weird to hear this called the "first million seller on ps2" given the series's relative obscurity now, a victim of capcom's prolific 3D output in the 00's. unquestionably any cultural cachet these interesting action-focused takes on resident evil's structure had was entirely wiped away when a young hideki kamiya pulled off the wildest "hold my beer" in gaming history and dropped devil may cry less than a year later. for how clever and honestly entertaining onimusha is, its conception of combat consists of mashing square to swing your sword and blocking when needed. no stinger, no launchers, and any semblence of juggling completely wiped from the beta builds - though not before dmc's designers got a quick whiff and snuck the concept into their own game.

onimusha in general hews closely to the resident evil playbook much more earnestly than was probably necessary, but the amount of upgrades and changes they made to suit their system still keeps the game feeling well-tuned decades after its original release. the tank controls are excellent, with not only a comfortable turning radius and synergistic hallway geometry but most importantly a full backdash in place of a slow back-up. this is an actual game-changer in terms of keeping protagonist samanosuke agile and frankly for my money beats out the free-roam controls slapped into this hd remaster. it's also a major boon considering that prerendered backdrops and fixed camera angles are used, as the frequent changes in orientation make non-tank controls too erratic. these are issues regardless of the control scheme given that enemies often appear and attack just off-screen; the designers smartly responded to this issue by making samanosuke's block omnidirectional (except against arrows unfortunately) and by giving his attacks a solid amount of draw towards nearby enemies, eliminating the need to precisely aim slashes. on top of all of this is a target-strafing system that I did not even realize existed until the final boss, although using it there felt instantly at home with the rest of the movement options.

the area exploration primarily takes place within a war-torn castle and its east and west grounds, all of which are littered with the usual locked doors, simple logic puzzles, and oddly-shaped keys that you would expect from a game in this vein. if you're into that sort of structure, it's a blast! each section of the game is nicely partioned into no more than a dozen rooms and a few objectives to cleanly take care of in about an hour each with a boss battle to finish things off. enemies don't stay permanently dead unlike resident evil (ignoring the remake's crimson heads), but each one drops orbs that give exp, health, or magic that must be sucked up with the player's gauntlet in a similar if more protracted way to the later ninja gaiden reboot. thus backtracking feels painless, and a few extra fights here and there never hurt in order to upgrade each of the game's three weapons.

I do have a couple of qualms with progression that disappointed me a bit the more I dug into the game. for one: a major component of accessing certain doors is leveling up the gems within your weapons for "higher-level" doors ie a third-level green door requires the green gem to be upgraded twice. this check is arbitrary and would have been annoying had I elected to upgrade my weapons first, which have a tangible effect on moment-to-moment gameplay - I reluctantly upgraded the gems first to avoid needing to grind orbs. there is also a significant portion of the game (maybe about 25% in two sections) in which you play as samanosuke's allied kunoichi kaede. while she's perfectly fit in combat and can hurl kunai for ranged combat, she lacks alternate weapons or the orb system and thus feels overly simplified. in her portions I often found it easier to run around enemies than bothering to fight for no reward. the little bits of fluff in samanosuke's combat like magic and hot-swapping weapons (and eventually a gun) shore up the shallow framework of the combat, and without that the deficiencies of the game seem more apparent.

regardless of these issues the game is a breezy adventure in the sub-5 hour range and hits the spot for those wanting a survival horror-style adventure with less anxiety and more swordplay. for what it lacks in depth it certainly makes up for in unpretentious charm and adherence to a comfortable modality of play. also: for those playing the hd version, make sure you set it to 4:3! the 16:9 seems to just zoom in on the backgrounds with panning and I found it to look rather unappealing.