While I do own a PS2, I can’t say I play it very often. Even so, I was familiar with the concept of the Onimusha series despite having never played any of the games. When I saw an Onimusha game being ported to the PC, I had to give it a try. I went in expecting a pretty linear but fun hack ‘n’ slash, and I got exactly that.Onimusha 3 originally debuted on the PS2 almost two years before it showed up on the PC. Yes, I did ask the question “why now”, but I suppose it’s better late than never. The game was very obviously taken straight from the PS2 port and slapped on the PC. They didn’t even convert the button references (it still talks about the X and square buttons in the game, for example.) However, that is only a minor detail, because the gameplay is really what matters.
To begin with, you will play Samanosuke, a samurai who would be familiar to anyone who has played the previous installments of the series, but not to someone like me who had to check three times to spell his name right. The ultimate goal in the story is for our samurai hero to dispatch of the demon lord Nobunaga and his seemingly endless supply of demon shock troops. However, Samanosuke won’t be working alone. Part of Nobunaga’s scheme involves time travel, and consequently Samanosuke finds himself five hundred years into the future in Paris. Despite that, maybe his luck isn’t all bad and he’ll have some good stories to bring back with him to medieval Japan.
The story also focuses around a second hero, Jacques. When I first saw the character model of Jacques, I thought he looked darn familiar, which was very odd. So I researched the game a bit and realized it was Jean Reno, who you’ve probably seen in several movies, most recently “The DaVinci Code.” I thought that was pretty cool to see a familiar looking actor playing a character in a video game. Anyhow, Jacques gets sent back in time to where Samanosuke originally came from. Now that they’ve swapped times, they both set out to stop Nobunaga.
Graphics wise, the game isn’t too bad, considering it wasn’t optimized for the PC. You’re pretty much staring at what you would get by playing it on the PS2. Save for the resolution, you won’t be able to raise or lower any of the other graphic settings. Consequently you’ll see some blocky or blurry graphics along the way, but it didn’t strike me as anything critical towards enjoying the game.
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The gameplay is where Onimusha shines. Do you like pressing several buttons fast and repeatedly in order to hack up hordes of demons? If so, this might be the game for you. Of course the gameplay is really a little deeper than just hacking stuff up, but that covers the main course of this meal. As you slay enemies, they poof into souls, which you can capture and save up. This serves several purposes. If you fill up five bars with them, you can turn into the powerful Onimusha. If you die with all five bars filled, you automatically resurrect as the Onimusha. You can also use these saved up souls to power up your armor and magical gauntlet (the gauntlet is what Samanosuke/Jacques captures souls with.) You will also find many different weapons for each character along the way. Samanosuke gets a variety of swords, while Jacques gets some pretty cool whips, such as a sword that extends out like a razorblade whip (think Ivy from Soul Calibur.)
My only real beef with the game would be the dialogue. Okay, I’m not expecting Shakespeare here, but…you would probably find wittier banter in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. However, there is one saving grace for the dialogue. When I first met one of the bad guys, an evil wizard guy named Guildenstern, I really wanted to beat him up. Not to thwart evil or to save the world, but because beating him up would make him stop talking. As such, I had a new mission in this game, and saving the world was just a bonus. Hey, as long as your motivation comes from somewhere, does it matter?
Since this game was designed for a console, I don’t think a keyboard and mouse is entirely optimal for playing this game. You could certainly pull it off though, because I was able to, and I know there are plenty of people out there with dexterous fingers. Regardless, I still purchased an Xbox controller USB cable so I could use my Xbox controller on my PC. It was only $5 on E-Bay, and totally worth it, because you never know when you’ll run into a game that a gamepad just “fits” better. This is coming from someone who is a huge advocate for the keyboard/mouse, so…I finally recognize that there are rare but existing times when a gamepad saves the day. Onimusha 3 may be one of those times.
Despite the random dialogue generator I think they used during the design process, the rest of this game is pretty solid. I enjoyed hacking and slashing my way through mobs of demons. So if a combat-oriented action adventure game that partners up a medieval samurai and a French police officer is your thing, then you might want to check out Onimusha 3. Another plus is that it’s priced like a budget title (about $20), and for about twelve hours of entertainment, that’s a pretty good bargain.
