Genma retains all the best parts of Warlords like the incredibly climactic score and the interconnected world design while also adding a couple welcome additions, and a couple unnecessary ones.

The additions include more enemies with the main one being Ayame. A demonic doll who acts exactly like Nemesis, she can pop into rooms out of nowhere and you best avoid her because fighting her is never worth it. There's also more armours and more optional challenge towers to take on.

The biggest addition Genma adds are the green souls that enemies can now drop. Collecting enough makes you temporarily invulnerable, but the enemies can try to absorb them too which will make them stronger. If this happens, you go into a tug of war with the enemies in which you have to start mashing. I'm not really a fan of this addition, it breaks up the flow of combat and the reward for collecting enough green orbs isn't enough since the invulnerability period is over so soon. Another change I'm not fond of is how you upgrade weapons and orbs simultaneously here rather than separately like in Warlords. This means that upgrading here takes much longer and I had to grind for souls on multiple occasions just to progress, this is something I never had to do in the original.

Overall though, even the changes I dislike don't sour the experience for me all that much. Genma's best feature is its difficulty, it demands much more from the player than the original did but it never crosses the line to where the game feels daunting to play. For me, it makes Genma a much more satisfying experience overall and I'd say that Warlords is a better starting point, but this is the definitive version.