We will give you our powers – Onimusha: Warlords

[It’s guest post time, and once again I am pleased to hand over to Shaun Musgrave, who previously wrote about Apocalypse and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Shaun posts at Post Game Content and on twitter as @ShaunMusgrave]

The early part of a console’s life on the market has a unique flavor to it. For the first year or so, the library tends to be a blend of games repurposed from the previous generation, experimental ideas that feel a bit light on substance, and tentpole releases that lean hard into trying to show off the obvious benefits of the boost in processing power. Capcom’s Onimusha: Warlords is somehow all three of those things at once. Little wonder, then, that the game proved to be the first PlayStation 2 game to cross the million-seller mark. Perhaps it is equally unsurprising that the star of the series faded as the generation wore on, ultimately dying with the console it was borne from.

Onimusha: Warlords was originally conceived as a project for Nintendo’s ill-fated Nintendo 64DD accessory. At the time, Capcom was experimenting with twists on its highly successful Resident Evil series. After exhausting the obvious choice of dinosaurs gone wild on a tropical island, the next idea was to set a game in a trick-filled ninja house in Japan’s Warring States period. It was certainly a clever choice for a setting. Many jokes had been made about the locations players explored in the Resident Evil games, with their bizarre architecture and odd requirements for traversal. In a ninja house, however, such things made perfect sense. The Warring States period, with its well-known figures, dramatic conflicts, and generally chaotic nature made a natural choice for a video game background. 

When the Nintendo 64DD proved to be a failure, the project shifted over to the PlayStation. Development on this version supposedly made it as far as 50% completion before the decision was made to shift it over to the upcoming PlayStation 2. It’s been stated that the reason for the shift was the development team’s excitement over the new hardware’s possibilities, but it’s likely that market realities also played into that decision. The PlayStation was in its twilight years, and the PlayStation 2 was on the immediate horizon. Capcom was hardly alone in making this sort of decision, and it’s one that still comes up to this day when new consoles are on the way.

This ended up being a good decision on Capcom’s part. After the dust settled on the system’s launch in the West, new PlayStation 2 owners were hungry for the next big game. Eyes were particularly focused on the third parties that had made the PlayStation so successful: Square, Capcom, and Konami, among others. Square’s first solid swing, The Bouncer, had come and gone with little fanfare. Konami’s big title, Metal Gear Solid 2, was still several months away. In the absence of other serious competition, Onimusha: Warlords was able to position itself as something of an event. A proper action-adventure experience from a proven publisher! Unlike that business with The Bouncer, this was no mere confection. No, this was a real meal. A true next-generation game as only the PlayStation 2 could deliver.

That turned out to be only partly true, but it was true enough to pass. Onimusha: Warlords is quite fascinating in how firmly it has one foot planted in the previous generation and the other so ambitiously stretching out towards the future. From a visual standpoint, the game looked incredible. Real actors were brought in to serve as the models for some of the key characters, with the then-popular Takeshi Kaneshiro providing both his likeness and voice for main character Samanosuke Akechi. Kaneshiro was hardly the first celebrity to appear in a video game, but rarely before had a 3D model of a real person looked quite so true to life. Indeed, the game at a glance looked miles beyond even Capcom’s own Resident Evil: Code Veronica on the rival SEGA Dreamcast console. 

The reason it was able to look as good as it did, however, was because of some decidely last-generation planning. While many other games took advantage of the PlayStation 2’s beefy specs to create fully 3D worlds, Onimusha: Warlords used the classic Resident Evil style of mixing 3D objects and characters with largely pre-rendered backdrops. This let Capcom use most of the system’s polygon budget on making the various people and creatures that inhabited Onimusha‘s world as detailed and impressive as possible. It didn’t hurt that by this point, Capcom was one of the best in class for making excellent pre-rendered settings. 

This approach came with its drawbacks, though. Pre-rendered backgrounds meant that that a dynamic 3D camera was impossible. Samanosuke would be wandering from one fixed camera angle to another, just as Chris and Jill had in the original Resident Evil so many years before. Fixed camera angles led to Capcom opting for tank-style controls for the game, a set-up whose sell-by date was rapidly approaching. It was a particularly awkward choice given the game’s greater focus on action when compared to Resident Evil‘s more methodical survival horror. Samanosuke is far more capable when it comes to dispatching his supernatural foes than his ammo-starved forebearers. 

It’s a good thing too, as enemies constantly respawn as you make your way here and there solving puzzles. Indeed, you’ll barely go more than a minute or two at most before having to once again raise your sword against one threat or another. Most players can fumble their way through the combat thanks to how generous Onimusha is with health restore items and save points, and it is possible to farm enemies to gain the red souls that can be used to power up Samanosuke’s weapons. For the more skilled players, a parry-style system called Issen allowed them to deliver one-hit kills to their foes should they time them just right. It’s a far more complex and rewarding combat system than anything seen in the Resident Evil or Dino Crisis games leading up to it. 

In this sense, we can see the future the game is bridging towards. Capcom would soon turn the third-person action-adventure genre on its head with the 2001 release of Devil May Cry, and although these two teams had little in common in terms of staff, it’s clear that they were coming to a lot of the same conclusions. More RPG elements, more action, and more compelling systems propping up the moment-to-moment gameplay. Onimusha: Warlords can’t quite get past all of its attachments to PlayStation 1 design decisions, but it’s also not content to rest entirely on the successful Resident Evil format the way the original Dino Crisis had. 

There’s an odd feeling to Onimusha: Warlords as a result of all of this. From a purely mechanical standpoint, there’s little here that could not have been managed on the PlayStation. From the design end of things it’s only slightly ambitious, not quite brave enough to throw out the kitchen sink entirely. In terms of presentation it was clearly a next-generation game, with little to rival it. While it was a relatively short game, it was long enough to satisfy. You might even say that its length was an appropriate match for its cinematic style. 

For all of its positives and negatives, its wild ambitions and more conservative choices, Onimusha: Warlords was just what the PlayStation 2 needed at just the right time. It resonated strongly with the system’s owners, and helped carry the fledgling hardware through a period that was otherwise lacking in showy blockbusters. But just as much as the PlayStation 2’s specific circumstances of the time needed Onimusha, the opposite was also true. While the series would see several more releases before going dormant, it would never again be as relevant and attention-grabbing as it was in those early months of the new millennium. Still, for a brief, shining moment, Onimusha: Warlords was the most important game on what would eventually be the most successful console in history. Perhaps that’s enough of a legacy. 

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Top of the charts for week ending 7 July 2001:

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Top of the charts for week ending 14 July 2001:

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