Once in awhile gamers will happen upon a game box that looks so cheesy they have no choice but to smile and laugh. Often it's something you've never heard of, and at times it's based on Japanese anime or some other little-known licensing property. Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad will draw both eye rolls and knowing glances, as the game box features a bikini-clad heroine with dual swords and a cowboy hat, and the game follows a series of similar titles on the Ps2 and other platforms.
Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad is a third-person action hack 'n slash game where the gamer takes control of three separate battlin' babes as they take on an army of... zombies (of course) and an evil corporate entity, or something like that. It has all the hallmarks of a frustrating game: repetitive action, tough boss battles, and nearly impossible challenges... yet I played it and beat it a few times, until I simply couldn't take any more of it. Why would I keep playing? The story is silly, with some sort of evil boss witch and her henchmen after the group of heroes, and the zombies seem to be a weird afterthought. But I kept going back, leveling up my girls over and over again, till I'd maxed them out and drained my will to live.
The leveling up is the key to making O:BSS a worthwhile way to spend a couple days. Your girls will start out doing little damage with limited reach, but grabbing more experience orbs (Yay, orbs! It's Crackdown 2 all over again!) allows customization to improve their moves. Play through the game a few times, and those customized characters retain their improvements, making it easier to play through again... and the wheel spins around and around. Soon you'll be decapitating hordes of zombies with Aya's double-sword attack and blasting away with intelligence agent Annna's dual guns (yes, that's spelled Annna), without giving a second thought to the number of undead who will never see their zomb-children again.
One of O:BSS's more unique features is the blood lust meter - the more zombie murders you accomplish, the more blood-soaked your young ladies become, until they enter Rage mode, which increases damage dealt while draining your character's life force. Thankfully, the girls can visit altars or use collectible altar pieces to wash away the blood, or switch to another character (in most levels) once the bloodletting reaches a fever pitch. Additionally, once a gamer has beaten O:BSS, they can return and play levels with any character they choose, so if you haven't leveled up Saki (Aya's little schoolgirl sister) in the first play through, you can use her as your go-to character the next time around.
I can't say Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad was no fun... I enjoyed it for a fair amount of time, but it is dumb and unnecessary. The story and the action are both mindless, and playing through either the story or the survival mode will suck up hours and hours of your precious gaming time. On the plus side, you can customize the girls' costumes... and that means bikinis! Zombie slashing becomes much more fun when you're controlling a cute girl wearing next-to-nothing but a tramp stamp, and that's exactly what you'll be doing unless you manage to unlock more outfits with the incredibly thumb-numbing challenges. Therein lies what I truly hated about O:BSS - the combo system, and its relationship to challenges and achievements.
Unless you're a combo-makin' idiot savant, you won't come near the full 1000 Gamerscore in O:BSS. I maxed out at 490 after a silly number of hours played, because the combo system requires near-perfect timing, making achievements like Cool Master and Rampaging Baneful Blood next to impossible. Granted, leveling up your ladies creates a larger combo time meter, but it still wasn't enough to allow this gamer to pull off the needed moves. YouTube is littered with demonstrations of how to pull off these stupid combos, and that's a bad sign. If you need to watch a combo done on a video to understand how it works, that's a problem.
Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad isn't a terrible game, but it isn't a good game, either. It's the videogame equivalent of watching the "Resident Evil" movie series... ridiculous plots, mediocre action, but you get to see a super-cute girl creating zombie stew (Milla Jovovich in the RE movies) every time you flip the switch. I surprised myself with how many hours I played O:BSS, and I highly recommend D3Publisher's excellent game guide for anyone silly enough to follow my lead. Bikinis, zombies, swordplay, gunfire, all with a Japanese flair... if that's sounds like fun, you might want to pick up Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad.
Check out our other reviews at www.gamedebateclub.com!
3.0