Onimusha Tactics

"Not a FFTA Killer, But Pretty Good"

INTRODUCTION
Well, joining the recent flood of such games on the GameBoy Advance, Capcom has ported over the ''Resident Evil....with Ninjas!'' franchise of Onimusha to the strategy/RPG format. The result, while not the greatest, is still worth a try.

STORY
I tend to do these out of order, so bear with me here. I'm doing story first so you can get an idea of what the game is about. Basically, if you've played any of the 3 Onimusha games on console, you're not going to see anything new, here. ''You're the last of the Ogre/Oni clan. Nobunaga wants to rule the world. Take your magic gauntlet and stop him.'' There really isn't much more to the story than that. There's little twists and turns - the designers apparently thought it a good idea to steal an idea from the Final Fantasy series and make you quest for 4 magic crystals, the embodiment of four mythic creatures that once upon a time helped the Oni keep the ''Genma'' - demons - in their place. Still, not much really new and original. The dialogue, on the other hand, is perfect. Even when it's not directly related to the story, it's humorous, and you can easily see a badly dubbed wuxia film with these lines. That entertainment value brings up this score quite a bit.

Final Score? 6.

GAMEPLAY
Onimusha Tactics is probably, of the current crop of SRPGs, the easiest to deal with in this respect. It probably has the smallest learning curve out of all of them, and the addition of a fairly simplistic tutorial at the beginning helps anybody who didn't grasp it from the manual or just pushing buttons until you get what you want. There's not really any great and wonderful new features added to this one that aren't in other games of this ilk, with one notable exception - I'll get to that in a minute - and alot of things people are used to in these kinds of games are missing. Main complaints would be no character class changing - once an archer, always an archer - and the almost infinitesimal amounts of HP that characters gain at level up - even Fire Emblem does better in that respect, since everyone seems to have a cap of 100. When the cap is 500+, getting 1 or 2 HP per level is just not going to work. And that's on your main character.
Now, for the one stroke of originality; as anyone who's played Onimusha on PS or Xbox knows, you can suck the souls of demons out and into your gauntlet, then use them to improve your weapons and armor. OT goes that one better. Now you also get special gems and ''recipes'' from defeated enemies, which you then forge with your gauntlet into new items. It's fairly easy to get used to, and an interesting concept. Then add in the old Onimusha theme - anything you've created this way can be enhanced by charging it with the souls of your defeated enemies, boosting them to insane levels if you've the time and patience.

Final Score? 8 - primarily for the soul-items and just plain ease of use.

GRAPHICS/SOUND
In most respects, Onimusha Tactics is pretty average in this department. Those used to games like Tactics Ogre, FFTA or Fire Emblem will notice the pastels and bright greens and blues are missing. Brown and red seem to be the color of the day, but given the game's attempt at an alternate and bloody Japanese history that's only a few steps from the real world, one can live with it. The character graphics are allright, and they're more animated than other similar games, but unlike a lot of folks, I don't consider it a huge improvement to watch someoene's scarf flutter endlessly rather than have them step in place. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, I'm not really paying attention to them anyway. The sound is all around dull, and you'll be muting it quickly - especially the ''hugha!'' attempt at a vocal that occurs when missions begin.
One aspect of the graphics that really does stand out - and contributes heavily to the higher-than-average score in this department - is the character portraits in the text windows. They look almost photo-realistic, and the characters who made appearances in the console versions look as close as one can possibly get to their big brothers given the GBA format.

Final Score? 6. It scrapes in for the character portraits. Otherwise, it's a 4, on a good day.

REPLAYABILITY
If you like pain, I suppose you could replay and constantly try for better scores after each battle; doing so seems rather pointless, though. Basically, this'll last you until Nobunaga's dead. Then it's time to move on. The lack of any real customization, beyond how many souls you infuse into your weapons, pretty much says the game is what it is.

Final Score? 0. Unless you're very bored, you'll have no reason to go through again.

Overall Onimusha Tactics is a decent game, if you can get a good price for it - most GameStop and GameCrazy outlets are running it for $19.99 - and need something a little less mind-numbingly complicated than Fire Emblem but still want a tactics game. It's not going to crush the opposition, but it's worth playing once you've beaten the competition. Have fun, and slay Nobunaga! ;)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/19/04