If you play the PC version, download the Anniversary Edition. It fixes some bugs and also serves as a mod manager: https://wiki.oni2.net/Anniversary_Edition
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Maybe best to approach this with a certain greybox appreciation. I don’t think there’s any level here that totally works, no vertical slice akin to "The Silent Cartographer," but there are a lot of cool ideas. Stuff like being able to slide over items to pick them up, thereby skipping a lengthy animation, or being able to go into an overcharge mode where your attack and defense are increased, are the kinds of nuances that an action game thrives on- encouraging you to play well, and, more importantly, to play stylishly.

It’s rare when it all comes together though, and aside from the obvious signs of a rough development, such as the barren levels and disjointed story, (inadvertently being the best tribute to anime and manga of the time, like we’re playing through the only translated portion of some massive series), I don’t know if the combat ever finds a real identity for itself. A lot of the encounters can feel sporadic, fighting an enemy every few minutes or so, in kind of awkward bouts that get very grab-heavy, often spending more time waiting for them to get up than actually fighting them. Feels like the sweet spot is two or three enemies, enough that you’re forced to manage the group with a few well-timed hits, but not so many that you can’t get any moves out. The potential for melee combat is also complicated by its interplay with ranged weapons- which is to say, guns render the melee combat nonexistent.

Well, it’s not entirely true, there are some great looking disarming animations, and because of the arsenal seeming to have been balanced around the axed multiplayer mode, you’re mainly avoiding weird projectile weapons that practically demand you to weave between shots to knock out the shooter. But when you get a gun, especially the power-weapons that litter the endgame, enemies have little in the way of a response, so the last few levels devolve into backpedaling around, firing away as Syndicate goons blithely run toward you.

(Wondering if it’s a problem of the style as much as anything else, the spartan environments and pragmatism of combat clashing with a game that’s trying to evoke Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix. Now I'm thinking reception to the gameplay might’ve been warmer if the game adopted a different aesthetic.)

After beating the game, I replayed some of the older levels to make sure my problems weren’t just a failure to understand it- and there was an appreciable sense of having improved. Had a surplus of health, armor, and weapons to mess around with, and was more consistently pulling off some of the moves that had given me trouble earlier, but it never gelled. There was always a bit of tension on its most basic level, gunplay invalidating much of the promise of the melee combat, and melee combat itself often failing to find value in your massive move list, boiling down to rolling around and trying to find a window of oppurtunity to pull off one of your high-damage grabs.

So I’m not hugely surprised that the game never got a sequel, but I am surprised some of its best ideas never caught on. The few occasions where everything clicked- where I’d slide into a guy, grab his gun, and then floor his buddy with a well-placed sidekick- they felt like Bungie tapping into some of the core appeals of the character-action genre years before anyone else. There’s something great yet to be made with the foundations of the gameplay here, just don’t know quite what it is.

Far from perfect, but there is just something about this game I love to pieces. The way Konoko is drawn differently in every single portrait, like 10 different artists worked on this game, the badass early 2000s electronic score, and the near flawless animation in the combat, this game could have been a true bonafide classic if Devil May Cry had come out during development. All this game is missing was something to take inspiration from and I feel like a style meter would have been huge for Oni.

Very empty, frustrating, often quiet levels and a by-the-numbers action story/characters. That said, I love the combat system to bits and I've replayed this game multiple times just to get into it.
It's hardly the level of a fighting game, or even something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but it feels like one of the best translations of the old beat-em-up formula in both combat and difficulty. You constantly feel like you're barely scraping by; every single health pack feels like a blessing and just when you think you're getting the hang of things, the enemies get significantly harder and the spaces between checkpoints feel more and more brutal. I still don't feel particularly good at this game but it's immensely satisfying when you learn to overcome the insane challenges and there's a surprising amount of versatility in how you can beat them.
I also deeply love the clear Otaku influence all over this game. The whole thing is just a big celebration of anime tropes including poor attempts to accurately replicate the traditional manga/anime artstyle and a protagonist that borders on copyright infringement - this could easily have been a licensed Ghost in the Shell game in another timeline.
Flawed as fuck but I really like this a lot despite everything. Has an active modding community!

A promising concept that is bogged down by a myriad of problems. Most of the levels are uninspired and the enemies become increasingly more annoying. It's hard to master the game's combat system as you are often swarmed and stun locked which then forces you to button mash. The frame rate also takes a nosedive whenever there are more than two enemies are on the screen or if you are in a large room. Perhaps some of these issues are corrected in the PC version but I wouldn't know.

I ended up using the in-game cheats to progress through the games and ended up having a better time with it. I think I remake for this game would do wonders for fleshing out its concepts. Better controls, a more in-depth fighting system, and an incentive to fight enemies are some changes that could be made.

I liked the main heroine and the story is cheesy but fun. Overall, I would pass on this game unless the PC version corrects a lot of the problems I have listed.

Feel super conflicted on this one, there's a fair bit to love here with a really cool Street Fighter inspired combat system, lots of enemies to learn the ins and outs of, and a decent arsenal that can offer some pretty gnarly combos with your melee punches and kicks. On a replay, this rating would probably improve as I continue to get better and improve, but here? Now? Distant checkpoints and a pretty limited supply of healing items makes a few levels an absolute chore.

I find the style of "death by a thousand cuts" health management extremely unfun, and although it was cool collecting as many of those heals as I could across the stage, the fact it restores a measly ~20% of your healthbar meant I was rationing them. Which is a shame, because there's a mechanic where if you overcharge your healthpool, you get a Super Saiyan-like mode where you hit really hard and have some overhealth, but very rarely did I ever have the opportunity to even activate it.

Graphically, it's a game from 2001 that looks not the best of the era, but there's some neat foibles (the glass shattering effects and general environmental destruction being chief among them). The two (intro and final cutscene) anime segments are really cool, and cutscenes across the game use JRPG-style portraits of the characters in different emotions which is a nice touch (in lieu of how little emotion the models themselves can portray).

The story? It's there. Extremely tropey, very predictable, and very hammy which strangely makes it enjoyable enough? The ending caught me off guard with how sudden and miserable it was, but it serves its role in the story well enough.

There's nothing particularly innovative in Oni, but what it tries to do it performs decently well enough. The anime-inspired action is definitely a big draw, and if you have a PC copy, I'd recommend the community-made Anniversary Edition which has a few mods that add some Quality of Life and plenty of fixes for modern hardware, plus a mod loader for plenty more Oni action!

6/10 - Ok, ok, don't frog blast the vent core!