Why did they do that to Onimusha, man? Obviously with the death of Nobunaga the franchise lost its main antagonist but their replacement, an absolutely pathetic interpretation of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, has absolutely nothing going for him. So much so, in fact, that at the end of the game they unceremoniously bring back Fortinbras! It's almost like they knew he was such a boring antagonist and desperately scraped up any good will they had left from 1-3 to (unsuccessfully) cash in at the last minute.

Soki is a fucking boring protagonist, too. His design is ugly and overworked, and he's about as interesting as paint drying. Somehow the rest of his band of idiots have even less going on. Minokichi is such a horrendous idea that I can only assume that we need to add it to the huge list of Keiji Inafune crimes. The writing is completely incoherent - in the first 30 minutes of the game you fight gigantic samurai mechs and this never comes up a single time ever again, not a mention of their manufacturing, no hint as to why Hideyoshi has these, they're just gone forever. It doesn't even attempt to do anything cool ever again for the rest of the twenty fucking hour runtime. I know I'm complaining about plot in the franchise where Jean Reno telepathically gets his son to deliver his motorbike keys to him in the past but at least Oni3 being fucking insane was fun, every forced plot moment in this game is people standing around in rooms monologuing at each other. (Special mention to their depiction of Tenkai blatantly just being Samanosuke, and also the fact that TOKUGAWA IEYASU NEVER COMES UP DESPITE SOKI BEING HIS SON AND TENKAI BEING THERE)

And the gameplay! Oh, my baby what did they DO to you!!! Issen counters are no longer a thing you have to practise or a risky move because the game literally just lets you Issen whenever you want. Big room of guys? Hit the magic button, Issen the entire room. A single really big guy with tons of health? Issen him 8 times in a row. For free. There's no flow or pacing to the encounters because you have a button that turns them all off. And if you die the game just sends you back to the start of the room so there's no risk even involved! The partner system is so fucking bad that I literally just told the partner to sit back and buff me or block for the entire game, and even then there's no reason to use anyone that isn't Ohatsu.

The transition to full 3D in this one instead of just some-of-the-time (except for the level that is copy-pasted directly and in its entirety from 3) combined with how tight the camera is means that every single archer in the game is now constantly hitting you from off camera because they all spawn in stupid locations the camera doesn't naturally point towards. I looked up reviews and so many of them complimented the game specifically because they wouldnt get shot from off screen any more and like? Did we play the same games? The fixed cameras in the first 3 meant they could design encounters based on what you can actually see so it was rare (cough except in onimusha 2) to actually get attacked from off screen. Here it's just the norm. Hope you didn't need to react to this enemy that's spawning in and instantly attacking because we're going to put a GIGANTIC PORTAL OVER THEM.

And the boss fights. Oh my god the boss fights SUCK. One huge boss that's so big the occlusion kicks in and turns the model off if you're standing within 30 feet of it gets reused like 8 times. Every humanoid boss fight plays exactly the same and they all get reused like 3 times each. In the end stretch of the game they make you fight Munenori THREE TIMES OVER TWO LEVELS. The Luis Frois boss fight during the big, awful boss rush at the end of the game might be the worst designed boss fight in any video game ever made. The final boss, on my very first try, with almost no difficulty, took FORTY FIVE MINUTES TO BEAT. It has TWO MECHANICS.

I dread the day they try to reboot Onimusha because we might end up with Dawn of Dreams 2.