Hokuto at its finest!
First, let me tell you about the box. The contents are nothing short of manly-tear-inducing. I daresay I practically ordered the box for the sole purpose of having a Kenshiro-shaped USB drive.
Now, onto the game itself. For those of you who played the original Hokuto Musou, the game has improved in practically every way. The graphics are more beautiful and clear. The soundtrack reutilizes many of the tracks from the first game (sadly, no Ai wo Torimodose or any of the show's original songs. This came as a great disappointment to me and is the reason I gave it four stars rather than five.), but that soundtrack was great to begin with.
The gameplay has changed in simple ways. The basics are still there - normal attacks, charge attacks, musou - but hyper mode has been removed, and so has the enemy defense bar that used to accompany the stronger mooks. Instead, you now have "Aura" mode, in which the more stocks you've got, the stronger your base attacks become, causing you to need to strategize the use of your musou attacks. Jumping has also been removed in favor of a dodge system, wherein if you press the button at the correct time you'll dodge any attack. However, consecutive dodging will cause you to deplete musou stock, unless it is completely full. This is an important element in boss fights, as pretty much all members of the cast have multi-hit attacks.
Finally, story mode. It follows the original story quite closely, to the point where you do not miss any information if you never watched the series previously, down to the original lines for each character.
I highly recommend this game.
Asia 
