There’s a boss battle close to the midpoint of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Future that I genuinely didn’t assume I’d be capable to get via. Not as a consequence of any supposed problem or a jarring issue spike, however as a consequence of its 2002-ass design: fastened digicam angles out of the blue switching and altering my directional enter mid battle; an enormous impassible environmental impediment simply quick sufficient for enemy projectiles to move over; getting stunlocked by ranged assaults that I can’t even see coming.
Have to know
What’s it? A remaster of Capcom’s 2002 samurai hack and slasher
Launch date: Might 22, 2025
Count on to pay: $30 / £25
Developer: Capcom
Writer: Capcom
Reviewed on: Radeon RX 7800 XT, Ryzen 5 7600, 32 GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
Hyperlink: Official website
It was the end result of 5 – 6 hours of gathered jank, gathered up like a Katamari Damacy ball of frustration and pitched instantly at my head.
Was this good design 23 years in the past? I can’t say for sure as a result of I had no expertise with Onimusha 2 till now. However I certain as hell can say in 2025 it isn’t. It’s significantly disappointing as a result of, up till that time, I had principally been having fun with this remaster. I noticed quite a lot of allure in Onimusha 2’s goofy voice appearing and stiff fight, artifacts of a bygone period.
No digicam motion? I bear in mind these days.
Unclear fight controls? How quaint!
Individually, these components quantity to nothing greater than quirks activating my nostalgia glands. Taken all of sudden—say throughout a single irritating boss battle—these outdated foibles make me understand how far we’ve come within the final two-plus many years.
Oh, and there’s a counter transfer within the recreation—some sword methods are everlasting—however good luck studying the timing for it.
Sons of a battlecry
The setup for Onimusha 2 is as 2002 because the digicam. You management Jubei, the lone survivor of a village massacred by a demon lord, on his quest for vengeance. Alongside the way in which he joins forces with a ragtag group of warriors and collectively they got down to destroy evil. It’s fantastic. It’s not like I would like a lot of an excuse to go swing a sword, anyway, and this setup will get the job achieved properly sufficient. However there are some antiquated story components that had me cringing fairly exhausting, most of them centered across the lone feminine protagonist.
The primary time you see Oyu—in the course of the opening cutscene of the sport—she is nude beneath a waterfall. The second time you see Oyu, she is being actively sexually harassed by townspeople. From there, Jubei spends quite a lot of time rescuing her from monsters and different perilous conditions. But Oyu is framed as a robust warrior-type, a lady who takes no guff, however is in fixed want of rescue. This inconsistent characterization felt ugly and left a foul style in my mouth.
As I perceive it, the unique Onimusha was conceived by developer Capcom as a kind of “samurai Resident Evil,” which sounds wonderful. I’ve cherished that sequence because the first one. And you’ll definitely see the affect within the fastened digicam angles and progress-gating puzzles. One of many most important therapeutic gadgets is even an herb, for crying out loud. However Resident Evil was a intentionally slow-paced horror expertise, a construction which was not made to accommodate action-heavy hack and slash fight. There’s an choice to play Samurai’s Future utilizing old-fashioned tank controls, too, however the concept of doing so chills me to the bone in an eldritch method.
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It’s straightforward to dunk on a decades-old recreation for its dated design, however there’s nonetheless rather a lot I preferred about Onimusha 2, even when I used to be unaware there was a block button for the primary hour or two. There’s a shocking quantity of selection in fight because of the weapons Jubei acquires all through the story. Every comes with a special set of assaults and its personal particular transfer. My favourite is the Hyoujin-Yari spear, which might freeze enemies, permitting you to shatter them with normal assaults. You may degree up weapons by spending souls Jubei absorbs after defeating monsters, letting you focus in your most well-liked arms.
The sport appears nice, if a bit sterile because of the HD upscaling. Pre-rendered backgrounds are inclined to age properly, as they’ve right here. Environments showcase a great deal of creativity and I used to be at all times excited to see what medieval Japanese fort or haunted forest I’d be exploring subsequent. The facet characters, too, inject quite a lot of persona into the story.
All through the marketing campaign, Jubei can present gadgets to his allies which impacts who joins him on any given mission. You may even management them as a substitute of Jubei in the event you get bored with him. This got here in helpful on a couple of event after I took management of Magoichi, who saunters round with a rifle on his shoulder. Right here’s a tip: ranged fight can trivialize a few of Onimusha 2’s more durable encounters.
The enemy selection can also be enjoyable: New monsters are consistently being launched, and so they’ve all acquired their very own assault patterns to study. However Onimusha 2 likes to throw a ton of them at you all of sudden, and juggling melee attackers with off-screen ranged attackers had me threatening my PC with a visit to the landfill greater than as soon as. In lots of areas, monsters appeared to respawn indefinitely, too, stopping me from exploring after I wished to.
Fight would’ve been much less irritating if the default structure of any given stage wasn’t “slender passage and/or pathway,” clogged up the second a single monster appeared in my method. Onimusha 2 boasts extra hallway fights than a whole season of Daredevil. Sooner or later it graduated from rote to exasperating. In direction of the top I used to be actually craving for the extra wide-open arenas of contemporary motion video games.
If Capcom is hoping to drum up pleasure for the lately introduced Onimusha: Manner of the Sword, I can’t think about this rerelease attracting gamers new to the sequence—it did not work on me. Nostalgia could be highly effective sufficient to assist us overlook shortcomings and reconnect with easier instances, when recreation design was not so wrought with expectation. I perceive that you must modify your assumptions going right into a 23-year-old recreation, and I gave Onimusha 2 quite a lot of grace. In any case, I reduce my tooth on the PS1 and PS2 technology of consoles.
However fond recollections don’t essentially translate to fashionable tastes. Maybe typically, as one particular boss battle urged, the previous is best off staying previous.
