I suppose i might as well start with a game I just finished off this afternoon on my lunch break:
I finally completed my platinum run on
Onimusha: Way of the Sword by beating the game on Carnage difficulty and then beating all the bosses of the game again in Boss Rematch on Carnage difficulty.
Incidentally, the in-game rewards you get for doing this are a sword that gives you the same Issen attack frames in your normal form that you have in Oni form, as well as an outfit that makes your bow stronger and automatically draws in souls like your Oni form. Not sure what use you would have for the outfit when you've already beaten the hardest challenge in the game, but whatever. At least the sword gets to be immensely useful in Boss rematch.
Man, what a game. i haven't played through such a collection of excellent boss fights in an action game in years, maybe not since probably Sekiro, this game's spiritual successor, or Lies of P. Nearly every boss feels hard but fair in a way that Fromsoft seems to have forgotten how to make. Just about every attack is extremely well-telegraphed and can be parried; deflected; dodged; or countered (via an Issen, where you attack at the last possible second). Only 1 boss, the last one, starts pulling out the anime ninja **** FromSoft's become so fond of lately, and even he's an outstanding fight once you figure out how his kit works. The game even manages to make so-called 'gank fights' (where you're forced to fight multiple bosses at once) work in a way that FromSoft has never managed, as whatever enemy you're not fighting tends to be mostly passive in the background aside from occasionally rushing in to catch you off-guard.
While I wouldn't call the game's presentation especially noteworthy, I would note that the facial animation on Mushashi (the main character) is absolutely outstanding. The way his mouth and eyes shift during cutscenes and even mid-battle during clashes is extremely expressive and gives him a lot of character.
Unfortunately, the game isn't without some major problems, which I imagine will really hurt it come GOTY awards season. While the game's linear sections are generally excellent (particularly the Underground Lab, which features more legit horror than Resident Evil is willing to feature these days), the bulk of the game takes place in the small-ish "East Kyoto" open world area. And just about everything about this area sucks: the copied & pasted enemy trash mobs; the copied & pasted "rift' encounters; the whopping TWO mini-bosses that get recycled the entire game (but especially here); and the boring sidequests. And it takes an eternity to get anywhere since the city is designed like a maze with locked doors, areas you have to crawl under debris to get into, and even entire streets you can initially only access by crossing through several houses.
it was a chore to come back to this area and have to constantly re-explore it for randomly-spawning chests and rifts to close for crafting components. A handful of the sidequests are passable at best, but most are just generic "go to this spot on the map and kill some guys". And if you do New Game +, you need to do just about everything all over again because none of your sword; health; or gauntlet upgrades carry over. Get to grinding!
Enemy variety is also especially lacking. There are maybe half a dozen different mob enemy types that get re-skinned at least once each (several twice), and I already mentioned the whole TWO minibosses recycled the entire game. Also, for as well-designed as the boss encounters are, i didn't really enjoy any of the beast fights. This is a game about studying patterns, deflecting, and countering. The beasts, perhaps fittingly, tend to attack rather randomly. i could never get into a rhythm fighting them, especially since only 1 really has attacks that you can parry to trigger your Blazing state and obtain a major attack buff.
Overall, an excellent game but i hope that if Capcom makes a sequel or DLC that they just scrap the open world idea entirely. It doesn't add anything to the experience and is just there to triple the length of the game.
in other news, I'm currently playing
Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon HD on my Switch 2. I played through this game before on the 3Ds and didn't particularly care for it, but I'm in the mood for this sort of thing right now and I am enjoying it more as a "pick up and play" game than I did trying to play such a repetitive game straight through back in the day. Up to the 2nd Mansion in that game.
There are more fitting games I plan on playing this month, but Onimusha was a considerable investment. I spent nearly the entirety of September playing through that game twice, it's a very hard game, and I need to detox for a while. Playing that Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight DLC tonight, which I don't imagine really qualifies for this.
Topic: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D (Read 543 times)
