Onee Chanbara Origin

Friggin' LOVE this game!

If you like fanservice filled action games, that are full of absolutely hot women, lots of T&A, plenty of gore, fun songs, and a replayable length, this game is just a pure joy to play. Can't recommend it enough. If you're able to, DEFINITELY get the deluxe edition (preferably on sale), since you get ALL SORTS of REALLY wonderfully lewd costumes to dress the girls up in.

Eva is best girl, btw :)

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

Pretty fun game but extremely short. The main story took me 6h, so I would only recommend it on sale. Parrying and dodging are a must, so if that's not for you then you may not like this 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.

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.

Even though it's a step back in basically every way from the previous game, Z2 Chaos, it's still fun enough that you won't regret playing it if you like these kind of games. The visuals and presentation are the only upgrade from Z2, though I'm not sure I want all games in this series going forward to use the anime aesthetic. (I want them to work towards the visual style of the promotional pre-rendered images for Z2) I know this is supposed to be a remake of some of the earliest games in the series, but that doesn't mean the gameplay additions from Z2 have to be left out. Basically, compared to Z2... you only have 2 chars on your team instead of 4, and some key actions are missing. Most noticeably, you don't have the homing dash and you can't keep combos alive by spamming dodge. So you will frequently lose your combos cause it's just not possible to catch up to a new enemy fast enough. You also don't have nearly as many ways to juggle and relaunch/bounce enemies, especially from mid-air. This doesn't ruin the game as there is still plenty of fun to be had with what actions and attacks are here, but it helps to accept ahead of time that the combo potential is nowhere as crazy as Z2.

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