Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad Review (Xbox 360)

Breast Game Ever!

Onechanbara is one of the shallowest games I have ever played. Its name translates to ‘Big Sister Sword Fighting Movies’. It features scantily-clad sisters with zombie-blood absorbing powers on a quest to save the universe.. at least that’s what I assume due to the story being told so horribly. Onechanbara can be a lot of fun though..

This is not the first game in the series. I’m not sure if the previous games had an in-depth story but I am extremely doubtful. This was the first Onechanbara game to be released outside of Japan and it doesn’t seem too easy to get hold of its predecessors. It opens with a short cut-scene with Saki (One of the protagonists) watching the news whilst Aya (Another protagonist) takes a steamy shower. There is a breaking news announcement informing the country that a zombie outbreak is occurring and the girls look at each other simultaneously exclaiming ‘Not Again!’ The rest of the story is told via text boxes. It feels like the creators got bored part-way through, especially when you take into consideration that this is a subtitled game, therefore they couldn’t even be bothered to do it in their own language.

Apart from the shoddy attempt at a story hidden behind a cinematic facade, there isn’t that much that Bikini Samurai Squad tries to hide. Muddy textures and inconsistent continuity plague the game, and it looks like the developers didn’t really care. Zombies will rise out of the ground, creating a pile of rubble and a large hole which disappears once they reach the surface. The game looks blurry at times and a little grainy – somewhat like an older movie – but this is not intentional and is just disorientating and confusing.

The far from AAA title also has an experience system which feels rather pointless, you put points into certain skills such as skill (I’m serious) and they are supposed to affect the gameplay. The game feels no different with or without the extra skill points and the little yellow and red orbs your enemies drop seem to mean nothing. The enemies will also drop items for you to pick up, such as gems that will temporarily buff your speed and health, but these are mostly pointless too.

No top, no trousers, no shoes, NO CLOTHES!

Onechanbara also features a dress up section, where you can decide on what your characters should wear (or not wear). This isn’t filled with much depth either, and the clothing options are so difficult to come across in-game it feels like a waste of time. Costume items are only wearable by one character too, so if you love playing as Anna, you’ll end up picking up all of the clothes for Saki or Aya, it’s quite infuriating. All I wanted to do was play dress up!

The soundtrack leaves much to be desired as it’s extremely repetitive and a bit tinny. I think it may actually be only four bars of a song put on a loop. It has a Dynasty Warriors feel in the way that after about 5 minutes you just need to mute it. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to navigate to the audio settings very easily so in the end I just muted the TV.

Onechanbara would suck if that was all it brought to the table. The truth is it is a fantastic game, and that is 100% down to it’s gameplay. In the game you can wield dual samurai swords, pistols, katanas and many more. There’s a mission where you have to ride a motorcycle through hordes of zombies akin to the opening level of Dead Rising 2 and also includes boss battles that act like a love letter to older arcade games.

This game is really bloody, and the more blood that covers your sword the harder it gets to use. Your blade will become lodged in an enemy unless you frequently shake the blood off of it with the left bumper. Once your character gets covered in enough blood she will enter rampage mode, where each hit will kill almost instantly at the cost of you losing life until you find a goddess statue or use a goddess statue fragment in your inventory.

There is also a cooperative mode, which i’m yet to convince my partner to play with me, however I am sure it will be a blast from beginning to end. There is a survival mode, quite similar to CoDs Nazi zombies and a free play mode so you can play any mission with any character. This definitely adds some replay value.