As can be expected from an Onimusha game, the character designs are detailed and quite striking, if more outlandish than those in the series' previous entries. This is made quite clear by the dramatic introduction to the new hero, Hideyoshi Yuki. Yuki, who introduces himself as 'Soki, Oni of the Ash' is decked out in resplendent blue samurai armor, wields a pair of wicked looking swords, and wears a pair of demon horns upon his brow. This obviously leads to some confusion when he meets up with Jubei Yagyu Akane, the attractive young swordswoman who not only rocks an impressive side ponytail, but also joins along on his quest, as she has her own reasons for engaging the Genma army in battle.
The combat animations are smooth as can be, and it's a pleasure to see your character in action as they hack and cleave demon spawn with reckless abandon. While the FMV sequences are quite nice, with plenty of cinematically inspired dramatic camera angles, and over-the-top voice acting, the graphics don't seem to have the same amount of polish that we've seen from the series, particularly in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege. The textures aren't as high resolution in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, and since it has already been released in Japan, we don't expect that the final version will match up favorably to the brilliant visuals we saw in the Demon Siege. It should be noted that Dawn of Dreams may well make up for the dip in technical quality with healthy doses of creativity--the game just oozes style.
The new combat features are quite impressive. Your right shoulder button locks onto targets, and a flick of the right stick will switch to an alternate target, allowing for easy selection of what direction to attack, or what weak spot to target in a boss fight. We got a taste of this first hand against a massive demon mech that was rampaging Godzilla-style through a helpless city. Towering stories above, it was impossible to initially get a fix on the behemoth's vitals, but after sidestepping a swipe of its enormous blade, we could target the aforementioned sword and unleash a flurry, freeing it from the giant's grasp. A few more rounds of this led us towards a sequence where we unleashed Soki's Oni Awakening power, which ended the fight in spectacular fashion, surrounding our hero with a dark aura and increasing his demon-slaying power manyfold. Not only does the targeting add an element of user-guided precision to combat, but it serves as a handy way to quickly focus the camera perspective towards your nearest opponent, handy when first entering an area inhabited by enemies that need a good slaying. The game's use of dramatic camera angles when entering certain environments still leads to visibility issues, however, and we were quite regularly running blind towards the bottom of the screen, or engaging foes in battle just out of view of the player.
