Game:

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos (2014)

Duration: 5:48

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84

A game I had often dismissed, but I learned it's a spectacle fighter... and I'm glad I did. It's certainly an outlier in its own series, the combat is as combo-heavy and over-the-top as the usual big names. Well, I sure understand why it gets overlooked.

It's not as complex as other spectacle fighter due to a smaller moveset, but there are four characters with two weapons each, and you can switch between them at any time. The game has all the standards with launching, bounce moves, jump and dash canceling, weapon-switch combos, Devil Trigger, all of it.

There's an unique 'chase' mechanic that homes into enemies with a knockback airdash, and momentum is a thing in general, which can make some interesting things happen. And the game even has dodge-offsetting (and a sort of taunt-offset) in combos like Bayonetta.

There's a training mode that lets you spawn in any enemy or boss, and it even shows you a little frame data on each move's active and cancelable windows, and have infinite resources. But the scenery there is crap.

This game rewards you for timing each swing within the right few frames, and some finishers (or infinites i.e. Dempsey Roll) are exclusive to perfectly timing every attack in an entire string, which is kind of ridiculous when the game has such fast, mashy moves with frame-tight windows, but it's fun to learn and ingrain those patterns.

One of the coolest aspects is the character switching. When you switch, the previous character stays out until their move is finished, while the new one can immediately act. In a lot of cases the previous character will disappear almost immediately, but with any longer duration attacks or launching moves, you can essentially do some puppet-play. Characters tagged in also come in with all their actions available (i.e. air jump/homing dash) once per cycle, and the switch completely bypasses any canceling restrictions. So combos are basically only limited to your imagination.

There's even an option to call everyone out at once, and they'll follow your inputs... Meaning it's awkward to do anything but mash, but it's definitely something with potential. Even if you use a long animation move with one character, you can mash or anything and they'll do their own attacks during it.

I was practicing characters individually a lot, and I think I could have shown much more of the tag-team system (although Kagura can run the combo show herself with so many good tools). And in general there are a lot of fun combo moves I didn't show much of (I had over 30 minutes of combos before I knew it and had to trim for a music video). But I had fun editing this one. Maybe I'll make a more technical tag-team combo video later down the line.

Though as much as I praise the game, the level and boss designs are some of the worst I've ever seen, and it's very short... and there aren't a lot of enemies that can take a beating to combo, despite how good the game mechanics are, so the replayability is very rough. But the gameplay itself is a gem... and I figured out how to glitch out of bounds anywhere and take enemies with me in side-missions where they take no damage. So the rest doesn't matter much as long as I can find my fun in the gameplay in fun stages. A lot of the music's surprisingly good, too.

All in all, a hidden gem if you can overlook the notorious aspects, and I'd say it's a must-play for spectacle-fighter junkies.

Music:
♪ Onechanbara Z2: Chaos - ICHIBAN WA ME
♪ Onechanbara Z2: Chaos - Two Deadly Girls

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