Onimusha 3: Demon Siege
How many words can you think of to describe "awesome"?
Published: May 25, 2004
Capcom doesn't have the best of track records when handling sequels. Let's face it, Devil May Cry 2 was not the game it should have been, and we won't even get into how some of the longer-running franchises like Resident Evil or Mega Man have been diluted over the years. Luckily, to combat every RE: Survivor mishap, Capcom seems to bounce back with something along the lines of Onimusha 3.
In the span of 10 or so hours, Capcom deftly shows exactly why they're one of the kings of the console games biz, dishing out a sequel to a sequel that not only improves on the formula that made the previous games so good, it throws in heaping handfuls of tighter story, better character interaction, more unlockable goodies, and the kind of finesse while pulling it off that can only come from a developer with a good two decades under their belt. Simply put, this game freaking rocks, and if you don't have it in your PS2 library, there's a giant gaping void where a soul sucking samurai and heavy-eyed Frenchman should be.
If that last sentence threw you a bit, you probably haven't gotten the skinny on what makes Onimusha 3 so durned fancy. Aside from bringing back the protagonist from the first game (played by Japan's Keanu Reeves, Takeshi Kaneshiro), Capcom chose to pull from somewhere outside good ol' Nippon for an action star. They chose... well, France. Still, it's not a bad choice considering Jean Reno, the other half of Onimusha 3's tag team, kicks an indiscriminate amount of booty in movies like Ronin and The Professional. The two, chosen by the fates to wield demon-slaying, soul-absorbing good guy gauntlets and shiny elemental weapons (Kaneshiro's Samanosuke works swords while Reno's Jacques favors whip- or chain-based implements), must unite across time to defeat Japanese uber-dictator and all around meanie Nobunaga Oda, returning in classic villain form with a cackle and a cape swipe from Onimusha 2.
More specifically, the pair have to stop the feudal lord after being swapped between their respective time periods, with Jacques hurtled back 500 years to Japan and Samanosuke thrown into modern-day Paris where a veritable shitestorm of demon slicing and dicing has turned the French capital into a bloodbath after a genma (Onimusha series terminology for creepy-crawly demon) time rift allowed an invading army to leap through time and space. As the story moves along, you'll take turns alternating play between Sam and Jack, with a few brief interludes with Michelle, Jacques' partner, love interest and impromptu babysitter for the Frenchman's son.
If it seems like the game juggles a lot at once... well, it does, but does it with a guided and masterful hand. The pacing of the game, cutscenes and action all mix incredibly well, and though the overall gameplay is more or less the same for each character, there's enough of a difference between play modes (Jacques uses his whip-like weapons to cross gaps Samanosuke can't, and Michelle just lays down raw firepower) to make the switches interesting. Since things are nearly identical gameplay-wise, it's probably a good idea to read our review of Onimusha 2 if you're unclear on how things work. We'll wait for you here...
Back? Good, let's move on.
In fact, I'd say the only real major change beyond the more refined pacing and swapping out of characters to mix up the play style is in both the level design and puzzles. While the Onimusha has always patterned its puzzle system after the Resident Evil games that came before it, things have generally staved away from the "half-dozen pieces scattered across the entire current level just to open a door to get to the next half-dozen-item puzzle" model, but O3's placement of items, keys and other such game-advancing items is notably better.
While it may take more than a few minutes to find an item, actually using it where it's needed is almost never more than a minute or two's run from where you discovered the item. Now this could mean that you find and item that unlocks something that gets you the key to the door impeding progress, but it's still just a short jaunt to the next fulfilled task. It's this kind of steady progression that keeps the game fun and never detracts from the action. It's frankly brilliant, and shows a level of pre-planning with the level design that few games can match.
There's little doubt that Capcom knows a thing or two about the PlayStation 2 hardware. Being on board since the beginning and having one of the most talented programming staffs around tends to help in that respect, but it's nonetheless quite impressive to just look at Onimusha 3 in action. Capcom finally decided to take the game into full 3D, and while this adds the usual upgrades in direction and presentation, it also helped partially alleviate the biggest gripe I had in the previous two games: getting slashed at from off-screen. It's not completely absent, but thanks to great camera placement, the chances of you getting a knife to the gut from some phantom genma are greatly reduced.
Sure, there's no mistaking the full-3D backdrops for the crisp, gorgeously detailed pre-rendered images and looped effects, but thanks to genuinely tight camera placement and some downright brilliant texturing and modeling, you won't really miss them - especially when you're able to round a corner to a tight hallway with a camera zipping along to add a nice sense of claustrophobia.
From the enhanced particle system to the improved texture quality on the characters to the little touches like the hair system on some of the models (the two-headed demon dog you'll fight a few times in particular just looks cool when you slash at it and the mane undulates with the body's swaying motions), Capcom has pushed the graphics of their seminal samurai slasher to the peak of what the PS2 can handle, and save for a few moments of marked slowdown when the effects get hot and heavy, it's pulled of nigh flawlessly.
Even the copious amounts of motion capture were synched up well, and it's impossible to mention the graphical polish of the game without lavishing just a bit of praise on Robot's CG intro, which may possibly be the single best animated sequence to ever grace a video game, besting even the most memorable stuff from Square. Yep, it's that good.
When it comes to the audio, I'll get one little quibble out of the way: if you're going to use the likeness and persona of Jean Reno, why not get him to drop a little English (he does supply the French) voice acting luv on us gamers as well - especially when there are already subtitles to clear up any of the more thickly accented performances? It's a minor complaint, really, since the actor that subbed in does more than a decent job, as does the man culled to fill the pipes of Kaneshiro. All the voice work is pulled off rather well, in fact, with the only possible exceptions coming from Jacques' son Henri and fairy sidekick Ako when she's a little too chipper.
The orchestral bits also managed quite a bit of sway, staying memorable in the more action packed bits, but staying far enough in the background to keep from being annoying when there wasn't a particularly sweeping movement. The same could be said for the sound effects, which provide the usual (and familiar) slashes, grunts and clangs as need be.
I find myself oddly torn when it comes to finishing up this review. Having already written over 1250 words on the game so far, I could easily lump another 1250 on top, garnishing an already superlative game with more praise. But I think you get the idea. Onimusha 3, if meant to be the series' swan song, is as polished, refined, challenging, rewarding and just plain fun as a game of this type is ought to be. Stop reading this review right now (cause, well, it's over) and get to your nearest store to pick up a copy of this game. Or, don't get off your butt and rent or buy it from us by clicking on those images to the upper right (y'know, by the score, labeled "Buy Game" and "Rent Game", either way, if you don't own this game, you're seriously missing out.
In the span of 10 or so hours, Capcom deftly shows exactly why they're one of the kings of the console games biz, dishing out a sequel to a sequel that not only improves on the formula that made the previous games so good, it throws in heaping handfuls of tighter story, better character interaction, more unlockable goodies, and the kind of finesse while pulling it off that can only come from a developer with a good two decades under their belt. Simply put, this game freaking rocks, and if you don't have it in your PS2 library, there's a giant gaping void where a soul sucking samurai and heavy-eyed Frenchman should be.
If that last sentence threw you a bit, you probably haven't gotten the skinny on what makes Onimusha 3 so durned fancy. Aside from bringing back the protagonist from the first game (played by Japan's Keanu Reeves, Takeshi Kaneshiro), Capcom chose to pull from somewhere outside good ol' Nippon for an action star. They chose... well, France. Still, it's not a bad choice considering Jean Reno, the other half of Onimusha 3's tag team, kicks an indiscriminate amount of booty in movies like Ronin and The Professional. The two, chosen by the fates to wield demon-slaying, soul-absorbing good guy gauntlets and shiny elemental weapons (Kaneshiro's Samanosuke works swords while Reno's Jacques favors whip- or chain-based implements), must unite across time to defeat Japanese uber-dictator and all around meanie Nobunaga Oda, returning in classic villain form with a cackle and a cape swipe from Onimusha 2.
More specifically, the pair have to stop the feudal lord after being swapped between their respective time periods, with Jacques hurtled back 500 years to Japan and Samanosuke thrown into modern-day Paris where a veritable shitestorm of demon slicing and dicing has turned the French capital into a bloodbath after a genma (Onimusha series terminology for creepy-crawly demon) time rift allowed an invading army to leap through time and space. As the story moves along, you'll take turns alternating play between Sam and Jack, with a few brief interludes with Michelle, Jacques' partner, love interest and impromptu babysitter for the Frenchman's son.
If it seems like the game juggles a lot at once... well, it does, but does it with a guided and masterful hand. The pacing of the game, cutscenes and action all mix incredibly well, and though the overall gameplay is more or less the same for each character, there's enough of a difference between play modes (Jacques uses his whip-like weapons to cross gaps Samanosuke can't, and Michelle just lays down raw firepower) to make the switches interesting. Since things are nearly identical gameplay-wise, it's probably a good idea to read our review of Onimusha 2 if you're unclear on how things work. We'll wait for you here...
Back? Good, let's move on.
In fact, I'd say the only real major change beyond the more refined pacing and swapping out of characters to mix up the play style is in both the level design and puzzles. While the Onimusha has always patterned its puzzle system after the Resident Evil games that came before it, things have generally staved away from the "half-dozen pieces scattered across the entire current level just to open a door to get to the next half-dozen-item puzzle" model, but O3's placement of items, keys and other such game-advancing items is notably better.
While it may take more than a few minutes to find an item, actually using it where it's needed is almost never more than a minute or two's run from where you discovered the item. Now this could mean that you find and item that unlocks something that gets you the key to the door impeding progress, but it's still just a short jaunt to the next fulfilled task. It's this kind of steady progression that keeps the game fun and never detracts from the action. It's frankly brilliant, and shows a level of pre-planning with the level design that few games can match.
There's little doubt that Capcom knows a thing or two about the PlayStation 2 hardware. Being on board since the beginning and having one of the most talented programming staffs around tends to help in that respect, but it's nonetheless quite impressive to just look at Onimusha 3 in action. Capcom finally decided to take the game into full 3D, and while this adds the usual upgrades in direction and presentation, it also helped partially alleviate the biggest gripe I had in the previous two games: getting slashed at from off-screen. It's not completely absent, but thanks to great camera placement, the chances of you getting a knife to the gut from some phantom genma are greatly reduced.
Sure, there's no mistaking the full-3D backdrops for the crisp, gorgeously detailed pre-rendered images and looped effects, but thanks to genuinely tight camera placement and some downright brilliant texturing and modeling, you won't really miss them - especially when you're able to round a corner to a tight hallway with a camera zipping along to add a nice sense of claustrophobia.
From the enhanced particle system to the improved texture quality on the characters to the little touches like the hair system on some of the models (the two-headed demon dog you'll fight a few times in particular just looks cool when you slash at it and the mane undulates with the body's swaying motions), Capcom has pushed the graphics of their seminal samurai slasher to the peak of what the PS2 can handle, and save for a few moments of marked slowdown when the effects get hot and heavy, it's pulled of nigh flawlessly.
Even the copious amounts of motion capture were synched up well, and it's impossible to mention the graphical polish of the game without lavishing just a bit of praise on Robot's CG intro, which may possibly be the single best animated sequence to ever grace a video game, besting even the most memorable stuff from Square. Yep, it's that good.
When it comes to the audio, I'll get one little quibble out of the way: if you're going to use the likeness and persona of Jean Reno, why not get him to drop a little English (he does supply the French) voice acting luv on us gamers as well - especially when there are already subtitles to clear up any of the more thickly accented performances? It's a minor complaint, really, since the actor that subbed in does more than a decent job, as does the man culled to fill the pipes of Kaneshiro. All the voice work is pulled off rather well, in fact, with the only possible exceptions coming from Jacques' son Henri and fairy sidekick Ako when she's a little too chipper.
The orchestral bits also managed quite a bit of sway, staying memorable in the more action packed bits, but staying far enough in the background to keep from being annoying when there wasn't a particularly sweeping movement. The same could be said for the sound effects, which provide the usual (and familiar) slashes, grunts and clangs as need be.
I find myself oddly torn when it comes to finishing up this review. Having already written over 1250 words on the game so far, I could easily lump another 1250 on top, garnishing an already superlative game with more praise. But I think you get the idea. Onimusha 3, if meant to be the series' swan song, is as polished, refined, challenging, rewarding and just plain fun as a game of this type is ought to be. Stop reading this review right now (cause, well, it's over) and get to your nearest store to pick up a copy of this game. Or, don't get off your butt and rent or buy it from us by clicking on those images to the upper right (y'know, by the score, labeled "Buy Game" and "Rent Game", either way, if you don't own this game, you're seriously missing out.
