YMMV / Sengoku Basara X

• Game-Breaker:
  • The game is plagued with infinites and touch-of-death combos at high levels of play, but two kinds stand out among the rest:
    • Space Vacation loops exploit a quirk in how Aerial Attacks and their followups interact with launch scaling to infinitely juggle the opponent, with the properties of said followups causing both characters to eventually fly to the top of the screen, and potentially out of it, especially in the Playstation 2 version, which seems to remove the upper boundaries of stages. This also causes a number of strange interactions with other mechanics. For example, both characters can easily end up flying outside the range of Engun Counters, preventing the opponent from escaping.
    • Somewhat more difficult than Space Vacation loops but no less noteworthy are Track and Field combos, which take advantage of an oversight regarding what happens when you hit an opponent with a fully-charged Blowback Attack and cross them up. Since they never actually hit the wall, you can repeat whatever setup you used to cross them up in the first place, trapping the opponent in a state of being perpetually Punched Across the Room.
  • In terms of individual characters, Mouri Motonari is generally considered to be the best in the game by a long shot thanks to his best-in-class zoning. He has orbs that block projectiles and can be used to extend combos, mines that trigger unblockable explosions and set up combos, incredibly potent assists that cost very little Engun gauge and also help with space control, and a ranged super that both seals the opponent's Engun gauge and can route into an infinite. He does require a lot of resources to pull this off, but he doesn't have much of an issue gaining those — his Engun level-up rate is so fast that he'll be at level 100 by the time most of the cast reaches level 50, and he can hit his assists to gain a ton of meter and give the opponent another kind of projectile to contend with. This does cost Engun levels, but the aforementioned fast level-up rate makes that less of an issue.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • A fully-charged Blowback Attack (or moves with similar properties) sends the opponent flying into the opposite wall, allowing you to chase after them by holding forward. If you cross up the opponent while they're in this state, they won't hit the wall, and remain in hitstun the entire time. A skilled player could theoretically keep them in this state as long as they can prevent the opponent from hitting either wall.
  • The game features a launch scaling mechanic, where each hit in a juggle combo launches the opponent less and less distance. However, if a combo lasts for 30 hits or more, it overflows, causing the launch height of the attack to exceed the opponent's falling speed. Chaining into an Aerial Attack after this allows for potentially infinite strings of aerials, since the launch scaling causes each Aerial Attack followup to float the opponent up at ever-increasing speeds.
  • Kenshin's Speed Up state is supposed to end after the opponent hits the ground or you land 5 attacks. However, their Taunt, despite having a hitbox, does not count towards the latter limit. This means that you can land a counter, then juggle the opponent with repeated taunts until you've fulfilled the conditions for a Space Vacation combo.
  • Tadakatsu has quite a few, to the point where it's speculated that he was added at the last minute:
    • Inputting the motion for his Super Drill super while hovering close to the ground during Flight Mode will cause you to exit Flight Mode and perform the super, but for no clear reason, this also massively increases its range and the number of hits it does, with damage increasing accordingly. Crushing the opponent's guard with it or using the Engun followup and missing with it increases the damage even further for even less clear reasons.
    • After firing normal bombs or missiles^note quarter circle forward + any attack button., inputting down twice, then the same button used for the special immediately afterwards will cause Tadakatsu to immediately fire another round. Timing this so that the game doesn't interpret it as charging the special move can be difficult, but when done correctly, it can be used for some truly oppressive zoning, especially when combined with the lasers from his reinforcements.
    • While hovering close to the ground in flight mode, inputting the motion for any variant of his bombs during the hitstop of any of his aerials will cause him to immediately land, and he can act almost immediately after doing so.
    • His Defense Mode normally lasts for a limited time. However, there are at least four different ways to make it last for the rest of the match.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Masamune is generally considered to be the worst character in the game by a considerable margin. While most of his kit isn't inherently awful in a vacuum, it pales in comparison to what the rest of the cast is capable of, leaving him thoroughly Overshadowed by Awesome. As if that wasn't enough, despite being the game's resident Shotoclone, he doesn't even have ease of use going for him — his high-damage combos are among the most difficult in the game, and while he does have infinites like most of the cast, his only work on specific characters on the left side of the stage.