Onimusha Tactics

The Good
Onimusha Tactics is a spin-off of the Onimusha series of action games, that happens during the feudal times in Japan. I don't know much about the main series, my brother just rented one of them once on the PS2, and I vaguely remember you had to kill zombies with a saber. Yet when I ran on a used copy of Onimusha Tactics I feel like I had to buy it because I like RPG-tactics games.

I won't make a long description of the gameplay mechanics or the story of the game because the description already says pretty much there is to say. The gameplay is really standard for a RPG-tactics game, with pseudo-3D isometric graphics, and many different characters we can move and attack on a chess gird.

The story is really not that good as compared to most RPGs today, you just fight "Genmas" (those are ugly creatures) again and again, because they kill people and wants to take over Japan, to finally turn the world to hell, and you want to prevent that. The good thing about the story is that there is cool jokes here and there, despite the serious appearance of the game.

The graphics are quite good for GBA standards, the maps looks dark and realistic, the characters looks pretty good, and you get portraits of them that really does like real pictures, and that represent emotions of characters as they talk. Too bad the font used in the game is very ugly for some reason. The animations aren't too varied and sometimes the controls are a bit slow, but that's nothing to cry home about.

The controls and battle system are very easy to learn, anyone who have ever played a RPG in it's live should have no problem understanding mechanics of the game. You can customise your weapon and "enhance" them with the power from the souls of enemies you defeated which is cool. There is several types of weapons : Sword, axe, spear, bow, gun, shuriken, each having their strong and weak points, which make the game well balanced overall (but I find there is too much sword users in the party compared with other weapons). Also bows becomes ridiculously weak towards the end of the game, making this weapon (and characters that use it) almost useless from a certain point.

The music is definitely not spectacular, and there isn't that many different tracks, but it's all right, you will probably like it enough to keep playing. The sound effects are quite good for GBA standards but again nothing exceptional.

The Bad
A thing I disliked is how hard it was to not confuse the characters of your party because they all have Japanese names and Japanese faces, which make them all alike by our standards ! Okay I guess the game is supposed to happen in the real world so it wouldn't make sense if there were Japanese people with American names and blue hair. At least I can recall 3 characters : the hero, another one because he was bald and fun and a third one because she was the only blond. On the party of more than 20 characters that isn't too bad. But maybe they could have made the game more accessible to people who aren't Japanese nor hardcore fan of Japanese culture for their English translation, of course without changing everything either.

Other than that, the game has no real bad points, except that it has no real good points either ! It's just one of those games that scores average in all departments, but that lacks anything really new or awesome to show. That doesn't make the game bad at all, but just that you'll feel bored when playing it, and since the purpose of playing video games is to be entertained, this game barely reach that goal.

The difficulty is alright, but maybe a bit low sometimes. Not that much strategy is needed, but that's no surprise seeing how little possibilities the game's battle system have.

The Bottom Line
Now I said pretty much all that has to be said. This is yet another RPG-tactics for the GBA which seems to excel at this genre, so now all depends of your viewpoint. Onimusha Tactics is by very far not the best RPG-tactics for the console, but yet it's not a terrible game either. If you're a fan of the Onimusha main series you'll want to check it out. If you're just a casual gamer looking around for great games, or if you are a very big fan of the RPG-tactics genre you'll really want to pass this one and play a better game instead, as you won't be missing much.