Like the movie industry before it, the growing popularity of video games has allowed a number of companies to produce more and more experimental games. Definitely one of the more... daring games in recent memory, Sengoku Turb has somehow garnered a small cult following in Japan. Anyone that imports the game, however, is likely to chalk that up to a severe case of cultural and language differences.
Jino-chan was your everyday intergalactic bounty hunter - leggy, blonde, and bloodthirsty. Pursuing her arch nemesis, Doppa, to the heart of a bear-shaped world, Jino-chan mistakenly detonates the cuddly planetoid, narrowly escaping with her life. Hurtled through the stars, Jino lands on a peaceful world and gets caught up in a devastatingly cute world war. Jino-chan sides with the more peaceful side of the war, which is unable to defend itself, using her skill as a bounty hunter to lead the inexperienced army to victory. All the while, she finds the ugly past creeping up on her waiting to strike back.
As relatively normal as the game's story may sound, Sengoku Turb is by no means a normal game. At its heart, Sengoku Turb is a 3D action-adventure hybrid with a smattering of role-playing for good measure. The basic concept is interesting enough: You equip a small band of soldiers to lead against the invading hordes. Using a variety of weapons and armor left scattered around the overworld by the defeated hordes, you upgrade your developing army, watch it gain experience levels, and watch Jino-chan grow herself. The concept's execution is an entirely different matter, however. The gameplay is action-oriented, with players running around the game's various landscapes hacking up various enemies. A majority of the game's weapons are extremely close range, however, requiring you to press right up against the enemies in order to hit them. Once you get ranged weapons, you'll instantly see that the creators of Sengoku Turb have yet to find a way around the problems of aiming a gun in a 3D environment. The game's slow, unwieldy camera makes it harder than it should be to find the enemies you're attacking, forcing you to rely on the radar almost exclusively. The game's control is rather stiff and disjointed, making moving around even more of a chore. Commanding the soldiers in battle could've been an interesting exercise in strategy but instead just becomes a diversion. Your soldiers have almost no AI, causing them to run into enemies and take hits for Jino-chan, making them more like a collection of animated shields than actual offensive units. With no way to heal or strategically command units, you will either die quickly or lose a lot of soldiers, in no way due to user error, but rather a lack of competent design.
Sengoku Turb definitely has a look all its own, but this isn't a particularly good thing in this case. The game's graphics, rather intentionally, are derived from a series of odd Japanese crayon drawings and turn into equally odd 3D models. The characters look like Playmobil people designed under the influence of some serious hallucinogens, and the world is flat and basic looking, sporting obscenely colorful textures. Slowdown is prevalent, as well, an odd thing considering the intentionally low polygon counts the game's art sports. While some of the game is interesting to look at, it mostly comes off looking like one of the Super Nintendo's FX chip-based 3D games, not a game from the next generation of 3D entertainment. The game's music is pleasingly spunky, but any aural pleasure derived from that is quickly lost through the game's painful sound effects. From the screeches of the characters "talking," to the constant clatter of Jino-chan's spindly legs, Sengoku Turb's sound effects are simultaneously unpleasantly shrill and decidedly boring.
Getting through Sengoku Turb without knowledge of Japanese won't be too hard, thanks to some English menus and the RPG's reliance on descriptive numbers. However, if there's anything worthwhile to this game, it must be hidden in the game's extremely Japanese story and setting. Sengoku Turb's poor design, overly "unique" visuals, and piercing sound effects conceal a potentially great game concept. Sengoku Turb's only remaining value is its oddity. It'll definitely be in importers' bargain bins before too long.
