Onimusha: Warlords Remastered Reviews
Onimusha: Warlords comes to 2019 exactly how it was in 2001, and that might not be your cup of tea.
Onimusha: Warlords is exactly how you remember it, and in 2019, that's not necessarily a good thing.
Still thoroughly good fun, Onimusha: Warlords is nonetheless showing its age, and unfortunately doesn't really hold up in 2019. For a fan like me, revisiting Capcom's samurai survival horror is genuinely welcome, but anyone experiencing it for the first time might come away perplexed.
A low budget but competent remaster of a game that's showing its age – and yet still makes a good argument for a future franchise revival.
At times it can feel that Capcom's samurai adventure Onimusha is one of the PS2's forgotten classics.
Onimusha: Warlords is a lazy remaster of an honourable but anachronistic video game. The new control system is a nice addition but we simply expected something more.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Onimusha: Warlords was an intriguing and successful spin-off of the Resi formula in a Japanese setting. But despite being enjoyable, this is still only a polished remaster of a nearly two decades-old game.
Beyond those changes, this is still the same game as the PS2 original, and much of the gameplay still holds up, minus some cheap one-hit death puzzles that prove extra frustrating since they occur during some unskippable cutscenes. While the experimental combination of Survival Horror and Capcom-style Action proved more successful with its sequels, Onimusha: Warlords is still an entertaining prototype that is worth a revisit for fans and a first look for newcomers.
With the only changes being an excellently redone soundtrack, this port is the perfect way to relive your memories of the Playstation 2 classic. However, if you've never played Onimusha, this port's only real value is as a simple way to experience a piece of history. Over the course of 18 years, other games have improved on everything that once made Onimusha great.
This remaster seems only well suited for folks who've experienced the series before. It's tailor-made for folks who want to take a trip down memory lane. Even then, you'll find the same surprise I did—that Onimusha: Warlords is a game remembered as being better than it actually was.
Thanks to a clunky camera and a very dated system this remake of Onimusha doesn't hold up. It's even apparent in the unskippable cutscenes. The atmosphere is great, but that's about it.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
While the game feels truly dated, for those of you who don’t mind playing classic PS2 games then Onimusha: Warlords is something that you might want to check out, but for those of you who’ve already played and especially beaten this game long ago then I would suggest spending your time playing games of this generation.
Onimusha: Warlords has aged poorly, and this remaster does not add anything new to the table. Not recommended
A remaster of this scope can’t give the game a better camera, liven up the combat, or spruce up the tacky pre-rendered backgrounds. It’s a shame too since somewhere in this game lies a decent core that could serve as a fantastic base for a more fully fledged remake willing to go beyond a simple touch-up.
A slightly dated reintroduction to one of Capcom's hack-and-slash greats.
All in all, Onimusha HD is a wonderful return to the first entry in a long and well-loved series. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if Capcom continues to overhaul these PS2 and GameCube era classics.
Onimusha: Warlords must be experienced, whether you were a fan of the games’ before or have never tried them before. Especially with the portability of Switch, the game has never felt more at home. Whether this is the last we see of Onimusha from Capcom remains to be seen, but having dived back in after all these years away from feudal Japan, I realise that I’ve never wanted to revisit this franchise more.
Despite Onimusha: Warlords’ individual elements looking good in isolation, the game amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Its systems aren’t inherently poorly designed, but they fail because they’re given no time to develop and are rendered arbitrary because the game lasts only a few brief hours. If, however, you can brush these concerns aside, as I imagine long-term fans of the series will do, there’s certainly some nostalgic value to be had here. The world and inhabitants of Onimusha: Warlords are as charming as they were on the PS2, and those who grew up on the game will surely enjoy revisiting Inabayama Castle after so many years. The one hope to hold on to is that this sells well enough to warrant a remaster of the significantly improved (and longer) Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny.
Where most publishers are trying to squeeze as much as possible out of people, juicing those nostalgia glands for every penny, here we have a sensible price point for a decent older game that’s been blown up to look passable on a modern screen.