Sengoku Basara 2 HD - Masamune Date | Story Mode

Now we play as Masamune Date, the character who easily has the most spotlight in this franchise. He is one of the few characters to get 6 stages to play. He gets a new subordinate called Kojuro Katakura who acts as a bodyguard for most of Masamune's stages. Bodyguards appear in story stages and...attempt...to follow the player around. Their AI can have them get hung on a wall or something and you won't see them for the rest of the stage, but they usually follow you around. They also trigger Sengoku Drive the same time you do and can actually be useful at distracting the enemy. Masamune retains his old S-string and Basara, which is still pretty effective. Still enters Six Sword Mode after using his Basara for a brief power up. He kept a lot of his moves and they all have English names, which is a nice touch. CRAZY STORM is more or less his bread and butter and I don't recommend ever removing it. It lets him combo an enemy for much longer than his S-string would normally allow. DEATH FANG is a launching attack that lets you air combo, so that can be fun. JET-X is sweeping attack good for keeping pressure off by sending enemies flying but it's too weak to really be worth using as an attack. MAGNUM STEP is great for closing the distance on an enemy, and is basically Dante's Stinger, so it's fantastic. PHANTOM DIVE is a very powerful attack that hits a wide range in front of Masamune, at the expense of having a flashing sheathing animation that is guaranteed to kill your combo. WAR DANCE lets him enter Six Swords Mode whenever you want, which can be fun to play around with but sort of impractical since you can't block while it's active. I hope you read all of those attack names in Masamune's Engrish. Masamune's first stage is a night time version of Ueda. It's similar to the regular version we played as Keiji, but it's a bit easier and doesn't have split paths. Feels very much like a "level 1" stage. It might even be unique to Masamune. The 2nd stage is Odawara, where we fight Ujimasa. Once we get past the initial group of enemies, an event will trigger where Odawara's big gate will begin to close. You can then mount a horse and attempt to reach the gate before it closes to get a stage bonus. It's pretty easy to do just by mashing Circle and using Basara to boost yourself past enemies. If your horse dies, there's like 2 more placed at checkpoints so there's some margin for error. After that, it's just reaching and defeating Ujimasa, who's still sporting that generic spear moveset from SB1. He doesn't really do anything to threatening as an enemy. The third stage has us fight Keiji at Hasedo, as he protects the enemy army that's retreating. The game psyches you out by playing your character's victory cutscene once you defeat the poor sap that challenges you at the start. And yes, that is Kanetsugu Naoe. He gets a unique appearance in SB3, but in this game he's just a generic dude. We have to fight Keiji a total of 3 times as we break through gates. Keiji isn't too hard to fight, but he does have access to some powerful charging attacks, so if you see him start to charge for a long time, you either want to run or protect yourself. I've had a fully charged attack from him take off over half a character's HP before. Masamune's 4th stage is the same Osaka stage we had as Keiji, so there's not much to add here. Masamune's 5th stage is so unique I forgot he even had it, since I only did it once. Seriously, this game is REALLY GOOD about stage variety. It's honestly kind of shocking. It's a 3-way battle, with you intruding on a Takeda-Uesugi fight at Kawanakajima. There's a TON of enemies to fight and the bonus objective is for defeating all of the officers. Sasuke guards the first gate to get us into the thick of the battle. Kasuga oddly doesn't appear, but we have to defeat both Shingen and Kenshin as they fight each other to win the stage. Masamune's 6th stage isn't really much of a stage, but more of a straight up duel with Yukimura. I unlocked WAR DANCE just before trying this stage so you'll see me equip it in the prep screen...buuut I cut out the battle I used that because WAR DANCE is kind of awful in boss battles. You can't block and that seriously screws you over on a hard and aggressive enemy, like final boss Yukimura here. I lost my first battle against him cuz of that, but I won the second when I went in with my usual load out.