OneeChanbara Origin - An Interesting DMC Clone

[@Proxzia_]

Have you played this game?

[@shadgargan9973]

Even though the first two OneeChanbara games came out around the same time as DMC3, those games barely (if at all) delved into themes like family and revenge; in fact, the stories were so barebones in the first place, only serving to explain why we would be in a hospital or a mall or something, so we could say that Origin's plot could have been inspired by DMC3's plot because it came after that game. Origin had a completely new writer (a woman btw) this time around, someone who managed to put a lot more thought into an OneeChanbara story to make it more relatable and heartfelt. I very much would like this writer to be brought back to revise the plot of a potential remake of the X360 game Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. Also, there were lots of retcons in Origin such as the Oboro being alive throughout the story, Lei dying at the end, etc. Anyway, yeah I agree that the main campaign's story can be lacking. However, I don't think the characters are as shallow as you say. Let's take the zombie sisters as an example. If you only play through the story, they simply come across as Eva's minions and they do show a bit of sisterly love to each other yet it isn't fleshed out. Or so we think. If you read Sayaka's character profile, you'd find out that Sayaka was being overprotective of Anzu in the story as a way to atone for her sin of killing Anzu when they were still alive. It's highly implied that Sayaka and Anzu were subject to the same Baneful tradition of sisters fighting each other to the death, since Origin decided to retcon Sayaka and Anzu as members of the Baneful Bloodline. Sayaka and Anzu can be seen as reflections of Aya and Saki in this instance. I'm gonna use Lei as another example. She's not a Baneful, but she essentially went through the same cruel situation as Baneful sisters, being forced to kill her fellow clones whom she initially had thought of as sisters. I'm sure this was extremely damaging to her psyche and her worldview, her plight being very existential in nature. Unfortunately, Lei only mentioned this detail as in-game banter during the player's battle with the clones in Ch. 22, which can be easily missed because you may not pay attention to the banter while in combat, or you might not think the banter is as important as what happens in cutscenes. This is further explored in one of her DLC missions, which can also be easily missed due to the nature of DLC being optional. I would argue that all the characters are a bit deeper than you think, including Oboro, who had been in a perpetual Berserk state for two years prior to the events of the game, something that is really bad even for a Baneful, and Eva, who sought power because she wanted revenge against the Baneful Bloodline because they had shunned her for being weak, and also to protect her unnamed daughter, perhaps against the Baneful Bloodline or the world which had been infested by Undead for a long time now. Unfortunately, only playing through the story does not give critical backstory and lore details from things like character descriptions, in-game banter, and the DLC missions. So, maybe the characters are not too deep, but they aren't so shallow either if you find out more backstory and lore details outside the game's main story cutscenes.

[@jameshampton4772]

Onee Chanbara Origin is actually one of my favorite hack n slash in recent years and even now I still love this game plus It`s actually my 5th favorite game in the genre if you can believe it 😄

[@Proxzia_]

I can believe it! It’s better than some of the DMC games imo.

[@MiraiChiaki]

The game looks really really good imo, and the rest of it (even the repetitive gameplay) looks good as well considering the price it retailed for originally. I mean, you really can’t expect much from a game that launched in 2004 on PS2 for only 2000 yen (14,57€ in 2023)