Onimushais an offbeat series, a mix
between historical epic and fantasy
that sadly didn’t survive the leap to
the HD era like Resident Evil and
Devil May Cry did. While the second
game – with its innovative trading
system, multiple
playable characters and
branching storyline – is
the series’ only
masterpiece, the first
game is still a fun curio
from the Resident Evil
lineage of fixed-camera
action games. You play
Samanosuke Akechi, a
warrior who ventures to save
Princess Yuki from Nobunaga and his
army of demons. After being owned
by the first big monster he
encounters, he’s revived by a kindly
collective of ogres with a gauntlet
that can absorb the souls of demons.
It won’t be much of a surprise to
anyone to learn that this 2001
hack-and-slash game has dated in so
many ways. Even next to Capcom’s
Devil May Cry from the same year,
which featured 3D backgrounds, a
more active camera and faster
combat, Onimusha feels retrograde.You mostly spend the game
wandering through tightly-wound
corridors full of demonic enemies
and key-based puzzles. Calling it
Resident Evil with swords, which is
pretty much how the media
described it at the time,
isn’t far off – it even
has healing herbs, and
environments that are
so complicated to
navigate that it’s
implausible humans
ever existed there.
The combat is still
nice and crunchy,
though. Sword fights with enemies
are paced like considered duels
compared to DMC’s acrobatic
flurries, and you really feel it when
the blade connects with an opponent.
Enemies spend more time circling
you than windmilling, and a
well-timed sword press will land an
instant counter kill. The fixed camera
angles do suck, though: if you’re
fighting an enemy and they suddenly
vanish off-screen, it’s pretty annoying.
Likewise, being hit by an enemy you
can’t even see is something modern
games have pretty much eliminated.The voice acting is still terrible,
too – what could be a horror-tinged
and creepy story is undermined by
campy enemies and bad lip-syncing,
both products of their time. This stuff
might be annoying to acclimatise to if
you never played these kinds of
games about 20 years ago, but you’ll
have to stomach it if you’re desperate
to pick up Onimusha on PC.
The additional options in this PC
version are super limited. You can
remap the controls and change the
resolution, but that’s it. The main
issue with this version is some
noticeable screen tearing, particularly
during cutscenes. The framerate
counter kept a steady 60fps
throughout my playthrough, but to
my eye it doesn’t really look any
smoother than I remember it on PS2.
The blurry low-res backgrounds
really date the game, too.CULT CLASSIC?
It’s also not a particularly long game
at about five or six hours – the asking
price of £16 isn’t unreasonable, but I
would probably have preferred to
have three or four of the original
games in one package for a higher
price, like the Devil May Cry
collection. Nonetheless, for
completists, it’s a start.
Much as I complain about
Onimusha feeling old, I am absolutely
the target audience for this re-release
and I had a lot of fun treating this
playthrough like a speedrun, given
that I finished the game five or six
times on PS2. I’d struggle to
recommend it to anyone below the
age of 30 who grew up with prettier
and more refined third-person action
games, but if you were there at the
time, Onimusha remains an important
part of a golden era for Capcom
during the early ’00s.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A2001demon-fighting
hack-and-slash game,
broughttoPCwith
slightly better controls
and widescreen
support.
EXPECT TO PAY
£16
DEVELOPER
Capcom
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Core i5-3570K, GTX 970
16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
http://www.onimusha
2001.com68
A fun relic of the early
PlayStation 2 days that I
still like a lot, but is
slightly too dated for
most players to enjoy.VERDICTIt doesn’t really
look any
smoother than
I remember it
on PS2O
nimusha is a series that burned brief and bright for Capcom.
It began in 2001 and was pretty much over by 2006,
encompassing four main entries and two spin-offs. The
original isn’t the series peak, but it’s a fun relic of the era of
survival horror games that was popularised by Resident Evil.
I would only play this re-release in 2019 if you’re an old fan, or curious
about this generation of games that never had much of a presence of PC.OGRE THE HILL
ONIMUSHA: WARLORDS is a fun relic, if you
can stomach how old it feels. By Samuel Roberts
WHAT COMES NEXT? The rest of the Onimusha series
ONIMUSHA 2:
SAMURAI’S DESTINY
Tradewiththealliesofyour
choiceandunlockdifferent
storylines in this high point
for the series.ONIMUSHA 3:
DEMON SIEGE
Starring Jean Reno, this
offbeatsequelcametoPC
butwasremovedfrom
Steam last year.ONIMUSHA:
DAWN OF DREAMS
Released in the dying days
of the PS2, I felt like this first
fully 3D entry was mostly
ignored, ending the series.Onimusha: Warlords
REVIEW