The most shocking thing I can say about Onechanbara is that its actually kind of good. It is perhaps the closest equivalent to an old school beat'em up in 3D I've played since Godhand, and despite the fact it makes almost no effort to actually improve or impress the genre, it manages to go from start to finish without tripping over its own feet too much.
The basic premise is scantily clad teenagers with swords knee deep in zombies, and this game provides no more or less than that. The levels are absolutely straightforward affairs where the half naked woman of your choice runs from room to room mowing down waves of zombies. Frequently, you won't even run, they'll just cage you in on all sides and spawn enemies until you've long since lost count of how many you've killed. A couple of times they try to get clever with key collecting backtrack nonsense, but they never get stupid with puzzles or item combination or hidden rooms or anything like that. The most imaginative level they put together is one where you ride on a motorcycle mowing down zombies while being chased by flaming dogs. Unfortunately, that reads a lot more exciting than it is, the net gameplay result was holding down the gas and mashing on the sword button until the level over screen popped up.
That's a theme that kind of plague the game, in that most of it is just not very imaginative. It lacks any sort of DMC style air combos or GoW style QTEs or other action game gimmicks, but at this point, its actually kind of refreshing to wage war without having to engage too many brain cells. Moreover there are at least a couple advanced tactics in the mix that can keep you from falling asleep at the wheel, even if you don't really need them. They mostly involve simple complexities like timing your button presses or manipulation of the d-pad mid combo, but can turn you into an unstoppable murdering machine if invoked.
On the simple side you have a combo with the sword, a combo with kicks, and an auxiliary attack like knives or dashes or grabs depending on what character you're using. You can mix them up a bit if you lock on to your enemies and hold directions before pressing, but you only really need the lock on for bosses, and that's because its the only way to dodge. The dodge is a good example of one of those advanced tricks I mentioned earlier. Normally, you can dodge around any attack without too much effort but with perfect timing you get a matrix style slowdown and a big damage counter attack. Granted, most enemies are slow and felled with only a few basic strokes, but the "Clear Sight" dodge adds an extra layer for perfectionists (and you'll need to master it if you're an achievement hunter).
Being a zombie game, BSS is pretty gorey and the devs have found a couple neat ways to tie that to the gameplay. Not only will you, your enemies, and the environs be painted and dripping red by your actions, there are no less than three meters governed by bloodletting. One for your sword which degrades it quality, one for your body which automatically unleashes "Blood Rage" when filled, and one for your overpowered Ecstasy attack. The management of the three meters is right at the core of the gameplay, and will frequently be the source of your providence or doom. A bloody blade is useless and gets stuck in enemies, so you have to manually clean it from time to time. Blood Rage increases your damage and speed, but drains your life. And while your Ecstasy attack is all powerful, it vanishes if not used quickly so you kind of have to time it.
The game gives you the opportunity to play split screen co-op, but if you don't have any friends you still get to switch between two characters on the fly. The main sword sisters play almost identically as I've documented above, but there's a third (and fourth, in freeplay) character that uses guns and kind of violates the games rules. Gun girl doesn't have the bloody sword or blood rage meters, her gameplay is less technical and more run away and rain bullets from afar, and she has to reload constantly instead of cleaning a sword. Its pretty obvious she wasn't very thoroughly tested as her effectiveness varies between absolutely untouchable in some places, and completely helpless in others, where as the sword girls are more or less jack of all trades. You could make some argument about balance or diversity in your character selections, but it all goes out the window on the few stages where you are forced to use one girl on her own. In those cases, you just have to pray that you've leveled up the characters appropriately and if not, go grind on some free play levels or hit up survival mode.
Ultimately, its the repetitiveness that hinders BSS the most (as it does all Beat'em ups). You will expose your self to most of the moves within the first 4 or 5 levels, and there are still 15 more to go (although thankfully a couple of them are just boss fights). Killing zombies never gets more complicated than "hit them with your sword" if you don't want it to and with the exception of a few special ones that shoot rifles (!) or throw grenades (!) they never do much more than shuffle about and take it. The bosses too are pretty uninventive, being either other girls with swords, martial arts men in suits, or big slow things you have to hit a lot. The game makes an effort to stretch it all out with Quests to unlock different Dress Up / Recolor options for performing certain tasks in a level, but if you don't care what your character looks like or don't care about achievements this will do little to spice it up. Being a licensed achievement whore, I actually found the game quite facilitative to my obsessive nature, allowing you to free play replay past levels with your powered up characters, or simply start the story over on a higher difficulty with them, but its not like anything new happens, enemies just take more and give more damage.
Still, despite the abuse its taken from the critics and its poor pedrigree, I recommend at least a rental spin around the block or a budget priced purchase. If you're a fan of the beat'em up genre or get your kicks on dressing up school girls and drenching them in blood, it won't disappoint you, at least not for a little while.
-F.
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