Reviews from

in the past


Me surpreendi, perfeitamente jogável até hoje, a gameplay é divertida do começo ao fim, o gráfico era muito bom pra época e mesmo hoje em dia não ficou feio. Maior problema do jogo é ser curto, 4 horinhas já dá pra terminar, ainda mais que a história parece um filme de aventura qualquer.

Um ótimo começo pra uma franquia, esse aqui sendo um dos pais do hack 'n slash (eu acho), é sólido demais, e a idéia de acabar sendo uma mistureba com resident evil é de certa forma encantadora, e combina bem, o combate sólido, narrativa muito gostosa de acompanhar, digna de momentos que qualquer um nos anos 2000 iria a loucura (quem to querendo enganar, até hoje piro com essas coisas) esse jogo merece muito mais atenção, e CAPCOM, por favor traga essa franquia de volta.

Gorgeous game, Japanese voice acting is fantastic, with my boy Takeshi Kaneshiro heading the game, good enemy variety, enjoyable world to explore. But a little bit too short! I want more! Also the remaster is of great quality, the game looks fantastic.

Onimusha: Warlords is a game I have been interested in playing for a very long time. I may have been interested in playing this game longer than some people reading this have been alive. So I finally got around to playing it and god damn it I should have played this sooner. Onimusha: Warlords is a short dose of greatness straight out of the golden era of gaming. 2001 just keeps on giving.

Onimusha: Warlords borrows a lot from the survival horror games of the time. It has tank controls, pre rendered backgrounds, fixed camera angles, puzzles, a bit of back tracking and using items to unlock your way through the game. But instead of being a survival horror it uses these elements to make an action game. So you could kind of say it falls somewhere between Resident Evil and Devil May Cry. However it doesn’t have as well designed locations and puzzles as the best survival horror and the action isn’t on the same level as a Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden.

First of all I want to address the controls. There is the option to use the stick but don’t do that. Use the direction buttons that controls like this were made for, it’s just better. I know there are probably plenty of people that will see fixed camera angles and tank controls and say things like ‘outdated’ or ‘slow and clunky’ or ‘needs modernising.’ To these people, please take a small amount of time and effort to learn to play it. Games should not have to bend to your comfort zone, low effort and taste. It shows a lack of understanding for how things like specific input methods, restrictions or limitations can create amazing gameplay experiences. Videogames were more interesting when we didn’t have standardised controls and it allowed for more unique experiences. The controls in Onimusha: Warlords are excellent. After a brief time getting comfortable with it you will find yourself running smoothly through the environments and weaving your way past enemies without getting touched. Then when you use R1 to lock onto enemies the controls change. Now the directions do quick forward/back/side steps. Perfect for dodging attacks, creating space or closing the distance. It works really well and you’ll be dancing with these demons in no time.

The combat is a bit on the simple side but it's satisfying and I didn’t tire of it across multiple play throughs. Combined with the controls I just explained you use a sword for basic combos and there is a block, thrust, kick, ground stab and upward slash. You can also perform counters if you attack or block at just the right time. The other attacks you have are magic which is great for tough enemies or dealing with groups but it does run out. Finally you have your ranged weapons, the first one being a bow, which is great for the floating enemies or just attacking from a safer distance. At first I found weapon swapping to be annoying as you can’t do it while attacking or moving but then I remembered this is an old game and you just pause to use the menu to instantly swap equipment or use items. Occasionally you’ll switch to another character which while similar to control is geared more towards evading enemies as they can flip over their heads and they don’t have an incentive to kill enemies.

There are also some other interesting things going on that I liked. First there is the risk/reward constantly in combat. The enemies drop souls when they die which is your currency for upgrades, or health and magic depending on the colour. They float around for a while before disappearing and you need to absorb them. This means stopping and being defenceless during battle or just letting them go but obviously you really need them. Then there is health. Herbs fill some health but medicine works way better. But upgrading an herb to medicine costs souls you need for upgrades. Some upgrades are actually required to unlock some doors as well. Once you are good enough you can actually play through the game without using any health items and without upgrading many things. Despite progression appearing simple and straight forward they found a way to make it interesting and give you more challenges on further play throughs once you’re more skilled. Speaking of further play throughs, I love the way this game progresses. You fumble your way through the first time and then get better and better and faster too with each play through. Then there is also an unlockable mini game, Oni Spirits, and another difficulty unlocked after that.

Onimusha: Warlords is set in 1500s Japan but with horror and demons, so of course it looks cool. It’s also one of the strongest looking early PS2 games and as far as I can tell they’ve done a good job with this remaster. It has great looking backgrounds, characters and enemies and the atmosphere is superb. I have to give a shout out to the CGI cutscenes as well, these would have blown me away back then and are clearly a bit ahead of their time. You play as a samurai, Samanosuke, and a ninja, Kaede, working together to defeat some demons and rescue a princess from becoming a sacrifice because her blood will make Nobunaga, who has an agreement with the demons, much more powerful. It is a solid enough story, with good characters, that is really well paced. It’s fleshed out further by reading the documents found throughout the game. The voice actors do a great job and the soundtrack is good too. I played in Japanese as that just felt right but the English has its own charm as well. By far the biggest problem here is that most cutscenes are not skippable. This is a huge sin in a highly replayable game and could even harm a single first play through if you die too often. I don’t have a problem with the cutscenes but I didn’t need to see them this often and it was frustrating.

Onimusha’s biggest problem though is the length. There is just not enough here. Your first playthrough will likely be less than six hours possibly even less than five. Then further playthroughs will probably be three or under. It feels like a short, small game much more so than the Resident Evil’s of this time. Onimusha: Warlords really needed more everything; more locations, more weapons, more puzzles, more enemies, more documents, more items, more upgrades and more unlockables. I think a couple of hours longer would have been the sweet spot but at least it’s really replayable and it is fun to blast through in one sitting. It is a bit of a shame because Onimusha: Warlords isn’t that far off of standing alongside the GOATs. If only there was more to it, skippable cutscenes and more impressively designed locations and puzzles.

I’m so glad we got this remaster and I hope to see the next Onimusha game get the same. How has this series not been fully revived, remastered and remade? Onimusha: Warlords may not quite be one of the all time greats but it’s still fantastic and not far off. Let me make things really simple. I am off to order an original copy of Onimusha: Warlords and the sequel, Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, which I am really looking forward to. If this game looks appealing to you I would recommend you do the same.

8.7/10


Onimusha la verdad es que me termino gustando mas de lo que esperaba. El juego es bastante corto, lo comencé un día y cuando pare de jugar prácticamente lo deje antes del final. El combate es bastante simple la verdad, con 3 armas diferentes y un combo para cada una + un ataque especial diferente para cada una. Aun que el combate no esta tan mal, siento que podría ser mejor, con un sistema de lock-in mejor, separar el botón de esquive/dash de el lock-in, y mejorar igualmente el dash, ya que este se nota que esta mejor trabajado para los controles de tanque, lo cual pues se puede hacer cambiando al dpad por lo que al menos es algo que tiene un tipo se solución. Junto a esto, igualmente me hubiese gustado que se pudiese cancelar los ataques para hacer bloqueos (como en Yakuza).
Otro problema fuera del combate, es el hecho de no poder saltar cinemáticas in-game, lo que encuentro medio meado ya que cada vez que mueras ante un jefe o en el puzzle del agua, tienes que hacer el recorrido de vuelta, ver la cinemática y ver si ahora si pasas sin problemas.
Fuera de esos problemitas y cosillas que pudiesen ser mejor, es un juego con un apartado artistico, en mi opinion, bastante bonito, con fondos pre-render que siento que fueron bien reescalados para el remaster, escenas cgi que me parecieron GOD, un gameplay sencillo pero entretenido y una historia corta pero buena.
Es un juego que recomiendo bastante si no saber que jugar y tienes la tarde libre, ya que el juego no dura mucho mas que 4 horas y se nota que tiene rejugabilidad, por lo que en algún momento a lo mejor lo vuelvo a jugar para obtener todos los coleccionables.

Awesome PS2 action game from the golden era of Capcom. Really eager to move right onto Onimusha 2 now. Man this was seriously really fun and I highly recommend it.

I didn't realize how much Resident Evil DNA is within the first Onimusha game, but now it is one of my favorites! Between the puzzle-solving and navigating a dense map, this really feels like the developers went "What if Resident Evil was set in feudal japan?". The game is originally from the PS2 and has all the elements that comes with that, which I personally love.

Overall, definitely a fantastic experience and I wish the other entries on the Onimusha series stayed with this formula, but they did not.

I’m a total a sucker for the highly specific (but never-not-great) combo of occult shenanigans in ancient Japan with demons and lots of insect stuff, so Onimusha: Warlords was right up my pagoda.

I played the re-mastered version. Its new default 16:9 aspect ratio, nice as it is and all, was cutting off some of the beautiful, pre-rendered artistry of the backgrounds, so I set it to the old one, because some of its backgrounds are gorgeous, and highly cinematic.

You may know the story of how the original Resident Evil 2 prototype evolved into Hideki Kamiya’s game-changer, Devil May Cry. Well, this game also started as an RE spinoff, itself, before (as with DMC1) the devs ultimately decided to make it its own thing, which I’m glad they did!

You may also know about how DMC1 is still often described as showing the “growing pains” of not quite being RE, while also not quite being the more fluid DMC we’ve come to know today. To quote an ancient, wise Japanese proverb:

“Not a girl.
Not yet a woman.”

Now, in truth, that’s a Britney Spears song, but let’s not get hung up on details. If you’re wondering how Onimusha: Warlords plays, it’s kind of like that middle ground between RE and DMC that DMC1 was. So if you love both, you’ll love this. Absorbing soul orbs of fallen enemies, lots of hacking and slashing, but also pre-rendered backgrounds, puzzles, scarce health, and a bunch of ambushing zombies. To quote another ancient sage:

“Best of both worlds.”

Okay, so that’s a Hannah Montana song, but don’t get frustrated just yet. Save your rage. After all, there are some truly frustrating segments in the re-master of Onimusha: Warlords, ones perhaps more forgivable in the context of the PS2 and its time of release, but inexcusable today.

The specific one that really got under my exoskeleton was a moment whose sadistic, torturous design was apparently at least skmewhat mitigated in a port of the game on the original X-Box called Genma Onimusha. Now, that port is actually much more than just a simple port with some improvement, as it ups the difficulty, adds new enemies, armor, combat mechanics and and generally changing things around a fair bit. It’s, by all signs, the best version of the game, but probably only if you’ve played the original already. The fact, however, that its less gameplay-changing, more objective improvements (like the ability to simply skip in-game cutscenes) weren’t implemented into this modern re-master, which ideally should be the definitive version so many years later, is kind of crazy and a bit unacceptable/lazy. After all, they took the time to implement one new, great change (quick swapping between weapons with the shoulder buttons wasn’t in the original, where you had to pause constantly to do so). Why stop there?

Some of the more hair-tearing, controller-throwing moments wouldn’t be half as bad if the cutscenes before them were skippable.
Alas, they are not. So, good luck with failing that TIMED puzzle at the last second and attempting trial and error like any sane person would, only to be greeted by the same cutscene over and over and OVER before you can get to the pure joy that is ALSO doing the three puzzles in a gauntlet of stupidly easy puzzles again, just to finally get back to the only one that’s suddenly extremely difficult (and, again, TIMED!), just to fail that and do them all over again, with that unskippable cutscene as the rotten cherry on top of this section’s most putrid of sundaes.

Don’t perform seppuku just yet, though, because Capcom so graciously and thoughtfully made it so that you CAN skip the PRE-RENDERED cinematics!!! If you’re thinking about how that makes about as much sense as an atheist praying mantis, you’re correct. Those cinematics are few and far between, and the ability to skip them is a paltry nothing.

Honestly, you probably won’t even want to skip the cinematics, because they’re actually quite beautiful! At the time, Capcom was pouring a TON of money into this franchise, what with its orchestrated score, celebrity actors, etc. Its intro cinematic is still one of the best ever.

If you like a little demonic horror in your feudal Japan and enjoy RE and DMC (especially DMC1, which while clunky in hindsight when compared to other DMCs, still was a cool evolutionary stage that gets overshadowed sometimes, and this takes its ball and runs with it), then when you’re making your backlog of “games to play”, don’t forget Onimusha!

Lord knows Capcom has… 😢


Note:
This is easily a 4 or 4.5-star game, but I’m reviewing the re-master, specifically, and it’s a pretty bare bones one, aside from the welcome ease of weapon-switching on the fly. It majorly missed an opportunity to correct some shortcomings that maybe, in the past, were more acceptable and which the Genma version fixed, but which make certain parts of this game just no fun at all. The rest has aged very well and I highly recommend it, but this why the re-master’e getting 3 stars from me, while the original, in context, would get much higher.

É tipo resident evil só que bom

This game was a ton of fun, and my final play time was under 3 hours. It was basically the perfect length. There are a couple trophies I want to clean up, but doubt I'm going to go for the platinum.

Didnt age well but still a good game.
Back the time when the games didnt hold your hand for everything.
Would be nice a new Onimusha

Resident evil samurai,n tem vergonha de ser isso por isso é tão bom

Was fully not expecting to beat this one in a single sitting but damn Capcom really made em compact back in the day. Some of the best prerendered backgrounds Cappy ever produced on display here, the bio horror aesthetics of the monsters clashing with the rigidity of the historical setting is so fresh and so clean, it's a joy to explore this space and fight some dudes. The combat is, eh it's sword fighting in Resi style. Could have been worse for sure but it's pretty easy to bash n smash your way through, especially in the less than satisfying Ayane sections. These seem to justify themselves with a unique deadly strike and some restrictions, but you can just run past enemies sooooo whatever? The deadly strike in general is neat but it's too precise a mechanic to hang such a thin combat system around, unless maybe I'm bad or the port introduced some input lag or sommat. Fun!

Cool, action-centric take on the RE formula with presentation too good and campaign too short for the tedium of its combat to set in. That timed sliding-block puzzle was unnecessary. The new non-tank controls unsurprisingly make combat smoother, if inelegant.

Even though I believe the first game in the series to be its weakest one, playing it is still a whole lot of fun to this day. The way the combat flows so smoothly, how the world pulls you in and the incredible design of the enemies and the environments – it's all just top-notch. It's truly disappointing that the remaster didn't meet Capcom's expectations, because of that, it looks like we won't get to see the rest of the series get the remaster treatment.

it plays like resident evil, but you're a samurai. meaning combat plays a bigger role and is very fun! though a bit shallow, only one attack buttons, three weapons, and very simple magic system. Level design isn't as good as most keys require you to upgrade your magic rather than finding keys. But its a pretty short game so the redundancy doesn't overstay. Would recommend for RE / action fans if you're looking for something fresh

Such a fun game. Combat is not complicated, responsive and fun. The story is extremely light but charming. The pre rendered graphics and controls (analog or tank) both work well. The camera can be annoying when you’re attacked by something you can’t see unless you stand in the right spot. But at like 4 hours, it’s got an exciting pace and is very fun.

so sad that nobody really bought this remaster, 2 is better and 3 has so much fucking sauce, my last hope is the netflix show but I don't even know if people really enjoyed that either

While it didn’t get the same TLC as Capcom’s other big remake release this year, Resident Evil 2, the visuals don’t look half bad – especially on the Switch’s portable display. If you’re looking for a compact and entertaining action game that still holds up give Onimusha Warlords a whirl.

Full Review: https://neoncloudff.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/onimusha-warlords-review-the-other-capcom-remaster/

Great pacing for both story and combat, short but highly replayable, fun challenges, you can dress as a panda, banger OST, has the best English dub ever, and most importantly... super fun! That was the best 13-hour gaming experience of my life. 10/10

se vc acha a camera do primeiro DMC ruim se prepara

perfect balance between action and survival horror

Masterpiece.

Play it with the dpad tank controls if you want the true experience. I’m not just being a purist, tank controls are Fun and Good! Let’s bring them back.


Far easier without tank controls and incredibly short. It is actually just Resident Evil with samurai though and didn't really find its identity until the second game. They should remaster the rest though because it was worth the revisit.

It might be the nostalgia talking, but this was a great time. The pre-rendered environments, great hack n slash action, the unsettling music and a ton of demons. For some reason, despite it being very similar to Resident Evil, I never played this on the PS2. It was extremely my thing, but it just passed me by. I did play the sequel with Jean Reno, however. Although I can't remember if I finished that one.

Anyway, it took me about 3 hours to beat this, and while that's not a great deal of time, the fun I had doing it (aside from that awful gauntlet of puzzles about an hour in) mae it worth it. As I say, I think some of it is nostalgia talking, as some of the corridors gave me big Resi 1 vibes, and it really struck a chord with me.

It's probably been one of the more entertaining games I've played recently, and I think the time it's taken is a contributing factor. I would love some more of these ports/remasters. Not just Onimusha, but more of these pre-rendered action or horror games. I loved them back in the day. I'd happily pay however much I paid for this for more of the same.

Very nice port of a cool, stylish game.

Maybe some day Capcom will remaster the complete trilogy

Resident Evil but sometimes you suck up ghosts like it's Luigi's Mansion.