Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers

"A huge let down, even at its budget price."

Well, I've had this game since its launch day and can safely say one thing: It's downright BORING! I love zombies- who doesn't, right? And I even used to play Devil Kings, Dynasty Warriors, and the like. So when I saw a preview for onechanabara, I thought: "Wow, awesome! Its gonna mix the simple hack-n-slash -gameplay-with-leveling-up and the undead; how can it go wrong?!" Well, I'll tell you how.

I'll assume that anyone even remotely interested in this kind of game isn't looking for a story, so that's a bit less of a blow. Unless you've played the 360 version and imported the rest, you'll be utterly confused and find yourself skipping the "dialogue" (and I use that term loosely) just to get to the gameplay, as I did. It makes no sense, conveys no sense of dire need to accomplish anything, and generally does its best to unmotivate you to continue playing.

So the story sucks: big deal, right? I'd have thought so too (and I did),and really only came to hack up zombies and grind up levels to take on more powerful foes and more difficult modes. Which this game attempts to let you do. So whats the problem, you ask? It's very simple: leveling up doesn't DO anything useful! It's Final Fantasy 5 all over again, except in that game at least you got more HP/MP. Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. I'm sure that, eventually, your point allocations will produce some sort of an effect, but it certainly wasn't immediately noticible for me; hell, I have Aya at level 26 and am FINALLY noticing an effect in her max number of combos. But who the heck cares when the enemies are so friggin EASY- I really can't imagine Hard mode being anymore difficult than normal or easy. Compounding the problem more is that the game makes absolutely no attempt to explain or help you with your various attributes and even what level they are. Its kinda like being blind and then having to choose which sunglasses will block the sun better.

So to put it all together, you have absolutely NO motivation to keep playing; no story, no satisfying gameplay, NOTHING. The levels are basically long corridors gussied up to look like towns/hospitals/cemetaries/etc, and you can barely explore them. Not that you would want to anyway, as there are no items or equipment to find, just more insultingly easy-to-beat enemies. Well thats not entirely true: there are special enemies called "blood-mist zombies", literal blood clouds shaped like humans, that can spawn in out of the way corridors. They are nearly impossible to beat, requiring a ridiculous amount of skill points put into your, uh, "skill" stat. And when they do die, they drop rings that can increase your stats and what-not. But again, the effects they convey and the amount of effort they take really don't justify anyone buying the game. Nothing does, come to think of it...

The game finally begins to get tolerable once you've managed to get 2/3 of the way through the single player story. Eventually new enemy types start showing up, and the game finally decides to tell you that you can taunt them to make them more aggressive. I began to have a bit of fun, but ultimately its not a very good design choice to make players sit through so much garbage just to get to the good parts.

I do have a few high points to mention. One is the graphics: they're actually pretty good, . The other is the actual controls. The way you can chain combos and moves is very precise and easy to do, although you can get away with...um, whatever the wii equivalent of "button mashing is (waggling? uber waving?).Those aside, there really is no reason to pick this up, despite the budget price. I recognize that everyone has their own tastes, and may still like this (and if you read the boards you'll see thats very true), but even I, who like often-hated games like Cold Fear, Alone in the Dark, Dark Sector, Dynasty Warriors....well, you get the idea.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/04/09

Game Release: Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers (US, 02/10/09)