Sengoku Basara 4 will have weapon enhancements, and it’ll be important to keep the keen edge (or flat surface, if you’re a hammer user) sharp by upgrading your weapons regularly. There are five different areas that you’ll be able to upgrade, which are Attack, Defense, Basara Gauge, Spirit and Stamina.
To do so, you’ll use a grinding stone, with whichever parameter you chose going up after putting in the requisite resources (read: MONEY). There’s also a “Fortune Gavel” item that will randomly upgrade one of the five stats—but as a lucky item, how much and which is determined randomly. It may even be possible to boost an item beyond its normal max stats with it.
Each weapon has one of five grades attached to it, which will limit just how high a weapon can be upgraded. So a starting katana might only have a few levels before it tops out, while the finishing swords and guns and fans and gourds and… everything else… will be tricked out pretty fancifully. There’s a Steel item you can use to upgrade a weapon’s entire rarity level though, which should help while you’re farming for the last few in the game.
There’s also inscriptions that you can put onto your weapons via different kinds of alcohol. Because with the right brew, anything is possible, these will give weapons new traits or effects.
You’ll do this in a room of Basara, which will also have access to the item shop and BGM selection options. The item shop is pretty nifty, offering you new weapons on a regular basis, special flash discount sales and even mystery weapon boxes that you’ll need to cough up cash to get a random (and possibly rare) weapon. To get the money to buy these, you just need to clear missions and battles, while the masses of dead footmen will probably have a few spare coins in their pockets as well.
Sengoku Basara 4 will be available on PlayStation 3 January 23rd, 2014.
