Today I finished the tutorial quest. Three things stand out:
- Familiar tropes abound
- Simple combat, tricky timings
- Awesome visuals.
Minor spoilers for the tutorial quest follow.
The protagonist is a witty anti-hero. He quips at his enemies, gives his (presumably rare) lunch to hungry children, and has few qualms about killing in his pursuit of the Way of the SwordTM. He is a reluctant beneficiary of otherworldly power bestowed upon him as he enters another world. The Hero’s Journey is well underway. (Supernatural aid? Check. Crossing the threshold? Check. Meeting the mentor? Check.) Our new mentor occupies a safe location from which we embark on missions. Standard stuff.
Fighting generally has two modes: offensive and defensive. Offensive fighting is the most straightforward; heavy attacks break your opponent’s guard, while light attacks are faster. Defensive fighting is where Onimusha shines. Your options include blocking, dodging, and counterattacking–all of which require precise timing (counterattacking most of all). I found myself settling into a rhythm where I awaited each enemy attack, focusing on pressing a block or counterattack within the fraction-of-a-second timing window. This required some thought. The enemies do telegraph their attacks, but the game doesn’t tell you when to press the button. One must use their own intuition (which I find myself developing with practice) as to when the enemy blade will drop from its readied position. It’s a solid gameplay loop, one which I find myself eager to return to amongst the numerous, lengthy cutscenes.
The cutscenes aren’t bad though, despite my eagerness to return to the ‘game’ part of this video game. They are, for the most part, serviceable; the graphical fidelity feels cartoonish in some parts and genuinely immersive in others. It’s obvious when you’re about to fight when the scene quality downgrades, but a close-up of a rice ball made me admire the finely detailed textures of each individual grain. The water ripples believably, first in the disturbed river of our world and then in the afterlife. I am reminded of Wilfred Owen: ‘In all my dreams before my helpless sight, he plunges at me,’–down into the mouth of Hell. A red moon illumes the afterlife; corpse after corpse floats, stream after stream meets amidst a maw of impermeable blackness. The veil draws back behind the Oni Gate which bars its entrance to our world, yet the red light of unlife shines through the domineering gap between its doors. Credit to the gameplay where it is due: in the cutscene before the Oni Gate one is restricted from fully looking up or down. One must imagine the gate extending perpetually, or at least beyond comprehension.
The tutorial quest is brief, but promising. It promises more subsystems to come (likely more powers will be unlocked, and a presumably chatty disembodied companion within your arm McGuffin), more practice in combat rhythms, and more stunning visuals. Onimusha isn’t treading new ground, but it’s treading it well–I look forward to our next journey.
