The Fist demo was definitely not the greatest representation of the game. I can see a lot of people doing what Beezy did and just deleting it after seeing that Kenshiro just has a boss fight. That was a distinguished mentally-challenged decision on Koei's part. Kenshiro should have had a level to play.
The game has three main modes of play: Story, which is more like a beat-em-up in its progression (Rei's stage in the demo), Dream mode, which is more akin to the traditional Musou games (army versus army; shitloads more enemies on the levels), and the challenge mode, which has various boss-rush and bonus scenarios (which are more like the story mode levels, but with more enemies/harder difficulty levels), the latter of which are mostly DLC levels that you have to buy.
BTW, you can break through the roof during the Jagi fight, and continue on in the bar below.
I wonder why in the Fist of the North Star demo, they would let Kenshiro's part be a boss fight but let Rei's be the run around and beat/make people explode part. Kenshiro is very slow, I can see someone playing the demo and hating it because they put you against Jagi and he plays keep away, but once you learn what to do/how to play it gets much better. Rei is much better he can even ride a bike. In Rei's section you have to fight Kenshiro and when you beat him he just walks away 
.
It was cool but I wouldn't pay full price.
I deleted the demo after playing Kenshiro's slow ass boss fight. I had no idea that it was completely different for the other character. smh
Pretty sure I have said this here before, but for whatever reason, Kenshiro was purposely made to be kind of slow and stiff in his play style. They wanted each of his attacks to have "impact" or something. Basically it really just means that all the other characters play better than he does.
You unlock Rei and Mamiya after about two hours through Ken's story. Then you get other characters unlocked from the dream mode or from more progression through the story mode. Kenshiro has the longest story with 14 stages. Rei, Mamiya, Toki, and Raoh also have story modes. Shin, Jagi, Souther, Mr. Heart, and the Outlaw are are dream/challenge mode-only characters.
Yeah, I played Kenshiro's stage first and that boss fight sucks. Guy keeps running and throwing grenades that are super easy to dodge. Really tedious. Rei has a proper stage from start to finish and it's fun though. Glad to see it has the Japanese dub too. I'll probably try to gamefly it when it comes out, but I kinda want to buy it. Basara 3 and FotNS coming out so close to each other is too much musou for me.
I lean more towards buying it whenever I listen to this
spoiler (click to show/hide)
[youtube=560,345][/youtube]
The key to beating most of the boss fights with Kenshiro is to use his light, hard, hard attack combo. He will do a kick that will stun the enemy/send him up in the air, and then you can wail away with a long combo or musou attack. This works way, way too easily and you can use this to beat Jagi without ever getting hit.
Two weeks (11/2). I didn't notice bad load times in the demo, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. I might get the PS3 version if it has DTS audio, but I dunno. I hate it when multiplatform games are better on PS3 because I prefer achievements over trophies. 
I should try out the PS3 demo.
I have the Japanese PS3 version and tried the 360 demo. You're not going to see any differences. In the game, besides the load time issue, the PS3 version has sharper cut scenes that run at 60FPS (30FPS on 360) and is suppose to have less slowdown. Maybe Koei addressed this with the U.S. version?
Also this game is filled with DLC that should have been there to begin with. Mr. Heart and the Outlaw character are like $8 each, and there's a number of challenge mode level (which are clearly unlock keys) for $1 each. Manga outfits are $3 each. I got all of it and it cost me something like $40 total, maybe more. It's insane.
Japan is getting Hokuto Musou International in early December. It supposedly will sell for under $50 and have ALL the DLC ON THE DISC, plus the extra gore and English voices. Not sure about English text though, but it might be worth waiting and seeing how the International version turns out.
It's hard for me to say which I like better between Hokuto Musou and Sengoku Basara 3, but at least SB3 has EVERYTHING on the disc. There's no DLC to buy. At the same time, it's also pretty obvious that Basara will get an expansion disc with the NPCs made playable and more levels next year.
