Onimusha: Warlords Remaster Review

As someone who was a big fan of the Onimusha when it initially released, and was sad to see it fall by the wayside, as many games of yesteryear did, it was a nice surprise to hear that Onimusha was getting a remaster.

Of course, every man and his dog are releasing remasters. Hell, even games that no-one really asked for remasters of got the shiny treatment. I'm looking at you CoD4. Well, at least I know I didn't ask for it. Which is what matters, obviously.

C'est la vie.

Back to Onimusha.

At first, I was sceptical. It had been so long, would it still hold up to the nostalgia shades that are sometimes welded to my head? The price was decent, at about 16 quid, so I thought "why the hell not?"

First things first; yes it does still hold up. In fact, it only reinforced my belief that modern gaming has lost something. The magic, if you will. But that's a blog for another time.

Now, I did no extra research, beyond a cursory glance, so I know hardly anything about the technical side of things. It certainly must have been cleaned up a touch, upscaling, that sort of thing as the game looks smooth, and crisp. The game controls the same, with the fixed camera angles, and tank-like controls of other greats such as Resident Evil, and the like. The music was redone, and I have no idea if it is improved, but as the original composer was a conman (he pretended to be deaf, if I recall correctly), it was to be expected. It sounds good, regardless.

In my opinion, the game seems fine. I definitely had a blast replaying through the game. In fact, I hope this spurs Capcom to do the same for the rest of the series, and maybe even revive the series proper.

Now, a friend of mine mentioned that this is based on the version that released on the PS2 versus the Xbox version, which had extra content, and that is unfortunate, to be sure. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this, and I assume it was an oversight on Capcom's part, or intentional if they release the extra content as DLC which would sour my opinion.

All in all, the game was a refreshing blast from the past, and I definitely felt it was worth the price of admission. Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on various factors, but if you liked the series, and would like to take a stroll down memory lane, then you can do worse than Onimusha: Warlords.