Onechanbara Z2: Chaos

What does that mean? I have no idea, but the last part "chaos" really does fit the game. I did play another Onechanbara game for the Xbox 360 and that one was subtitles "bikini samurai squad" It was about female characters in bikinis killing zombies and it was pretty fun. I also came across a live action movie based on these characters but I never watched it.

This one is similar. You have the same 2 main characters Aya and Saki, but this time they are joined by another set of sisters Kagura and saaya. There might have been some kind of story to the game, but I didn't pick up much between the boob jokes and hints of lesbianism in the dialogue between characters.

The gameplay however had me hooked on the game and I played through the story on normal and I have beaten all the missions on normal so far and jumped into hard mode. The game plays similarly to Bayonetta, though the fight system isn't as in depth as that one, but it is good enough to keep you learning new moves and having a good time annihilating monsters throughout the levels of the game.

You can switch between all 4 characters on the fly which leads to some cool combos where you start a combo with one character then switch to the next to have her finish the combo. Also, you can call in the other girls to fight alongside you which is neat because of how much chaos happens on screen when you have all 4 girls battling it out against hordes of monsters. It's really cool and part of me thinks they missed an opportunity for co-op play here.

Each character can build up a meter and use that to unleash a special powerful attack that can deal a lot of damage to enemies in a large area , or that meter can be used to tag in the other girls for the all out carnage I talked about.

The two sisters Kagura and Saaya have an ability to change into powerful beasts as well which look really cool and deal a lot of damage. Aya and Saki get this ability near the end of the game, but you can carry that ability over to a new game and have it right from the start.

There are regular combos, there are COOL combos which involve you hitting the button for the next attack and the right moment, there are partner combos and so on.

You can also learn new combos for each girl by spending orbs, which are dropped when you kill enemies.

Along with new combos, you can spend orbs on new weapons and rings. Weapons are specific to each girl, but rings can be worn by anyone though only one girl can wear a particular ring so if she has it on no one else can have it. Each character can wear 3 rings at a time. Rings give you bonuses such as causing more orbs to drop meaning more currency to upgrade with, or another ring gives you more attack power and so on.

As you tear through enemies, your weapon gets blood and guts on it and there is a gauge on the screen showing how bloody your sword it. The more on it, the less damage you do so you have to hit the shoulder button to have your character clean it off so that your weapon does full damage again.

This serves two purposes. First, just a fight mechanic to keep your eye on and second, because there are quests. And one quest wants you to do a 500 hit combo 30 times. So if you do this while your sword is fully coated and doing little damage , then you can rack up the hits on surrounding enemies without killing them, letting you get those 500 hits in.

There are other "quests" such as defeating a large number of bosses, or beating level section without taking damage. These quests are what unlock art illustrations for you to view.

There are 16 chapters to play through and each level is neither too long or too short and they throw in boss battles at the right times to keep you on your toes. Finishing a boss is pretty neat since you have to use QTE movements with the directional pad. I know, I know, most of you hate QTE's but this time it adds to feeling like you're actually slicing the boss apart with your sword. I don't know if you can fail the QTE because I never did even with presing the wrong direction accidently once or twice.

The campaign was fun to play through and after normal , there is hard and then I think 3 more difficulties after that. I unlocked a new outfit that any of the characters can use. Speaking of outfits, as you play mission mode you unlock new items that you can put on your characters as you beat each mission.

Missions are pretty fun. The normal missions were mostly easy enough with some harder ones that took more time near the end. They consist of killing a set amount of enemies, or you can only hurt enemies using COOL Combos or only using secondary weapons. After each mission you unlock another wearable item and some of them are pretty cool.

There are 20 missions for normal and I'm guessing 20 for Hard as well, each unlocking new items.

You can dress your characters as skimpy or as covered as you want, that's up to you.

There is a good amount of replayability to this game and with all the unlockable content , which also features illustrations (game art) the price of this game was a steal. This game might not be for everyone because of the TNA or just the playstyle of the game, but if you're like myself who plays a wide range of games and doesn't get wierded out because of digital female bodies then you might have a lot of fun with the game.

This game was initially released on PS4 and was ported to PC not long ago. I bought the game instantly when I saw it was on steam for a couple reasons. First, the first game I played on the xbox 360 was really fun and second, I want more of these developers to bring their games to steam as well.

The price tag was about $30 dollars which also helped.

Being a PS4 port the graphics are pretty decent, but don't expect anything spectacular as the characters look like expressionless plastic dolls at times and background textures and enemy textures can look pretty dull and low resolution.

The animation though is pretty good. The girls move fluidly and not stiff or clunky which was nice, and the best part is that the game runs very smooth. I had it constantly at 60 FPS and I never ran into a hitch with this port.

Though, some people on steam had issues with crashes, but apparently there was a patch that resolved the issue.

So, to reiterate, this game is tons of fun and you should definitely give it a try if you like beat-em ups and hack and slash Bayonetta type games. I thoroughly enjoyed it and still have a few playthroughs to do before I'm done with it.