Onimusha: Warlords

Steam Deck performance review of Onimusha.
This game is listed as 'unsupported' but here is my steam deck performance feedback after spending +19 hours and getting 100% of the achievements. If you want a full review of the game itself, there are plenty of reviews online for this +20 year old game.
Full disclosure: I played this game to death on the PS2 back in the day. I knew everything about the game inside and out so this was like a re-visit about 20 years later on a new platform.
Long story short: It runs but with one minor problem.
Problems I encountered with Onimusha:
1. The main issue has to do with the FMVs. The game would show a multi-coloured screen/coloured bars when some of the FMV played in place of the FMV. When an FMV did play, their would be audio glitches, static and it would be out of sync. Cut scenes were fine though.
2. Minor graphical glitches and texture clippings (but this was also present in the original game).
The analogue control setting was a major and welcomed change to the game and vastly improved how the game played when compared to the original 'tank' controls.
I encountered no gameplay or audio glitches (only in the FMVs). No forced restarts/resets. No frame rate drops. No crashes. No game breaking bugs.
Using the original LED steam deck with 50% brightness, I was getting about 3.5 hours of battery life in a single charge. You can technically play the game from start to finish on a single charge with juice to spare.
The game is fully playable on the steam deck but keep in mind the FMV issue.

No Nostalgia Needed...

First, I think it’s worth mentioning that I wasn’t familiar with the Onimusha series until 2025, so this review comes from someone without any nostalgia for it.

What can I say... Despite the game’s age, it feels and plays ahead of its time. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. The setting, the graphics, the characters, the soundtrack — everything’s great.

That said, I’d like to share a few words about the game’s difficulty. Surprisingly, it feels a bit too easy. For your first playthrough, the highest difficulty available is "normal." While the game can feel challenging at the beginning, the more you enhance your equipment, the easier it becomes.

One thing I didn’t enjoy was the controls. They felt a bit too slow for an action game like this, and occasionally, they caused me to take some unexpected and unwelcome hits (or maybe I’m just a slowpoke, lol ┐(￣ヮ￣)┌ ).

Still, for me, Onimusha: Warlords has become another favorite Capcom game, and I’ll definitely play it again — at least to unlock Ultimate Mode and complete it.

P.S.: My personal recommendation—play the game with Japanese voice-overs.

Great game, LOL port.
Capcom should have just remastered the entire series in a collection similar to the classic Tomb Raider titles.

Got this because the new game was announced. Didn't know what to expect. Got hooked and beat it in one sitting. It's really good.

The Onimusha series were my absolute favorite games on the PS2. Onimusha 2 Samurai's Destiny was the first one I played. I very much enjoy the free range of motion with an analog stick as opposed to the old Resident Evil style of controlling your character. I hope they port the other games in the series and remaster them.

Pre-rendered backgrounds are great and never should've fallen out of fashion. For a port of a PS2 game, this does a decent job of preserving the quality of them. The game otherwise is decent though only about 4 hours long if you don't want to engage with the bonus game mode or challenge runs.

old mechanics. only worth nostalgia wise. MAKE ONIMUSHA 3 CAPCOM!!!