Both the original and Dragon's Dogma 2 are not games for everyone. Not in the Dark Souls, uber challenging sort of way necessarily, just in that they do not hold your hand, right down to not even having a lock-on feature in combat. There's a long list of other aspects that provide friction, interesting friction, that make the games so beloved. At least, they're beloved in the West, because folks over in the RPG's home country of Japan have a different perspective, a difference its devs find difficult to balance.

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The opening minutes of Onimusha: Way of the Sword are glorious, in the sense that they’re utterly shambolic. Wandering ronin Musashi wakes up under a bridge, belts a wrong-footingly British "WOT?!" at some starving urchins eyeing up his rice ball, then proceeds to be chased around a muddy village by what feels like two thousand martial arts students, only occasionally stopping to boot a wooden plank into their faces or scoop up an imperilled dog. It’s goofy and brash and genuinely funny, in a way that immediately looks to elevate it among the field of po-faced fantasy slashers as effectively as any well-honed parry mechanic.

Why in the following hours, then, does Way of the Sword make only occasional attempts to match this intro’s energy?

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Last month, I played an extended preview of upcoming action slasher Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and came away impressed - if a bit sore in the fingers. Though the samurai action genre is a crowded one these days, with Nioh 3 doing an excellent job of claiming the current throne, Onimusha has more than a few intriguing tricks up its yukata sleeve.

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I know full well that pally RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 has its Dark Arisen expansion out this year. Still, two years and one megalo-DLC announcement after release, what I still find most fascinating about it is the Dragonsplague: an insidious affliction that quietly infects your mates (or Pawns, whatever) and heightens their fighting prowess, but if left untreated, can induce a bescaled hissy fit that will kill the entire population of your favourite NPC village. Overtuned, ill-communicated bullshit, or laudably bold application of arrogance-punishing friction? These days I lean the latter, but still, what an interesting mechanic that I can think about it on and off since 2024.

Capcom, meanwhile, always seemed to play the hedging game, patching in various tweaks and tunings to Dragonsplague in an attempt to placate both camps. The game’s Title Update 3.2, due in late August (ahead of Dark Arisen on October 9th), appears to come down further on the 'Angry fire virus can be fun, actually' side - though according to a Q&A with producer Naoto Oyama and expansion director Kento Kinoshita, these upcoming changes will bring Dragonsplague more in line with Capcom’s original vision for it.

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Photojournalist Frank West is heli-dropped into the Willamette Parkview mall, following a tip-off that there’s something sinister going down in the sleepy Colorado town. Impressively undeterred by the sight of people eating each other by a school bus during his fly-by, he instructs his pilot to drop him off on the mall roof and return for him in exactly three days.

The rest, more or less, is up to you. If you decide to do absolutely nothing but lounge around in the security room for 72 in-game hours, Dead Rising doesn’t care. The chopper turns up on schedule, you get in and leave. Thanks for the £40, here’s the credits.

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