DYING BY THE SWORD.

Byline: Redmond Carolipio Staff Writer

I'm not sure why ``Onimusha: Blade Warriors'' was made.

All it does is provide another example of why action/adventure characters should never be plopped into a fighting game. The two genres just don't mix.

In this case, everything that made the ``Onimusha'' adventure series unique has been stripped away, so you're essentially left with no story, no real atmosphere and no character development. It's like having a ``Splinter Cell'' game without stealth.

``Onimusha: Blade Warriors'' gives fans a chance to square off against each other using the characters from the ``Onimusha'' games. The matchups look good on paper, but the fundamental difference between fighting and adventure games cripples the effect. There's an assumption that the characters are enough to carry the game. They're not.

In an adventure game, the story crafts the characters. Without some kind of ultimate purpose, you don't have a reason to care about them individually. In a fighting game, the characters ARE the story. They have to be walking caricatures, usually stacked with exaggerated features and/or a giant list of combos and moves. You also have to have an intuitive control scheme to weave all those elements together.

You don't get any of that in ``Blade Warriors.'' The characters are essentially the same guys - noble, dead serious samurais who are good with swords and magic. Compare that with the Ryu and Ken rivalry from ``Street Fighter.'' Both used the same fighting styles, but Ryu played the dark-haired no-nonsense man in white while Ken was the cocky, explosive blond in red. Simple contrasts like that are essential to a solid fighting game, and the only way adventure characters can keep up is through a radical cosmetic change (like ``Zelda'' hero Link in the GameCube version of ``Soul Calibur II''). The control scheme also feels ported over from the adventure series, so there's no sense of true technique. The moves are more tailored to fighting large boss monsters, not other people.

In addition to the characters and controls, ``Blade Warriors'' also loses some of that ``Onimusha'' ambience in its scenery. As in any fighting game, you have your pick of various places to fight. The stages are pseudo-3D - if you fight on a barren grass field, you can hop in the foreground or background, but you never get any full rotation. This is disturbing, because exploration of lush backgrounds is a tradition of Capcom adventure games and was essential to ``Onimusha's'' mystique.

Part of the charm of the ``Onimusha'' games was the use of beautiful, pre-rendered scenes that wove feudal Japan with mythic demon fantasy. This made snooping around an integral part of the experience. Whether it was a village or a cave full of the dead, you wanted to see more. In the story mode for ``Blade Warriors,'' you also get nice-looking backgrounds, but the thrill of mystery is gone. Instead, you are confined to fight battle after battle and plod along a linear path. At the end of each battle, you gather up points. It's simplistic, an '80s arcade feel that doesn't do the franchise justice.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

no caption (``ONIMUSHA: BLADE WARRIORS'')

Box:

TOP 10: The best-selling video games on Amazon.com