284. Sengoku (SNK, Arcade (PS2), 1991)

Like game # 282, Burning Fight, Sengoku is another SNK beat-'em-up, but with a supernatural twist. Instead of beating up a bunch of street toughs in modern Japan, in Sengoku, an Evil warlord who vowed revenge in 400 years, makes good on his premise and invades modern japan with a demon army turning into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You star as one of two tough dudes, who are unfortunately not selectable, because player 2 looks like Macho Man Randy Savage. 

Gameplay starts out very typical for an early 90s beat-'em-up: There is a single attack button, the attacks come out fairly slow, the jump is super floaty, and it's often very difficult to tell if you're going to make contact with an enemy or not. There are numerous colored orbs that you can pick up that will give you different swords. These swords increase your range and attack power, but most importantly, they leave sick neon slash trails of blood when you finish an enemy. 

Sengoku sports an interesting dual level-structure thing going on where you're constantly transporting up and down between heaven and earth. While you are in heaven, there is tonally odd traditional Japanese music with weird vocals, while the earth stages have normal arcade music. In the first level, you quickly gain the power to shapeshift into a dog god, demon samurai, or ninja in addition to your human form. When transformed, if you run out a 60 second timer when using these forms, you lose that particular form until you are able to beat a certain powerful enemy, though usually I just diced before the timer expired.

In the spirit of the swords being cool to look at but not that fun to use, Sengoku also has a lot going on to keep you interested. At one point I defeated a giant skull that was spawning enemies, so a wizard gave me a hand. The first level boss fight takes place on the back of a horse stampede.  While there's a single attack button, there are a wide variety of attacks, depending on your current power state. The best attack I was able to use, as the dog a spit out a tiny spirit dog that bit an enemy's leg. There's enough here that I am hopeful that the 2 Sengoku sequels improved on the gameplay but kept the weird.

3/5, a conceptually and visually cool beat 'em up that is lacking in the gameplay department