Onimusha 3

Keiji Inafune, the director of the Onimusha series and the top guy behind Onimusha 3, had a surprise for the Japanese press during a Capcom press conference last month. "The game is coming out March 2004," he stated, "but, really, the game's pretty much done. Most of the work left is game polish and CG creation." So, in other words, the latest game in the Onimusha series is just going to be hanging around at Capcom for a good half year before it hits stores.

Sniff. Mr. Inafune can be such a cruel master sometimes. It's the best thing the PS2 has going in terms of action, after all.

The basic idea, in case you aren't familiar: Onimusha, a 3D action game set in ancient Japan, is one of Capcom's greatest PS2 success stories. The first one featured young samurai Samanosuke kicking ass all the way across Japan, sucking the souls out of hundreds of otherworldly demons and taking down sinister overlord Nobunaga in the end. The second one was more of the same, but with more of a story-based adventure element. Both had killer graphics, but their pre-rendered backdrops made the games look prematurely dated. As a result, the series has faced trouble in non-Japanese territories—Onimusha 2 sold a million copies in Japan, but barely registered a ripple over here. Inafune's answer to this: make the third game fully 3D, drop the adventure malarkey, and hire stubbly-faced French actor Jean Reno to "virtually" co-star with Samanosuke. Oh, and bring on director Takashi Yamazaki to create a six-minute long CGI intro movie that Inafune calls "a drama unto itself".

Like every other game in the series, "ambitious" doesn't begin to describe Onimusha 3. As Inafune explained in a subsequent interview, his development team basically had to create two games' worth of visual material—medieval Japan for Jacques Blanc (Reno's character), and modern-day Paris for Samanosuke. (They get warped to each other's time periods, and it all makes sense within the plotline, we're fairly sure.) The push for a Western locale was part of Capcom's efforts to make the game more immediately appealing to non-Japanese gamers who don't care about the movie-like detail placed on the Eastern scenery. So how's it look, then? So far, very, very good.

Since Onimusha 3 looks and feels so different depending on the character you use, let's discuss each one separately. First off, Samanosuke. His basic moves are the same as always—slash, thrust, imbibe souls, and rinse. There's a new charge move, and it's a little easier to target enemies this time around, but that's about it. Jacques, on the other hand, has a weapon which we're not sure actually exists in real life—it's a sort of whip that has a great deal more flexibility than the one Harrison Ford uses in the movies. Like Samanosuke, it's a simple matter for you to bash the buttons and have Jacques combo his enemies into submission, but there are one or two tricks you can earn. For example, "capturing" enemies. If you can charge up your weapon enough, you can earn the ability to ensnare enemies in your whip, allowing you to swish them closer to you or flip them around in the air, smashing them against anything nearby. The whip can also be used to latch on to fairies flying in the air to swing across crevices, Bionic Commando-style. It's really a completely different style of gameplay for Onimusha, giving a bit of variety to a series that could use some.

This sense of variety is echoed in the visuals and the stages you run through, both of which are much more visually fascinating than before. The character models are extremely detailed, of course, but more impressive is the fact that they're still this detailed even with the PS2 rendering the backgrounds in 3D the whole time. The stages, from what we've been able to play so far, look very good for a game that's just now going 3D: Jacques' Japan, a forest with waterfalls and castles, is abundant with catchy light and water effects, and the modern Paris Samanosuke tromps through is dark, intricate, and even includes the Arc de Triomphe (no, you can't blow it up). If this attention to detail is sustained through the entire game, series fans worried about the graphics taking a hit should be resting easy now.

Onimusha 3 is set to hit the U.S. next year; there's no specific ship date yet, but it likely won't fall too far behind the Japanese version's March 2004 release.

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ZD Games.