Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams
- March 07, 2006 18:26 PM PST
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Feudal Japan is once again at stake as five new heroes take up arms against a growing Genma army.
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Why Doesn't Anybody Have Their Natural Hair Color In Feudal Japan?
In Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, you'll be able to select from five various heroic characters for a two character party to embark on your missions. The new gameplay additions allow you to toggle between characters at anytime, and switch party characters at designated rest areas allowing you the full arsenal of abilities of your entire stable of warriors. You'll be able to play as Hideyoshi Yuki, also known as Soki the Oni of Ashe, Jubei Yagyu Akane, the granddaughter of the original Jubei Yagyu of Onimusha 2 fame, Tenkai Nankobo, a mystical holy monk who has vowed to bring down Hideyoshi's tyrannical reign, Ohatsu, childhood friend of Yuki, and Roberto, a mixed blood Spanish Missionary on a mission of revenge.
In addition to conventional attacks, each character also sport special abilities, and unique super attacks. Utilizing special abilities allows you to access secret areas, navigate puzzles, and pick up bonus items which may not have been available if that certain characters abilities were not present in your party. Super attacks are generally unlocked when you level up to certain degree.
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Speaking of leveling up, Dawn of Dreams features a fully functional pseudo-role play game leveling up system. You'll be able to gain experience points which you'll be able to use to enhance specific abilities and skill areas of your characters. However, you'll have to think carefully about which character you'd like to buff up and which weapons you'd like to enhance. Oni Souls and experience points may be awarded generously early in game; however wasting them by enhancing your character in nonessential areas is a quick road to revisiting completed areas to troll for assets because you aren't at the right level to survive the latter creatures and bosses devastating onslaughts.
Dawn of Dreams game engine has been refocused and tweaked to give a more conventional hack-n-slash feeling --most of the attack commands are very simplistic. To compensate for the shallow button mash friendly engine, the game offers a buffet of attack options for every playable character. In addition to the conventional attacks, you'll be able to initiate a chained combo attack by using Oni Magic, or trigger an Oni Awakening attack.
Human Cherry Trees . . .Are Gross
Oni Magic is stored up by collecting blue souls from defeated foes. Initiating an Oni Magic Attack takes a very small amount of Oni Magic and allows you to create a chained combo which allows you to strike every foe within an arms length. Oni Awakening allows you to enter a special status alignment which renders you temporarily invincible, regenerates your HP, automatically collects souls, and increases the inflicted damage of your attacks.
Additional changes from the last Onimusha title include fully rendered 3-D backgrounds, larger and more diverse environments, limited camera controls in some areas, and the ability to show 6-8 characters on screen at 60 frames per second.
With all the additions and enhancements, Onimusha does have a few rough areas that may irk the attentive gamer. There are a few battles where the game starts to chug on the PS2 -- especially around larger enemies. The game relies heavily on the RPG aspects and it can become extremely tedious to troll for experience points and items, or to backtrack to a save area to swap out party characters because you brought someone who doesn't have the needed skill to proceed to the next room. Additionally, boss battles tend to last longer than they should. Who wants to block for three minutes just to get a single slash in, before having to evade for another three minutes?
Even with these few select caveats, Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams is a stellar addition to the series and a new beginning for Capcom's fourth largest franchise. One has to wonder with all the multiplayer RPG aspects, will there be an online Onimusha title on the horizon.
