The voice-acting in Warlords is still terrible, too-what could be a horror-tinged and creepy story of demons shaping the human world is undermined by campy enemies and bad lip-syncing, both products of its time. Being hit by an enemy off-screen, or knocking an enemy back so you can no longer see them, are annoying factors that third-person action games pretty much eliminated years ago.

The fixed camera angles are undeniably irritating in 2019.

There are four melee weapons to unlock, each with a different elemental power and area of effect, and several projectile weapons of limited use. Enemies spend more time circling you than windmilling, and a well-timed key press will land an instant counter kill, meaning there's a fairly high skill ceiling for its swordplay. Sword fights with enemies are paced like considered duels compared to Devil May Cry's acrobatic flurries, and you really feel it when the blade connects with an opponent. The combat is still nice and crunchy, though. Calling it 'Resident Evil with swords', which is pretty much how the media described it at the time, isn't far off-it even has the series' signature healing herbs, and environments that are so complicated to navigate that it's implausible humans ever lived there. You mostly spend the game wandering through tightly-wound corridors clearing out demonic enemies and solving key-based puzzles. Even next to Capcom's Devil May Cry from the same year, which featured 3D backgrounds, a more active camera and faster combat, Onimusha feels retrograde. This 2001 hack-and-slash game feels extremely dated now, which is no surprise. After being embarrassingly owned by the first big monster he encounters, he's revived with a gauntlet that can absorb the souls of the demons he kills. You play Samanosuke Akechi, a warrior who ventures to save Princess Yuki from Nobunaga and his army of demons. While the second game-with its innovative trading system, multiple playable characters and branching storyline-is the series' only masterpiece, the first entry is still a fun curio from the Resident Evil-dominated era of fixed-camera survival horror games. Onimusha mixes historical epic and demonic fantasy, and it didn't survive the leap to the HD era like Resident Evil and Devil May Cry did.

Onimusha warlords pc save