When I play a game, I want to get straight to the action. Maybe I’ll pop into the graphics settings for 30 seconds to see if everything’s optimized and to turn off bloom/motion blur, but not much more. When I powered on Onee Chanbara Origin, I was met with an agonizing stuttering with both visuals and audio, rendering the game absolutely unplayable. A quick Google search revealed I wasn’t alone, and I had to go out of my way to get this fixed.

Thankfully, Steam reviews came in clutch and advised me to pop into my graphics card’s control panel to tweak settings, at which point I could actually play the game. Talk about an awful first impression, considering this is a brand-new, fully-priced game passed the day-one patch period with a deserved review bomb on Steam. It’s frankly inexcusable to release a game in a broken state, let alone unoptimized.

At the very least, I was able to get into the game now. After a cutscene with multiple shots of the protagonist’s chest for no reason, I proceeded into a tutorial that got its point across. However, I felt like it was too drawn out of a tutorial with almost 5 minutes of combat. I already got a good feel for the hack-and-slash by minute two of this fight, and it hadn’t even introduced dodging, parrying, or anything else. With virtually no challenge, this felt like a Dynasty Warriors title with the sheer ease of dominance.

When Onee Chanbara Origin‘s first boss came about, I learned how to block, which wasn’t necessarily useful in non-boss scenarios. The next boss was a nice challenge, with parrying coming into play, but it requires pixel perfection against attacks that don’t telegraph enough. When the boss fight ramped up into two enemies at once, Onee Chanbara Origin was at its best. I felt like each of my movements mattered and the timings were nice, but with so much healing at my disposal, the fight wasn’t anywhere near impossible.

While I found myself playing through, I did so with consistent frustration at how long the zombie sections lasted. If Onee Chanbara Origin was a long stretch of bosses, maybe it would justify its staggering sixty-dollar price tag for only being a mere few hours long. The game can’t decide if it wants to be a Musou or a Devil May Cry clone, and we certainly don’t get the best of both worlds in this title. I would be deliberating a refund if I was almost halfway through the game by two hours.

I tried to see the best in Onee Chanbara Origin, but I’m alarmed the game was ported in such poor fashion to computers. On the game’s Steam page, it is full of screenshots of only the first 15 minutes of game, and has a bewildering $100 of available DLC for costumes and in-game music. While the music is salvageable, the blatant fanservice in these purchasable pieces of clothing is yet another offense to add to the list. In short, avoid Onee Chanbara Origin at all costs, as it’s absurd this game has a AAA price tag for shovelware performance.

A PC Review Copy of Onee Chanbara Origin was provided by D3 Publisher for this Review.

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Onee Chanbara Origin

59.99

3

Score

3.0/10

Pros

• Good music
• Passionate voice acting

Cons

• Unplayable before fix
• Obnoxious fanservice
• Tedious combat
• Beat in 4 hours