Sengoku 3 (the best brawler ever made)

[Shay Chaise]

Without any hyperbole, this is the best 'progressive brawler' I've ever played. I can say that with some confidence because I'm not much of a fan of the genre and I've been rather disappointed when revisiting Double Dragon or even the M2 3DS port of Streets of Rage 2. I just find them overly repetitive and transparently greedy credit guzzlers. It's funny, though, because I used to love this kind of thing as a kid. TMNT arcade was probably the first game that I dreamed about and which I specifically looked forward to playing on a rare trip to Rhyl or wherever. I couldn't get enough of hammering the buttons and doing the same move again and again against various palette swap bad guys. I recently completed it at Arcade Club in Bury with a couple of mates but we were bored well before the end, and I think we only saw it through out of respect for our nine-year-old selves who would once have given a couple of fingers and toes for a free play TMNT cabinet.

Sengoku 3, then, is only the second brawler I've ever completed but it's some distance ahead of any other I've played. While the graphics are charming and chunky and detailed and solid, and the soundtrack and effects are suitably moody and gruesome, it's the core fighting mechanics which make this rather special. I'm not kidding when I say that it reminds me of Street Fighter 4, my favourite fighting game ever. While the two-button combos only have some limited variety depending on the sequence of buttons pressed, it's the ability to juggle and - most importantly - dash to extend the combo which gives me something of the same feeling. Interrupting combo animations by double tapping the stick and linking the chain further genuinely evokes SF4's FADC (focus attack dash cancel), which is probably the most satisfying and thrilling mechanic of any game I've played. No more are you mindlessly bashing punch and kick, you're fully alert and trying to get your spacing just right to eke out that extra juggle hit to launch your opponent enough to catch the full force of your special meter-draining power attack. It feels bloody good and it's one you really must experience for yourself to understand the appeal.

The story and structure and everything else are perfectly serviceable, to my eye, but the core gameplay is the hero and it's comfortably worth the price of entry alone. The only misstep the game makes is with the final boss which is simply too hard and surprisingly cheap. It unleashes a charged special move every few seconds at times, which is doubly irritating because it also grants him invulnerability and hurts you if you attack. There may well be a trick to it but my response was to brute force until the credits rolled. Despite this sour note, Sengoku 3 is an absolute blast, straight into my top five Neo Geo games and one I'll be firing up for local co-op at the earliest opportunity. For me, it's the pinnacle of the genre.

Anyone here played a better example of the form?

[bgmnts]

Castle Crashers.

[Shay Chaise]

Administrator, please ban.