Samurai Warriors 5 - Nobunaga's Path | The Incident at Honnoji (Part 47)

Well, here we go. The final (not actually final) stage. Hell it's not even the last one in Nobunaga's Path, but we'll get into that later.

The stage itself is nice, glad to see it's unique. We start just fighting off the Akechi coming at us, but before long, Iga ninjas appear and say they'll get revenge for the destruction of the Iga village.

As you should be aware, we know absolutely nothing about this. It's another thing that happened off-screen. This one we didn't have the luxury of the narrator even telling us what happened, and the Iga ninjas don't make it clear if Nobunaga or Mitsuhide did it. I had assumed Nobunaga did it initially, since Sandayu shows up with a massive hate boner for the guy all of a sudden, but nah, it was Mitsuhide that did that.

Speaking of Sandayu...

9:55

Yeah, he just...puts on some random armor and starts acting like a fucking looney. I literally started to laugh out loud seeing how ridiculous this anime power up was. They even made his eyes glow and have him wave his arms around like he's gone berserk or something. Of course, he still just fights exactly the same with the Kusarigama anyways, all this is is a cosmetic change that does nothing. And this armor? Never explained. None of Sandayu's powers are explained, he's like some OC fanfic character that just keeps having bullshit powers come up out of nowhere so he can look cool and like he always has a one-up to whoever he's fighting. We'll see this more in Mitsuhide's Path, but he spends all of his later scenes just acting like he's masterminding everything even though every single one of his plans ends in failure. He's just like "Ha, it failed, just as planned."

Now, as for WHY he suddenly wants to kill Nobunaga... Well, first of all, I've had people tell me Hideyoshi at one points mentions Sandayu's family was murdered by "warriors" and he's held a grudge on them ever since. I've absolutely no goddamn idea where this was said, despite checking my own videos to try to find it, but in either case, it did NOT have enough attention drawn to it as it needed. It's apparently easily missable and not even said by the character in question.

Now let's check 11:52

Sandayu says he despises the warrior-class and the world that's centered around them, initially supporting Nobunaga because he thought he was going to break that system. But now he believes Nobunaga is trying to make a new world of warriors...for some reason. And yes, I double checked the translation, it's pretty much accurate.

But I've no idea why Sandayu suddenly decided this about Nobunaga, and apparently did so WAY early on considering he was manipulating Mitsuki as far back as Odani, if not earlier. So he really didn't give Nobunaga much of a chance here. And if he hates warriors THAT much, we really should have seen like a flashback showing what happened in his past that caused that so we can at least properly understand where he's coming from. And before all that, if ANYONE was going to destroy the current social structure of Japan, it'd be Nobunaga. Sandayu is trying to kill literally the one person that would be MOST in line with his thinking. I don't... Like... Just... Why!?

And after all that? He just fucking leaves. He gets beat and goes "WELL FINE, YOU GUYS JUST KILL EACH OTHER THEN!" like he's just fucking pouting he couldn't do anything. The whole thing amounted to NOTHING because he just leaves. All he did was set Honnoji on fire, which, by the way, takes away from Mitsuhide's character because that initially served to show his resolve in fighting Nobunaga, but now it's just "man, setting fire to the temple, Sandayu's a dick". As if Mitsuhide WOULDN'T do that.

Okay, anyways, the stage itself. The fire actually adds an extra layer of difficult to the stage, which is nice for the finale. Your health is constantly draining from both your characters so you have to periodically pick up health items to keep from dying. We fight Toshimitsu and Mitsuhide twice here before Mitsuhide finally respawns inside Honnoji. How...how the fuck did he get there..?

Anyways, once we reach the top we have a duel with Mitsuhide...that we don't get to finish. It's the first enemy with 3 health bars so you think "Oh, they're ramping it up because it's the final boss." But nope. Once you get Mitsuhide down to his last health bar, the stage just ends. You don't actually get to finish the fight which is INCREDIBLY anti-climactic for a finale. I dunno why on Earth you would ever do that for your ending. Like, imagine you're fighting Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising, you see the 200% HP and go like "oh shit" but then the fight just screeches to a halt once he hits 100% and you win anyways. How is that in any way satisfying!?

Holy shit, I'm actually running out of space here. This stage has been such a clusterfuck I've ranted for longer than I have in a long time. And I still had more to say! But I guess that'll be saved for another video.