Recent reviews by Sephilar

First of all, I must say that as someone that played SW4 (in consoles), I couldn't avoid thinking at first that a "spin-off" like this one would probably not be worth to buy at full price again, but I was actually surprised to find that was not the case after finally playing the game two years after it was released.

If you know your history about the Sengoku period, or/and you've already played the previous SW games (although only SW3 and SW4 are focused in the storytelling), you'll probably already know what this game is about, if not, if you're looking to play a happy game with a happy ending, search elsewhere.

This game unlike the previous SW games, focuses of the Sanada clan, a clan that loyally served the Takeda clan until the death of Shingen Takeda and shortly after they were wiped out by Nobunaga Oda, and they struggle to survive in a land of chaos and turmoil, which would eventually divide the clan into half in order to survive. The game actually has two main characters to speak of, one as you would expect, Yukimura Sanada, still to this day venerated as one of the best samurais Japan ever had, and his father, Masayuki Sanda, which was the leader of the clan after the fall of the Takeda, and also known as one of the best strategists of its time. It has the same new gameplay it gains from SW4 with the Hyper Attacks, and its heavy focus on lowering the morale of your enemies to achieve victory, and the addition of the Rage Mode. The concept is very similar to the Rage Mode found in DW5-DW8, your character gains a boost of attack and super armor, plus the level of your Rage Mode here depends on the amount of your Spirit Gauge, the more you've, the stronger your Rage Mode will be when you use it, and the more enemies you defeat while in Rage Mode, the more you can increase its level withing the time allowed, and you can use a more powerful version of the character's Musou Attack.

Personally, what makes this game even better than SW4 is that you get more than just one battle after another like many Warriors games, you control a character while you're in a city, and you can do optional quests with rewards after completing them, you can fish, you can upgrade your weapons, you can talk to the citizens there, and you can make medicine with the materials you got to use them later in battle among other things. Furthermore, there's also new territories you're able to explore while you're progressing in the story, some of them are mandatory to advance in the story, like for example avoiding being caught by the enemy while you're escaping, but there will be times when you'll want to return again to discover the entire map of those places and recollect materials to be used later with what I mentioned before.

Also, unlike other Warriors games, in order to explain the story of the Sanada, years actually pass in this game, which goes over 2 generations. This means that you get to see how certain characters like Yukimura and Masayuki actually grow in both personality and physically with the passing of years, with at first controlling a weak Yukimura when he was just a kid, until controlling and adult Yukimura even stronger than any other Yukimura you played in other Warriors games.

With all that said, just make sure to play at least in Hard difficulty especially if you’re not new to Warriors games, otherwise except for the last battles like the Battle of Sekigahara, it will be too easy to beat except for the fact of trying to complete all the challenges in each battle. But even then, if you compare the game with say DW8, I would say the game is definitely more difficult in comparison especially for having to avoid fields where the enemy has the morale extremely high, or even worse when you can't avoid fighting them even with those conditions.

The future of VNs is here now with Alice in Dissonance, and now I can say for sure that what I am saying is not an exaggeration.

If you're into a beautiful and a touching story, Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell while short (about 2 hours long) can't do the job more better than the way it does, with a beautiful art that along with the sound effects and the camera system, will make you feel that you're really inside a living fairy tale reading its contents, finding along the way that there's more to it than meets the eye.

If by some chance you're reading this but you're not sure if give the fault series a chance even though you enjoyed reading Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell or the other way around, the creator of the series is the same person, and you'll not need to know that because you'll just realize that yourself once you do, as all of them follow the same pattern and is what makes the fault series (including this spin-off) stand on its own. In short, with the target audience that is aimed to, chances are you'll definitely like either the fault games or Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell if you already enjoyed one of them.

Without any doubt the best GG so far, yeah, far better than even the one most known now as Xrd. But be aware that is extremely difficult to play this game at a high level (and unlike BlazBlue and Xrd there's not any tutorial to help you out, you must learn everything from the very start for yourself) so it's probably not the best option to start if it's your first time playing fighting games, but otherwise this is definitely one of the best fighting games ever made.