Koihime Enbu - The Other Romance of the Three Kingdoms

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Hello everyone! How is it going? Did you already embark yourselves in the adventure to hunt down the Valkyrie? And speaking of valkyries, in this new entry we are going to talk about yet more female warriors, but this time around we will move on to the 2D Versus genre with a game that belongs to that recent “revival” of the genre of which I have already talked about a couple of times in this blog. The game is called Koihime Enbu. Let’s see what this new Japanese fighting game has to offer.

Koihime Enbu is a 2D fighting game developed by Unknown Games in collaboration with BaseSon, who are the creators of the franchise. The game was released originally for the Japanese arcades, but was later ported to the PS3, the PS4 and PC. In fact, Koihime Enbu is the improved version of (take a deep breath before reading this) Shin Koihime Musou: Otome Taisen Sangokushi Engi, a game that was released for the Japanese arcades and the PS3 only in Japan, and that, just like Koihime Enbu, is a spin-off of the (adult) visual novel series Koihime Musou, although the franchise has expanded into other media such as manga and anime in Japan. Just like some of the games I have talked about previously in this blog, such as Vanguard Princess or Nitroplus Blasterz, Koihime Enbu is an all-girl fighting game. The story of Koihime Musou reinvents the historical Chinese novel of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms replacing all the characters with beautiful ladies willing the beat the crap out of each other (and how some underwear). The game includes 13 playable characters plus another 7 support ones. The characters are:

The 7 assist characters are:

Just like in Blade Arcus, of which I talked about a couple of entries back, Koihime Enbu is an old school conservative fighting game that does little to nothing when it comes to push the genre to a new level, limiting itself to deliver an experience just like the one we could have found in any of the arcades of the 90s, however, just like Sega’s title, what Koihime Enbu does, it does it pretty well. Koihime Enbu makes use of a four-button layout, with three buttons being used for the weak, medium and strong attacks, and the forth one used to perform powerful attacks that will allow us to take down our rivals. By combining these four buttons we will be able to perform all types of combos, as well as other actions typical of the genre such as throws or counterattacks, which will allow us to stun our rivals and leave them completely exposed. The game makes use also of the typical power gauge that will fill up during the combats and that will allow us to perform the special versions of our special attacks, as well as the Super and Ultimate attacks, which are the equivalent to the Super and Ultra attacks from Street Fighter 4. Finally, just like in some other fighting games I have talked about in this blog, the game will allow us to use part of our power gauge in order to summon our assist character to help us during the combats. Each character will have their own skills, so depending on our main character and fighting style, some support characters will be more suitable than others. As I was saying, Koihime Enbu does absolutely nothing when it comes to innovate, however, that doesn´t mean the game is bad at all.

Regarding the game modes, Koihime Enbu includes all the typical modes that we can find in this kind of title, and yes, don’t worry, that includes the holy online now. Koihime Enbu includes the typical story mode, in which we will have to select a character and fight against a series of opponents controlled by the CPU while the story is narrated in between the combats via conversations between the characters, then there is the arcade mode, which is basically the same as the previous mode but without the conversations, then there is the versus mode, which will allow us to fight against our buddies in local matches or against opponents controlled by the CPU, there is also the training mode, which will allow us to practice the different techniques of all the characters, and then finally there is the beloved online mode, which will allow to take on players from all over the world.


As for the overall presentation of the game, while Koihime Enbu doesn´t reach the level of titans such as Street Fighter 5, BlazBlue o Guilty Gear Xrd, the game does indeed have a nice and polished presentation that surpasses by far that of other games of its level such as Phantom Breaker or Blade Arcus. The characters have been molded in 2D with a huge attention to detail, as the same goes for the animations, all of them really fluid, which together with the game´s bright color palette helps to give the feeling of being playing some kind of interactive anime. The stages in which the combats will take place display beautiful landscapes that seem to be taken out directly from a painting, with the only negative point being perhaps the absolute “lack of life” in them.

Koihime Enbu isn’t here to push the genre to new levels like the Street Fighter, The King of Fighters and Guilty Gear series have done in the past, but it is still a more than decent alternative for all those who just want to see “new faces in the fighting hood”. The game is available on physical edition in Japanese for the PS3 and PS4 (both normal and special edition) and on digital edition in English for PC via Steam. If you are looking for something new to throw some punches, you should definitely give a chance to Koihime Enbu, for despite not brining anything new to the genre, the game has a solid gameplay that will surely please the fans of the genre. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEp6Gr0RmWU