Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams
Capcom messes with a good thing and makes... a good thing.
Published: April 15, 2006
The Onimusha series has always been a visually impressive one -- even when the development team switched from Resident Evil-style pre-rendered backgrounds to real-time 3D ones. There are some rare instances of the textures looking just a bit too stretched or low-res for their own good, but the game as a whole is damned impressive. Each of the five characters is loaded with the intricate detail that you'd expect from the series (bits of armor, cloth, hair, etc.), the environments are quite detailed and yet still varied to the point where you can go from a battlefield to the stomach of some demon nightmare inside of a half hour.
Capcom also took the time to listen to fans and move the camera from the multitude of fixed, pre-set angles that were a holdover from the first couple games and mapped independent camera control to the right analog stick. For the most part it eliminates the old issue of enemies attacking from off the screen, and the spots where you can't move things are almost always presented with a camera that lets you take everything in.
The sound design, too, is very, very good. Dolby Digital Pro Logic II means you'll actually have full 5.1 surround on the pre-rendered movies (and good Lord are they hot), and during the game, Pro Logic does a good job of shoving things out to the side and back channels as well as a semi-faked surround system can, but it's in the sound effects -- the footfalls on different surfaces and snarls and that splashy sound swords make when they cut into bad guys -- that the game really becomes a treat for the ears.
The voice actors hired for the game certainly aren't bad (though I have a hard time believing they could deliver some of the lines the first time with a straight face, they can be so bad), and you'll probably recognize a couple of them from animation work in the past, but the choices were wise ones, and there are more subtle lines that are pulled off with the right kind of inflection to give the more touching moments of the game some oomph. It's not amazing stuff, but it's better than most games.
In fact, Dawn of Dreams is better than the games that came before it, and I don't make that statement blindly. The move towards an action RPG with more characters, a more twisty storyline with more threads and action that helps refresh the stuff that was starting to feel just a little stale in the past games (though slicing demons never really gets old) all add up to an adventure that I'm grateful actually happened.
If this is an indication of where the game is headed going into the next generation of console hardware, I am indeed sorry that I thought it should have stopped at three games. Here's hoping there are at least three more good ones under Capcom's belt.
