Look at the little panda plushie moving around in his pouch

I finished the first Onimusha, and overall it was a delightful little time capsule of early 6th gen gaming. The most interesting part to me was its obvious relation to Resident Evil. I know it literally started out "samurai Resident Evil" as Capcom wanted to use the formula from their biggest hit to create more hits like they'd already done with Dino Crisis.

I wish it'd stuck closer to Resident Evil. Had it been a slower-paced survival horror game where you explored a creepy Japanese castle it could have been one of my favourite games of all time, but the finished product ended up going in a more hack-n-slashy, character actiony direction with the tone of that soap operatic Sengoku Era samurai schlock the Japanese love so much combined with a tokusatsu show. (Which is still fun, mind you)

I love fixed camera angles, pre-rendered backgrounds and tank controls but even I can admit that all of those things pair pretty poorly with anything approaching character action gameplay. Thankfully, the game was easy enough and generous enough with health and item refills that it never became a real problem, but it did make the optional challenge tower and attempting to master the counter system too annoying to bother with. It might actually be worth it to instead play the 2018 remaster instead of the PS2 original since it had the option for analog movement.

Maybe I'll actually get to fight Oda Nobunaga in Onimusha 2- despite a demonically resurrected Nobunaga being set up as the main villain of the first game you actually never get to fight him