4/5 ★ – MechaniChris's review of Onimusha: Warlords.

So this was the first game my brother and I ever got on the PS2. I remember thinking it was so insanely hard the first playthrough. We got stuck for like 3 days because we couldn’t find a very visible item. I also remember thinking the cutscenes were photorealistic, and genuinely thought computer graphics would fully replace live action movies within a few years. I was a child. Anyway, my brother and beat this thing probably a dozen times because it’s so damn streamlined. You can knock out the whole thing in 3 hours if you know what you’re doing. This is the first time I’ve played it in maybe 20 years? Jesus. Regardless it took me about 5 hours this time because I had forgotten so much. Still, I found it so much easier this time around than I ever did as a kid. It really feels like the Souls games picked up the baton and took this type of gameplay to the next level, which ultimately made me so much better at this game since I’ve now played every Souls game. The other thing I never noticed until now was how similar it was to Resident Evil. Obviously they’re both Capcom titles, but everything from the direction, the fixed angles, the puzzles, backtracking for items, it all just feels like playing resident evil in feudal Japan. The main difference of course being that you can absolutely decimate your opponents with your magic swords rather than horde ammo to barely survive. I played 2 and 3 when I was a kid too, but this one was always my favorite. I heard they made a 4th one that kinda sucks, but I really think this franchise is due for a real new entry. Hell, make a movie out of this one. It’s already movie length, and if they can reboot the Resident Evil movies every few years, they can certainly give us one of these.