With apologies to HAL Laboratories and Kirby's Adventure...

First you take a popular series
Then you add an up-and-coming genre
Erase all of the fun,
and presto! It's Onimusha Tactics!

Capcom has decided to cash in on the waning fates of the Onimusha series and the upswing in tactical RPGs. Theoretically, this is a good idea. Theoretically. In practice, Onimusha Tactics, the fruit of this union, is another low-budget gaiden for a series nobody cared about anyways. Onimusha Tactics literally goes to hell in the first chapter and doesn't improve from there.

No awards will be won for Onimusha Tactics's story. Nobunaga, the evil leader of the Genma, destroys the hometown of Onimaru, our insipTREPid hero, on his way to taking over...the surrounding countryside, the world, whatever it is evil overlords like Nobunaga want to take over. Unfortunately for Nobunaga, Onimaru is the last descendant of the Oni clan and has the Oni Gauntlet, the combination of which give him the power to lead a small yet plucky revolutionary force to topple the reign of evil. Gripping.

The Oni Gauntlet, the relic of his ancestors, is the key to the limited amount of customization for the player's force. The members of Onimaru's small-yet-plucky revolutionary force gain levels by gaining experience from beating on enemies, like every RPG character since time immemorial, but that's it. No jobs, a handful of pre-scripted special abilities and slight increases in stats. Instead, the only customization comes with their armament. Instead of buying items, as in other games, Onimaru creates them. Enemies drop Genma stones and recipes for Genma stones, allowing Onimaru to make new items. Additionally, killing genma allows Onimaru to absorb their souls into the Gauntlet. This soul power can be used to enhance items, incidentally giving them the most boring names possible; advancing a "Wyvern Blade" turns it into a "Wyvern Blade +1," D&D-style.

It's not like the combat is any revolution, either. Units are largely interchangeable, enemies can be divided into enemies that shoot and enemies that don't, and niceties like facing, magical elements, or terrain effects are largely ignored. Instead, Onimusha Tactics delivers gimmick battles galore. Gimmick battles degenerate into try-and-die-and-try-again, much like the occasional worst of Disgaea or the last quarter of Fire Emblem.

The single shining point is the character design, and to a lesser extent the graphics as a whole. Each character is unique and interesting, and characters have different poses for different situations (unlike simply using the walking animation for characters on the battlefield.) Onimaru has a striking, iconic design—the best of the bunch—despite the fact that it was ripped off of Zoids: Chaotic Century.

Musically...yeah, leave the sound off. The sound effects are drawn from the bin of generic sounds and the music grates. Onimusha fans might recognize a tune or two, but the tunes are so grainy and flat that the only reaction will be revulsion at the hatchet job inflicted upon them. Nothing here couldn't have been done on the NES, and it's possible that most of it could have been done on the GameBoy Color. Just weak.

Onimusha Tactics, in the end, is a soulless cash-in. Every aspect of the game seems hostile to anyone intending to actually play the game. The story is mediocre, the interface is obtuse, the combat is oversimplified and there's little to do or find. In the end, Onimusha Tactics won't satisfy Onimusha fans, even with their history of disappointment, and as for tactical RPG fans, they'll probably have more fun playing with the volume control on their GBA.