, but he annoys the hell out of me, smacking me down whenever I try to jump kick him. Anyway, the rest of the enemies follow the Japanese motif, the bosses will even introduce themselves with some subtitled Japanese. The sound effects are bizarre with all the sword clanging and weird evil ninja noises. The music is, as you may have guessed, reminiscent Japanese, but sounds ok during boss battles. The main problem this game had was that it is very difficult. This is a decent game, but watching yourself on the receiving end of a feudal beatdown may bring you down a little.
Best Cheats: Nothing Entered
Game Play: 7
Graphics: 7
Music/Sound: 6
Originality: 7
Overall Rating: 7
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