Onee Chanbara Origin

Once you get past the insanely bad optimization, it's really not that bad of a game.

I did not expect this but... this game feels really good to slash around wtf
This is my first game in the series. I heard about these games in the past and to me they seemed like games focused on fanservice where gameplay is probably very meh and depthless. But i was very wrong.
Calling it "DMC at home" isnt accurate at all imo. The combat is very different. The movesets are simple, comboing isnt as freeform, u might be mashing one button over and over... but with some addititional mechanics. Theres a rhythm type mechanic that awards u with bigger, flashier and faster hits when u connect button presses between attacks with precise timings. It's satisfying. Then theres also retaining the combo string between dodges and jumps if u time them well.
Theres perfect dodging. And reloading your sword (yeah). And, what really elevates the game to me, PARRYING. By default is mapped to the circle button on PS controller, so its in your face and readily accessible. It feels GOOD to parry in this game and enemies seem to be designed specifically to have attack tells that let u parry them well. This gives the game cool skill ceilling that in conjunction with very no bullshi* level designs seems to give the game lots of replayability.
What do i mean by no BS? The game constantly throws u into combat. Its like steets of rage/beat'em ups or some shi*, u push forward constantly and enemies are spawning. The amount of downtime/running around is minimal. No puzzles so far. Stages so far are really short, you are constantly fighting. I really like that. Games like Bayonetta 1 constantly interrupt u with: longer traversal/puzzle sections; minigames that u dont want when u just want to fight; in-fight unskippable semi-cutscenes; annoying qtes; bosses u cant hit cuz they are flying around and u have to patiently wait till they come back to the playable space so u can hit them again. Even DMC feels cumbersome to play at some points. This game cuts all that BS.
The story so far is just goofy silly stupid fun, dont treat it seriously. Theres english dubbing and the voices feel nicely corny.
Graphics are pretty... pretty. Blood is nice. The weight of the combat feels GREAT.
The game seems to have longevity, there is survival mode, and higher difficulties, cool.
Music is has some cool tracks but only few.
Camera is meh. It works fine in normal encounters with many enemies but with bigger bosses (like the very first one) the lock on is stupidly zoomed in so that u only see a small part of the action. Why is it so zoomed in is beyond me. Not using lock on also doesnt solve it cuz then the camera is tied more to the ground level and u dont see the upper part of the bosses body anyway. Its fine in fights against humans.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this game is fun wtf. Feels really arcadey and the density of the combat is awesome.
Edit: now i beat the campaign and some of the bosses suffer from bad visibility with their VFX that obscur their actual moves, its weird. And some attacks feel hard to read the parry/dodge timing but maybe thats a skill issue.

This review is gonna be for the most part a rant about the price, so if you're a gamer I'll be brief and just tell you a couple of words about the game, that way you can skip the rest. If you're a dev, you might want to hang around and read the rest cause you're screwing up big time.

Game pros:

- Game is fresh, fun and the combat system is satisfying even if it feels a little on the "mobile game" side.

- I beated the main story in 5 hrs on the first run and in half an hour on berserk mode, so it's fairly short and coincise if you don't like stuff that drags out for no reason. Platinum took me little less than 20 hrs.

- Story is very basic but the characters are likable and the mc is a real eye-candy.

Game cons:

- Zero support for UW.

- Like other people said, the game boots up in japanese, but if you have a smartphone you can just translate from the camera and put on English in half a minute, also the translators f***ed up one of the achievement so when you complete the game in Berserk mode you'll unlock the Beast mode achievement and viceversa, no biggie but still doesn't look very professional for the devs team.

- Minor visual bugs here and there.



Now for the elephant in the room.

The game is blatantly out of any reasonable metric of price range, how am I supposed to recommend it to my friends and other gamers? This is in the Ved: Recure category, and that game was 15€ on day one, for OCO being a extra niche super short 6 years old indie anime game with 200 peak players at launch and just 4 average players now, you want 50€, day 1 price of Mortal Shell 2, (that is on a total different weight class for production, quality and marketing) and you only drop at 13 € ca during deep sale. The Resident Evil AAA games that come out at 70€ drop down to 8-10€ in 2 or 3 years, RE Requiem with its 350k players at launch is gonna be cheaper than the basic ed. of this game by 2028/29, like hello?

Personally I got interested in the game some time ago by a yt video, this little gem often comes up in under-appreciated and slept on lists of games, I waited for some time for it to reach a fair price, and when it didn't, I just bought a steam key for around 3.5€ on a online store reseller, which is a totally legit way of purchasing steam games but it bypass at least in part the developer share so I usually avoid it, but that's entirely on you.

You had a very interested customer in me, ready to easily drop 5 or 6€ on the full version of your prodouct, and you totally fumbled that sale, now I still have one or two € I'm willing to send your way to support your work and because I really appreciated the game, doesn't sound like much but it's better than nothing, especially if you consider that everyone with a basic ed. will very likely upgrade for 0.99€ or 1.99€ + there are thousands of gamers that every month find out about this game, come to check it out and then turn it down once they see the price, a lot of them would take it if on sale the basic was between 1.99€ and 3.99€ like every other game in its category, I mean even Hades that still has plenty of interest is 6€ now and Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, another comparable indie to OCO, but longer and more recent is 2.99€.

Last thing, listing every single microscopic little aestetic add-on separately and price it at 1€ each is just in bad taste. Like c'mon, tf are we even doing here? Base game is 50€, Deluxe is 62€, so elementary math tells us that Upgrade should be 12€ with zero discount, instead is 96€ with a 50% discount if you buy everything in one go, for a total of 48€ (basically full price of the base game) just for some extra skins. What an utterly bs. Let's be serious and drop that motherf****ng price for real at once.

Im writing this review from the perspective of a DMC, Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, Punishing Gray Raven...etc fan. If you are in this category of player, I highly recommend this game. Even if you aren't, this game is better than 100% of triple A slop that has been released in the last ten years
The good:
The game plays like a weird, but interesting mix between MGR and Resident Evil 4/5
The MGR guts: Characters control a lot like Raiden do, sans blade mode. You have a 'light' and 'special' attack that gives you different properties depending on what order they're executed in, and the game has launchers and finishers, with an emphasis on parrying
The Resident Evil guts: Instead of blade mode, or being able to cut off enemy limbs when they're stunned, stunning enemies with parries or heavy attacks lets you execute an AOE attack (like Leon's Roundhouse in RE 4), turning the enemies into as much a resource as they are an obstacle. Because there is so many enemies on the screen at all times, much like RE 4/5, posistioning and controlling the chaos becomes insanely important as they can stunlock you.
The game gives you exactly what you want, it is through and through a game about killing zombies. There is no arbitrary crafting, no collection slop, no pointless open world that doesnt do anything but kill time, no backtracking, just arena after arena of increasingly interesting combat encounters...a lesson every game needs to learn from
The bad:
The girls are kinda mid. Obviously part of this game's appeal is supposed to big tits in not a lot of clothes. While the main heroine has quite a bit of drip, I didn't find many characters intriguing. The one I did dies in the same encounter you meet them. Obviously this is subjective, but this is a game about samurai girls, and samurai girls are my fictional woman of choice...so if they don't land for me they probably aren't going to land for you
Enemy active frames make no sense, for a game that is about perfect timing, its almost never intuitive when an attack is an 'active' frame (thus damaging you). This is a problem more on some enemies and bosses more than others, sometimes and attack can be directly going through your body but it doesnt count as 'active', so if you time your parries to hit then you 'miss' the window.
There's way too many attacks that are just an enemy deciding their entire body is a hurtbox now, mostly enemies that have had their limbs removed become insanely annoying because of how impossible they are to read

Wait for a sale. Then have fun slicing up undead in this DMC inspired anime game. Check the community page for the thread with fixes for known issues. If you get this game for what it is, the bikini zombie slayer, there's enough for a good time if you don't take the story and setting too seriously.

Starting the game: "Yeah, it's just a bikini girl zombie slashing game."
1/3 into the story: "Wait the combat is actually pretty cool!"
Reaching the credits: "Yeah, it's a cool bikini girl zombie slashing game."

"...Welp, time to show off on the next difficulty!"

If you like Warriors style games, you'll like this. It's a basic hack and slash with a few combos and transformations, nothing crazy. But it is the type of gameplay that is addictive for its simplicity. The story is interesting to say the least. I never played the original Onee Chanbara games, but it feels like the concept was created and that was about it. The story feels a like there are cool ideas there but they are not really fleshed out well. Some interactions seem a little odd, no weight behind them the way that you can tell it seems like there should have been. Or maybe it is supposed to be a comedy/campy story?

The main story is short and will only take you a few hours (5-8 max) to complete. However, the short length lends itself well to multiple completions for all difficulties. There is also an infinite survival mode to tackle which you can unlock another character in if you get far enough.

The DLC missions do not add much, but they do expand on the story especially for the unlockable character (which you have to unlock before you can play those DLC missions); however, they feel like they should have been in the game to start. Also one of the DLC costumes has concept art in the Base Game Art section and shows up in the achievements, so it seems that this was meant to be in the game but was later parted off to DLC. Kinda lame.

Overall, it was a good time though. If you do everything you should get around 20 hours out of it. If it's on sale give it a shot.