Onimusha was one of those weird games that was enjoyable yet not a game that spent a large amount of time in my PlayStation growing up. I beat the first game in the series before, for whatever reason, never playing its sequel, Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny, or I might have spent an hour on it at a friend’s house. There was even a strong possibility I might not have played the third game had Capcom not placed a massive amount of marketing that shoved the fact that Jean Reno was playing a supporting role. Honestly, it would be hard for me to say why, since I derived enjoyment from the game. While I wish I had given it the time it deserved back in the day, it is always great when a remaster allows you to go into it fresh without some history attached.
The series seemed to draw from Capcom’s Resident Evil series, but funny enough, it feels like a hybrid between that and Devil May Cry, which was released the same year. The lead characters, in this case Jubei, use melee weapons and fast-paced moves to slay the hordes of demons that come at them. He gets a collection of weapons as you progress that all have their own moveset, and interestingly, their own element and color that adds to the exploration and backtracking when you can open up another path, thanks to the next tool in your arsenal.
The story of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny is set during the tail end of the Sengoku period, particularly during the rule of Nobunaga, while the would-be shogun was burning villages and committing indiscriminate murder. Given this, as one might assume, Jubei’s village is one of the many that is burned down, and he sets off on a quest to kill Nobunaga, the big bad of any good Samurai story. Mixed in with this are demon generals in Nobunaga’s employ, with the main character being part demon himself. This, too, proves to be a popular depiction of Nobunaga as Team Ninja would use it as well for their Nioh Series.
One of the old school elements the game helped me to remember why I hated it was the fixed camera angles. Now, they aren’t all bad, sometimes turning a corner for the camera to simply represent the next area that’s easy to navigate into, and if you hold forward, there are a lot of scene transitions where the controls don’t become completely muddled, not to say there aren’t places you end up running in a circle cause you can’t navigate the transitions. One boss in particular shoots balls at you that you should block, sending you sliding back one transition, then two, then three. There are so many transitions here that it can get confusing just to transition back to the boss in view again, and she can follow up with more shots or a combo that can come out of nowhere as you attempt to re-engage, having become so far removed.
Bosses in general were enjoyable but fairly predictable, which I wasn’t expecting. In most cases, they remove themselves from a position of being hurt, forcing you to avoid them for a bit before they open up. One boss, for instance, in the forest, is fought in a long corridor that he very often jumps out of, running across the screen over and over until he hits a tree and can be fully attacked. It’s not so much that he is hard, but you barely feel like you are damaging him before he restarts the process again and begins to feel like a time sink. Other bosses are more straightforward and forward, like the one mentioned above. Those, however, serve as a reminder of just how much I hate fixed cameras as they bully you across three or four screens in their combo before you get a chance to return the favor. The old-school boss design feels like enough of a novelty at this point to motivate players to experience them, but there were points I felt my sanity slipping away.
Onimusha 2 does, by technicality, feature tank controls, but like most games from the thumbstick era, tank is only secondary if you really want to play using it with the D-Pad. With the combat being as fast as it is, it is good that you have a full radius of movement that you make when engaging a group of enemies. Locking on to an enemy will turn the game into more tank-oriented, causing your character to move slowly around a specific character, but unless you are fighting one really powerful enemy, this leaves you very open to attack, or at least ending up on the back foot in defense. There is a dodge in the lock-on function as well, but in all fairness, most times it walked me right into the axe being brought down on my head. A particular pet peeve of mine is when most attacks can’t even be avoided when dodging backwards, away from combat, which is what occurs here regularly.
Unlike the first game in the series, which was relegated to one location, there is a much grander adventure to be had here. Between hunting down the tools to take your revenge, the game comes to a small village where you can relax, with a show to buy a lot of collectible items. Right outside is a combat area that begins the looping of interconnected areas that you will explore. The game does have that, you unlocked the door that was locked from the other side, moments, self-contained to smaller explorable areas on different points on the map. Magic portals help to bridge the gaps between areas, so this is some interconnectedness of the main full world. One of the weird things though is the game does have a currency system with money that you can use in town, but to the best of what I have seen you only earn it right outside of town, having chunks of exploration like in Jubei’s hometown, or the castle, rewarding you with nothing on that front which feels poorly balanced. The set designs remain a high point for the game, though, all these years later. Like all Capcom games of the era, though, you eventually wind up in an underground laboratory where experiments took place; that’s just non-negotiable.
Enemies in certain areas can feel never-ending as they constantly spawn in and force you to fight them instead of interacting with the one item you want to in an area. This works great if you are looking to farm your abilities, as the weapons and armor can be leveled up three times, but not really if you want to just move forward. At one point, as I was slashing down demons in a bad camera spot, I saw an enemy appear on screen and cut down the enemies I was focused on, then this new one. As it turned out, there were 3 enemies overlapping each other that came cascading out of that one spot. It wasn’t like these enemies were going to be hard to kill, but as I camera transitioned, I got to watch two more enemies spawn in while rushing to get a down finisher on at least one of these enemies. Eventually, you will most likely just rush past enemies as you can’t be bothered. The good news is that enemies frequently drop health and magic, so fighting can often be worth it to recover. The bad news is that all enemies drop these as orbs that can be hard to absorb in the character’s animation when you’re surrounded by the never-ending horde.
Combat can also be spotty at times, owing to some frustration as you fight through areas. There is a bad frame where you go for an attack on a downed enemy, only for them to start getting up, you are locked in the animation having hit nothing, and possibly open to a quick attack from the same enemy you should have just killed. Combos are also neutral, meaning you need to close the distance to an enemy, then stop moving to unleash a flurry of attacks. If you do this the other way, while running, it locks you into a one-attack slash that has enough frames to leave you far more vulnerable than the alternative. This can happen a lot. Depending on the enemy type, these mistakes can be far more devastating, with one rolling enemy type often dragging me into massive counter combos, but they are very simple mistakes to make, which is the issue.
Arguably, the best aspect of Onimusha 2 is just how replayable it is. As you might expect, there are several modes unlocked upon beating the game, as well as new difficulty modes, to make it worth your while to restart your journey. The main narrative, though, also features a branching storyline based on minor choices that you make. One of the coolest aspects of this is the four other characters besides Jubei that you can play as during certain moments of the game. These change the narrative slightly as well as offer varied styles of play. The modes you unlock also give you the ability to play these characters so you don’t feel locked into one more go around, but seeing how talking to one person back at the beginning, instead of that other person can change the trajectory is worth it, though it would have been great if the game had a New Game+ to minimize my work.
Verdict
I always feel weird reviewing remasters, and Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny is no exception. There are a lot of ways this game feels dated, requiring the energy to want to play a game that lacks modern conveniences we take for granted, but then again, that’s kinda the entire point. At its absolute worst, this is a game from 2002, and it plays accordingly. I was never a fan of fixed camera angles in action games, but at the time, I didn’t know any better. Sluggish character controls were the norm. It doesn’t feel as great as a modern game, but Onimusha also feels good against its peers, which helps when returning to it.
There is always a hope that when a game is remastered, somebody is going to go in and sledgehammer the bad bits, the ones that don’t age as well as they should. This is rarely the case. Taking the good with the bad, though, there is a samurai journey here worth taking again, or for the first time. With Onimush: The Way of the Sword, the first new entry in forever, right around the corner, picking up your blade and giving it to Nobunaga one cut at a time has never felt more enticing.
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Review For PlayStation 4, Also available for, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC
A code was provided by Capcom for the purposes of this review
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: May 23, 2025
PROS:
+ Fast paced and Fun Combat
+ Good Set Design
+ Improved Visuals and performance
+ Replayability
+ Plenty of modes to unlock
CONS:
- Some dated elements such as fixed cameras
- Some elements of combat
- Constantly Spawning Enemies
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Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny
