Considering the fact that I didn't get a PS2 until August 2001, I missed the first generation of PS2 games by a while, including Onimusha: Warlords. The samurai games haven't really been real big over here in the US, and the only real successful Ninja/Samurai type game that's been praised over here is the Ninja Gaiden series( which is about to make it's first next-generation entrance on the X-Box). Way of the Samurai was tried and released over here and although it received somewhat good scores from surrounding websites and game magazines, I was sitting at home despising it because of how bad the control was, which made the game really hard to play. So since I missed the first Onimusha: Warlords, and also the X-Box port Genma Onimusha, I told myself that I wasn't going to miss the next Onimusha game, which turned out to be Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny.
Plot/Story:
Although I've started to take a keen interest in Japanese culture and folklore, I'm not very thorough on the interesting subject. Even though my knowledge of the Japanese cultures lack in great detail, although slow at the start, the story in Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny is easy to follow once the wheels on the Narrator bus started rolling down hill. You remember Lord Nobunaga fromOnimusha: Warlords right? Well it's now 1573, 13 years after Samanosuke's defeat of Nobunaga. There's one problem though, Nobunaga has resurfaced along with his demon army, and has now started to use his iron fist to slaughter entire villages across the country.
The story starts with a beautiful CGI scene( that even rivals Final Fantasy X, but I still think FFX wins) of a bunch of Nobunaga's henchmen rampaging through a village, slaughtering everything and everyone in their path, and also destroying the village. Our new hero is named Jubei Yagyu, and when he hurries home, only to find it in ruins with slaughtered bodies laying all over the once lively village. Shortly after arriving to his destroyed village and searching around it, he hears the faintness of a women's voice calling his name into the woods. He follows the sound of the women through the forest and eventually to a house on a pond, where he meets a flying women demon that tells him in order to defeat Nobunaga, he must collect 5 stones standing for five different human virtues.
This is where the plot thickens, and now you( Jubei) are off to take revenge on Lord Nobunaga for annihilating his village. On this new adventure, you'll come across parts of the story that will branch off, allowing you to replay the game and do the opposite of what you did the first time, and experience something different from the first time you played the game.
Gameplay:
Never playing the original Onimusha: Warlords before picking this game up was for sure going to lead to some surprises for me, and boy did this game run a touchdown on that. The biggest surprise that I got out of this whole game besides I had a rather enjoyable time with it, is that the controls are in resemblance to the Resident Evil controls. You know, those clunky and un-responsive controls that made it almost impossible to navigate tiny hallways in and dodge zombies without getting a nice fat chunk of meat from your neck. When you press UP or DOWN on the control pad, instead of Jubei walking/running/tip-toeing in the direction you've pressed, he'll move whichever way he is facing, regardless of what direction you pushed on the D-Pad. You'll use the side buttons on the directional pad to turn Jubei left or right, and then when you're in the direction you want to move, you'll press UP on the d-pad to move in the direction you're facing. If you want to move backwards, press DOWN on the d-pad and Jubei will slide back. After taming the surprised-ness that had built up inside me, I soon became accustomed to the controls much faster than I did in Resident Evil( the games on the original Playstation, not the remake on Gamecube). Since most of the game is played in open environments and not in a big mansion through 98.6% of the game, this turn and go control formula was actually easy to control once you got the hang of it.
You've got lots of control over Jubei throughout the game, especially during really intense fights. Aside from your default Samurai sword that Jubei carries from the beginning of the game, you'll receive four more weapons, each having it's own element such as Wind, Earth, thunder(electricity), and Ice. One of the weapons, my favorite, is the Double Blade which has the Wind element, and it's really light so you can attack your opponent with 3, 4, or even 5 more hits faster than the Spear, for example. Don't understand? With the double blade you could get in 3-5 or so hits on your enemy, while you're lucky to get two attacks with the spear at the same time. Each weapon also has it's own magic attack that corresponds with their element, so if you're using the double blade, you should know that the magic attack you're using it is going to pertain to the Wind element. This goes the same for the other three weapons, so plan out your attacks accordingly as certain magic attacks could mean the difference between life or death in this game. As you continue in your search for revenge against Nobunaga, you'll come across various opponents, including other regular ole' Samurai's, to some weird underground demons with their heads bigger than their torsos and six legs. I don't think Capcom felt like being real creative in Onimusha 2, because a lot of the enemy character models are boring. Aside from evil Samurai's and ugly thing-a-majigs, you'll also fight a few bosses that will give you quite a challenge, including some fat demon that reminds me of "the Elephant Lady" from Final Fantasy IX( talks like her also, coincidence?).
Each time you down an opponent, as they disintegrate you'll see different colored orbs start to float around, and these are basically the enemy's souls. When you met the flying demon lady before you started your adventure, she gave you the power to collect demon souls, and so by pressing the "O" button you'll use your soul collecting power to collect their souls. Different colored souls do different things, such as one color restores health, another restores your magic meter, and then there's a color that will actually act as experience points, and when you've got enough of these, you can upgrade your armor and each of the elemental weapons to higher levels. One small rule of thumb though, don't do what I did and upgrade all your weapons only and then get to a boss and get your @$$ handed to you because you didn't upgrade your armor. So if anything, upgrade armor first, and then work on your weapons because this'll help you in the long run. Of course you can even out how you level up your armor and weapons, just don't do all your weapons first.
Most opponents will also drop gold for you to collect, so you can use your hard earned cash and spend it well at a general store for health restoring items, because some of the later boss battles get pretty intense, including a demon swordsmen( or would it be swordsDEMON) and you don't want to be caught without health and have to start from your last save point. You'll also find health restoring items spread throughout the game as you progress, including different Medicines and a borrowed item from the Resident Evil series, Herbs( they actually look like the ones in RE too, weird).
Although some battles will require 90% skill and 10% luck, most of those battle ratios will be with a boss, so when you fight regular opponents the game turns into another hack n' slash game where you just press buttons to defeat your opponent. You may have to use your block occasionally, however that comes once in a blue cat when you're fighting the "regular" enemy's, but when it comes to a boss battle, you better make use of the blocking technique real fast because you're not going to be able to get in an attack and back out of it in time without getting hit very often. In fact, when it came to the boss battles, the ratio of fighting turned into 40% blocking, 40% dodging, and 20% of actual attacks. It's not very easy to use a whole bunch of dodging techniques because of the turn and go controls, but that can be helped by using the "fighting stance" where you'll always be facing whoever you're fighting. It's most useful in one on one boss fights since there's only one opponent to face, however I'm sure it can be used when fighting multiple enemy's as long as you don't let them get a shot at your back. Anyway, while you're using the "fight stance" you'll always be facing your opponent like I said, and it's also easier to dodge on-coming attacks. I used this in a few of the battles against the swords-DEMON, and it actually helped me in keeping myself from dying. This is also useful when you've got about nil' health left, and makes it easier to dodge your opponents attacks, and strategize when to attack and when not to attack, while keeping yourself from getting hit.
So aside from most boss battles, most of the action that takes place in Onimusha 2 is a hack n' slash format, with little to no skill needed. Onimusha 2 doesn't just consist of fighting, killing, and more fighting, there are also several spots that require you to use your noggin' to complete a puzzle in order to progress where you need to go next in the game. There aren't quite as many puzzles in Onimusha 2 as there was in the Resident Evil games, but there are a few, and they're actually a lot more fun than the ones inResident Evil. Some of the puzzles have you arranging tiles to complete a picture, however the twist is that you only have a certain amount of times you can move a row of tiles up or down, forcing you to actually use your brain instead of just the "trial and error" format which is widely used once again inResident Evil. Another feature in Onimusha 2 that I found amusing was the new "Gift" or trading aspect of the game where you can receive special items. As you progress, you'll find "Gift" items, which you can give to people as a gift, and depending on how good your gift is, you'll receive a gift back in return for the gift that you gave. My curiousness led me to experiment more with the gift giving/receiving, and eventually I started going all around and seeing who gave what depending on what kind of gift I gave them.
My major complaint with Onimusha 2 is that if the skill required to play this game and hack n' slash was put on a scale, the Hack N' Slash would win because most of the game consists of just hitting a button again and again and again and again, collecting the souls, and then repeating the process. I don't really have a complaint with the hack n' slash action because I actually enjoyed the game, but basically the whole game had you hacking and slashing, and not requiring any use of skill to beating the game. If this, along with the amount of puzzles compared to the fighting, could have been balanced out a little more evenly, then this would be one heck of a game.
Graphics:
Right from the get-go of Onimusha 2, you're introduced to a nice CGI intro of Jubei's village, Yagyu, being destroyed and Jubei's friends and family being slaughtered in a very detailed manor, which means that Onimusha 2 is very graphic when it comes to blood and gore, because people's heads flying off, baby's being trampled, and other obscenities may get to a few people. As you progress more in the game, you'll learn more of the story through cut-scenes, and also a couple more CGI like the beginning FMV of the village being burnt down. The detail put in these FMVs are nice and crisp, and although a little bit of slowdown could be noticed in the CGI portions of the game, they were still a really nice addition to the already good game.
Aside from wonderful put-together animations and nice character modeling with smooth and detailed textures, the backgrounds are also well put together, being that they've been pre-rendered like in Resident Evil. I tell you, I've had so much fun noticing similarities and differences between this game and theResident Evil games that it could even overrun the fun I had with the actual game. Either way, unlike the RE games on the Playstation where the graphics looked like a black fly on white paper, Onimusha's background and character models have been blended in well to each other in order to divert the player's attention away from the difference in graphics to the actual action going on-screen.
Sound:
First song that comes to mind( as if it didn't others) when I think of a game that has to do with swords and Samurai's would be the Kung Fu Fighting song which goes like this: "Everybody was kung, fu, fiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhting, and they were fast as lighting". However when it came to Onimusha 2 I don't think this song popped in my head once, as the song's cheerfulness and the game's darkened gameplay didn't quite "go together" in my book, and so I was thinking more Eminem style music. Although singing the Kung Fu Fighting song while fighting a boss does help to relieve the stress that has built up inside you and also the tension on the controller from getting so ticked off, so if you feel that you're about to break your controller or you're about to explode, just start singing the Kung Fu Fighting song and see what it does. The themes during actual gameplay are usually dark and represent the game's demeanor quite well, why with all the demons around who's going to want to listen to "Some WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHERE over the rainbow, way up HIGH, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby" while kicking some demon's tush.
The background music and such was good, but sadly I can't say the same for the voice acting. Once again, this just goes to prove that games set in Japanese aren't going to go well with English dialogue. I heard that the original Onimusha included an option to change to Japanese dialogue with English subtitles, so hearing the way each character talk would help you to grow attached to different characters. But sadly, this feature isn't in Onimusha 2, so we're stuck with the horrible English dialogue, with lines going like this;"You can do it!" ...[pauses for a few seconds]... "my son...". I mean, it sounds like the guy from the Water Boy where she gets all high pitched and cheery when she says "You can do it!", but then a few moments later she uses a monotone voice, almost soothing "my son...". The spoken dialogue by other characters is also the same way and will happen through most of the game, and there are a lot of exaggerations where there shouldn't be.
Rock's Thoughts:
Overall I thought Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny was an enjoyable, but yet again, hack n' slash fighting type game, but was balanced enough with the way you had to fight a boss that I didn't mind the hack n' slash as much. There are a few places in the game that will thoroughly tick you off beyond relief and frustrate you beyond belief, however just sing to yourself the Kung Fu Fighting song and it should help you do a little better and use your "samurai skills" to defeat your opponent or boss( which in my case meant the annoying swords-DEVIL boss). A definite rental for a fun 4/5 day period with the cost of 4/5 dollars, although I don't think it's necessarily to actually put out 50 dollars for the game, so either rent it or wait until it goes down in price.
