“Faith, Charity, Respect, Honesty, Strength.”
Of all the long-forgotten franchises that Capcom has in their vaults, Onimusha was one of the last that I would have thought would be given the reboot treatment, but low and behold at Feb 4th’s Capcom Spotlight, we saw details of the next entry in the franchise: Onimusha: Way of the Sword (over 19 years since the last instalment) as well as a remaster of the fan-favourite: Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny. The game follows Jūbei Yagyū, who returns home to find his village burned to the ground and his family slaughtered by the demonic forces of an undead Nobunaga Oda, vowing revenge against the evil overlord. Releasing in 2002, not much has changed since it’s release outside of the original launch 23 years ago; whilst some criticisms have been levied against the game in respect of some very minor censorship issues and the inclusion of Denuvo DRM, the more pressing issue is something that is one of the biggest topics that plagues current-gen gaming; what the hell is a remaster anymore? Having released on May 23rd 2025 on the previous generation of systems (backwards compatible on current gen) I’m going to be covering off my time spent with the PlayStation 4 version of the game, detailing whether it’s worth your time and money at the £24.99 asking price (UK PSN Store).
If the current generations of consoles have taught us anything, it’s that we’re in the middle of a creative drought when it comes to fresh ideas, with many developers going down the route of remasters and remakes. Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the industry has seen some stellar remakes from the likes of franchises such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the lines between what was once considered a remake and a remaster are in constant shift, with the latter blurring somewhat into the former. Once of the most recent examples of this was the ‘remaster’ of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (check out Game Hype’s review here) as it took the foundations of the original game in the Creation Engine, but layered visual changes and performance tweaks on top with Unreal Engine 5, resulting in a game that truly is impressive on both a visual and technical level, even if it does blur the lines between what a remake and remaster actually are. Games such as The Last of Us and The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim are some of the most prolific examples of developers abusing the remaster moniker, re-releasing lazy ports with minor resolution changes and performance tweaks and charging full-price for these games again. Capcom have large and part avoided this, using the original game as a foundation for inspiration when creating remakes from the ground up, such as the stellar remake of Resident Evil 2 (shameless plug for my review for it here), however when they announced a remastered version of Onimusha 2 at the February Capcom Spotlight event, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to once again fall into the realm of another lazy remaster.
Semantics of the remaster/remake debate aside, a case could be made for re-releasing a 23-year-old PlayStation 2 title with updated textures, resolution and performance for modern systems, and that’s primarily what this release is, especially ahead of a new entry in the franchise, and wanting to drum up some excitement to see a long-lost franchise return from the dead. Onimusha 2 is a game that holds a weird, but special place in my heart, as it brings me back the nostalgia associated with video rental stores such as Blockbusters or Choices UK, as I seemingly had no idea what the franchise was when I first picked it up from the pre-owned section at Blockbusters in Acocks Green back in the early 2000s. The game places you in the shoes of Jūbei Yagyū, returning home to find his hometown: Yagyū Village has been burnt to the ground by Nobunaga Oda’s Genma (demon) army, leaving no one left alive. Soon after finding an Oni woman called Takajo, who (after revealing herself to be Jūbei’s mother) unlocks his potential as an Onimusha; a warrior who possesses the soul and power of the Oni, a mythical race of powerful, benevolent beings that oppose the demonic Genma. This sets Jūbei down a dark path of revenge to collect the five orbs: Faith, Charity, Respect, Honesty & Strength, in order to stop Nobunaga from plunging the world into darkness. From a narrative perspective, the story features a diverse cast of characters who all have their own charm (the boozehound Ekei was always my favourite) that all have their own branching paths, but more on that later. In terms of story delivery, the game hasn’t aged very well, and is a relic of a time where Capcom were the king of both fixed camera angles and horrendously cheesy dialogue. Whilst the overall narrative is a solid revenge story, it’s filled with over-the-top cutscenes and cheesy delivery that is overall hilarious to watch, but might be a bit jarring for newcomers.
The Three Amigos: Jūbei, Ekei and Magoichi are (for the most part) the embodiment of the three stooges, brought to life by Capcom’s stellar ability to deliver cheesy, over the top dialogue.
From a gameplay perspective, Onimusha 2 takes advantage of the fixed camera angle system from the early Resident Evil series (the OG trilogy is the godfather of survival horror imo) which is great for fans of their original work, but might be a bit jarring for newcomers when you start running in the opposite direction to the camera shift. The game is largely the same as its 2002 release, offering the same challenging combat system that made the original game exceedingly tough. Whilst the game could be seen as a button-mashing hack’n’slash, the game has more in common with survival horror than one might think, especially when it comes to resource management. For starters, Jūbei isn’t afraid of dishing out the damage, but isn’t that great at withstanding it either. With aid items in short supply, the combat can feel unforgiving at the best of times, sometimes artificially so; with the ability to block and even time perfect blocks and counterattacks, you will have to use every skill in your arsenal to survive. In addition, the game features upgrade paths for the various weapons Jūbei obtains through the souls of demons (which all come in their own garden variety of colours). Red souls allow you to distribute experience points towards a weapon or a piece of armor, yellow restore health, blue restore magic power, and the rarest of them being purple, which when five are collected, turn Jūbei into an Onimusha (think Demon/Human hybrid) which boosts Jubei’s attack damage and grants him invincibility for a short period (you used to have to be tactical when picking up the 5th purple orb as Jūbei would instantly transform, however it’s been changed to manual in the remaster, acting as one of the better QoL changes this time around).
Combat aside, one of the more interesting aspects of the gameplay design is the weird (yet hilarious) gifting system, whilst within the initial town of gold mining town of Imasho, allows you to buy and trade items with the various main cast of characters in the game, with more effect than one might think. Each character has their own likes and dislikes; Ekei likes food and exotic alcoholic drinks, Magoichi likes practical tools and books etc. this directly plays into their affinity with Jūbei, and if high enough, will directly impact the outcome of their character arc in the story. The different paths that can open up makes the game extremely replayable, shaping both narrative progression and the overall gameplay experience, with characters coming to your aid when you least expect it. The affinity system (if high enough) can unlock character backstories, through side quests, new cutscenes and dialogue and even altering the ending of the game (being betrayed by Ekei still hurts to this day). In addition to the gifting system and challenging combat, are the game’s puzzles, which once again, are nothing to be scoffed at. There are both progression-based puzzles as well as exploration logic-based puzzle boxes that begin nice and easy towards the start of the game, but get more challenging as you go through. All in all, the gameplay direction is a solid (yet aged) foundation that offers a challenging experience that comes from a time where hand-holding in video games wasn’t really a thing, it also stands as a classic example of Capcom’s ability of genre-fusing, taking the best elements of their craft from survival horror, and recontextualising it within a hack’n’slash framework to exceedingly good effect.
Riddle me this: Onimusha 2’s puzzle difficulty starts off easy enough, but will have you overclocking the ol’ grey matter as you get further and further into the game.
Whilst the remaster has largely left the OG game intact, the most notable improvements come from the game’s performance on modern systems. The game holds down a dynamic 4K resolution on PlayStation 4/5, offering both a 16:9 aspect ratio, as well as the original 4:3 depending on viewing preference (I wouldn’t recommend on a modern TV). The game manages to maintain a consistent 60fps across the board with very little in the way of performance issues, which is to be expected of a remaster of a 2002 PlayStation 2 game. Pre-rendered backgrounds have been cleaned up, and overall the games textures look nice and crisp for this portion of the release. The game’s stellar soundtrack from Taro Iwashiro remains intact and is still one of the more stellar features of the game in my opinion. All in all, it’s hard to be mad at the release when it presents the classic game so crisply; and whilst my initial points about it being a lazy port still stand, it also has to be said that it’s released one of Capcom’s classic titles onto modern consoles, for a new audience, ahead of the release of the next instalment from the franchise, which from a business perspective makes complete sense; just give us a remaster for the rest of the games Capcom!
A PlayStation 4 review code was provided by Capcom.
This review is featured on OpenCritic.
