The Genma are back again to try conquer the world, and only have Japanese star Takeshi Kaneshiro (who plays Samanosuke) and Frenchman Jean Reno (yeah - the hitman Leon himself) who plays Jacques in the way...
After a beautifully rendered and action-packed intro you’re dropped into a battle as Samanosuke (the Samurai hero from the first game) and are going after the Genma Lord Nobunaga, but something rather odd happens as you confront him. Samanosuke is transported to modern day France, which you find is under attack by the Genma. Enter Jacques, a French commando who then gets transported back in time to ancient Japan!! You then continue the story swapping between the characters at certain points trying to find out what’s going on.
Well, even if you swallow the rest of the plot you might be thinking how Samanosuke can speak to or understand anyone, and that problem is sorted by a Tengu (a fairy) named Ako who allows Samanosuke and Jacques to speak to people (what a bit of luck). About half way into the game when the two characters are in the same location you’ll find a small portal big enough for a certain fairy which allows you to switch characters at any time and send items to each other. This allows for good puzzles involving you switching between characters to access different parts of the same place. For example; Jacques’ whip weapon allows him to hook onto small ‘fireflies’ that lets him swing, or carries him to places unreachable to Samanosuke, and because Jacques is in the past any doors opened will remain open in the future…
The game features a better control system than the previous games that now allows you to run in the direction you push the analog stick in, as opposed to having to turn left and right then pushing up to move forward. This allows you to run about the levels dodging enemy attacks much more instinctively. There are three weapons for each character and each has different magic, i.e. a huge ball and chain with an ice attack is one of Jacques’ weapons, and it freezes the enemies around him, then when he swings the weapon it shatters them into 100 pieces (which is always handy). And Samanosuke gets a wind-based weapon, which is a long sword with a wind attack that cuts enemies in half (which looks really cool).
You can enhance your weapons and armour using the same systems as previous games; whereby you collect souls from your fallen enemies to upgrade the weapons to make them more powerful. The action is fast, with a lot of Genma beasties on screen at once which can lead to a lot of blood. Talking of blood, Onimusha 3 defaults on low violence and green blood which I didn’t notice until some humans were leaking green stuff. This can be altered in the options screen (only before you start a new game though) and allows you to put it on full violence and red blood.
There’s one big difference with the graphics this time around. Capcom have decided to abandon the pre-rendered 2D backgrounds of old, and gone for fully-3D worlds much like the Devil May Cry series. While not packed with detail like the old static backgrounds the 3D backgrounds look great, and allow the camera to move and follow the highly detailed characters. The likenesses are very well done; you’ll be able to point out Jean Reno out from anywhere. The Genma beasts and zombies are well designed and highly detailed. Also to be noted are the great-looking real time flowing and rippling water effects.
The sound quality is a bit hit and miss, on one hand you’ve got Jean Reno speaking French with an excellent musical score playing in the background, then on the other hand you have dodgy Americanized voices for the English speaking Jacques and Samanosuke - it sounds really bad. Aside from the voice acting the sound effects and music are top notch.
Overall Onimusha 3: Demon Siege is a good quality ‘actioner’ with some cool levels, puzzles and fighting going on, and is easily on par with the first 2 Onimushas. But the dodgy voice acting and slight repetitiveness makes it fall behind today’s high standards. It’s quite a big game and has some secrets to unlock but that’s about it – this doesn’t quite reinvigorate the Onimusha franchise in the way it perhaps needed.
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