We’re fighting formidable enemies in the first 30 seconds of gameplay without a combat tutorial. Now all that stuff can be good in moderation! But Onimusha just effortlessly gives you all of the lean parts.

Oh, and there’s a few secrets and sidequests that are just…there, without bullet points or endless menu notifications. There’s three weapons on offer that change up your style (a slender katana, a broadsword, and a naginata), not a boatload of clones or slight variations, and a very simple, elegant RPG angle. You start the game off killing demons and you end it in the same way. Onimusha‘s virtue is that it’s a breezy action game with almost no filler to speak of. I can live with the fixed camera angles and the silly dub (which you can swap to Japanese vocals in the re-release). While Onimusha may seem like a relic of the past, it actually highlights one of the PS2 era’s biggest strengths: brevity. Released: Janu(PS2) / Janu(PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One) Onimusha: Warlords (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)

While a lot of people simply aren’t going to be able to get over some of its ancient systems of a bygone era, it still holds up due to the timeless tenet of self-control. While there were plenty of wild risks that seemed to endlessly pay off, a stream of classics like Onimusha helped secure that ironclad legacy, and nearly 20 years later it’s back with a vengeance.

The PS2 was hitting its stride and would go on to cement itself as one of the most extravagant purveyors of the genre. The early 2000s were a boon for action games.

Onimusha ps4.