What a disappointment... but I should've expected this, especially after the previous two games. Dawn of Dreams does a lot to change the formula in a bad way. While the parter system is novel, it's proven worthless when your partner can't stay alive, and if they are alive are barely noticeable in combat. The game is entirely too bloated with multiple stages and bosses being reused. The worst part of it all is how lackluster the story is. Even with 2 which I still think is the weakest game, the story was at least engaging enough to keep me going through. Where as the story here takes a huge shift from what is expected. Like others have said going "full blown anime" was a detriment to this game as the story is by far the weakest part of this game.

God damn, so disappointed with this one.

Such a awkward change of tone and feel from the first three which felt much more grounded. This isn't to say that 1-3 were these believable, realistic games or anything. But they felt cinematic, and benefitted from their Resident Evil roots, characters weren't super-well voice acted or anything, but the performances felt lightyears different from what we get in Dawn of Dreams.

DoD shifts into full anime-mode, with a blonde main character who does the whole cliched lazy main hero who has to be nagged into action, which i've seen like a million times before. Partnered up with this hyper cute kid who made the tengu from 3 look realistic.

I kinda hated how nothing really got set up properly story wise, we never have the moment of the hero gaining the oni-gauntlet, or the fancy orbs that get you the weapons. It's skips all this, and just has your hero wander in all pre-made, you have no opportunity to warm up to them, they're pre-baked.

The fact you pick up weapons in random boxes or just buy them, rather than having to do these interesting set pieces where getting a new weapon was this hefty, powerful moment takes lots away too.

The inclusion of electric guitar stuff into the soundtrack again felt tonally weird compared to the other games, which tried to be more classy.

I don't like how they split everything into levels, whereas before it was much more open and you could travel all over and return to areas for grinding etc, the story just naturally moved you from area to area, and didn't awkwardly just scream "LEVEL 2" at you.

Also the way the camera just swings around every time you progress 5 feet forward and highlights doors and direction just treats the player like an idiot. Like you can't work out where to go without being told every two seconds.

Annoyed me to no end that the buttons for examining and absorbing souls were swapped, and menu navigation buttons got all fucked up too.

Massive downgrade, what a rubbish end to this series.

This game really disappointed me. For everything it did right it did two things wrong or worse then by the end I feel like it's not worth anything. The story and characters are kinda whatever. The main series plot is already done and over and what they give us here just feels like needless filler. With every gameplay addition they add the game just becomes more ridiculous by the second.

Like two examples here. Landing a critical (issen) strike on an enemy is one of the most rewarding feelings in gaming full stop. The timing, the impact, the sound and the white slash feels so good. Performing and even trying to chain them together on enemies is so rewarding. But in dawn of dreams their is an item that just lets you do it infinitely for free at the cost of a bit of life. The problem is you can just recover that said life from your kill. We took a great system here and just shat all over it. Secondly there was the bastardization of the phantom relms. In past Onimusha games you could participate in underworld gauntlet of battle enemies consecutively to gain special rewards or weapons. Usually about 20 levels of challenges and that can be quite difficult. Very well balanced and just pure gameplay. In Dawn of Dreams though it's 100 levels. 100 levels for each of the five characters. 500 levels or some shit. You can't just back out mid way through, aw no. 100 levels each sitting. Only the last 20 or so levels are even worth anything but if you want to get the best gear and special weapons for each character and get a good rank you gotta do it for everyone. BUT you know what? You can use bonus items in this game here. Just use the free critical hit item. Turn your brain off for three hours as you grind away. Oops did you get hit cheaply before you could restore that health. Guess that's 3 hours down the drain. On my completionist playthrough seriously 80% of my time was doing this shit. It's this kinda crap that soured me on a game that really isn't THAT bad, but boy did it get me to hate it. Just so unnecessary of a sequel. All substance no meat.

There's always an interesting feeling about going into what is, for all intents and purposes, the final game of a series. Whether because it wraps the story up, or because it just ended up being the last one released before the series just went on ice, my curiosity is usually higher when I know the game I'm getting into is where a series chose to leave itself off. So it only made sense to cap off the Onimusha series, which I've completely coincidentally been experiencing 1 game per year since playing the original in 2020! And... aw jeez.

Onimusha: Dawn Of Dreams had me thinking, "Wait, this is the one people don't like?", and "Oh man, I get it now..." on regular intervals, and that sucks. Hidden under a pretty meandering, less grounded story led by new protag Soki, a change to the usual series' protag by being a total goofball, not being designed after a real life actor, and just kinda having the Oni Gauntlet, and whose sudden introduction makes Nero seem like he was given a fully developed presence from scene 1, is one of the most "icey hot" video game experiences I've had in a minute. Though, while the game's story is at the forefront, it's worth noting that it somehow feels both higher and lower budget to the prior entries, with a fair few grand scale CGI cutscenes throughout, but also a lot of in-game cinemas with character portraits and text boxes, and too many goddamn instances of the game just hard cutting to a text crawl after a boss fight that amounts to, "Oh, they got away, lol". There's some neat moments within the game, and it definitely has a good sense of finality about it, with the main villain being the series' oft-recurring joke character Hideyoshi Toyotomi, as foreshadowed from the first game, but my issues with the game are far greater than anything I could provide about the plot.

Oni 4's combat is a wholesale change from the tank-controlled, fixed-camera style of the first 3 entries, now going for a full behind the back camera style that feels like a weird attempt at being Devil May Cry while still keeping Onimusha's systems like the Issen counter, ground stab, magic attacks and the sort. And for the most part, it's decent fun! The game's got a really neat mechanic for the PS2, allowing the player to bring along a second character to accompany Soki throughout a stage and either commanding them to take on one of four command stances via AI, or to swap control to them mid-combat whenever you want, effectively allowing you to continue the combo you were performing as you juggle between your own characters. It's honestly wild to me that, such a short time removed from Devil May Cry 3 limiting the player to 4 weapons and 1 style at a time, Oni4 was able to do full blown character swapping like this. I don't know what'd be hitching the PS2 on the technical side of things, but I just find it neato.

Between Soki being the usual Oni protag, Roberto feeling like a less fun version of Gene from God Hand, Ohatsu being the DMC2 sequel we never got, Tenkai using a big ass spear (a weapon that more action games need), and Jubei being a more fast-paced affair, there's certainly a lot of variety between playstyles in the game, even if I mostly stuck with Soki when the time came. It's a bad force of habit, what can I say? The combat on a base level is slightly expanded from prior titles with some additional moves triggered with more inputs, most notably full launchers in addition to the usual kicks, and a back-forward input for every character. So it all sounds pretty great! Sure, the camera's a bit of a finicky bitch, and the lock-on being tied to the right stick is a pain in the ass that meant I got hit a fair few times, but there's some super neat ideas here.

And then the game goes on, giving you full blown RPG mechanics. A bazillion different weapon types that might play reasonably differently but ultimately come down to the numbers game, defenses also being decided via equipment, and both being needed to be o levelled up on a by character basis (complete with extended periods of time where a character might be out of the party meaning you could potentially waste EXP on them). You also get an accessory slot, and unlocking additional moves is barely a footnote compared to the game forcing you to increase the strength of them all individually on an upgrade-point based system. I've spoken at length about my distaste for RPG systems forced into action games that don't need them, but the amount of RPG busywork thrown on top of Dawn Of Dreams is enough to make me groan. And that's a shame, because the core combat is really interesting and has some neat ideas going for it!

But you know what else brings Dawn Of Dreams down a fair bit? It's too fucking long! While the series was getting gradually longer as it ran on, with Onimusha 1 standing at about 5 hours and 3 capping around 12, DOD drags its feet for upwards of about 20 hours, without enough going on with its mechanics to really keep the player invested like other Capcom action games like the DMCs and God Hand. The game's presented across 2 goddamn discs, and I was ready for it to be over when I was halfway through the first.

Unrelated, but I wanna complain about the first boss fight with Sakon real quick; not because it's some super hard boss fight, because it wasn't. I was fucking up and dying a few times because I was tired, and a few because I got trapped in a corner and stunlocked, but my issue isn't to do with the fight. I need to vent about my copy of the game, as this entire boss fight, and seemingly ONLY this fight, made the game run a completely random chance of freezing. Maybe it's freeze when I died, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it'd freeze when I paused the game to use an item, or maybe it'd hang on a black screen for upwards of A MINUTE, and then slog over the finish line. The fight also only being accessible after another boss fight and brief intermission mook rush before it made for a pretty dire experience where I felt like the only solution was blowing £20 of my already low funds on another copy of the game.

PTSD experience aside, though... yeah, it's unfortunately hard for me to really recommend Dawn Of Dreams. Kinda stinks to say that, especially after coming away from the rest of the series pretty damn positively. Loved Onis 1 and 3, and even enjoying most of 2 in spite its final hours falling a little limp and the gift RNG that left me struggling with a lackluster HP bar in the 11th hour compounding that fact, but my big takeaway from DOD only furthers the exact sentiment I shared with Oni2. Sometimes bigger ain't always better. There's a lot of stuff to do, with the series traditional Dark Realm serving as a quick way to just dive into the core combat on a whim, and I'm sure there's a lot of other stuff to do with the game's higher difficulties, with secret missions to find and different approaches to take... but when a game is mentally exhausting me halfway through, not because I'm binging it and burning myself out, but because the game itself isn't offering enough content to make its runtime feel worthwhile, I can only take so much. Wish I loved ya, Dawn Of Dreams, but I don't, and that sucks.

A sad end to a beloved franchise.

The gameplay changes are garbage and the character design is edgy trash.

Skip it, for your sake.

Came expecting to hate it, ended up liking it a lot. Story is a bit all-over-the-place, issen/critical got quite streamlined and can easily be spammed with magic too so that sense of countering enemies isn't there anymore, but at the same time this game is full of content, fun environments, SUPERB soundtrack. It definitely took the series in a different direction and this game can definitely put you off if you came after playing 3.
Given Capcom's disinterest in the series i can live with this game being a great series finale.