Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad
IGN- 3.0
Gamepro- 2.0
Gamespot- 2.5
Things looked bad for the ladies of Onechanbara. The reviews destroyed the game, citing bad controls, bad graphics, and the manuals incompetent technical explanation of the game-play. All that aside, I bought this game the day it came out, without having read a single review. All I knew was that it was the new North American release from D3, the company that gave us Earth Defence Force 2017, and it was a hack and slash game about DOA style characters who killed zombies with samurai swords. The main character wears a bikini, not for style mind you, but because the more blood she gets on her skin, the more powerful she becomes.
The game plays a little weak in story mode. The camera is frustrating, the map lacks logical sense, and the amount of time running around aimlessly fluctuates wildly due to bad navigation. But the largest strike against the game is that their is NO explanation of how to play whatsoever. I was constantly getting my sword stuck in zombies, or turning purple and going ape-shit, only to have my health decrease rapidly. Turns out you need to clean the blood of your sword by pressing the right button. And that purple ape shit mode is “berserk”, and to end it you must use a goddess statue fragment. How do I know all this. I spent a good day and a half tracking down Japanese text and translating through google, as well as finding obscure import version FAQ’s to explain the game-play. No game should ever be that poorly explained.
That all being said, I LOVE THIS GAME. The survival mode alone saves it from all it’s shortcomings. Sitting down with a friend and hacking zombies apart for well over 4 hours is a blast. Once you have the game mechanics figured out, the game plays quite well, and offers a similar experience to the hordes of enemies that Earth Defense Force 2017 offered up. Never before has slowing frame-rate been a welcome sight, for you know that a shit load of zombies are getting eviscerated.
Bottom Line: the game costs $40.00, it has a ton of zombies, and the main characters breasts jiggle even when she stands still. I give it an 8.5.
