Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny Review

This was a game I played around a few years ago. I recall liking it when I initially beat it. After beating Demon Siege, Dawn of Dreams and Warlords in recent times, I decided to jump back into Samurai's Destiny again. As a whole, it's pretty much the typical expansion sequel of the time which were prevelant in late 90s all the way up to the mid to late 2010s. Some of it's ideas land but many others miss the mark. It's an enjoyable game however compared to games in the series like Warlords and Demon Siege, it comes up short. It edges out Dawn of Dreams however.

Samurai's Destiny's story is a weird one. In some ways it doesn't feel as confused as Warlords' story was. There's multiple allies to team up with and the villains last a lot longer by comparison to create some attachment. Jubei Yagyu's backstory is a bit more clearly defined than Samanosuke Acehi's where at least you know the former's upbringing. With all the improvements, there are also some new issues, for one there story just has Jubei randomly teleport back to the locations from Warlords with no clear explanation or reason, it just happens. It reinforces to me how quickly put together this sequel is.

The next issue is that in the grand plot of the Onimusha games, Samurai's Destiny can almost feel like filler in how little it advances the story and how none of the characters get mentioned outside of the game itself. Nobunaga's defeat in this game barely advances any kind of struggle.

This could be fine if the characters are enjoyable but that's where the problems start. Knowing or getting attached to the characters depends on how much you gift them items. If you don't even engage with any of this, they are nothing more than background characters who show up on occasion, you'll fight them some of them randomly if you don't gift them things or form attachements but it's hard to care about them as villains since they don't do much of anything and this is what I mean. Due to this system stories can vary widely...kind of. The ending is ultimately the same no matter what choices you make. Oyu is one of few allies in the game that feels fleshed out. Jubei is okay even if I stopped taking him seriously when he said he would kill Ginghamphatts in their 2nd fight and he didn't. He's mainly just a stoic avatar for the player.

Gameplay in Samurai's Destiny is mostly the same as Warlords but there is one major additon, the charge attack. Strafing was a great evasion tactic in the latter and with the charge attack, you are encouraged to use strafe more and not getting hit means you can land some major damage.

Secondary characters are handled much better now. Where with Kaede, there was no need to fight enemies unless in needed to progress the story. Where now, Oyu can soul absorb and do charge attack and what you get with her carries over to Jubei.

You can transform into Oni Form now which was a cutscene in Warlords. However you can't choose when to turn it on when enough of souls are gathered so it's something I did when fighting the damage sponge enemies and bosses.

As a whole, Onimusha 2's gameplay is enjoyable, the solid backtracking and level looping level design is still here even if it reuses Warlords' levels. When the combat is just close quarters sword fights, it's still enjoyable as before, and improved in some ways with the charge attack.

There is two major problems with Oni 2's gameplay, the bosses and projectile attacks. Both can work in tandem to make the game insufferable. There's more archers than there were in Warlords and you can't seemlessly fire arrows and guns and the same time, you have to go into a menu and unequip your melee weapon. Some enemies can throw quick projectiles at you but the problem is that due to this it's much easier to get attacked from off camera. An enemy can fire a projectile from camera angle and by the time projectile reaches your line of sight, you could get damaged. Strafing also isn't quick enough to dodge since the projectiles move faster than Jubei can strafe.

The bosses have all this plus their overly aggressive and fast moving attacks combined that with the fixed camera and strafing not being as reliable and it feels like the game is demanding skill out of you that the controls and game design doesn't feel like it's up to the task due to the amount of times off screen attacks will happen.

The only interesting boss is the first phase of the final Nobunaga boss where it's esstentially a fighting game where the goal is trying to perform whiff punishes on him. This doesn't last long and he eventually starts flying and the projectile problem is amped up to 11 because the camera and slow strafe will make his projectiles you need to dodge a game of luck than skill of any kind.

There is a hub and currency but that gets dropped around halfway into the game.

Overall, Oni 2 is mostly a decent sequel but it's sequel difficulty spike exposes issues that were never that noticeable in Warlords.