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Would you look at me funny if I said that Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny is still one of the best looking games to ever exist? There's something about the textures of the PS2 era that still look amazing to me, and this Onimusha 2 remaster does a stellar job ensuring it's shown here in all its glory – just crisped up. Sure, there's a lot that has aged this supernatural samurai hack and slash, but it's certainly not hard to look at.
I know conceptually that, say, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach has a kind of absurd graphical fidelity that puts Onimusha 2, released in 2002, to shame. I'm not completely deluded. But this game still looks so good that if any modern release just looked like this, I'd be more than happy with it. Maybe I'm just an aging gamer, but there's a charm to the era's stabs at realism where stylization has to meet it halfway. But I also still think Shenmue is breathtaking so take it with a pinch of salt (from Tom's Hot Dog Stand, of course).
Polished steel
Developer: In-house
Publisher: Capcom
Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Release date: May 23, 2025
It's not just the preservation of the visuals that I appreciate in the Onimusha 2 remaster. It runs buttery smooth. You can play without tank controls – a control scheme I think works way better in Resident Evil than, erm, a samurai hack and slash. You can quickly switch weapons, though not as quickly as in the first game's remaster (perhaps for balancing reasons). There's wide screen, of course. Even the original's bonuses and mini-games are intact and unlocked from the get-go. It might not quite reach the thorough highs of Digital Eclipse's work, but Onimusha 2's remaster approaches a gold standard for PS2 re-releases.
While Capcom have taken their time with this remaster – Onimusha: Warlords' remaster released in 2019, while Onimusha 2's is in 2025 – this wasn't the cadence of the original releases on PS2. The first game came out in 2001, and its sequel released a smidge over a year later in 2002. Not to mention both were originally intended for PS1, and development across them partially overlapped.
The quick release meant the development team had a lot of changes for Onimusha 2. It's a situation similar to 2001's Devil May Cry and 2003's Devil May Cry 2 – both series share a lot of history as both were conceived as ways to shake up the Resident Evil series itself before becoming their own projects. With Onimusha 2, you can feel the changes in direction quite clearly, and though it doesn't feel like the hot mess Devil May Cry 2 ended up being – as a fan of the original Onimusha: Warlords it feels like it loses its way a bit.
"The weapons Jubei gets throughout his journey feel more varied than Samanosuke's."
Picking up after Samanosuke's battle with demonic forces that ended with the encroaching threat quelled but a revived, warmongering Oda Nobunaga escaping, the story now centers on samurai Jubei Yagyu. After Nobunaga razes his village, Jubei sets out for revenge under the prompting of his village's yokai protector to defeat the warlord's now truly hellish army. The cutscenes are surprisingly violent, and Jubei is an immediately likeable successor protagonist – and innately able to suck up demon orbs just as Samanosuke could.
Jubei's combat skills, at least, feel like they evolve nicely from Onimusha: Warlords (something I can not say about Devil May Cry 2). The weapons he gets throughout his journey feel more varied than Samanosuke's, and all have a great assortment of different strikes that can fit different situations – even if sometimes just mashing to stun lock weaker foes can remain the best option now and then. Running through areas with fixed camera angles and plenty of loading zones, Jubei will constantly be fighting, so it's a good job there's a lot of variety in how you can do it.
It's a shame, then, that the actual combat scenarios often feel so stale. There are a couple of screens in Onimusha: Warlords that still annoy me a bit, where enemies constantly spawn in and, easy to dispatch though they are, it can become a slog. There, it's the exception to the rule. In Onimusha 2 it is the rule. Almost every screen slowly spawns wave after wave of enemies that take many hits to kill.
Sure, you don't always have to slay them all to progress, but upgrade speeds are glacial compared to the first game, meaning nabbing enough resources is a real grind and skipping fights will leave you underpowered. On top of red orbs, enemies now drop gold currency as well, which mind-bogglingly can't be absorbed from a distance like demon essence, meaning you still have to trudge across anyway. So much of the game is quite linear, with very little to explore for large chunks of the game other than repeating samey hallways.
Town life
"I'm less likely to replay this than the original Onimusha even without multiple routes."
That gold comes into play in the game's RPG-like towns. These are pleasant little spaces, but don't add much. A gift system allows you to grow closer to Jubei's companions who he befriends, and events can play out differently depending on how much they like you. A nice idea, but it's slow and clunky here, and is one area that feels like it's aged less elegantly. Some of this is dropped later in the game as it becomes more focused – but rather than a relief it just contributes to a feeling of odd pacing.
Just as Samanosuke would sometimes need the aid of his shinobi ally Kaede, control shifting to her with a slightly pared down ninja moveset, Jubei also needs to call on his playable allies from time to time. None of them are as fun to play as compared to Jubei. While there may be more options, none of them are particularly good.
It's another example where more ends up feeling like less, I'd have rather had an improved single companion than a slew of middling ones – but I guess this is from the era where having multiple characters was a definite marketing bullet point. In fact, I just grabbed the back of the original EU release and it's right there as point number one: "multiple characters". Who helps out when is part of the branching path structure but even so, less fun as Onimusha 2 is, I'm less likely to replay this than the original Onimusha which doesn't have multiple routes at all.
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny's remaster still presents it as the odd, messy, and often over-bloated sequel it was, a strange followup that didn't really know how to evolve the focused castle exploration of the original. Leaning more heavily on fantasy elements than horror, it's tonally all over the place and paced weirdly, with even its improved sword clashing deployed in less than exciting slow waves of enemy encounters. Gogandantess is still an awesome boss design though, I will grant it that.
Yet, I can't bring myself to hate it. It's not as fun to revisit as the original, but it's still quite the looker, and the remaster's enhancements are really nicely done. I'm glad that while some improvements are present, this is still Onimusha 2 faithfully reproduced. Now, when can we get Onimusha 3 remastered?
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny was played on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.
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