Onimusha Blade Warriors

Blade Warriors is mostly a multiplayer game, but it does have a decent story mode for single players. You can choose from one of numerous Onimusha characters from both the original and the sequel, from Jubei to Samanosuke, Kaede to Oyu, even one of the silly 3-eye demon ninjas. Each one has a storyline, slim as it is, giving them a goal for fighting. As you progress, you get numerous different objectives Ц collect Victory Souls (special souls from certain enemies), kill so many enemies in a set period of time, beat a level boss, or merely kill all enemies that attack you. Each story is only about 10 chapters and doesn't take a whole lot of time, so you can play through pretty fast. There's a decent selection of secret characters to unlock as well, giving you some drive to play through with multiple characters Ц if you've always wanted to pit Samanosuke against Mega Man, this is your lone chance. Multiplayer is effectively pitting the major characters in up to 4 different battles, which you can customize in many ways. Naturally, SSBM fans will really dig this, as it plays in many ways similar, only a bit more methodical in pace and less emphasis on crazy side-weapons.

For those who have played Onimusha, the fighting engine will be extremely familiar Ц because it's the same thing. No matter which character you choose, you can play things just like the traditional action games. This means you collect souls to power up characters (to make them stronger for higher difficulty levels), collect souls to replenish lost health, and collect souls to fill your magic meter. After each chapter, you can upgrade your characters in the different categories (strength, defense, magic), and you level up that way. Fans of the series will be right at home here. All the fighting is done exactly like the last 2 games, with the same controls and everything. This of course means for the unknowing that the controls are pretty sharp, if a bit too simplistic for a fighting game. It becomes a basic hack & slash game with a bit of trickery to compensate, but there's few special moves and such, just a straight swordfighting game. Unfortunately, this same kind of control system and engine means that there's still no analog control, only digital, making this game feel like it's about 3 years out of date. At least Onimusha 3 will use analog for the first time.

Though the game feels merely like the normal Onimusha games at first (and really, it always will feel that way, just in a bite-sized form), the Smash Bros. stuff will add some freshness, especially if you haven't played that series before. While it's a fully 2D game, your characters can leap from place to place on the corresponding map with the D-pad, leaping up to attack enemies above or moving downwards to attack baddies below. It's a bit weird to leap up to merely walk upwards if it's not a tiered level, but whatever works. And while you fight, treasure chests fall, which hold numerous samurai-themed weapons like stars and even a hammer (okay, so that's not really samurai-themed) that can do some more damage and clear enemies from you so you can recover from an onslaught. It never gets as outrageous as Nintendo's fighter, but it's similar in spirit, and the swordfighting makes it a different experience than anything else out there.

Still, I really can't believe how simplistic Onimusha Blade Warriors is. It's extremely playable, that's for sure, but it's a bit dry and seeing as this is now the third game in the franchise using this same control and combat scheme, it's a bit long in the tooth, and is very evident playing this as a pure fighting game. Seeing as Capcom has had such insane fighting games like Power Stone, I was hoping for something similar, when it's merely an Onimusha game using the fighting engine to create a fighting game. The story stuff is interesting, though brief, and the different objectives in each stage is a nice change of pace, but the fighting got a bit tiring after a while because it's the same old stuff, in a different form. In a traditional Onimusha game, this engine works as combat needs to be fast and furious to advance the game along, but in a fighting game where combat is the lone hook, it doesn't have enough depth or variety to really stick out, especially since the stages don't last very long at all with few challenging enemies. As a multiplayer game, Blade Warriors is a bit better, especially as a 4-player game (there are so few 4-player fighters around, this is bound to attract this audience), but still, there are better pure fighting games out there, which are more worthwhile buys. Obviously, fans of the series will dig this game merely to control the characters of the universe (and there is a great collection of characters), but to a non-fan, the appeal will be lost on them. And even the franchise fans will merely pass this off as a small sampling before the release of Onimusha 3: Demon Siege after clearing the game a few times with their favorite characters.

Blade Warriors is one of those С2D' fighting games using pre-rendered backdrops and 3D characters, which makes for an interesting mix of graphics. The character models are ripped straight out of the traditional games, which means Onimusha 2 characters are more refined and better detailed than the ones from the original, though not all that different. With limited sets of animations for attacking and using magic, there's not much to go on anyhow. The pre-rendered backdrops look nice, taking place in numerous locations from the first 2 games along with a few generic locations not recognizable. They look a lot more lifelike this time around, but lack the high detail of the older games. As nice as they look, they lack the Сwow' factor the original game had, or even Onimusha 2, which had some beautiful backdrops. On the plus side, the game runs very smoothly and never slows down even with dozens of enemies at one time on the screen. If anything, Capcom should be credited for keeping the game running fast with no hiccups, which is always better than going crazy with pretty visual tricks.

The sound is pretty nice, thanks to a strong orchestrated soundtrack that fits the theme of ancient wars and demons (as always, Onimusha games have always had great music), and though the sound effects are carried right out of the old games, it's a welcome return in this instance. The voice acting is pretty strong, with numerous VA vets from other games, such as Quinton Flynn (who was Issaru in FFX/X-2 and of course, the voice of everyone's favorite Solid Snake replacement, Raiden), Jennifer Hale who played E.E. in MGS2 and recently the replacement as Naomi Hunter in MGS Twin Snakes, and Gwendoline Yeo, who of course played Paine in Final Fantasy X-2 (which earns points with me, any connection with one of my favorite games ever will be duly noted). Some of the voices are a bit weird (and I don't think the original VA's are here at all, except like Gogandantess, but I didn't go back to play the old games and find out), but nothing too bad.