Onimusha Tactics [2003] ANALYSIS

Platform: GameBoy Advance (GBA)

Turn-Based Strategy Role Playing Game: Turns by Team

Completion Level: Campaign Completed ~37 Hours

Onimusha Tactics is classic Strategy/Tactical RPG fare. It’s a pixelated adventure not unlike Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Tactics Ogre: Knight of the Lodis. It’s free from glaring flaws. Borrowing elements from the popular Onimusha games, it incorporates them to put a unique spin on a SRPG. Combine that with an item creation/enhancement system and you have a game that’s better than its (slightly) rudimentary externals.

All the foundational warrior classes are represented, and neither melee or ranged get short shrift. Additionally, the game’s skill system distributes magic-like abilities across your entire party, not restricting them to mage classes. It gives you strategic options, allowing more opportunities to play the way you want. There’s more than one way to take down a map of baddies, and thankfully Onimusha Tactics lets you explore them.

Another RPG? Another hero’s hometown is burnt to the ground. There’s got to be a better way!

 The layout is classic 2D art depicted as 3D. The camera is angled down upon a standard grid-based layout. The environment is non-rotatable, and the characters are traditionally crafted sprites.

The Good:

• 98% Fat Free: OT is a lean game. The story moves along, giving you the key points for each character and scenario succinctly, not wasting any time. The game engine cut scenes are not padded. This economy also applies to the interface and various mechanics. There is no endless button pressing for any of the special mechanics including object creation, enhancement, and skills use.
  

• Skills are Like Magic: Learning various skills allows status effects like “sleep” to be added to ranged characters’ attacks, like a bow shot, in essence making a magical archer. Skills have variety (electrical zapping, status buffs, etc.) and add ranged attacks—with reasonable limits—to melee characters too. The good balance between ranged and melee classes is partially due to this “magical” skills system.
  

• New & Improved Items: If you find or create (See “Good & Bad) a weapon you like, its useful lifetime can be extended by enhancement of its attributes. This feature is empowered by the energy collected from defeated enemies. A good mechanic.
  

Okay, while there isn’t a lot of Onimusha Tactics cosplay, there is plenty of Onimusha franchise cosplay.

• New & Improved…Battle Stats? Everybody fights their battle scenarios uniquely, with different emphasis, units, and unit strengths. So it is refreshing to get a better post-battle debrief than just, “You Win.” We don’t fully understand exactly how each of those stats is generated, but we’re grateful to have them none the less, even for comparing our own battles as we progress.

And here he is, Samanosuke, the butt-kicking super samurai wielder of the oni gantlet… But NOT in this game.

This is Onimusha Tactics’ wielder…

• Don’t Play Favorites with the Troops: With up to eight characters able to be fielded in battle at once, there isn’t great need to leave good units behind in experience. Eight opens the door to various tactical options, and was the sweet spot for the number of characters the game introduces.

• When a Decent Story Counts as Good: When you ask? Here. Sure, OT’s story isn’t revolutionary, and the basics are drawn from the Onimusha franchise. But good execution counts, and the greatest story, poorly told, would not. They use introductory banners to identify key characters, and simple black text screens glue each “episode,” as they call them, together. The story is not flat, and does have a poignant twist in the middle, a little like Final Fantasy VII’s Aerith (Aeris).
  

Uh, can we shorten that to just “Lady?”

• Portraits—in the Eye of the Beholder: While the portraits are not our favorite, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re of good quality and different, imbuing the game with its own feel, and keeping it from cookie-cutter land. Perhaps they’re inconsistent, but not enough to ding down to “Good & Bad.” And they do have expression variants, which is a plus.

• The Quick & the Good:
  • OT’s rifleman class. It’s not common in SRPGs (some Final Fantasy franchise appearances), but can really change the tactical decision-making.
    
  • A tutorial that is quick and handy, not laborious or on separate screens—but it strangely breaks the fourth wall…

Huh? You can actually see that?

• It’s 3D! (…not really): Obviously, the technology in this kind of game does not allow for real 3D geometry, but the 2D maps portray (sometimes severe) height clearly. Many of the maps are very 3D oriented. (Some games of similar technology don’t embrace the pseudo-3D as much.) It adds another level of strategy and interest, which hopefully, with good design, translates into fun.
  

• The Quick & the Good II:
  • 45 battle scenarios. The game is not short, and offers plenty of content for your learning curve.
    
  • The low-percentage “Issen” melee counterattack is a fun and satisfying mechanic.
    
  • OT is not afraid to put in some humorous dialogue. It’s not over-done and adds to the game.

Too Big for a Bullet Point:  The Wrappiest Wrap-Up

After dedicating so many hours to saving the world, we think a specifically crafted ending is a must. Not just a throw-away picture and a couple lines of text. This is especially true in an SRPG—which generally requires more player hours to complete than other genres. Yet surprisingly, many SRPGs are not crafted with an ending that does the game, labored on for so long by developer and player, justice.

Onimusha Tactics does a fine job, giving us a variety of pre-scripted, game-engine cut-scenes not unlike the epilogue of Vandal Hearts. That ending left you feeling good, and this one does as well. It goes through all the significant characters, giving them fitting epilogues worthy of your saving the world, and not lame second-class endings because you didn’t buy a daisy from the flower girl on level 7 (*cough* —Riviera *another cough* —Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together).

How long will this one be safe?

It’s meaningful right up through the end where you find out the final disposition of the main hero. Look for a skeletor in the end credits (before Marvel superhero movies made skeletors so fashionable). It does not ruin anything, or un-do your victory, but it does leave things open for a sequel, and implies that evil must be continually fought wherever it’s encountered.

The Good & Bad

Conveniently Together in One Point:

• The Phantom Realm: Having a place to level up new characters is necessary if there are no non-story, regenerating encounters. But battles in the Phantom Realm have no penalty for death, which can make them meaningless exercises. We chose not to use it, only to later find out it is used to distribute rare item creation stones. Hey, how about putting such important finds in the regular storyline!?

We said “phantom realm,” not “phantom zone.”

• Item Creation… The system may have sounded great seeing its entirety on paper, or perhaps with a FAQ explaining every possibility. Barring that, in practice, it’s a little flat and uninteresting. Additionally, there’s little control over the creation stones you can obtain. We don’t want to ding an item creation system. It can be a boon to a game, allowing one to tailor the play experience to a particular tactical style. Too bad this one does not fully live up to that.
  

But can it make a ham sandwich?

• The Environmental Textures are… just okay: They do the job they are painted to do, but not with panache. They are quite average. Grass looked like grass. Rock and dirt more-or-less like their namesakes… Adequate, but no more. More shading and contrast would help. The map topography is fairly interesting. The textures don’t live up to it.

The Bad:

• “Your Death Won’t be in Vain!” Well, in actuality, unit deaths in battle mean nothing. Those who have read Play What You Like know this is an important point.  There’s more immersion and investment when keeping your characters alive is essential. Felled units in OT might lose out on a little bit of experience for the rest of a battle, but are otherwise good as new for the next.

• They’re Dumb and Need Your Help: One of our least favorite mission types is, “Guard the really unhelpful AI controlled character.” It’s one thing to lose because of your own decisions, but another is when it’s seemingly out of your hands.
  

• Gatling Unit Onslaught: These units are (possibly too) strong, and can appear grouped so that approaching them is nigh impossible. In the end, we had to pick at them with the longest range attacks. It was a long a tedious process. Boring and un-strategic. How did this scenario get past testing? Other players’ unit configurations may have less trouble with them, but we think this needs to be anticipated and addressed in the design.
  

• The Quick and the Bad:
  • Boss enemy health may be 2000, but the display only shows 999. Really?
    
  • Many enemy magic attacks take too looong. Come on, keep things moving. Remember we’ll see these attacks repeated many, many times.
  • The world map is underwhelming. Just snoozerville. It does not need to be.

• “Listen to this!” (And by ‘this’ we mean two tracks.): A couple good tracks can be found in OT’s music. More are needed. Music can and has been done much better on GBA (Example: Fire Emblem). SRPG music has its own specific functionary challenges. Rise to it.

• “Enterprise, two to beam down.” “Beaming” new enemies into an already established battle is weak sauce. That’s not the way to increase difficulty, only frustration (Example—again, the otherwise excellent Fire Emblem). Forcing your units to roam in a circle while chasing down beamed in enemies is no fun. Especially when said enemies grow stronger over time!
  

 Final Thoughts:

Onimusha Tactics is a fun experience if you like classic SRPGs. Okay, it’s so classic that it also uses one of the most classic RPG cliches: “Forget that guy, I’m the REAL final boss.”

It moves along quickly, often with someone at the end of a battle disclosing the name of the next important story location. This inevitably causes the leader to respond with a variant of, “To Yagami!”

Onimusha Tactics is a solid, competent game. It has two stand out mechanics, item creation, and a magical skills system, that make it worth playing if you need a reason. Yes, it’s a game made on a lean budget, but it accomplishes much with it. Our appreciation of such accomplishments has only grown in the years since we played this game.

“Don’t make me go oni gauntlet on your face!”

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If you like Onimusha Tactics, try:

Yu Yu Hakusho – Ghost Files: Tournament Tactics [2004] GBA

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance [2003] GBA 

Tactics Ogre: Knight of the Lodis [2002] GBA