Dancing Sword: Senkou

"Dedicated to the black man who drop-kicked me through the window of a restaurant."

I’d heard very little about this game before buying it. The only things I knew about it where that it was a Beat-Em up and that it somehow used rhythm like in a dance game. Hearing that greatly intrigued me so I decided to check it out.

Gameplay:8 Dancing Sword is a side-scrolling Beat-Em up but it tries to do something different from other Beat-em ups. You can choose 1 of 5 different girls to play through the game with. I don’t know the names of any of them except Claire who’s name is in English, and looks like a Charlotte Wannabe.

Each of the 5 girls have 3 moves apiece. One consisting of Fire, Ice, & Lightening. But those elements are the only things their moves all have in common. Each of their moves are done in a different button combination.

However these combinations are probably nothing like what you think they might be. Instead of doing something like say a Street Fighter Fireball motion, all you do is press the A & B buttons.
Now it doesn’t seem like there could be much variety with just those buttons, but it’s not just in how many times you press the button but how slow or fast you push them. Sometimes you may have to push one instantly right after the other while other times you may have to wait a second to push the next one. And sometimes the moves don’t even consist of using both buttons. There are moves where you’ll have to push just one button 8 times but each button press at varying speeds.

It's this thing that adds more depth and complexity to the game than your average Beat-Em Up. But with having this you have to wonder how well it works when you’re actually playing.
For the most part it works pretty well.
Once you've gotten the timing down,Beating up enemies with your perfectly executed button presses is pretty fun And since each of the 3 combos works in a different way you have to figure out which works best for beating guys up.

And for those that think they can skip doing the combos, you can’t. The game forces you to use them at various points in the game. Like Ice to Freeze Lava or Electricity to power a switch. But even that you could probably just stumble around until you did it by luck. It’s the last boss that will really test your combo skills. It requires you to use all 3 combos to weaken it so you can even hurt it. It took me quite a few tries to beat because I still hadn’t fully mastered the combos when I got there.

Unfortunately aside from the last boss though, all the bosses suck and levels 2 and 4 even use the same boss over. And not only that but the level design is also horribly repetitive. (I will mention more about this in graphics.)

When playing through this for the first time I recommend that you just pick one character and stick with them until you’ve mastered them. For me I picked Claire, and I would recommend her because she has the easiest combos to do.

Story:N/A I can’t really say much for the story because it’s in Japanese, but stories are not usually very important in a Beat-em Up and you can tell it’s just your typical save the world from evil story.

Graphics:7 All of the characters look nice and there is a lot of detail involved with them. Their moves all look different, and heck one of the chicks when comboing even flashes here panties.
But there is one really big minus to this, and that is the horribly repetitive level design. Levels consist of you walking through the same background until you get to the next section and then the boss. Because of this it seems like they were mainly focusing on the combos and very little on anything else

Sound:7 Just like the graphics, this game suffers the same problem. All of the chicks sound effects are great and you can hear them very clearly on the GBA. Which is good since it really helps if you listen for the different sounds they make for each combo. It really helped me get them down.
But when you get to the actual music selection, it sucks. Every single level has the EXACT same music on it. Though it at least does differ from character to character. And the music isn’t really that bad, it’s just that again you get the feeling that they didn’t try too hard with this part of the game.

Difficulty:9 Largely because of the games combo system this game will destroy you at first until you get the hang of it. I don’t recommend doing anything past Easy until you’ve beat it first and gotten the combos down with a character, because even on easy it can be very tough.

Replay value:8 Like most Beat-Em ups once you’ve finished the game there nothing else to see. But the fact that each of the 5 characters does truly play differently it makes it worth playing through again with another character.

Overall: If you’re looking for a decent Beat-Em up that tries something different, then I suggest you check this one out. I don’t really know of the games scarcity, but I got my copy for a bit over $30 on E-bay. Though I do get the feeling you can probably get it for cheaper if you really looked.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/03