Kensei: Sacred Fist [PS1] - play as Zhou Leimeng

This is a playthrough using Zhou Leimeng in the PS1 game Kensei: Sacred Fist. Read on below for more information...

Zhou is the main boss on Stage 10 of Normal Mode. He appears as the first boss for the 1st round of this stage until you beat him, before taking on Kaiya afterwards within the same stage. Zhou is one of the last 4 special hidden/boss characters you can unlock and select in this game.

===== HOW TO UNLOCK ZHOU =====

1) First, get the regular batch of 9 hidden characters unlocked by beating Normal Mode with each of the starting 9 base characters.

2) Now beat Normal Mode with one of the starting 9 base characters. Once you've done that, Zhou will be available on the top-right of the grid on the character select screen.

===== ABOUT ZHOU =====

He is a Hong Kong-Chinese crime boss. Kaiya Tsubaki is his bodyguard. Zhou's fighting style is "Original Style".

Design-wise, Zhou is a generic "Chinese-businessman-who-doesn't-do-martial-arts" design. He has the fighting style of someone who doesn't practice martial arts, and being rather short in height means that his moves are short range. He does have some powerful strikes and his hit-priority seems to be quite good though... however he does struggle against opponents with long range strikes.

===== ADDITIONAL INFORMATION =====

---- The game is known as Bugi in Japan.

---- During gameplay against CPU opponents in Normal Mode, "FREE PLAY" blinks above the CPU character's lifebar. This is rather interesting because there isn't an Arcade version of the game.

===== ABOUT KENSEI SACRED FIST =====

This is a decent fighting game. There is a large repertoire of moves for each character, and the game depicts the various martial art styles very well. The game has a total roster of 23 characters, with 9 base characters being initially available when you begin the game, so there is a lot of unlocking to do.

The unlockable characters share a moveset with one of the regular base characters, usually with some differences such as a few unique moves to themselves; some moves removed; slight changes to their strike ranges; and slight changes to their combo lengths.

A cool feature of the gameplay is that Guarding consists of the characters avoiding/dodging the opponent strikes rather than blocking.

The Japanese version of the game is called Bugi, where apart from the Japanese dialogue in the Command Lists and the Options screen, the game seems to be identical to it's Western counterpart. The game's graphics are good for the PS1's standards, and runs at a lovely 60fps.