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I'd like to start off by saying that the PS2 absolutely rocks. The graphics are stunning, and since my favorite game will be coming out on it eventually (Soul Caliber) I must buy one. It will be mine, oh yes it will be mine
*rubs hands together* Umm
yes, well then. On to the review! Onimusha is an interesting fighting game, set in feudal Japan. You play the role of Samonosuke Akechi, a Japanese samurai. Basically, your princess friend has been kidnapped by demons that have overtaken her island castle. The demons plan to sacrifice her in a dark ritual that will give the Evil Bad Guy Samurai Dude lots of power, in exchange for selling his soul to the Uber Bad Guy Evil Demon Lord. You get to the castle just in time to see your would-be girlfriend being carried off by demon lackeys. (Note: Microsoft Word, in its infinite grammar wisdom, wants to change the preceding sentence to: "Demon lackeys get to the castle just in time to see your would-be girlfriend carrying you off." Go microsoft!) You try to save her, and things are going well, until a grossly overweight demon interferes, and smacks you across the screen in a blow that *I* saw coming from 50 miles away. Anyway the demons shang hai the princess and then in an unconscious dream you get harassed by the guardian spirits of the clan. They give you a super spiffy gauntlet and an extra spiffy sword that makes it significantly easier to beat the snot out of the demons. The gauntlet lets you absorb the demon souls, and use them for your own purposes: life, magic, and leveling up your stuff. The sword has a little blue, glow-in-the-dark orb that lets you thwack-a-demon with lightning (mwhahaaa). After that, you get to run amok in the castle, thwacking demons, trying to figure out what's going on, and where they've stashed the princess.
Plot. The plot is intriguing, but nothing to get excited over. However, the plot is fairly original, and expands as you explore the castle, through the use of journals and books that you find lying throughout, and also supplemented by frequent clipscenes.
Graphics. Playstation 2 (drool), need I say more? The graphics are amazing, but then again, in all fairness, there is actually never much that they display. You are unable to interact with most of the backgrounds, and there are only a handful of sprites (animated objects, i.e. you and the badguys) on the screen at any time. Each area never particularly large, and is partitioned by doors, where it pauses briefly to load the next room. There were two features I found annoying, video-wise. First, is that the camera angle would automatically shift to preset views depending on your location in a room. This was fine for most things, but in the middle of a fight, the radical POV shifts were disorientating. The other annoying little detail is that one can't skip the clip scenes. I would die sometimes, and have to restart right before a long clip scene, and after watching the things 3 or 4 times in a short period of time, I was desperately hitting everything on the controller trying to skip so I could get back to the fighting.
Sound. The sound was quite good. The game had two audio tracks, one in English, and one in Japanese, with optional subtitles. The in game sound effects were realistic, and the music was decent. The dubbing was passable, I've heard much better, but also much worse. Only complaint is that once you start a game, you can't change what audio track (English/Japanese) you use for the rest of the game. Also in some clip scenes in Japanese with subtitles, the subtitles would cut out, and unless you speak Japanese, you have no idea what they are saying, and you miss some crucial plot points.
Game Play. The entire game is spent fighting demons and occasionally interacting with the background, like inserting a key to a door or cutting a rope to lower a bridge. There are some minor semi-challenging puzzles, mostly little logic ones. The control style is similar to the way Zelda for N64 does. You can get 3 swords, with tradeoffs between speed and damage, and you can also get a gun and a bow. One really cool aspect, is that there is this ninja lady called Kaede who is with you and you sometimes control her instead. She is absolutely awesome. She has all these cool kicks and flips and attacks, much more than you get as Samonosuke. (I think the game would have rocked if SHE got the gauntlet and you played her for the majority of the game). The bottom line though, is that you spend the entire game running around thwacking demons and collecting journals and documents to fill in the plot, and that's pretty much it.
Difficulty. First let me state that I'm not the worlds best video gamer. With that in mind, let me also say that I beat the game 2 times in 4 days. The game only has 2 difficulty settings, normal and easy. Easy only appears after you beat the game or die something like 5 times in 30 minutes. My first game took 7 hours to beat, the second time 4, on easy. The replay value isn't that high either. I pretty much unlocked all the secrets and found all the spiffy stuff in my two times through.
Spiffyness. This game has a few spiffies. The first is with the weapons you get. Blitz attacks with them are darn cool, and so are the magic attacks with them. There is also a secret sword you can get that blows the other three away. Other spiffies include some preview footage of Onimusha 2 (the ending of the game just screams "Sequel!" and proof is provided when you unlock the preview. There is also a mini-game, and its dang hard. It has something like 12 levels, and I could only get to the second one. The BEST spiffies, however (game gets mucho points) is that you can unlock alternate costumes for Samonosuke and Kaede. I was unable to unlock Kaede's, but I believe that it's a dragon. Samonosuke's is absolutely GREAT though. You can play with him in a giant panda costume with a mask you can take on and off. It is SOOOO funny. The gauntlet is a giant daisy on his wrist. You *must* play a game that way. I dare you to keep a straight face. It even shows the costume in most of the clip scenes.
Overall: This is a cool game, but fairly short and easy to beat, which costs it a lot of points. It is worth playing though, so my recommendation it to go rent it, and you should be able to beat it within a few days.
Final Ratings:
Plot: 7.5
Graphics: 8.2
Sound: 7.0
Gameplay: 6.8
Difficulty: 4.5
Replay: 4.0
Spiffiness 9.0
Overall: 6.71
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