Sengoku Basara is the Game of Thrones of anime - you either like it, or you abhor it for ill-organization, fan service, and a pointless 12 episode run which serves nothing more than faulted padding with no purpose or reason whatsoever. Sengoku Basara is frankly, a waste of time and does not handle itself well in any form or way.
Story
Bare boned and basic - bad guy wants to take over Japan, but there's "clan grudges" which prevent them from uniting and fighting them. These grudges are pointless and needlessly indicate the audience into falsely believing that there's a core plot development which in actuality is never addressed directly. In essence, it overdoes with the "fight till armageddon" against THE VILLAIN WHOSE NAME IS "DEMON KING OF THE SIXTH HEAVEN". And what makes it even worse is that the story makes it clear that he's some "demon child" but never bothers to address it as anything other than "it makes the villain look badass". Most of the story revolves around a roundabout way of getting to the plot and resolving it.
The worst part of this story is that it tries to show its historical perspective, but it rips it apart with character development that serves forced plot progression (betrayal, deaths, and needless drama and "planning" and "tactical strategy formation"). In all aspects, the story treats its villain like HE is the most sane person in the anime while the only two generals who know that he's the villain are powerless because they - almost as if they're breaking the fourth wall - understand that they won't die and will have to proceed with the needless drama that is ingrained into this waste of 325 minutes.
Art
Mecha warrior, fan service cleavage ninja, fan service wife of the villain and mundane battle sequences followed by 70% of sequences just of the younger cast showing off their "skills". All aspects concerning the story - visually - is padding and extent the running time to a lot more than is needed.
Sound
Its decent. I can only say that the actors are doing their best, and that the sound of the overall product made it bearable and certainly is fairly well handled. Even with the obvious shit of a story and art style used to merely please fans, the sound is decent enough to capture the intended purpose of this anime, and for that, I find only that it could have been improved through some adjustments in the story itself. Another reason why this anime's sound is decent is because of the occasional English portions in the subbed version - again, credit where credit is due, the actors did their best in making do with what they were made to work with.
Characters
Few characters made me bother watching this anime - the axe wielding red general, and the "Battle God" blue female general because they're the only two characters who are well developed and handle their roles with a certain degree of maturity, knowing that they're stuck in an obvious ruckus of a story. Another character is Sasuke - even though his name is linked with the crappiest and most abhorring character ever to condemn anime (Sasuke from the Naturo franchise), he's likeable because he doesn't actually give a shit about the plot, shows that he has an appreciable acceptance of the story and makes it progress as best as he can, and brings boob showing lady to her senses.
What else? We have dual spear wielding dumbo whose sucking up to axe wielding red general every time he can get, and is actually a staple construct for (worthless) padding; the two other characters, one eyed Harlock wannabe and his right hand man, both of whom are only concerned with "fighting" and serve purely to drive the action of the anime (and make it boring and artless); boob lady who exposes her cleavage shamelessly and has a thing for the "Battle God", her retainer (who, incidentally, is her big crush that she fantasizes about - and this anime does not resist showing her in lurid poses doing exactly that. Also she blushes when her retainer shows signs of concern for her in her development which I gather to be sarcasm, and she blushes in embarrassment. What a paperboard sexist construct); and a panel of numerous blank slate characters solely meant to die in every episode: they are all paperboard cutouts and are, quite frankly, the epitome of every anime with a "dramatic" twist out there. All of them, serve nothing to the plot, are merely running around catching their tails, and are so weak and worthless in their progression that honestly, there are only the three main protagonists here who I mentioned.
As for the villain, he does nothing but pimp in his "evil lair", drinking from skulls, and lets his minions do his dirty work. He offers no surprise, and is a cardboard cutout anime cliche villain. In fact, only Sephiroth hair offers some form of action and movement to his plans of "taking over Japan muhahaha". His wife serves nothing more than kissing his arse, and is purely fanservice.
Bottom line, if you want an anime which actually has a good premise, uses fantasy elements, and has characters who are actually three dimensional, and lastly has a good plot which is progressed through the actions of the characters themselves, then go watch Basilisk - its certainly a better anime than this crap. The plot is roundabout and doesn't actually and genuinely get going until episode 10, the characters (save for Sasuke, Axe General, and Battle God general) are caricature cardboard anime tropes with zero personalities, the padding because of the "intellectual strategy interaction" in which only the three main generals know the goal and main end point and are doing their best to achieve it, and the artwork fails to make this anime likeable - in fact, the moment they introduced MECHA SAMURAI, they killed the whole premise. Its a hopeless and disappointing 325 minutes, and isn't worth mentioning or appreciating in any way.