What did you think of Onmusha: Dawn of Dreams? I did not care for it.
Dawn of Dreams is a travesty. (Wall of text incoming, kind of sort of, maybe if I can post without raging thinking about it.)
It is a horrible game and it should feel bad. Onimusha was a planned trilogy from the start. Team 1 worked on Oni1&3, while Team 2 worked on Oni2. This just feel forced fan service. On the surface though it's not a bad game. The gameplay is does a good job of pretending to be an Onimusha clone and had some nice ideas that were executed poorly, very poorly.
From what I remember the gameply plays similar to past titles but takes the skill and finesse out to truly feel like a hack and slash copy of the past games. The game is mind numbly easy for the most part and then is sprinkled with bits of stupidly hard parts. Certain items make the game a complete joke and aren't hard to obtain. In Oni3 there was the charm that made every strike a critical hit but at the very least it took health away AND you had to breat all of the critical challenges to unlock it. DoD had some pretty OP stuff from what I recall.
Then all of the new characters were all terrible. Main character is named Soki, is in Japan but is American and not even based on a real person? WTF is this? Then we have old Samonuske. Clearly Capcom wanted to shove him in for no reason, but didn't want to pay royalties. So let's give him a fake name, make him really old so we don't have to use any likeness's and give him a personality that even all ready bare bones Samonuske would look the other way. Just to twist the knife let's make him a spear user and his point in the game baseless. The other characters aren't even worth mentioning. And there's like what 5 total or something.
So you gradually play with all the characters depending on what path you take. Even though you only play with them for a short amount of time, you better level them up and give them some half way decent equipment, because at the end of the game you have to fight like 5 or 6 bosses back to back with these characters and if you didn't bother with them you are completely fucked. Thanks game. It's like in a RPG you get to control one of the NPC characters for a second in the story and then it's switched back to the main party. Gee I hoped you leveled up that one dude from the beginning of the game cause he's gotta fight the second to last boss on his own.
I mean you can level those characters but the game makes it feel optional and more for Co-op. That right this game has Co-op. Does the game mention this? No. Not even in a bullet point. In fact looking at the box now it even says ONE player only. Wow. Maybe they are right not to advertise it as such, as it's horribly implemented. It's about as Co-op as Devil May Cry 3. So like at any point there's more than one character in the story player two can press start and be the second character that the AI normally controls. The second player doesn't have their own screen so they just share it with player one. Kinda like Tails in Sonic 2 or 3. Every time player 1 shifts the camera, player 2 has to blindly follow whether their there or not. Kinda like Tails catching up with Sonic but it's not automatic. Also this makes certain parts incredibly easy as Player 2 is completely invincible. Just have player 1 stay back and let player 2 do all the work. Victory! Okay player 2 this is a one player only part I'll get you back in about a half in hour when another AI comes along.
The thing I hate most about this game is the final Phantom Relms. For those who don't know the Phantom Relm is Onimusha's take on Bloody Palace or a kind a multi-floor endurance round. Pure gameplay bliss. Except for Dawn of Dreams case. In order the complete the game 100% and get every characters best weapon/armor you have to complete the PR at the end of the game. Past games PR's were fair and balanced and quite long. Dawn of Dreams needed to take the extra step though. While past games PR could be completed in about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, Dawn of Dreams literally lasted closer to 4 - 5 hours. That is fucking ridiculous. No check points. AND you have to do this for all of the characters individually! While past games PR were hard, Dawn of Dreams where just cheap. Each floor has a set enemey pattern. The last 10 floors or so in DoD have several waves per floor. To lose at the end when it really ramps up in difficulty is heartbreaking. It was never a feeling of "Man they totally got me there, that's a tough combo of enemies" but "Man I can't fucking move with these enemies lagging up the fucking game and being cheap pieces of shit" It's the classic philosophy of just throw more at the player and not the quality of the fights.
The story was stupid and pointless. The fighting game had a better story and connections to the series than this game. (Blade Warriors is under rated as fuck! Most defensive fighting game ever) Hitioshi (sp?) never needed to be expanded on and was a terrible villian. Main character's drive was pitful and Samonuske being a incredibly bad Old Snake was painful. All bone, no substance.
4/10
