Sengoku Basara Retrospective: Devil Kings

In a well-lit office building on the top floor, an executive of a major gaming company inhales a line of a white powdery substance through a straw up his nose.  We will call him Crappy Com.

Shortly after, Crappy Com’s subordinate comes in.  This subordinate knows a thing or two about game design and what people like in a game.  We will call him Captain Obvious.

“Sengoku Basara is a decent hit,” says Captain Obvious.  “We should get it ready for America.”

Crappy twitches and stares at nothing in particular.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  America.  Yeah,” he says.  “I have an idea though.  What if we, like, do that, but make it NOT Japan?  No Japan.  Americans hate Japan.  Yeah.”  Crappy then sniffs a dribbling nose.

“That’s a terrible idea”, says Captain.  “Being in Japan the entire premise.  It’s where the title comes from.”

“Glad you like it.  Let’s do it!”

And thus, Devil Kings was born.

No T.M. Revolution.  We’re already off to a bad start.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and just translating Sengoku Basara into English, Capcom decided instead to make a version for English-speaking audiences that pretends the game doesn’t take place in Japan, let alone Japanese history.  This was unfortunately not an uncommon practice at the time, for both games and American-broadcasted anime.  Sometimes the implementation of this localization tactic can be a little annoying, but inoffensive, like in Case Closed, or it can be almost a non-issue like in Yu-Gi-Oh.  Hell, later that year Capcom released the first Phoenix Wright and that pulled it off to much acclaim.

Here’s the thing though: Case Closed, Yu-Gi-Oh and Phoenix Wright all take place in the modern day, where fashion and cultural norms between Japan and America largely overlap.  There is absolutely none of that in a historical Japanese setting, which is why The Great Ace Attorney didn’t even bother with it, only changing the names of minor characters and certain ones associated with Sherlock Holmes.

The original Sengoku Basara didn’t have much of a plot, but because Devil King takes out the setting, there’s even less context.  Instead it takes place on an unnamed continent in which a variety of warlords in Japanese armor, using traditional Japanese weapons, holding Japanese flags emblazoned with REAL LIFE JAPANESE CLAN INSIGNIAS fight each other for control.  Suspiciously one of them uses an axe shaped like a war fan made famous by Japanese warlord Shingen Takeda and another has a crescent helmet that looks identical to the one used by Masamune Date.  You know, one the most famous helmets in human history to the point that you can get it in Team Fortress 2.

It’s an insult to my intelligence the way Devil Kings tries to put up a farce that it isn’t about Japanese warfare.  In a couple of cutscenes the year is shown onscreen!  That famous Awkward Zombie comic about Phoenix Wright is an exaggeration for that game franchise, but in Devil Kings that’s exactly how it is!

Since it isn’t Japan that also means nobody has their Japanese names anymore so they’ve all been replaced with some of the most unimaginative, stupid names they could’ve come up with to make a fictional counterpart.

Not all of them are that bad.  Nobunaga is named Devil King, which works because even in the properly translated media other characters call him that.  Nouhime is an elegant lady with a butterfly motif so Lady Butterfly isn’t the worst name and since Masamune has a blue dragon motif, the name Azure Dragon is indicative.

Then there are some that are lame or make no sense.  Motochika becomes Arslan?  Yoshihiro is Zaan?  What?  I get why Kenshin was renamed to Frost, because he uses ice and has an icy blue outfit, but there had to be a better name than that.

Then finally there are names that are just plain stupid.  Xavi becomes Q-Ball because he has a bald haircut?  Shingen Takeda becomes Red Minotaur?  The TIGER of Kai was renamed to a minotaur just because of his horned helmet?  Yukimura is Scorpio?  The TIGER cub of Kai is named Scorpio?  Why?  Because he uses spears that thrust forward like a scorpion does?  Is that it?  These names are surface-level with no thought put into them.

The only saving grace is that at least Devil Kings’ script is accurate.  Almost none of the dialogue or characterization was changed so if you can mentally revise the original names back in, it’s still Sengoku Basara, but that still leaves the problem of taking out the central premise and replacing it with nothing.  Devil Kings has no world building.  All the stages are renamed to generic, nonspecific locations, the stage trivia is gone and all the character bios tell you practically nothing about any of the characters.

This being an English release, all of the renamed characters were given English voice actors so that stupid, incomprehensible method of speaking in the Japanese version is no longer an issue, but the English dub is one of the most mixed bags I’ve ever heard when it comes to voice acting.  Not the voice cast itself, mind you.  The voice cast is what you would get if Guardian went to a voice acting guild and yelled “Avengers, assemble!”  It is a team of the biggest, best A-listers you can possibly get out of Canada.  I hope you like Death Note and the Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Z because we’ve got Cathy Weseluck

Brian Drummond

Kirby Morrow

and even the Great Old One of the North, Garry Chalk!

No, the mixed bag comes from the direction they were given, resulting in acting that ranges from perfect to good to okay to bad.

Garry Chalk is perfect as Nobunaga Devil King.  Of course he is.  He’s the man.  Cathy Weseluck is also good at playing young boys and that carries over to Ranmaru Hornet.

Lee Tockar as Xavi Q-Ball is my second favorite performance next to Chalk because he hams it up with a ridiculous Italian accent and it’s a good translation of the hammy, funny-talking weirdo from the original.  I love his intro line.  “It’s time to test-a your faith!  Choose a-life-a or choose-a death-a!  I would suggest-a life.”  It’s the way he sincerely says that last part that gets me.

Others like Mark Gibbon as Takeda Red Minotaur and Andrew Francis as Yukimura Scorpio are miscast for their characters, but they’re good enough.  Characters like Kenshin Frost, Itsuki Puff and Motochika Arslan were given various accents for some reason, as if to further distance the setting from Japan.  That works for Q-Ball because speaking like a loon with a loose grasp on the native language is part of the character, but the accents on the others are out of place.  Their performances are about as good as they could be.

Brian Drummond as Yoshimoto Muri and Peter Kelamis as Mitsuhide Reaper though?  They sound like they have no idea what they’re doing and some of the lines from soldiers mid-battle are awkward too.  What happened here?

The attempt to hide the game’s Japanese origins is a big miss in the actual story and cutscenes, but Devil Kings did put at least some effort to do so in-game, and I don’t just mean changing rice balls and sake into generic gem power-ups.  In the original Sengoku Basara, pretty much every stage had the same enemies recolored for their respective army.  Devil Kings goes a step further in a few stages and reskins some enemies rather than recolor them.  The eponymous Devil King’s soldiers are armor-clad knights, Toshiie Lark’s soldiers have animal skull helmets and tribal shields and Reaper’s army is supposed to be armored demons, but because the wings on them are static it looks more like he has an army of guys in Halloween costumes.  Certain stages also have textures altered, like Ujimasa Orwick's castle being redesigned to be more of a vaguely Egyptian structure with his Anubis-looking soldiers.  In this regard Devil Kings has the advantage of more visual variety than the original game.

A shame they couldn’t do that for the menus.  Devil Kings has the most pathetic main menu of a game I’ve ever seen, which might seem petty to type, but the original’s was so stylish and beautiful that Devil King’s generic stone background is an insult by comparison.  All the charm is gone and the exciting menu music from the original is replaced by a generic twanging guitar that’s trying and failing to sound like the NWO theme.  The character select menu also doesn’t have the Makoto Tsuchibayashi artwork and instead uses 3D character renders, but I don’t think that one is because it was too Japanese.  The art can still be seen in the gallery and most future Sengoku Basara games would do the same thing so I’d say it’s more like they started making that the norm with this release.

Middle school students could do better!

If everything Devil Kings changed were purely cosmetic I wouldn’t have made a post dedicated to it.  Unfortunately, Capcom seemed to have tried experimenting with new ways to play with Devil Kings and the way they went about it feels like one step forward and one step back.

The core gameplay of using basic and special attacks for fighting mobs of enemies is still there, but the special attacks got changed up.  Instead of switching between 2 different special attacks, there are 2 different commands for using 2 different special attacks on the fly and the triangle button is now a dedicated “priming attack.”  This seems good on paper, because that means you effectively get 3 special attacks to use at once, but both priming attacks and the new special attacks are not implemented well.

The priming attack is a dedicated special attack that does little damage and instead “primes” those it hits to make them more vulnerable to damage.  These priming attacks are either repurposed special attacks from the original or in some cases new attacks made for Devil Kings.  Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 demonstrates how vulnerability conditions can be done well as a little extra combat option, but in Devil Kings it feels like priming attacks are an unnecessary extra step to the combat that you’re forced to do, especially since hitting primed enemies is the only way to get basara fury meter in Devil Kings.

That lightning circle graphic is lazily tacked on.

The two slots for special attacks you don’t have to switch between is a good idea, but it’s botched by Devil Kings taking them away at first.  In Devil Kings that priming attack is all you get at the start, meaning you don’t come into the game fully prepared.  By the end of a conquest mode run in Devil Kings you’ll be lucky to get more than one special attack unlocked because one thing that WAS kept from the original was the extremely slow level up process.  This is exacerbated by Devil Kings being one of those Capcom games at the time where the easy mode is the Japanese’s normal mode so you’ll think normal difficulty is the one balanced for low levels rather than the one made for challenge.  Yes, you can keep playing and grinding to level up and get a full loadout of special attacks, but Devil Kings is just as light on the number of stages as the original so that gets just as repetitive.

Whether the gameplay and visual changes for Devil Kings is for the better is subjective, but I would forgive Devil Kings for experimenting with new ideas if it weren’t for the biggest change of all: it cuts out 4 of the playable characters from the original, including Yoshihiro Zaan and Reaper, neither of whom are moveset clones.  By taking out a quarter of the game’s cast, combined with the removal of the trivia part of the gallery, Devil Kings is objectively worse than the original Sengoku Basara.

Sure, Devil Kings has an A-list English cast, varied visuals and maybe better gameplay if you’re willing to put a lot of time into such a content-light game, but the original has more characters, a better, more consistent style throughout and gameplay that is much easier to pick up and play.  Devil Kings as a localized release isn’t as bad as something like the original release of Revelations: Persona or anything from Ignition Entertainment, but it’s still an inferior version of an already mediocre game.  I give it a 5 out of 10 just like the original game.  The only thing keeping it from rating lower than the original is because simply being in English is a major plus to ease of playability and it still has some of the fun of the original in there.

Devil Kings wasn’t exactly panned, but it wasn't received as well as the original game was in Japan and it’s generally mocked and dismissed by Sengoku Basara fans.  Despite this, many gamers have mad nostalgia for Devil Kings when it came out and they didn’t know the original game existed and there are even some outlying Sengoku Basara fans that actually prefer it to the original so at least it’s not a total bust.

 

Capcom doesn't shy away from Devil Kings having been made either.  They've since used the name Sengoku Basara in all translated media, but in the Capcom character encyclopedia the Sengoku Basara characters present in the first game all have their names from the "heavily localized" Devil Kings pointed out.  They could've done what Atlus did with the first Persona and try to pretend the PS1 version didn't happen, but Capcom owns their mistake.

After the weak reception, Capcom learned their lesson and for the next game they made the wise decision to properly translate it into English so that English speakers could enjoy Sengoku Basara the way it was meant to be, right?  RIGHT?!  That's the logical takeaway to any company not on hardcore narcotics!