Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny

Jubei The Substitute Santa Claus Onimusha 2 is a game about simulating the hell of having to please everyone in your friend group, where everybody has a certain taste in things, and an opinion about how uncool your other friend is. Compared to the first game this is much less focus. it tries so many different mechanics and systems to see what sticks, it doesn't feel as refined, but it does to some interesting stuff. The OST is still good even if the original is a bit better. The way to gift system work, feels purposefully made so you would have bought a guide, in the old days to get the outcome you want it, it is exciting looking at gift points and trying to figure out, how to get them all as happy as possible, and get the items you want out of them, and the difference scenarios and upgrades and just entire story lines, that appear or disappear depending on the gifts. It's just that this is the element of the game I remember the most, because it's such a big part of the beginning of the game. The other thing I remember most is the wonderful opening, that really shows the tone they are going for, cohesive blend of war and gruesomeness and sadness, but also likeable character, funny dialogue and character animation that is really expressive. The normal gameplay is still fun. how you fight and get points to upgrade your weapons and armour so you become a dead deadly machine, and the harder enemies do enough damage, so you can never be in auto pilot. It's a game that feels like it is pushing the formula from the original Game as far as it can, and it succeeds in many ways. I may prefer the more refined and shorter first game, but this is just a great adventure would recommend.

The gameplay is there. The story is not. Capcom was trying to experiment with this one, introducing a friendship system to eek out more replayability into the game. Because guides were all the rage at the time, the idea was you'd go to your local game shop or what have you and pick up the magazine or actual guides to then help you figure who should get what and when. GameFAQs still exists and Steam has Guides but it seems like none of them have all the information you need like I remember in the actual guides. And that's the thing with the game. Terrible story aside, the game to this day is a slog of obtuse puzzles and hidden story beats. The friendship system is likely the worst offender. You want 100% of the story and the best ending? Good luck knowing how you stand with characters in how much they actually favor you. So no, I actually do not recommend this one. It's still "short" at roughly 7-9 hours long but I was cringing at nearly every cutscene -- especially when the English translation can get it so damn wrong. 6/10.

Thanks Capcom, due to your incompetent remastering skills, I have decided to not play any more Onimusha games (especially Way of the Sword) after this game. - The orb absorb mechanic is annoying and lame, because you need to make the game very spongy with enemies, making it artificially difficult. Orbs disappear after a while but you are busy fighting. - Combat is just attack, block, magic attack that you can use like twice with full bar (atleast the first game let u you more magic attacks, man that was fun), can't even ranged attack because there's no way to get ammo, and when you try to, you can't block so you just get stunlocked. - This franchise is just not it. - This game is literally worse than the first game in everyway - Whoever thought of that give gift to ally to get a random item thingy, should get fired if not already they did. Cosmetic gold mechanic basically.... - Another enemy spongy game like the first game but less fun due to more stunlocking - Boss fights way less enjoyable - Puzzles are lamely over complicated - You added auto save feature THAT DOESN'T EVEN WORK BECAUSE IT SETS YOU BACK MORE THAN LOADING A SAVEFILE. - Most boss fights are just camera angle bossfights, like THERE ARE LIKE 5 DIFFERENT CAMERA ANGLES IN SOME BOSS FIGHTS IN A SMALL ROOM. - Finished the game, still won't recommend, last boss is literally "have plenty of healing or it's pretty much impossible" - because there's no parrying, the dodging is very clunky, blocking works half the time... TLDR: Try actually remastering your games properly next time Capcom.

horrible horrible game. first one was okay, this is all the bad stuff amplified. holy heck what a bad action game.

Endless spawns and an insane amount of souls to Upgrade. But the game is still great

不懂塞尔达时之笛伟大之处的人都应该来试试这款坦克视角act🥲。 虽然杂兵战时一闪和坦克视角搭配体验很棒但BOSS战里坦克视角和多机位切换逻辑真是纯粹的折磨。 除此之外这款游戏作为act体验没什么短板

VERY different from the very Resident Evil-based first game with the town hub and shopkeepers and NPCs to talk to and its gift-giving system. Lots of dialogue, you have to check THREE times for dialogue most of the time instead of the usual two. These addition make it where different ally characters can come in to help you at various points and changes outcomes of certain parts and the endings of the game, so more replayability incentives here. This makes Onimusha become more of its own distinct thing separate from Resident Evil, but I honestly liked the straightforwardness of the first game more, which kept it purely about RE-style level design. This new aspect of the game also is mainly relevant for the first parts of the game and is a bit of an unwelcome and unnecessary addition to me, since after a certain point it is all in on the RE-style game design train with no opportunity to get back to the town, which is what I really like and where these games really shine, although I do respect the effort to differentiate it from being just a samurai-flavored Resident Evil derivative. It's crazy how much story difference can happen and be committed to just within those few early portions of the game with this esoteric gifting system which involves a lot of guesswork and seems to get different reactions even from the same gift to the same character. Imagine if in Resident Evil, you could give Wesker booze to make him more loyal to you. I find the main character Jubei is less likeable than Samanosuke from the first game, with Jubei being more gruff and voice acted in kind of a funnily cheesy way, but you get onimusha transformation powers right away since I guess he is already part demon and doesn't need an oni gauntlet. Also, I detected hints of Zelda in the first game and this amps that up even more because the story right away presents a "collect the 5 mystic orbs" setup to the progression through the story. There are more weapons (5) and more nuances to the combat now, with unlockable techniques (they all use the same command for each weapon), but I find that this made the controls for switching weapons also more advanced but in a cumbersome way. You will get hit while fiddling around with that for sure, you have to stand perfectly still and hold L2 + left (ranged weapons) or right (melee weapons), and it is very janky and slow response and sometimes you skip a weapon and have to cycle back. Also, I found that upgrading weapons and especially armor with souls was more of a grind in this one. The survival side game is back and with more variations, but I find that they are accessible too late in the game to matter. Once you get the hammer and put some souls into that, you can absolutely destroy anything. Also, there is some environment recycling from areas of the first game in this one, and I played this one right after the first so it was a little deja vu disorienting in a way. Ultimately, while I personally prefer the simplicity of the first game, this sequel gets more ambitious in a way that I respect, making it become more of a full-fledged samurai RPG almost. I do like RPGs, I just wasn't expecting that here, and wouldn't mind further differentiation from Resident Evil if implemented more cohesively to the whole experience. Hopefully the third and fourth games come to Steam sometime too! I am officially a fan of these classic games and would welcome more of these ports ASAP. FYI, some censorship in this game too with one of the unlockable costumes that can be used only with one of the other characters you briefly play as (who are really fun actually), but odds are you won't even unlock this costume in the first place. Also a bathing backside of the lady character in the intro FMV. Can restore both via NexusMods.

didn’t like it :( but you probably will :)