Operation Backlog Completion 2025

An Onimusha 2 Remaster is Finally Happening!

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Feb 072025
 

Back when I played the remaster of Onimusha, I mentioned my hope that the sequels would be remastered as well.

I’d never had a chance to play them, and I enjoyed the first game enough that I wanted more.

At the time, it seemed unlikely. There were a lot of concerns that the remaster simply hadn’t sold well enough for Capcom to make more.

But when the new game in the series was announced at The Game Awards, I expressed that hope again. After all, remasters would be the perfect way to fill the long gap before Way of the Sword’s 2026 release, and a new game announcement showed they still had confidence in the Onimusha IP.

Well, although the Capcom Spotlight mostly focused on already-announced titles (and certainly had no Ace Attorney news), it did include one surprise – an Onimusha 2 remaster announced for later this year.

It will be out on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC, so I’ll probably play it on the Switch like I did the first remaster.

There are two other mainline Onimusha games after 2, Onimusha 3 and Dawn of Dreams. It remains to be seen if Capcom intends to remaster them as well or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re waiting to see how well 2 does. I’ll definitely be picking up the Onimusha 2 remaster when it comes out.

(Oh, and they made a point of saying that Onimusha: Way of the Sword won’t be “an impossibly difficult game”, which should lay to rest the concerns that it would be a Souls-like).

Are you planning to pick up Onimusha 2 once the remaster comes out? Do you think the other games in the series will be remastered as well?

Capcom Will Revive Dormant IPs, Bandai Namco Plans “Consistent” Tales Remasters

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,
Dec 182024
 

The biggest surprise of the Game Awards for me was Capcom reviving both Onimusha and Okami, two series that looked like they’d never return.

Onimusha’s last full entry was in 2006, a whole 18 years ago. Only a browser game and a VR experience came out since then. The remaster of the first game was followed by rumors that subsequent remasters had been cancelled.

As for Okami, it also came out in 2006, with a spiritual successor called Okamiden coming out in 2010 and a remaster of the first game in 2012 (with ports in subsequent years).

So it’s been quite a while since Onimusha and Okami saw any love, much less a brand-new entry for each both being announced at the same even. We Ace Attorney fans think we’ve got it bad, but it’s only been 7 years since the last one – hardly any time at all in comparison.

But what makes this even more exciting is that an official press release from Capcom says they’re “focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently.” That opens up the doors for more than just Onimusha and Okami to return.

I’ve believed for a while now that a new Ace Attorney game is coming sooner rather than later, but what else could they revive? Dino Crisis has been dormant since 2003. Breath of Fire’s last entry was in 2002 (all right, technically Breath of Fire 6 came out in 2016, but let’s try not to think about that). Is it finally their time to shine again?

Moving aside from Capcom, this week also saw some interesting news from Bandai Namco. After Tales of Graces f Remastered was announced, we learned that they intended to remaster more Tales games as well. Now they’ve doubled down. In a new message translated here by Gematsu, producer Yusuke Tomizawa said there’s now a dedicated development line for Tales remasters and that they’re planned to be released “fairly consistently” and “as much as possible.”

This is exciting news, and it gives me hope that it will be more than just a handful of the newer games in the series. My hopes that we’ll get some of the untranslated games officially released are renewed!

In short, we could have a lot of good stuff coming. What dormant Capcom franchises do you hope to see revived, and what Tales remasters would you like to have follow Graces?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Onimusha

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  13 Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 042023
 

The first game we’ll be taking a look at this spooky season is Onimusha: Warlords, the first game in the Onimusha series.

The original Onimusha: Warlords is still surprisingly easy to find if you don’t mind a used copy. However, it was remastered a few years ago, and I picked up the remaster in a sale on Steam.

(Physical copies of the remaster appear to be available as well, at least Japanese copies that include English.)

Onimusha: Warlords follows Samanosuke, a warrior in the Sengoku period who enters a castle overtaken by monsters and demons in order to rescue the princess. He gains a strange gauntlet that allows him to seal the souls of demons, which becomes an important part of gameplay. Defeated enemies release souls that restore your health, restore your magic, or can be spent on upgrades, depending on the color.

You primarily fight with a katana, although you gain a couple of ranged weapons along the way. As you progress, you also obtain orbs that let you use magic attacks and also unseal doors of the matching element.

Onimusha actually started development as a Resident Evil spin-off, and I could really see that in the game’s structure. As you progress through the game, you find many locked doors and obstacles that require specific keys or puzzle-solving to get past. In this way, the game area gradually opens up, with the player backtracking to previous areas upon finding a new item or power.

So structurally, it’s a survival horror game, although in terms of gameplay I’d say it’s firmly an action game. Instead of de-emphasized combat, fighting is almost always beneficial in Onimusha because of the souls. You can effectively grind if you really want an upgrade before continuing on.

Click for Onimusha spoilers
The exception is when you play as Kaede. Since she doesn’t absorb souls, fighting never benefits you, so I found myself avoiding and running from enemies whenever possible.

The story, meanwhile, definitely has horror elements. From the monsters attacking the castle to the dark plot they’re trying to enact, it’s a horror story that made Onimusha: Warlords a worthy game to start off this month’s reviews with.

Its sequels have yet to be remastered, but since an Onimusha anime was recently announced, I have my fingers crossed that the other games will follow. I had a lot of fun with Onimusha, and the more fun I had, the more I wished the second game was easier to find.