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The graphics are some of the best we have seen on the Playstation 2 to date. The CG-animated movies and general in-game graphics are just gorgeous (the water effects being especially impressive), and there seems to be far more detail in the backgrounds and in the characters themselves. The animation is of a high quality and many of the character's movements appear to have been carefully motion-captured. Because the backgrounds are pre-rendered there can be times where a camera angle can hide the exact positioning of an enemy, or you can become disorientated when the angle changes between scenes, but these problems are already well-known by fans of this type of game so may not bother some people too much.
The voice acting is pretty ordinary, but eventually you can fool yourself into believing it was meant to be that way to enhance the oriental B-movie feel (the acting is much like a badly dubbed fantasy film from Japan). Unfortunately you aren't given the choice of which language you want to listen to, so you're pretty much stuck with the bad voice acting whether you like it or not. The music is also not quite as memorable as the original Onimusha, but is still good and fits the action suitably.
One word of warning. While Onimusha 2 is an excellent game, it is quite short, lasting just over 8 hours on our first play-through. There is a fair amount of replayability as there are different paths involving controlling different characters that we missed first time round, but otherwise there's not much else to unlock. Also the main character is not all that memorable, and is completely outshined by the flamoyant demon Gogandantes, whom I can't help but hope makes a return in future games. Highly recommended to action and adventure game fans alike, but might be better as a weekend rental due to its short gameplay time. |