Onimusha 3: Demon Siege review

Right from the start, Onimusha 3 does everything it can to create a spectacle. It starts off with one of the most impressive cinematic sequences ever seen in a console game: armies go to war and there is a big explosion. The opening draws on the legacy of cinema blockbusters of recent years, from the Matrix style kung fu to the Lord of the Rings scale fantasy armies and beasts of war. Aside from the great detail and quality of animation - equal to the best any movie has to offer - there is style and dynamic direction, something that manages to carry itself even into the somewhat less stunning (but still impressive) in-game engine.

The suggestion that you are taking part in a cinematic adventure is further supported by the all-star cast. Takeshi Kaneshiro may not be famous here in the West, but he does have obvious star quality and Jean Reno has always been an excellent gruff action hero. What counts even more is that their in-game counterparts project enough heroic charisma to carry the story through. They are well animated in combat and have striking costumes.

The Odd Couple

The basic plot revolves around an evil demon army from ancient Japan invading modern day France. It brings the two heroes together from different times and puts them both into unfamiliar settings. This leads into gameplay that mostly involves fighting armies of demon soldiers and the occasional boss encounter. All while exploring ancient Japanese temples and hidden catacombs under Paris. While it could have easily been repetitive, fighting your way through these locations is actually as fun and exotic as it sounds.

This is partly due to the new and improved combat system, which takes more than a few cues from Capcom’s other big hit, Devil May Cry. Full analogue control makes it easy to switch from opponent to opponent without the old method of turning using the D-pad. The combat system isn’t the most complicated around, but timing can still be perfected to expert levels, scoring ten-hit combos and multiple instant kills, if you manage to get good enough. There is definitely a sense of satisfaction for experts, but the strength of combat isn’t how deep it can get, it’s how easy it is.

I’ll be back

Just like the films it admires, Onimusha doesn’t want to make it hard for you to get into the action. Instead of putting up a stiff challenge from the start, it keeps things varied, and when all else fails, flashing lights and special effects save the day. In the first few hours of gameplay, you get given more than ten weapons between three characters. Onimusha 3 doesn’t try to be more than an action game with some exploration and a few puzzles, but if that’s just what you want, you couldn’t want much more.

It is the sense of pace and variety that make Onimusha worth playing. Every hour you get to explore a new setting and get rewarded with a new weapon. There is freedom to fight hard and earn more upgrades for your weapons and even carry out side missions or training mini-games, but most of these are not necessary. You can finish the game in fifteen hours, or fifty. You can make it hard for yourself, or just try to get to the end. Personally, I didn’t die for the first eight hours of gameplay and I didn’t even look at the map for the first ten, but I can’t say that I missed any of that. And there’s always hard mode after your first play through.

And the Oscar goes to…

The blockbuster movie comparison is a double-edged sword though. True to the worst action movies, there is an unnecessary romantic subplot. It’s not that the supporting characters aren’t likable, but that they’re just going through some very tired clichés.

The in-game graphics and sound hold up well, although there is noticeable slowdown in some situations when a fight gets heated between more than a few characters, but this doesn’t cut into the gameplay and the slow-motion effect doesn’t jar.

What does jar is some of the voice acting, not that we expect much from this genre, and the script is far from gripping in itself, but some of the delivery really grates, especially the bewildering decision to swap Jean Reno for an American voice actor when he starts to speak to the other Japanese characters. They had him for the French dialogue, and we all know that he speaks English, so why the confusing change? We may never know.

Run of the mill

The music may not linger in your head afterward, but it pulls all the right strings at the right moments. Always melodramatic, it keeps the pace exactly as it was intended and without too much repetition or looping. The exaggerated slicing and weapon impacts sound great through a decent sound set-up, even though they’ve been the same for the last two games.

It may seem like Onimusha 3 lacks ambition, but even though it fails to provide any solid innovation to a tired genre, it makes great effort to keep what’s familiar interesting and engaging - going to great lengths to cater for its audience’s needs, even if they seem run of the mill. But if “run of the mill” is throwing demons with a flaming whip, that’s not so bad.