Sengoku Basara 3: Utage - Matsu | Unification Mode
Matsu gameplay.
Of the 6 characters with no stories, I liked playing Matsu and Kasuga the most. I think it's just coincidence that they both happened to be girls, but you think what you will. Anyways, Matsu's main gimmick is that she can summon animals to fight with her. Her neutral Triangle calls on boars, her R1 summons hawks, her L1+Triangle brings out moles, her R2 drops down a bear, and her Basara brings out a wolf. Her directional Triangle is a launching attack and Hold Square is a multi-hit attack.
Aside from the Basara, you can hold down the button input to one of the animal calling attacks to keep them out and have them help fighting. They stay out until they take enough hits to their invisible HP, so there's no time limit, but you can only have one out at a time, aside from the bear who functions a bit differently. Tapping R2 will cause the bear to slam down butt first on whatever's in front of Matsu and then go about attacking normally. Holding R2 allows Matsu to ride it, giving her new attacks while mounted. You can stay mounted for as long as you want and end it on command with another R2 press. The bear can attack in tandem with whatever other animal you have out at the time.
The animals' names are
Boar - Jiromaru
Hawk - Taromaru
Mole - Saburomaru
Bear - Goromaru
Wolf - Shiromaru
Although some of those attacks can summon multiple animals... I guess stuff like all the boars are called Jiromaru collectively? Jiromaru would just be the single boar that sticks around when called on and the rest are just friends/family.
I tried to unlock Nobunaga's stage this run, which you need to hit a bunch of requirements to unlock, but I happened to have been nearing an appointment for something while I was recording this, so I ended up rushing the last few stages and didn't hit the KO requirement. I didn't unlock Nobunaga's stage in the other stories either, only came close with Toshiie next and once again fell short on the KO requirement. Annoying, but it's not as if we haven't seen the Honnoji stage dozens of times by now anyways. I mostly wanted to play it for Toshiie and Matsu since I figured they might have some unique dialogue with Nobunaga, but honestly all their dialogue was pretty predictable in this playthrough so I doubt we missed much.
