The type of people who balk at the historical inaccuracies in films like Zak Snyder’s 300 would probably lose their boring minds at the treatment the Sengoku, or ‘warring states’ period of Japan is given in Japanese popular culture, particularly games.

Characters relationships, appearances and humanities are regularly fodder for video games such as Samurai Warriors, Devil Kings and the latest Sengoku Basara game Samurai Heroes. It'd be like a game version of the Crusades where Richard the Lionheart was a girl, breakdancing cyborg who fired lasers from her crotch and summoned dragons from her imagination to fight the armies of Saladin. Despite its colourful interpretation of Japanese history the Sengoku Basara series from Capcom is a hugely popular hack and slash title in Japan; but western players may have trouble getting their heads around it.

Firearms made their first appearance in Japan the Sengoku period

The game is set during the The Sekigahara Campaign in the closing days of the Sengoku period where several battles lead to the eventual showdown of rivals Ieyasu Tokugawa, who becomes shogun (omg spoiler), and Ishida Mitsunari who becomes dead. While these two wise old generals were in their late fifties when they locked horns in real life, in Sengoku Basara they shave about thirty years of their age. The wise general Ieyasu becomes an ambitious youngster who wears a hoodie over his armour and the ‘bureaucrat samurai’ Mitsunari becomes a screaming emo warrior with purple forward combed hair. Even better, Ieyasu’s faithful retainer Tadakatsu Honda becomes a robot with a jet pack who Ieyasu rides around on like a magic carpet. So, historical accuracy is not the goal of Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.

The game is very similar in execution to the Koei Warriors titles (Dynasty Warriors, Gundam Warriors) in which your army has to defeat an opposing force with your single character doing most of the work, killing enemy troops in their hundreds and tackling a few tougher officers along the way. Sengoku Basara has map sections that need to be captured by killing an officer in a little hut. This creates a spawn point for your own troops and sometimes unblocks a route you couldn’t previously take. For the most part it’s the same process of button mashing and racking up ridiculous kill counts. The attacks are same button combos across the different characters, just with different results such as area of effect or speed attacks. Around ten characters are available at the beginning of the game with another ten available by completing the game with other characters or fulfilling special conditions.

I'm standing on a horse and have six swords, you're challenge is irrelevant

As you play, your character levels up and earns items that can be used to create upgrades for your equipped weapons at the 'Basara Mart' between battles. Basic upgrades like increases in health or attack power are easy enough to come buy, but more advanced upgrades that add elemental powers like fire and lightening are harder to come by and require unique materials that can only be gained on certain levels or by achieving a certain goal such as defeating a thousand enemies in one battle. While the Basara Mart adds some depth to the game its needlessly confusing and while most of the games elements have handy in game tutorials the Basara Mart does not.

Graphically the game looks the part with decent graphics and bright, crazy colours as you would expect. Attacks produce plenty of flashes and sparks depending on an attack being parried or not. Some of the characters super attacks look extremely impressive. The soundtrack is your usual throwaway Japanese rock with lyrics awkwardly translated into English, it would have been much better to keep the original Japanese, I may not understand it but its easier on the ears. One major hiccup is the voice acting, most of the characters don’t seem to be suited to their voice actor at all and many are hideously annoying. The lack of an option to switch on Japanese language with subtitles is frustrating.

Ieyasu demonstrates his skills at making things asplode and abstract masonry

If you’re not a fan of the repetitive grind gameplay of the Japanese beat’em up then Sengoku Basara is going to immediately choke your fun gland and wrinkle your brow. Even fans of the more familiar Dynasty Warriors may have cause to pause, Sengoku Basara often has less enemies on screen and levels that are much smaller than the average Dynasty Warriors battle ground. Some of its innovations, including more aggressive enemies that try and capture territories back from you and devices like flying foxes to quickly traverse maps add a lot to the genre, but they don’t quite lift the game above any of it’s Koei competitors. On the plus side Sengoku Basara does a pretty good job of maintaining gameplay flow, there’s rarely a moment that you have to wander for empty, boring minutes to find a fight or tackle an objective, but the compromise for this smoother gameplay is smaller level designs.

The real problem here is that these types of game have made a name for themselves with big battlefields and hundreds of enemies on screen at once; shortcomings for Sengoku Basara which has a more intimate angle on the action. Unfortunately because the action is so repetitive, not the crazy combo fest of say God of War or Bayonetta, this isn’t such a good thing. More often than not it feels like Dynasty warriors with a x2 zoom turned on.

Kotaru Fuma, one of the 'cool' characters, laying down some ninja magic super attack of some kind

Speaking as a pretty huge fan of the repetitive beat’em up genre the thing that really rubbed me the wrong way, as it will many western players, was the flamboyant weirdness of the characters. In most of these types of games the characters, being real historical figures, are treated with some level of respect and proceedings are carried out seriously, for the most part. Sengoku Basara is a little… odd, in its portrayal, the robotic jet packing Honda I can forgive, but the following examples point to a game that’s not just renting a flat in crazy town, it’s running for mayor. At one point you’ll be chased through a castle by a samurai wielding two chainsaws who will make jokes the whole time about why his wife left him. Another enemy fights you with a cooking pot on his head and his charged attack is to summon a giant pot of boiling vegetables and hurl huge bits of steaming celery and tofu at you. There’s yet another samurai general with an overly effeminate manner (think The Yes Guy in the Simpsons) who sports, I kid you not, a lightning bolt Dick Dastardly style moustache. There’s plenty more oddball elements, but I think you get the idea.

Any humour these characters may convey is definitely lost in translation. The fruity and oddball elements either come across as wildly inappropriate or more often just plain annoying. The characters personalities clash very poorly in the game as well, during the final battle for Ieyasu’s campaign you have to battle the aforementioned cooking pot guy, who talks like a Sesame Street character to boot, who is partnered with a brooding sickle wielding bad guy with a gothic, menacing demeanour. It just feels… stupid.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a screenshot of the cooking pot attack so here's another spinning blade something attack

If you’re a fan of the genre then Sengoku Basara: Samurai Warriors is most likely the best of this type of game you’re going to play this year. With a decent (although again moderate number compared to Dynasty Warriors) group of twenty characters to level up and plenty of items and weapons to be gathered Samurai Warriors will keep you happily button mashing until Dynasty Warriors 7 gets a western release. The smaller scale of battles can be forgiven by genre fans for the smooth gameplay and nice graphics. If, however, the mere mention of a -insert title- Warriors game makes you gnash your teeth and/or chuckle cynically then this not a game you are going to find in any way enjoyable. For people in the third camp, inexperienced in the genre, Sengoku Basara could be a good start to your education and if you enjoy it there’s a pretty huge back catalogue of games I can recommend.