Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams is the latest and probably the last part of the pretty popular action game series. Dawn of Dreams is pretty basic: killing different enemies, upgrading old swords and buying new ones, settling out some puzzles and fighting bosses. The graphics are great looking and especially the dark forests are really good looking and very atmospheric. The characters look really good for PS2 and there really aren't any flaws in the graphics. Then on to the gameplay. The controls are pretty easy to learn and master: hitting with sword, running, walking, using sword as a shield, performing special "Oni Attack" and those kind of things. It's pretty weird that the characters can't jump. The basic enemies are pretty easy to kill and they usually die easily with a couple of sword hits. When the player progresses in the game, the difficulty obviously rises, enemies begin to be harder to defeat and the bosses get even harder. The games boss battles can be called epic by Onimusha fans, but to other players they can and WILL be really frustrating, way too long and generally too hard. Also there is too many boss fights. You play a level and there can be two over 15 minutes long hard boss fights. Warning, the huge Genma after beating "the Red Demon" Tenkai requires a lot of time. The boss fight is extremely hard and it takes time from an hour to almost two hours. I completed it in my third try and it took me a little bit over an hour. The boss fights should be easier and there should be fewer of them. Then Dawn of Dreams would be worth rating 9.0. The sounds are pretty enjoyable, but nothing too special. The game is very long and it will certainly be worth the money. The storyline is pretty interesting too. Overally Dawn of Dream is a great beat 'em up action game that could easily be superb without it's extremely hard and anguishing boss battles. If you're a casual player who plays few times a month, don't bother to buy this game. I was very happy that I wasn't a casual player after I bought this one.