Gamespot score:8.3(great)
my score:8.5
(+)Pros:-Good lenghty game with addictive and stragetic combat,-interesting story,-a total of 3 different playable characters add into variety,-some amazing boss fights,-amazingly good visuals during the time of release
(-)Cons:-very hard to play on normal mode,-some story loopholes
gameplay time:10-20 hours
Now time for a game of the past. The onimusha series was one pretty well renowned one. For one, it has 4 running main games, and a few spin offs. Sadly, 3 was the only I played, and dawn of dreams crashed on me. Back on topic, onimusha fans and newcomers alike(me) will love this game for a few reasons, an intruiging story, solid combat, and a bunch of lovable characters. Though the game is one of the hardest I have ever played, I can't say that its unplayable, its just really hard. Well, moving on, it even has characters based on REAL LIFE PEOPLE. While I didnt know these guys back then, this should be enough to spark some interest in some people.
Story goes as samanouske, a honourable samurai, goes to assualt a temple to kill oda nobunaga, the reason for genma appearances. There, during the final battle, he is teleported away, for an unknown reason. He is brought to the future in france, where he finds out that most of his power has been sucked away. At the same time, police detective jaq is facing problems of his own. his squad is wiped from the genma and hes barely surviving killing the monsters with his machine gun. At the most crucial moment he is saved by samanouske, and is teleported away as well. Samanouske, suprised, looks around for a cause, and notices guildinstern, a mad genma scientist, at a faraway tower. Presuming the source of the time travel, samanouske goes to confront him. Jaq on the other hand, is teleported back into samanouskes time and gets powers of his own similar to samanouske after unforseen events, and he fights to get back to his time. 2 fighters, 2 times, this game is just that awesome.
Being a hack and slash game, onimusha 3 is friggin awesome. The gameplay isnt as fast as something like, say, devil may cry, or even god of war, but its still as great as or even better than those. For one, the pacing is pretty great, you cant jump and do air combos and all, but hitting your enemies still require great presicion, especially the big and powerful ones. Slashing blindy will only cause you to die terrible deaths. Almost everything requires some strategy, thats if you're playing the brutally brutal normal mode and not the easy mode. The maps are great, the environments are nice to explore and roam around. The game requires some backtracking, but its nothing serious. Monsters get infinite spawn, but you can ignore them so its not that big of a deal, especially if even the weakest of genma can decipitate you if you are playing blindly. Still, theres such a thing called a FAQ.
For the characters and genma, you are in for quite a treat. You play as 3 characters, samanouske, jaq and that 1 police chick michelle. Samanouske is your run of the mill swordsman with a few cool weapons. Among the 3 he fights the most up close. He has basically swords in his arsenal, be it great swords dual swords or any other blade related crap.Though he is the main character and is used the most, I would say I enjoy using him the least, not that he isnt fun, the other 2 are just better. Jaq is a blast to play. He using whip based weapon, he can hit them from afar, go toward them to dish out pain, or drag them to him. Most of his weapons are whip based so they have quite similar properties. He is personally my favourite character. Michelle on the other hand uses modern day weapons, like machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers etc. Tough you only play her for a small bit, she is suprisingly fun. That 1 zoo level was one of my favourites in the game, due to the sheer fun of shooting genma. Combinging 3 characters with the slaying of some interesting looking genma, this game is just great. Some of the normal genma look really good (that 1 chainball guy and the bear looking dude from the zoo level, even those ninja dudes look cool), and bosses are just a blast to fight.
I overall only found the difficulty in this game to be a major issue. The game is really hard on normal, and since I was just a sore kid back then I played easy after dieing against the 1st robot boss like 20 times. Years later I tried again on normal mode and cleared it.....it was hell. Also, the story has parts where it doesnt make sense, more so, the time switches. When ako time travels to the different heroes, the other hero just sits back in his time, idling and doing nothing, when the world is at stake, wth? You would think the other hero would go off and kill some stuff before ako comes back.
Happy gaming!
