That costume may end up being paid DLC, like everything TMR. ...Waidaminute, I went with the exact same combo in Ieyasu's side story - Tanuki gloves with the school costume.

Yeah, last life. I haven't paid that much attention, but I think it also only applies to those designated boss characters with 3 lives.

The Spirit Back thing is very noticeable with Magoichi. In a duel, having the magnum out will lose the orbs due to its slow rate of fire, but switch to machine gun and bam! all three back in less than a second. I guess for the less spammy cast it boils down to liberal application of Parries and Steps (since both of those give Spirit).

EDIT: a couple more mechanical observations

• There is a delay between getting hit and Spirit leaving the character. From what I can tell (and I'm not 100% sure about this one), the Spirit won't go down any further until the orbs are out, but they are lost immediately if you get hit again while they're out.
• You don't lose Spirit while under the effects of the Spirit Orb (the kind you get from fancy boxes, Bushindenshin-dama... who even comes up with these :V).
• You can get Spirit back by juggling corpses.

Yep, that they do. So at the moment there's this to add.

• 60 Face Challenges unlock Sanzu difficulty, and all challenges completed on Sanzu are additionally marked to show how badass you are;
• The above also unlocks Special Styles for purchase - presets with those character-specific inscriptions from 4S (finally, I can have my rocket Magnum Magoichi back);
• Sanzu itself does not seem to be that different from other difficulties with the exception of the Spirit Down mechanic and the usual health/damage tweaks to enemies (unlike 4S, playable officers as NPCs can do Basara Arts even on Normal);
• Can also confirm that lost Spirit orbs on Sanzu/Trials are returned depending on the number of hits (i.e. not damage) you land during a ~5-10 second timeframe - the 3 of them are restored in succession, not together, and, I'd say, 30 odd hits get all three back (sucks for the slow 1-2 hitters);
• Each Sanada Trial is a checkpoint, allowing to start from any already completed fight;
• However, the 60th one is not, and starting from 59th will end the Trials after the fight, which, apparently, means that golden skins require one to actually go through all 60 in one go (the horror);
• Sumeragi's pre-order and magazine-exclusive weapon skins are unlockable - they don't change the element like before, but Tanuki gloves for Ieyasu are always a nice touch;
• Playable credit sequence can be skipped (which also raises the question of whether or not the Prologue should be played, considering it's a narrated autoscroller with God Mode on).

Right then, managed to clear the Trials. There's 60 in total. They get harder starting from ~40 or so, but I imagine are much, much more brutal for anyone but NewYukimura or NewMasamune. Ended up with 1.3M after all bonuses. Clearing the last one (I think) gives the golden weapon skin. Amusingly, IGT clocked at ~19 minutes, but RT is more than 40 minutes long.

Still no idea how to get 3rd difficulty. Clearing the Story on Hard did jack. Side Stories then? Extra Challenges? Hmmm...

The dialogue in Ueda seems to be one continuous set. Once the first half ends and you didn't fail the defence part, the minigame starts. After the game, second half kicks in.

Got the Trials unlocked, and those are pretty much Bloody Palace, which is pretty great in itself. Does DMC have BP leaderboards? If so, yeah, it's definitely a thing that can be compared, with the footnote of having 46 characters to choose from. Speaking of which, they could have brought Ujimasa back to the playables, dammit.

Oh right, both Trials and that third difficulty have an added mechanic wherein your spirit will go down whenever you're hit, but you can recover it by attacking (and landing a set number of hits, apparently).

Anyhow, there's a bit of Trials here...holy balls, it embeds the VOD? Wot magick is this? (starting at 26 min mark). Note that I'm complete ass with Kojuro. The video also appears to be choppy after I've tweaked something in OBS. Eh.

Edit: fixed the link.

Nah, 30 minutes isn't even the minimum you'll get - the two Ueda castle stages are essentially "tower defence" autoscrollers with minigames in-between, and, from the looks of it, end only once the characters' dialogue has been exhausted. Both clock at around 15 minutes. At least, that's my current impression.

As for Secret Stories, those aren't even part of the "Life of..." proper. Another note on minigames - of the 3 the game has, 1st and 3rd depend on the player to end faster, whilst 2nd is another timed affair.

NG, on second thought, would be a pain. If you have a Sumeragi save (or any other SB on PS3, I presume), the game awards you with 5K coins, so to put everyone on even ground you'd have to delete the 4S save, not to mention wiping SYD data for each new attempt. Yeah, NG+ is where it's at, as usual.

Haven't gotten to the Trials yet.

Man, I wish Capcom would port HD/3/3U to PS4. I know they can. ¤grumble¤

Imma necro this thread in the most gruesome way, if you don't mind.

Righty then, gave Yukimura-den a whirl (available in Japan, as of August 25th), and it's probably the most speedrun-friendly Basara title as far as playthrough flow goes. Somewhere around 10 stages in the "Life of Sanada" mode, so far fairly linear, no randomness in which stage comes next. There is probably a free mode afterwards (...probably?), but characters and their playable bits during the stages are pre-defined otherwise. Curiously, Capcom seems to have dropped the tag mechanic from 4/4S - the one Story stage I've played that featured forced tag, had it function similarly to SW4 and its lot, as both characters are isolated from each other. Also, no orders.

Items are out, as are inscriptions - everything is rolled into preset "styles" that give specific parameter boosts and passive skills. The latter you have to unlock/activate during the actual stage. Money is literally the sole resource and you only use it to level up styles and unlock weapon skins.

New Yukimura's moveset is stupidly fast and you can go even faster with the style that has a + to movement speed as its first passive skill. Masayuki is slower (and has an obnoxiously long Basara art), Nobuyuki - the slowest (and the most fun of the three to get combos with, incidentally). Haven't tried the New Masamune yet.

NG is doable, but Capcom keeps trucking one with the silly Only One Savegame setup, so NG+ is probably the best bet still.

Ah, thanks for the explanation, that second video illiustrates it nicely. I still plan on sticking with Magoichi regardless (for a while, at least), think there's some potential to her. My main "pro" point about her is that you can keep your distance with officers, as I believe most of them go for Basara Art only if you're close enough. May be wrong about that one, of course.

Damn, that'll be a lot of categories. Felt like it would be more up to the runner - either save time in menus with a risk of clutching during the stage, or waste some time equipping stuff, but get through the level faster and, most of all, safer. Separating makes sense, though.

Speaking for Natotora's Dojo, I rarely ever get to the skill part - beat the first wave of Nadeshikos, defeat Naotora afterwards and, bam, the stage ends. It maybe has something to do with how much bonus time you get in the first wave? I have more problems with the bell hunt on Tsuruhime's ship, damn those things.

Kotaro is probably the best for getting to where you want to be overall - I did some rough testing, and his base speed seems to be slightly higher than that of the other "light" character. And then there's his air dash, of course.

Why Kenshin, though? Haven't really used him much - does he one shot everything on Heaven? I've used Magoichi myself, which is probably a whole lot less efficient than it should be, but she's just so fun to destroy everything with, even if getting officers fast enough (i.e. before they activate the Basara art) on Heavenly is literally a hit or miss situation with her.

As for the loadout, gave Kotaro 5 Haste inscriptions + Limit Break, to give a bit of survivability before I get him to level 999. Magioichi had 4x Dasatsu, personal inscription for homing rocket bullets (plus, makes the Kaga festival stage a cake) and a Limit Break - I do wonder if just going full Dasatsu is a better option.

Anyhow, the parameters for the run were to start after selecting the difficulty, and split on character's victory screen upon the mission end. All stages one after another. No roulette, but with modifiers (usually went with Officer Killer, Body of Steel and Full Spirit - you do waste some time menuing, but I feel it pays off in the end). I did want to exclude the 3 Matabe dupes, but it seems pointless with no real categories existing yet.

Well, that turned out somewhat verbose. Apologies. :V

Is anyone running Sumeragi? Since Creation mode is short and random, I decided to give Free Mode a go (heavenly difficulty, all 48 stages in succession, no roulette). It's actually a pretty neat "category" to run, if a tad long (virgin run took me 3h 14m). And because it can only be NG+ it's open to all kinds of character/gear optimization. I guess the biggest downside is that one has to do all kinds of grinding before unlocking everything required. Still, neat.