Tonight I had a little time to myself so I decided to boot up the old switch! It’s been sitting kind of dormant recently, not only have I not been playing games too often, when I am, these days, I’m using the Steam Deck. I was browsing the e-shop when it dawned on me - The Onimusha 2 Remaster released! A game I’ve been interested in after seeing it in the February State of Play. So let’s dive in! (I’ve brought over my thoughts on Onimusha: Warlords from 2022 if curious).
First Hour
Immediately, after the opening cut-scenes you can feel the tonal shift in this game from the first. There are these cute dioramas that introduce the cast of characters that are about to be a major part of this game and they have a goofy air to them. Gone is the creepy mansion slowly unfolding before you like a paper map - now we’re being moved to specific areas. After seeing his village burned to the ground, Jubei is called to a cave and given the gift of absorbing the souls of slain demons, then sent off into the world to find 5 magical orbs. The first stop on this journey is a small mining town full of life, slapstick and whacky characters.
I think this is the biggest change, for me, you now have these funny guys that are hanging around towns and dungeons, sometimes jumping in to fight with you, other times they are around to trade items with. There is this whole mechanic of gift-giving that I’m still trying to figure out - it’s not quite like the Links Awakening trading quest, though someone gave me a piece of chalk and hoped I could turn it into a canteloupe so it feels like maybe we’re building up to something. Sometimes these allies will tell you specifically what they want (“Booze from around the world!” or “I came here to learn”) but other times its more vague (“I want to be entertained!”). I’m really trying to not look up a guide but I’m also nervous that you won’t be able to replace certain items if you trade them, I’m hitting a bit of friction there.
So far the combat has been pretty good, it seems quite simple compared to the first game but again I’m only about an hour in. I found a scroll in a puzzle box that gave me instructions on how to use the “true power” of one of my swords (R + back to forward + Y) so I’m assuming the combat is going to open up and breath. I also have two weapons already, certain weapons unlock specific magical gates so I expect to get more of those. The first boss, this weird spider guy, was a pretty good fight and he knocked me out once, but it was pretty fun. I had an ally with me and he was stunning the boss and then encouraging me to move in and go for the kill. I like the allies so far, it’s an interesting addition to this series.
My last observation is specifically lobbied towards the remaster. By default the aspect ratio is set to 16x9. I thought that it looked pretty good that way. The ratios were all correct and the environments looks nice filling my big TV. Then I got to the mining town and there was a statue you can look at it - its head was cut-off! I switched the aspect ratio and sure enough, turns out they are just zooming in on the 4:3 image and cutting off the top and bottom, as opposed to reformatting everything to fit 16:9 natively. I find that a bit lazy and I don’t like the idea that we’re missing out on anything so I’m going to leave it on 4:3.
