Rabbit’s Reviews #430: Kawakami Gensai (5* Assassin)

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 Gensai is an extremely straightforward single-target damage-dealer. She does nothing other than NP damage and crits, but she is quite good at both of those things. She has high steroids spread across all three buff brackets, with two broad niches that can stack with each other. She’s probably the second-best ST Assassin now, behind Kama—though that’s more because the ST Assassin pool is on the weak side overall than because Gensai is a standout. If you need a strong Rider-killer, Gensai fits the bill… but that’s all she is. She’s not a bad unit (and her art is great) but she’s not particularly noteworthy from a gameplay standpoint.
Kawakami Gensai
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Gensai has middling stats relative to the other SSR Assassins, meaning her stats have no particular impact on her power. She only has one Quick card, but she’s still an Assassin and she has decent hit-counts, so she’ll generate at least a few stars off her attacks. Her Arts card NP gain is very high relative to her deck, so even though she has an underwhelming Quick card, she’ll have fairly easy access to her NP. Gensai also has only standard passives, with Independent Action for a marginal crit damage buff and Magic Resistance for occasional debuff avoidance. The only thing worth noting about Gensai’s passives is that while she does have Presence Concealment, it has no effect, which is a little weird for an Assassin.
Gensai is a 30% charger, so Mana Loading is her most important append. Skill Reload also lets her stack her skills faster in a Koyan team and gives a little more flexibility even without Koyan, so that append is solid, too. The other appends don’t matter much—the crit damage append is okay, but the values are small, while the other two are pretty ignorable.
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Gensai’s mats are a bit annoying, as she needs both a decent number of bones and a few later-FGO gold mats. There’s a good chance most player will be blocked on at least one of her mats.
Gensai has an extremely generic DPS skillset. Her second skill is the most unique, but in practice it still shakes out as a typical damage buff. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Hitokiri Gensai is a standard damage buff. It strengthens Gensai’s Buster cards—for NP damage and crits—and her Arts cards—for NP gain—for three turns. The skill also gives Gensai a 50% power mod effect against Man enemies for three turns, which is nice and pairs with Koyan’s buffs to make Gensai very good at killing Man enemies. Power Mod stacks additively with crit damage and NP damage buffs (and of course with other Power Mod effects, like the one from Koyan), so this is less impactful in practice than it might seem on paper, but it’s still good at baseline. Man is a very broad niche and Buster Servants tend to be the best Man-killers anyway, so leaning into that isn’t a bad thing.
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Peerless Battōjutsu is a de-facto Mana Burst, as it gives Gensai a one-turn trait buff that causes her NP to give herself 30% attack up. The short duration would be a bad thing, except the skill is on a 2-turn cooldown at max level, so she can use it every other turn. In a standard Koyan team, Gensai can use this on turn 1, 2, and 3, effectively turning it into a bog-standard 3-turn 30% attack buff. The cooldown does mean Gensai can use this several times on the same turn, but the trait buff doesn’t stack, so this doesn’t matter much in practice. Aside from the trait buff, this gives a modest 50% crit damage buff and a star weight buff for 1 turn, along with a burst of stars, so if you really need to maximize damage and you have an NPBB chain lined up, you can triple-stack this for 150% crit damage up for a turn… but you sacrifice so much sustained damage that this isn’t really worth it. It’s also worth noting that with Skill Reload this has a 1-turn cooldown on its first use, meaning a single Koyan or the Atlas mystic code is sufficient for Gensai to use this three turns in a row. This doesn’t really impact her usefulness, but it’s there.
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Eyes of the Viper is a 30% battery and a 3-turn 30% attack buff. Both of these effects are solid; neither is amazing. Aside from that, this gives partywide skill seal, which can be good or bad depending on how annoying the enemy’s skills are and how hard their cards hit—a skill-sealed enemy will use all of its actions to attack, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes not. This also gives another 30% crit damage up in the form of a debuff, which is… pretty questionable. As a debuff, this can fail, and 30% crit damage up is generally too small to be noticeable. Still, a battery and a persistent attack buff is nice, and this means all thee of Gensai’s skills are functional damage buffs, which is nifty.
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Gensai’s NP is all about damage. It gives 30% attack up for a turn if Gensai used her second skill, plus a small one-turn NP damage buff that scales with overcharge. It’s unfortunate that neither of these ramp, but Gensai has such high steroids even without ramp that this is probably fair.  Additionally, this NP pierces both invuln and defense buffs, making Gensai extremely consistent and very hard to stop. Most Servants with both forms of pierce have low-ish damage in exchange, and the fact that Gensai has both high damage and double pierce is arguably her most unique trait.
The NP also deals supereffective damage against Divine enemies, which is excellent—Divine is a broad niche, and supereffective damage on an ST NP is always great. Technically, Gensai gets double niche (and very high effective damage) against Divine Man enemies… but there aren’t all that many of those, as Divine enemies tend to have the Sky trait instead. In practical terms, getting niche damage against both Man and Divine means Gensai deals heavy damage against about two-thirds of the cast. There are still a decent number of Servants with neither trait, but it’s a broader range than most Servants get, which is nice.
Gensai’s best team is going to be your traditional Koyan/Koyan/Oberon setup. You can add in Crane, Nobukatsu, Chen Gong, or Summer Chloe if you want a bit more damage push, too. There’s not a lot to say here—she does the standard Buster DPS things.
The one thing worth noting is that in most cases you’ll want to alternate Gensai’s second skill with Koyan’s batteries. If you use Gensai’s skill on turn 1, then a Koyan’s battery (on turn 1 or turn 2 depending on CE choices), then the skill again on turn 2, then the second Koyan battery, you can use Gensai’s skill again on turn 3 and have it up all three turns.
Gensai has nothing that points in the direction of stall—she has basically no survival tools—but her high damage and consistency mean she’ll be reasonably effective in typical Buster stall setups as well, whether you’re looking at a Merlin/Mash team or a Himiko/Castoria setup.
At the low end, any supports who can provide extra charge and extra damage will help Gensai. SSR Mash is an excellent choice for this, as is Waver if you picked him as your free SSR. Hans and Shakespeare are also both solid choices.
A 50% charge CE like Aerial Drive will guarantee Gensai can loop in a Koyan/Koyan/Oberon team, but since Gensai will almost always have access to cards and because her card-based NP gain is quite good, you can usually afford to give her The Black Grail, which will be her best damage option.
Gensai is a purely damage-oriented Servant with decent crit access and only moderate crit damage buffs, which makes crit damage CCs a natural pick for her. They won’t have a huge impact, but more damage is more damage.
Gensai is one of the best ST Assassins in the game, but whether you need an ST Assassin is open to debate. If you need a strong Rider-killer, or if you’re still looking for an Assassin to Grand, Gensai is a good candidate for grails… but without much other than damage going for her, Gensai doesn’t compare favorably to top-end Berserkers and Avengers and the like, which makes it a bit hard to recommend grailing her for general use.
Gensai is exceedingly simple: she hits hard, and that’s it. She has notably high steroids and two niches, but even with that, her damage isn’t exceptional. She’s a good DPS, make no mistake, but all she does is damage and she doesn’t do so much damage that her damage itself becomes a standout trait.
If you pull for her, she’ll put in good work for you, and there’s a very good chance she’s a great pick for the upcoming Grand Assassin battle, but aside from that she doesn’t really bring anything you can’t get elsewhere, which makes it hard to get excited about her kit.