There's my long winded nonsense, have fun!
robotzombie knows what's up! I enjoy almost all the musou games for different reasons (even similar, non-Koei, games like the Senran Kagura Versus series), however BASARA is pure love. It is, by far, my favorite series in the whole genre. Capcom seriously knows how to make amazing characters and stylish action combat. Heck, some characters, Ii Naotora in particular, have so many nuances to their movesets that they wouldn't feel too out of place in a character action game like DMC. SB4 improved the combat to fantastic levels and is such a blast to play. SB4 Sumeragi looks to be fixing some of the nagging issues I had with SB4 (mostly in regards to it's weapon/powerup system) and expanding the roster and stage count. As such, it is probably my most anticipated title of the year.
Sadly, it is very unlikely that we will get more SB titles in the west due to SB: Samurai Heroes's (localization of SB3) lack of success. For anyone that's willing to import and is interested in musou games or character action titles, BASARA is always my first, and strongest, recommendation.
As for stuff available in English, there's a lot of good games in the genre. I'd say the best, currently, are the most recent versions of each subseries (for the most part). Here's my thoughts on all the recent ones I've played:
- Hyrule Warriors
OP, you've played this so you know it's a great game. All of the movesets have fun and unique animations plus various gameplay tweeks that make them all feel original. The Z-targeting is also a welcome feature. The game's Zelda series fanservice shines brightly and makes the whole thing all the more enjoyable. There is also an impressive amount of content for a Musou subseries's first entry and the DLC added a whole lot more to the game for a surprisingly bargain price. The biggest issues I personally had were the over reliance on the game's weakpoint system and the limitation of it's weapon system. Fights with non-trash enemies were all about needing to fill up the weakpoint bar for those big attacks. While it's really cool to pull those off, normal attacks seemed mostly useless against them. Weapon abilities can be moved between weapons, but only into blank slots and there is no way to add slots to weapons you get (I think I read that this was fixed in a recent patch, if so I'll have to go back to the game and check it out).
- Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate
This is the perfect jumping on point for DW/SW due to the ridiculous amount of content and characters it has. As such, it is likely to give players the most bang for their buck. It is also not tied heavily into Chinese or Japanese lore, instead having a wacky time-travel based story and a plethora of crossover characters from non-musou series (DoA, Ninja Gaiden, Soul Calibur 4, Atelier Meruru). The game is based on the DW7 and SW3 era, so characters and movesets are outdated in comparison to the more recent DW/SW games. This doesn't mean they are bad at all, but it can be difficult to go back to after getting used to the current games.
- DW8:XL CE / Empires
The DW8 line of games introduced a lot of combat improvements over WO3U (although Ambition mode can get super grindy for sure). Every character has their own unique weapons now, and they've done more to make various weapons feel different. Empires' western release is coming in a few weeks and looks to take the 8 combat and merge it with improved modes and features from 7E. I can see myself sinking an unhealthy amount of hours into 8E, as Empires has my favorite style of battle in Koei's games. I just love the the back and forth flow of defending and capturing bases that the Empires games focus on. There's also strategic elements that players can micromanage during and in-between battles. The goal of the main Empires mode are to take over all the areas on a map from rival warlords through a mixture of sheer force (beat them in battle for pieces of land until you've conquered them all) and political maneuvering (alliances, coups, officer defections, etc).
- SW4 / 4-II
I have yet to play SW4, but it looks like the new Triangle attack strings and jumping between two playable characters on different parts of the battle field gave the main series a big shake up. Weapon and power up systems can make or break these kinds of games for me and friends have told me that the weapon / power-up system of 4 is pretty bad. This is why I haven't jumped in on 4 yet. It seems that 4-II may have fixed those problems. 4-II comes out in a few days in Japan, so I'm curious to see how it turned out before deciding if I want to get 4 or wait for 4-II's localization.
- One Piece 2
I absolutely love all of the things they did with combat 2 and it is one of my favorite of Koei's subseries. They have way more variety in moveset options than any other Koei musou game, yet still has a large group of characters. WARNING: Avoid the first game like the plague! It was heavily flawed and overloaded with bad gameplay designs. 2 improved every single aspect of gameplay and 3 (March in Japan, Summer in English) appears to be building on those improvements.
- Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage
This is the opposite of the One Piece games. 1 is fantastic, while 2 blows. It is slower paced than every other Musou game, but there is a lot of depth to movesets and combat mechanics that were completely lost in the sequel.