It's more than a game set in another era, it's a game from another era. I definitely swore more than once after dying and needing to suffer through a cutscene again, but there's something quaint about its aged pre-rendered backgrounds and choppy character animations. On my next playthrough, I'm sure I'll be able to breeze through thanks to a newfound sense of familiarity, but on my first time in nearly two decades, I spent a sizeable chunk of time running back and forth, trying to remember where it was I saw a door requiring some manner of medallion or key.įor all its dusty gameplay mechanics and frustrating old-school backtracking, I still found myself enjoying playing through Onimusha. I couldn't get my bearings, and the primitive map system barely helps. I'd run around a corner and suddenly be facing the opposite way. Since the backgrounds are stationary and prerendered, as was the style at the time, I had a hard time getting a sense of direction.
Like many other turn-of-the-century survival horror games, you spend roughly 50% of your time fighting enemies, and 50% running around to find an item to fit in a lock so you can open the next part of the game.
It's incredibly frustrating when you lose to a boss, or otherwise die, and have to sit through the same cutscene again.
Instead, you are required to watch everything unfold. Speaking of which, one of the most glaring old-school quirks in Onimusha: Warlords are its unskippable cutscenes. I remember seeing them on my PS2 and being blown away by what was then high-quality CGI video. The pre-rendered cutscenes were a real treat in 2001, but in 2019, they look their age. There's a weird twitch to them, too, when they're supposed to be otherwise motionless. Their fingers don't move at all, stuck in a permanent, almost Ken-doll-like half open pose during cutscenes. I played through Onimusha on Nintendo Switch, and even on the small screen in handheld mode, the backgrounds looked tired and hopelessly dated.Ĭharacter animations are stiff, and faces have an unnatural plastic smoothness to them. “The pre-rendered backgrounds, the hallmark of PS1 and PS2-era survival horror, look muddy and primitive when the light of high-definition shines upon them.
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