Abortion

User Rating: 1.8 | Shin Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams PS2
Onimusha 4 is a total and complete disgrace. I played the previous three games, Hell I did not even mind the fact that Jean Reno was in the third one. This game though, is just plain bad. The story makes absolutely no sense, It takes place 19 years after the events of Oni 3, Hideoshi Toyatomi manages to unite Japan. A feat that his predecessor, Oda Nobunaga could not. The stupid part is that even though he is clearly seen as being evil in number three, glowing red eyes and all, he decides suddenly to rule Japan as a good guy for another few years. Then something really dumb called the "Omen Star" or whatever appears in the sky, Toyatomi goes mad and starts killing everyone who is a westerner, demons come and an earthquake makes a volcano eurpt somewhere in Japan and everything goes to hell. There is also something about screaming cherry trees that help out the demon (genma) armies under the control of Hideoshi, and it is the main characters mission to just..burn trees. To clarify the main character is soki the oni of ash or whatever, even though this was never brought up in the previous games at all.

Oni 4 is similar to Oni 2 because you have other people helping you out, I was only able to get one person before my card corrupted. Her name was Jubei Yagyu, this made me so angry I almost died because she has the name of the main character from Oni 2. I had a feeling that they were going to do some kind of stupid "reborn as a girl thing." Also like Oni 2 you can buy stuff for your future friends, I am not going to buy Jubei anything if and when I decide to play the game again, because she sucked. Thus proving once again why women should never be given weapons or responsibility.

Onto the gameplay. Unlike the previous three games you can actually lock onto enemies now, I mean you could in the first one but now each enemy you lock onto has a yellow target over them, just in case you forget whilst your swinging wildly in every direction. The boss fights were way to easy, The first boss was some stupid bug eating freak named "Danemon" or whatever, who dropped in like five minutes. The second boss was some giant bug (A bug connection here) who barfed out enemies and swung at you...and then I killed him. A hollow victory.

There are some decent aspects in the game however (nice graphics at least). For instance Jubei has the ability to create items. If you give her mushrooms and grass (which you find throughout the game and I mistook for healing substances), she can make medicine. Luckily for me I found alot of mushrooms and grass along the way, so I had a decent amout of medicine. Which I went through like it was going out of style. I also managed to come across more weapons. Earth, ice, light and fire swords. It was frustrating through because even if your weapons and armor leveled up after massive amouts of souls being imbued into them, they seemed to remain at the same strength.

As I progressed into the game I ran into the shadowy group from the beginning of the game at a cherry tree warehouse. One was Jubei's uncle who had betrayed the Yagyu clan, the other was a riflewoman named Ohatsu who was in love with Oki. So Jubei challenged the uncle to a duel and lost, and Oki beats Ohatsu down. Just as Oki goes to destroy the trees the evil uncle appears and says Jubei was disciplined. So Oki runs off to save her. I also managed to play as Jubei, I have to say she was alot better than Oki.

I know that I only played for two hours, And some people have said that I should have played through the whole thing before I rendered my judgement but I am not going to force myself to play a game that has so many problems in my eyes. I really wanted to like this game, I really and truly did. Sadly the confusing storyline, the weapons and the overall feeling of a truly Un-Onimusha game pretty much ruined it for me. I just don't have the patience to make my way through games like these anymore. Maybe I'll but it again some day, But for now I feel it was a waste of forty dollars.

This game should have been aborted at conception and never created. The game has no connction to the other three and is just plain bad, so very very sad.