Onimusha 3: Demon Siege

PlayStation 2 (Capcom 2004)

The big G-S-G-S-G

General opinion: Pretty cool
Story: Not without problems, but entertaining enough
Graphics: Pretty good
Sound: Not bad
Gameplay: Good

Total:

The Review

Onimusha 3: Demon Siege is a hard game to classify. It shares much with the survival horror genre (and Capcom's other hit series, Resident Evil, in particular), but the more fantastic nature of its story and the fast action with its cool supernatural special attacks are something quite different. It also shares something with another Capcom title, Devil May Cry, and even has a few RPG elements. So I'll just call it action/adventure. It should be noted at this point that I have never played the first two games in the series, so I don't know much about how this title relates to them in terms of story or gameplay.

Samanosuke is a Japanese warrior from the 16th century, fighting against a race of demons called Genma, and their evil lord, Nobunaga. He has been given supernatural powers by another demonic race, the Oni, in the form of a gauntlet with which he can draw 'souls' from the demons he kills. The Genma, however, have been meddling with the fabric of time. Samanosuke gets caught in a time fold, and finds himself in the middle Paris, in the year 2004.

Jacques, on the other hand, is a French soldier who suddenly finds himself under attack by monsters. To make matters more confusing he runs into what appears to be a samurai from medieval Japan, but the two have barely met when Jacques is sucked through another random time fold into, you guessed it, 16th century Japan. There he also receives an Oni gauntlet, and in order to find his way back home he embarks on a quest against the Genma, while Samanosuke does the same in modern day France... To make things easier, we run into Ako, a little 'Tengu' with the ability to travel through time, thus helping the two heroes to coordinate their efforts. Samanosuke also receives help from Jacques' son, and girlfriend Michelle, while Jacques gets acquainted with (who else) Samanosuke of the past...

Confused? Well, the story might be rather far fetched in many ways, and time travel is a difficult concept to portray realistically, because of the many paradoxes involved. But this doesn't stop the story of Onimusha 3 from being entertaining enough. One benefit of the storyline is that it has allowed the game to contain many interesting and very different locations. It is also often featured in the puzzles, and often Jacques must achieve something in the past for Samanosuke to be able to proceed in the future...

An interesting feature is that the main characters have been modelled after real actors, Jean Reno (star from films such as Mission: Impossible and Ronin) and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Jean Reno has also voiced the short French language sequence at the beginning of the game, but sadly the rest of the game is voiced by others. Voice acting on a whole is of standard quality, not the greatest ever, but nothing to complain about.

Gameplay is smooth and fun. You'll hack through the swarms of demons, and solve puzzles, much like in any survival horror game. You'll find new weapons, and you'll also have to enhance your weapons using the souls you receive from enemies. Controls work pretty well. As far as I know, the first two games used Resident Evil style controls, in which pushing forward moved in the direction you're facing, and pushing left or right turned the character. These controls are still available, but thankfully there's also a more normal control method available. Many enemies pack a punch, and the game seems challenging enough. If you die a few times, an easy mode is unlocked, which is good for us not so talented action gamers.

Graphics are quite good. There were one or two places that suffered from slowdown, which is something I've rarely run into in a PS2 game, but mostly the game works quite well. The soundtrack, though not one of the greatest and most memorable I've heard, is not half bad. The game is decently long, up to some 15+ hours (well, at least if you spend as long as I did solving the puzzles and exploring locations), and there's plenty of unlockable features that add to replay value, including an additional scenario in which you play as Heihachirou, one of the people Jacques meets in Japan.

All in all, there's not much wrong with this game. It's not the greatest action/adventure title I've ever played, perhaps, but it's a lot of fun, despite (or even, in some ways, because of) the somewhat implausible plot... Not much else to say. Two thumbs up.

Ben B. Bainton, 27 June 2006