Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny Remaster Hands-On Preview – A Welcome Start

In 2019, Capcom brought Onimusha back with their strong remaster of Onimusha: Warlords. It felt like the series was finally back, receiving the attention it so justly deserved amongst other Capcom greats like Monster Hunter, Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Despite this, the series remained dormant. Five years later, Capcom is ready to give Onimusha another go. While a brand-new game is out next year, the second game, Samurai’s Destiny, is getting the remaster treatment too. I’ve had some time with the remaster, and while it’s a technically impressive redux of what would many call a beloved classic, it is an entirely different beast to Onimusha: Warlords.

The most apparent change is that Samanosuke is no longer the main character. Instead, the game opens with us playing as Jubei Yagyu, as he returns to his village to find most of his people slaughtered by the demonic army of Genma, led by none other than Nobunaga Oda. While Samanosuke defeated Nobunaga in the original game, he’s back, resurrected with more powers than before. Jubei’s journey, and Onimusha 2, thus begins. Attempting to seek revenge, he must gather five Oni Orbs to bring the Genma and Nobunaga to their knees.

This preview covers the very beginning of the game to the point when Jubei retrieves the second of these five orbs. As somebody who knows the ins and outs of Onimusha 2 meticulously, this is around three to five hours of gameplay, which already eclipses the entirety of Onimusha: Warlord’s runtime. For the most part, the game does a great job of setting up Jubei and the supporting cast’s stories, though much of the meatier stuff comes later in the game.

Coming from the remaster of Onimusha: Warlords, Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny features all of the quality-of-life improvements that Capcom takes care to implement in their remasters. Tank controls are now optional if that used to frustrate you, and the power of the newer consoles allows for real-time weapon switching without going into the game’s menus. It sounds like a small change, but it significantly impacts the flow of combat, which I will always appreciate. There are also new difficulty modes and an optional toggle for your powerful Onimusha mode, where the original game would just force it upon you whenever you pick up the soul required for it; the remaster now lets you save it and activate it for a time in need.

Still, despite similarities to the remastering efforts of Warlords, I can’t stress enough just how different Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny is compared to its predecessor. The core premise is still the same – you’ll embark on an adventure throughout feudal Japan while slashing down a variety of demons. However, where Onimusha: Warlords has obvious similarities to the older Resident Evil games (it did start as one, after all), Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny takes things in a different direction. It’s a more directed game with a slightly goofier tone that pays remarkable homage to many great Samurai movies in Japan’s history.

For one, in these opening levels during this preview, the game doesn’t give you a castle to explore Resident Evil style. Instead, you’ll spend most of your time at Imasho Village, a small mining settlement that acts as a hub for the game’s opening moments. Each time you return to Imasho, you’ll be able to speak to people, buy items from the store and see how things change after each major quest. You’ll also be able to chat with the supporting cast, who play a major role in how Onimusha 2 plays out both at the village and throughout the entire story.

This is the other area where Onimusha 2 deviates heavily from the first Onimusha. Each of the four supporting cast members has their own detailed backstories, and you’ll often run into them during your adventure. Choosing to help them in battle will improve your relationship with them, which also might make them show up in battles with the bosses in the game. You can also improve their relationship when at Imasho Village by giving them gifts, though if you give them the wrong gift for their personality, it might worsen your relationship too.

While I usually shy away from systems like these in games, it’s cool to see how Onimusha 2 does it. Not only will these allies turn up in battle to support you, but if you’re friendly enough, they’ll pop up for story scenes that further flesh out their backstory. It’s early days, but even in these earlier moments of the story, I know more about them than Jubei. Having played this section of the game for preview several times, it was interesting to see how the characters would pop up depending on who I paid more attention to during my downtime. Experiencing this game as somebody who’s more experienced with games and can see how it all works underneath, I’m excited to see just how these branching storylines play out as the rest of the game progresses.

But this remaster stands out the most for me because of how good it looks. I don’t know if Capcom had better access to the original games files or if their upscaling efforts are just more advanced several years on, but the pre-rendered backgrounds that made the early Resident Evil games and Onimusha look so good return for Samurai’s Destiny. And in this remaster, they’ve been upscaled in a way that all the details have been retained, but the image quality is still just as crisp. This blends perfectly well with the models, which look just as you remember they did when they first graced our screens on the PS2, but have obviously received a considerable resolution bump.

All in all, while it’s most certainly early days, Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny is just as good as I remember and the remaster is especially a strong treatment for a game that was sorely in need of both an update and accessibility. It’s a great-looking remaster that I’m incredibly excited to talk about when it launches next month. But for now, know that while Onimusha 2 deviates a lot from the game that came before it, it’s easily doing things in a much more interesting way than Warlords, and that’s worth being excited about.