Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams Review

Same old story

Looks pretty enough on an old TV, but it scales surprisingly badly.

The premise may be a bit rubbish and contrived, but then again when isn't it? In this case, you get to control a young blonde-haired, blue-eyed warrior in the shape of Soki. As generic as he is (complete with a Dante-esque penchant for wearing his swords on his back), it doesn't detract from what is another fast, furious sword-waving, magic-casting, demon-slaying, puzzle-solving epic that's easy to get straight into and provides 15-20 hours of good hacking, slashing fun. And much like the last game, there's even a plethora of additional playable characters to add to the variety (skinny fast girl, beefy bloke, arrogant warrior) who you get to meet at various stages of your adventures. In short, it's not going to change your world, but there's little wrong with it and for fans of the series you can't go far wrong. Think of it as an expansion pack.

In keeping with the rest of the series, the gameplay pretty much follows the exact same template as before, with most of the action focused squarely on intense bursts of combat, punctuated with odd bit of object-hunting and puzzle-solving. As ever, this essentially involves studious use of the attack, block and magic buttons to scythe your way through an almost endless procession of foes. Although the combat's far simpler than, say, Devil May Cry (or even God of War), careful timing helps you clock up combos and critical strikes, not to mention allows you to evade even the most deadly assaults.

Predictably, the death of every enemy allows you to suck up their souls and pick up their gold, which in turn allows you to level up and enhance your skills and weaponry - a very refined experience system that works as well here as it ever has. Within a few hours you'll be able to power up your various capabilities, which in turn opens up new combos, making the combat gradually more complex and involving as you go along. From being an utterly simplistic button-masher at the start, it's not long before the game starts to become a lot more involving, requiring plenty of strategy and skill once the game gets going.

Command and conquer

Pink neon was all the rage in 1596.

One major new addition in Dawn of Dreams is the new command system, allowing you to deliver basic orders to your cohorts via the d-pad, such as all-out attack, attack and follow, wait, as well as a character-specific skill. As useful as it sounds, it merely shows up the limitations of the buddy AI, with characters either far too gung-ho for their own good or not effective enough. To get around these limitations, downed buddies never actually 'die' no matter what, meaning that they'll wake up and rejoin the battle after while. Not only that, ordering them to wait recharges their health halfway (which is a bit of a cheating fudge) or you can go the whole hog and take full control of them and take advantage of whatever special abilities they might have (while cheating and allowing your other character to recharge their flagging health). For example, certain characters can squeeze into small gaps or can communicate with the dead, while others have explosive abilities or can use a grapple. As such, this teamwork ethic is a reprise of the kind of environmental puzzles seen in Capcom's Resident Evil Zero, and often forces you to traverse seemingly simple locations methodically pulling levers, operating lifts and picking up otherwise inaccessible objects. All the while, the Genma hordes keep on coming, always giving you a chance to flex your combat muscles in the process.

On top of that, the game also offers up optional puzzles in the form of simple (yet fiendish) challenges that task you with lining up three rows of coloured blobs within a set number of rotations. With special (often more powerful) weapons and defence/attack boosting trinkets up for grabs, the ends are mostly worth the means.

But on the whole, the game is an incredibly formulaic grind that settles into an immediately identifiable pattern right from the beginning - just like the previous games in the series. The carrot of all those upgrades, new skills, new characters and the end-of-level boss encounters always seems within reach, and thanks to the bite-sized level design you're always motivated to continue until the next section... and then find yourself poking around the one after too. The one major issue we had was more to do with general gameplay balancing, with certain bosses seemingly only there to hold you up. After something as revolutionary as Shadow of the Colossus, this dead-eyed return to boss-by-numbers feels positively cute. They're all of the three-attack-patterns-on-rotation variety, and finishing them is more of a war of attrition than a test of skill. Old school fun, but nothing you haven't seen 50 times over.

More is more

Where's the blood?

Unlike the previous sprawling adventures, Dawn of Dreams is divided very specifically into 17 stages (which you can revisit between levels with the newly unlocked characters), spread over 2 DVDs, making it (by some distance) the biggest in the series to date. More doesn't always equate to better, as you know, but at least it should keep those folks quiet who complained about previous Onimushas being too lightweight. On the other hand, it also goes some way to making you even more aware of the slog. Whereas previous games in the series left you wanting more, halfway through disc one of Dawn of Dreams you're already wondering whether you can take another 10 hours of repetitive demon slaying. It's not as if the unravelling story offers any great incentive, and with so much to read, and so many incidental conversations to wade through between levels, it's often quite a drag. The fact that there's an unlockable hard mode and a two-player arena battle mode when you finish the game isn't much of a draw.

An unfortunate side issue is the game's lack of technical merit. Although it's solid and pretty enough (certainly no worse than previous efforts), things have once again moved on from where this engine was a few years ago. Stood next to any comparable title in the genre, Dawn of Dreams is looking sub-par. Lacking the progressive scan and widescreen options of other recent Capcom releases, the game suffers. Next to, say, God of War, Resident Evil 4, or even Devil May Cry 3, it's looking quite dated. The backdrops, character design and animation's fine up to a point, but the problem is we've seen so much better - and things like the blurry cut scenes seem rushed and point to a general lack of attention to detail. As with Onimusha 3, the game offers two-stick movement/camera controls for much of the game, only to revert to the frustrating old static camera angles of the past, complete with disorientating viewpoint changes. It's not a deal-breaker (especially as the lock-on button is a useful aid) but we really wish they'd make their minds up.

I've got soul(s).

The RPG-elements are a bit broken too. As gratifying as it is to level up all your characters abilities and weapons, the fact that you can keep switching between characters to get around your failing health is a ruinous mechanic that you can't resist using. As a consequence, nothing's ever that much of a challenge, and getting through the game feels less satisfying than it used to. Evidently they either didn't think this through, or they're making concessions to the masses, as usual. Either way, it's not a smart move, especially when the game checkpoints before every screen regardless.