The game too good
You do have a few more tricks up your sleeve beyond your standard attacks. As you dish out and absorb punishment and conquer enemy camps by defeating the zombielike commanders stationed at each one, you fill up two meters. One allows you to briefly enter a slow-motion mode called hero time, and the other lets you perform your character's Basara art, a devastating technique that unleashes a flurry of hundreds of attacks on nearby enemies. These techniques are particularly useful against some of the many generals and other named enemies you encounter, who can be challenging. That is because, unlike the soldiers who serve them, they make an actual focused effort to defeat you and can absorb a lot of damage before they fall. This challenge isn't nearly enough to make these fights interesting; on the contrary, these prolonged and simple battles only call attention to the shallowness of the combat. Anything that brings them to a close more quickly is welcome, especially because there are no checkpoints within levels. This makes death a potentially infuriating setback, particularly when it comes at the end of 45 minutes or so of tedious combat, which you're then faced with the prospect of having to repeat. All in all Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is a 9.5 on my count