Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi | Masamune Date (Anime Route)

Masamune's anime route in Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi. It's called the anime route because it has an anime cutscene at the end. SB4, like most SB games, is Japan only so there's no English text. Well, except for Masamune's random Engrish. I'll provide a story summary in the descriptions. Not doing the full on translation like in Utage because that takes forever and this is a lot more game to cover. We start with Masamune talking about how he's tired of staring at the backs of emperors and demon kings, and starts referring to himself as the "Dragon Lord". Occasionally misspelled as "Dragon load" when he uses his trademark Engrish. Anyways, he's taking things seriously now and making a grab for power. When he takes over territories, he subjugates the loser (but since he could be fighting someone random, they just talk about recruiting "new guys" and leave it at that.) After one of the fights, Masamune recalls when Kojuro stood up for him while his clansmen were worried about the Date's future when he first lost his eye back when he was called Botenmaru, his childhood name. When the anime route starts, Kojuro reports that Oshu has been attacked by Yoshiaki Mogami. Apparently many of the new recruits that were guarding Oshu turned over to the Mogami's side, or more specifically, to Yoshiteru Ashikaga. Who I guess Yoshiaki is working for now. After defeating him, Masamune decides to tackle Yoshiteru head-on despite this set-back, before their forces are worn down any further. Yoshiteru says that he had Yoshiaki attack Masamune just to incite him into action and seems to enjoy their fight together. He says Masamune is more like an emperor that makes his own rules rather than being a king that's bound by them. Masamune likes the idea of being a Dragon Emperor. In the anime cutscene at the end, Masamune is impressed with Yoshiteru's skills, so Yoshiteru offers to teach him, but he says no thank you, since the sword rain of his reminded him too much of the sword graves in Oshu. After he overcomes Yoshiteru, he says for him to travel a path beyond his own imagination and Masamune walks off saying he intends to, now becoming the Dragon Emperor. There have been buffs to every character's moveset for this game. Everyone now has a Hold Square and an L1+Square attack, as well as the ability to change R2s on the fly. A lot of characters can now use their attacks mid-air as well, which is cool and opens up more combo potential. Generally the characters feel better, so that's a good start. The stories are less, well, story focused than they were in SB3. People only have 2-3 endings now, and one is just a generic route with only one cutscene at the end. Which I guess is for the best if you just want this for the gameplay. Stories play the same pre/post stages dialogue for a few stages, then you get a route choice that ends in 2-3 battles. So just 5-ish battles per story, usually. In SB3 you could hear different dialogue playing the same stages on different routes, but that's not the case here, you always get the same and its usually just a few lines from your player character reacting to what happens in stage. At least that makes it easier for me to show everything. Sumeragi, unlike SB2 Heroes and SB3 Utage, is a full on expansion that has all the base game stuff and more. Heroes and Utage were these weird "standalone but kind of not" things. Like if you had Xtreme Legends but not the base DW game. Sumeragi treats itself more like a toy box, letting you have all the characters, and their full movesets, unlocked right from the start. Which I both do and don't like lol. Like at least I don't need to level characters to lv50 to get their full movesets anymore but it feels less of an achievement. You do still need to play the game to unlock stuff in the gallery like cutscenes and free mode stages though. Actually, I was told by someone else that the full movesets unlocked from the start was just a gimmick for the Anniversary edition of SB4: Sumeragi, which is the version I got. It comes with all the DLC on-disc so it lets me use the wacky cross over outfits you see in these videos. I tend to just alternate between outfits at random for variety