One of the few things that survived the transfer well is the storyline. After having saved his father's kingdom from an enemy invasion all by himself -which you can see in a brilliant and mind-blowing CGI sequence-, Samanosuke Akechi (played by Japanse actor Takeshi Kaneshiro), assaults the fortress of his arch enemy Nobunaga Oda. However, something goes wrong and Samanosuke is blasted to present day Paris. In the meanwhile Jacques Blanc (the always brilliant Jean Reno) is catapulted back to the Japan of 1582. With the help of the time-travelling elf Ako, both heroes need to reverse the time-warp process and stop Nobunaga.

The story is well-written and brings some unexpected plot changes to the table. Thanks to the solid acting from Kaneshiro and Reno (though he doesn't have a lot of lines), the story is captivating and provides nice incentive to keep playing. Sadly enough, it's about the only incentive. The game's horrible keyboard controls totally ruin what was supposed to be a thrilling gaming experience. Working with keyboard and mouse is just too cumbersome for a fast-paced action game such as this.

The game's fighting mechanics are solid, on console at least. You have a whole range of swords, whips, lances and chains (some infused with elemental magic) to work off combos. Dead enemies release souls, which can be absorbed. Yellow souls recover some life energy, blue ones fill your magic meter, purple souls charge your Onimusha-gauge and red ones can be used to upgrade you weapons, armour and soul absorbing speed. This makes the combat more tactical than a normal action adventure. You'll need to collect souls quickly enough, but doing so, makes you vulnerable.

A fully charged Onimusha-gauge allow you to trigger your superhuman second form. As Onimusha, you are invulnerable for a short period of time and deal insane amounts of damage to your enemies. The purple souls needed to transform into Onimusha are pretty rare though, so you'll need to use them carefully. You'll need it though, since the game is pretty challenging (and near impossible with a keyboard) on standard difficulty. Playing the game with a gamepad should fix this. Still, if you die several times in a row, the game offers you the possibility to switch to an easier difficulty setting.

There are just so many things that expose the console nature of the game. For starters, we have the absolutely horrid interface. The menus are poorly finished (they can't even be navigated with a mouse) and unless you start the game through a special shortcut, you are stuck to 800x600 resolution. The controls are also mapped to "square", "O", "triangle", or "X", in other words the PS2 control scheme. Seeing sloppy things such as this is simply unacceptable. You have to use the manual to translate the PS2 symbols to PC keys.

The graphics have gotten an update, though they're still ugly by today's standards. Blurry textures, bland lighting and unimpressive special effects are key in this game. The animations are nice though. The game also suffers from a very choppy framerate, even on very powerful machines. Framedrops that weren't present on the PS2, mind you. In my book, that's saying something.