Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers

"The ideal sword fighting game for Wii."

Oneechanbara Revolution is the latest game of the Oneechanbara series, and the first to hit the Nintendo Wii. The series has come a long way from it's beginnings as a "Simple 2000" game, a series of budget video game titles from Japanese publisher D3.

At first I was a little skeptical about getting this game; with swords, girls and zombies, Oneechanbara Revolution ran the risk of being a fanservice game, in the style of a certain Itagaki fighting series. Thankfully however, Oneechanbara Revolution has a little more depth, and it's the simple premise combined with the effective use of the Wii's controls that make it a great game.

Graphics: 6

The game doesn't really shine in the graphics department, although the character models of the two lead characters are very nice and smooth, the rest of the game doesn't cut the graphical standards of today's games. The landscapes are bland and jaggy, with no outstanding elements whatsoever. Usually, I bash games for having too much bloom, but Oneechanbara's lack of bloom makes it come accross as dull and bland.

There are absolutely no pre rendered FMVs in this game; a huge punch in the face after seeing the draw dropping FMVs of the Xbox 360 version. The story is either told through voice narration accompanied with scrolling text, or short in game cutscenes. Neither of which are terribly visually impressive.

Sound: 7

The music choice in this game actually works very well. The heavy rock soundtrack, as soon as you turn on the game a nice guitar solo busts out during stage selection. The in game sound and music isn't terribly outstanding, but compliments the game well.

As for voice acting, it sounds good enough. Surprisingly, Saki's voice isn't whiny and annoying, unlike most young Japanese girls are portrayed to be. For my non-Japanese ears, the voice acting sounds excellent.

Gameplay: 8

The sword fighting here is perfect, very much ideal for the Wii. Movement is performed by the nunchuck, and combat with the Wiimote. A simple shake of the wiimote slashes the sword, more successive shakes allow you to link into short combos. After the third hit, you can either slash or thrust the Wiimote to perform a different move. The full motion sensing gameplay works surprisingly well, and is easily the best aspect of this game. It's basically what you expected from No More Heroes, in that the sword fighting is controlled not by pushing a button, but rather by swinging the Wiimote itself.

However, mindlessly swinging will only get you so far. The enemy AI begins to guard in later chapters, and no matter how hard or much you swing, the sword will not break their guard. A quick shake of the nunchuck will allow you to perform a roundhouse kick, that breaks enemy guard, and allows you to resume with the combo.

Of course, with so many zombies on the screen, it's going to be a little hard to fight them all at once.
Z targeting is nothing original, but it is used effectively. Special moves can be performed by holding the 1 button and swinging either the Wiimote or the nunchuck, effectively clearing all the enemies around you. After you've killed a certain amount of monsters your character goes "beserk" with golden style hair, becoming much more powerful; the downside is that your health slowly drains. Beserk mode is ridiculously fun, you can run around at crazy speeds and just kill everything in your path. Certainly a great addition to the gameplay.

Pressing the C button will enable you to change weapons, whether it be to two swords (Aya) or bare fists (Saki), each one has it's one usefulness, and makes the gameplay completely different. I'm not going to mention everything in this review, but the change of weapons adds a lot of depth to the game, and it's not one of those preference things either; learning where to use each is an important aspect in later levels of the game.

As you can probably tell, the gameplay is the best part of the game, and it only gets better as you continue playing. Cool combos are an implement which tries to make the game deeper, but is initially frustrating. Swings need to be executed with perfect timing, but luckily, it just comes naturally with practice. Learning this skill allows you to deal much more damage to enemies, and although they are almost impossible to execute in the beginning, they become second nature as you become more accustomed to the game.

Sadly, the gameplay isn't perfect; the most useless system in this game is the blood meter. Killing enemies makes your sword "fill up" with blood, making it slower and less effective. Every once in a while you have to clean the blood of your sword, and while it might sound good on paper, the system is completely irrelevant. It's not really a major problem, and doesn't get in the way at all, but the complete uselessness of the blood meter leaves you wondering why they put it in there in the first place.

With all this, the gameplay is very fun and fresh. The game is always rewarding to play with the level up system, in which you gain experience from killing enemies, and can pump them into stats such as skill, vitality, power and reach. This adds considerable replay value to the game, and although it's not necessary to max out the stats, like in most RPG games, it's always fun to see your characters progress as you play.

Overall 7/10

The game suffers mainly from poor presentation. The graphics look outdated, the levels are repetitive, and the game possibly has the worst unlocking system ever: To unlock new costumes you have to finish 10 quests for the first one, another 10 for the second one, and so on. It's just boring and lazy, and the game would've been so much better if it wasn't treated like the budget series it started out as.

Luckily, the game is charming, and you won't have to try too hard to see what a great game it is. Overall the game's many presentation flaws can be overlooked due to it's fun and innovative gameplay. It certainly is a refreshing game and easily the best use of waggle controls for a sword fighting game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/08, Updated 07/14/08

Game Release: Oneechanbara Revolution (JP, 02/07/08)