Gave up on
Onimusha 3 ~ 2/3 into the game. Hesus, what a decline...
Bad:
- Game combines two of the most horrible possible features of a 3D game:
a) Fixed camera angles, but with camera following the character during movement. Enjoy being hit by enemies who are out of your FOV and not seeing shit during 50% of combat encounters. Totally fixed camera can work in a 3D action game (Oni 1-2, DMC 1), but it's inferior to "TPP + camera behind the fag" (Derp Souls, 2000 others). Shit used in Oni3 (and Soul Reaver - Defiance) is fucking horrible.
b) Analogue movement is camera-dependent, instead of character-dependent. So yeah, it's Soul Reaver - Defiance all over again: you press "up" to go upward the scenery, but in next area the camera switches to another angle and your character hits the wall / falls off the ledge / goes back to previous area. Jesus Christ! You can still use old "tank" controls via directional pad, but it's impractical due to stage design (plenty of long corridors).
- To make a) worse, camera is often positioned in front of the character, so you keep going in direction of the camera, seeing shit. Even when you go left / right, character is often shown way too close to the edge of the screen, which reduces visibility and makes you bump into enemies unexpectedly.
- To make b) worse, controls in combat are still relative to your character ("tank-like", for example forward + attack = kick), which leads to total mess, esp. when camera switches to another angle while you're locked onto an enemy.
- Locking onto enemies is fucking broken. You can switch targets via right analog stick, but the game seems to be choosing targets randomly, so often after killing fag #1 you can be nicely surprised by the auto-aim switching to some fag #12 at the other end of the current area, instead of one of the fags #2-#4 who are currently raping your character's anus. Esp. horrible during Michelle's sections, who seems to be ALWAYS preferring the airborne enemies, even if they're very far away and melee fags are close. Fuck this shit.
- There's no reliable way to dodge when locked onto enemies. It's all about countering their hits in certain moment (which leads to insta-kill). The problem is, most of the time you're fighting against 4-5 enemies at the same time. Not using an auto-aim at all is often better idea...
- Game utilizes the Y-axis in area design, but to the shitty outcome. Quite often you can't hit enemies who are slightly above / below your character - esp. visible on stairs.
- Items often drop near "transition zones", which makes them inaccessible - you move in their direction to pick them up only to transit to next area. There was a reason to use good old door system in Resident Evil and old Onimushas...
Ugly:
- Story and writing are abysmal even by Capcom's standard. Both Navi the Oni-fairy and Reno's family life are 101% rage-inducing, immature and horrible.
- Some elements are actually pointless. For example teh fairy can "spot" and bring back to your character some items placed outside of his range (way up or some shit). I dunno what's the point of that, the devs could've used good old chest for that...
- Stages are very narrow most of the time, which, combined with increased number of enemies and shitty camera / aiming, often leads to frustration. You can't dodge, can't see much, can't switch enemies easily... You can only block and wait for a chance to hit something.
- Enemies are now locked on your character, which is esp. horrible when fighting stronger enemies or bosses. It goes like this: enemy rises his weapon to hit you, you quickly move behind his back to... get smashed in the face when he automagically follows your character's position during his attack animation. Grorious. It would MAYBE make sense in 1 vs 1 combat, but not in 1 vs 12... In Oni 1-2 backstabbing enemies was one of the basic tactics, here it's often impossible (except when COUNTERING! - press buttan in certain moment to pop a mole).
- Game relies too much on special attacks (triangle). Due to that, boss fights can be either too easy (using specials 30x) or too hard (using regular attacks). Most boss tactics described in FAQs boil down to "level up some weapon to the max and make sure that your magic gauge is full. Don't forget to stockpile healing items". Epic.
- Way too many airborne enemies, making you life a pain due to shitty aiming system.
- Some training sessions are absolutely retarded. For example during "deflecting attacks" training you can spend ~30 seconds waiting for each enemy attack. WTF?
- Locations set in contemporary Paris are banal shit boring and ugly.
Good:
Verdict:
It's fucking painful to play these games in order...
Oni 1: good gameplay, good story and writing, decent horror mood of demons raping helpless humans. Nice touches like ghosts of fallen bros giving you protips.
Oni 2: good gameplay, weird story of friendship and gay demons, weird mood of SF genma mixed with ancient Japan and (not always straight) romances.
Oni 3: shit gameplay, shit story, shit writing, no mood whatsoever, plenty of irritating design decisions.
OFC 95% of reviews praises the game as "epic" and having "great gameplay" with only like 5% of (mostly user) reviews mentioning problems with camera and controls.
It looks like Hitler was right, after all...