The Besties - Onimusha: Or, Capcom Refuses to Make Bad Games

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

The last time Capcom made a new Onimusha game, George W. Bush was President. But Onimusha: The Way of the Sword would have you believe the series never missed a beat. This week, Ron Funches joins the guys to talk about the ways this new entry blends Devil May Cry and Dark Souls tropes into something fresh and surprisingly welcoming!  Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Y'all, did you know that every Oni-Musha game has an actor in it? Like, they put some actor's face in the game. Like everyone but one, but we're not going to talk about that one. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. I'm going to grab a soda. Give me one second. It was good stuff.

I mean, it was a great topic of conversation, Chris. I thought. I was running in chat. You know, I was going to chop it up. I was like, who could we put in an ony-musha game? could we put earnest in it, you know, like who would fit. But I'm just glad that Ron's thirst is quenched. Yeah, that's the most, that is important.

I didn't know, had we started? I mean, that had a huge cold open energy. Ron, you've done this enough times to be able to detect a cold open vibe. I was not, I did feel that when it was like, oh, we're talking about the game, but I was like, I really need this Coke zero. You know, before we to, Ooh, grip that, rip that. You hear it? It's so stupid. It's so refreshing.

It's so good. I'm just saying before we start recording, we're all a bunch of mumble mouths. And then once we're putting tape down, there's a, there's a, I don't know, an improvement to our addiction in general. And I think Chris had his big boy radio voice on. I was kind of ready, you know,

I was like, are we going to put like Colonel Sanders in Onimusha? You know, like I was. Love it, Hollywood actor. Like a funny kind of like, are we going to put the three stooges in only movie? And people were going to, and you, Ron, you were going to be like, that's, now that's funny.

I like that. I did, I did think, because it made me Sylvester Stallone. As Only Moochial. He'd be great. He'd be terrible. Yeah, well, he wouldn't be the lead. I was assuming he'd be like one of the demons.

And his things. Because I could see him talking about how he wants to like gush up a bunch of people and turn him into wine. he can drink with his demon buddies or whatever. That does sound like something still along with that. That does sound like my sly. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Planton. I know the best game of the week. My name's Ronald Kyle Funches, and I also know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest and home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club just by listening. You've become a member.

We are joined this week, so excited to have Ron back on the show. We subbed out Russ. There's a button you can press, and it will change. It will swap Russ for Ron. And that's exactly what we, that's exactly what we've done here today. Because Ron is, from what I understand, an Onimusha expert, someone well versed in this series. Not at all. Not at all.

I just assume since you wanted to do the Onamusha Way of the Sword episode, hell yeah, though. I love, we're all coming at this fresh, it sounds like. No, I have played, I have played the older games, but they were always just something kind of in the background for me. They were to me a lesser of the, like, I would be like, oh, I'd rather play devil make cry, or I'd rather play another action game. And Onamusha was always like this thing that seemed fun, but also a little bit more daunting with the controls and some of the cameras. But what I am is a fan of stylish action games. That is my favorite genre of games. I love a game with a good story that makes me feel like a badass,

whether I'm holding a sword or a gun like Nathan Drake. Ninja Guide in Black is one of my favorite games of all times. So I was very excited for this game. Hell yeah. I can't wait to hear how it compares against all those things. I was brushing up on the Onomusha franchise on Wikipedia, where I learned that it is the 10th best-selling Capcom video game franchise. It lists the nine other ones.

I mean, Capcom makes a lot of game franchises. I think it placing 10th on the list is not bad. Yeah. Probably beating rival schools. Yeah, definitely. All right, let's take a quick break. Then we'll come back. We'll talk about this new Onimusha Way of the Sword, the first onomushi game in two decades.

Okay, I'm going to kick things off with like the basics. I'm going to lay down the basics here. Like Ron said, action adventure series, but it's really unusual because it's not full action like Devil May Cry, and it's not full adventure, as weird as that is to say, as Resident Evil. It's somewhere in between those games, which might be why it's always been kind of the odd one out. It is set in real places in Japan. It is set against real Japanese history. It often stars real figures from Japanese history. but it has demons in it and fantasy elements and like gauntlets that can like suck up souls.

So it's different in that way because that didn't happen. I've been to Kiomitadera Temple before. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. There were not big guys going around gobbling up kids hither and yon. There weren't dark orb suspended in the air turning people into demon servants. stuff. So that part was fictionalized from what I can tell. Yes. And this is basically a reboot of the

series. I mean, it might technically fit into the fiction, whatever, but you do not need to have played those old games that Ron was talking about. Like, did either of you have a love for that series that while you were playing this? You're like, oh yeah, who could forget? I've never played an Oni Musha game in my life. No. I know that there was one that Jean Reno was in. And that, that's cool. But that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the franchise. So how did this work for y'all then? Ron, you like actually, does this hit the action game sweet spot for you? Well, I always feel that, and we talked about a little bit of this when we were talking about beasts of reincarnation, where these are usually a style where a game is overly punishing souls like or goes for the

reverse where they're like you are the badass and you're slicing through people up like maybe like the that metal gear um all right was it re revenge revenge that's it that's why i couldn't remember it it's not a word that you was it's not a word that um and what i what i felt about beast's reincarnation was that it really held on the just being too simple and too button mashy and didn't have its own unique style. And I would say that's where Onamusha very much differs is that this game, I think, while it does not feel like a soul's like and it doesn't always make you feel like a bad ass, what it does is really find this nice blend of like you can just get by with like regular

moves of just hacking, slashing, and doing your light and heavy attack, or you can learn and really be stylish with this game where they're, using the ishen attacks or the environmental attacks. I love being able to pick up the wood off the ground to stun my enemies and the chain finishers. I really, really like this game a lot. What I love about it is that it really feels like it's found its own take of the action

genre, which is very rare. And this engine, I mean, from the latest Resident Evil game to Pragata to this, like this engine that they're using this generation is kicking Unreal's ass. I love it. It's fucking great. The hit rate of Capcom in the last 12 months, like it's crazy. They released a Resident Evil game and Pragmata and this one and probably, I feel like I'm forgetting something else. And they're all like good, like they're all good games and they all look fantastic. The facial

animation in this game is unlike anything I've ever really seen. It's unbelievable. I really, I'm going to struggle to, I am not familiar with Toshiro Minifune, who is a, you know, iconic sort of Japanese actor who was in some Kurosawa films, probably, Chris. I don't know why I'm the one doing this bit and not you since he's more you are. I'll think like a little bit here. Toshiro Mufune, the appeal of him is he has this very hard jaw and his face can like look very like solid and rigid, like a statue almost. And it makes these like square, almost rectangular mouth movements.

And yet, the skin around his eyes around his cheeks, everywhere else is so expressive. I didn't want a review of his... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is important. You sound terrifying right now. This fucking wild, man. I'm saying that if I put his skin on my skin,

what I'm saying is the reason that matters is he is famous for having one of the most expressive faces in cinema. And if you're going to put that into a game, I was extremely skeptical when I heard they wanted to do this because this isn't Jean Reno, who mostly just looks disappointed in you. This is somebody who's all over the place. You can play like a very stern figure to a comedic figure and everything in between. And what they have to do with the facial animation in this game is,

I don't know, it looks like skin overlaid onto a skeleton. It's super expressive. Rather than in most games where it's like the face looks like it's all just one lump of clay. It's really, really incredible. The game I was not really prepared for the tone of the game, which I think Hues, him's a lot closer to Devil May Cry in that. I don't think that the combat feels like it, like basically at all, but the kind of like almost campy nature of the dialogue.

Musashi is just a, he is, in this game, he is just a swordsman who wants to be the world's greatest swordsman, who then gets these demon powers through this magic gauntlet that he's annoyed by, because he doesn't want it to discredit how good he is at the sword. That's a really fun setup for a game is like a man who's been bestowed with this incredible power and is like, well, that fucking sucks. Like, I was already good at the other thing. Now people are just going to think I'm full of shit. I was not prepared for the horror of this game. I referenced turning,

Slice Stallone, turning people into wine, which is a sort of thing that does happen in this game, not with Slice Stallone in it, really truly grotesque, like shit happening to people in the game and some truly kind of like

scary depictions of demons who you then have to get into these fucking rad, super difficult boss fights with. which to me is the highlight of the game. I don't know that I've enjoyed like hardcore, super difficult, super like boss fights that you have to practice over and over again. I don't think I've enjoyed this much sense like Sekiro, which is for me the gold standard of this exact thing. I'm guessing that you played on like the normal mode and not the action mode, yes.

Action mode, yes. This game, it proves it. We never need to have the discourse ever again. You can have an easy mode in Souls likes games. And it does it in a way that I had never considered, which is it puts button prompts on the screen almost like a punchout or some sort of thing where it's telling you exactly what you need to hit right when you need to hit it. I think of fighting game training modes, stuff like that.

So, Ron, did you play the story mode or did you do action mode? I did action mode. I actually did action mode with those button prompts turned on. You can enable those but still play the much more higher difficulty, which I appreciate. Because I think the flow chart of options given to you if an enemy is coming at you with a sword is fucking bonkers. Because you can either dodge out of the way or you can hold down the block or you can try and block last second to get the parry off but don't miss the timing. Or you can hold block and then hit A to get a deflect off. which won't give you a counterattack opening,

but it will reduce their stamina further. Or you can wait until the last second and try to attack right before they attack so you can hit them with an easing strike, which looks and feels so fucking cool, so rad, especially once you start chaining those together, but the timing on them is like the tightest thing that you can do in the game.

Or you can try and hit them with your, you know, your YB combo melee. Like you have so many options, and there's different ways to respond to different things, like a melee attack, you've got to dodge out of the way of, you can't parry those, or I should say an unarmed attack. There's just like a lot of stuff. So I found that turning those on actually did help while still making the game like, it's super punishing, super difficult. It does not get the timing right for you. It just tells you like, hey, this is going to be a B button situation,

whatever it does finally arrive. Ron, what did you think of the boss fights? Like, do they any stick out to you? I mean, I just really love the character designs. that you deal with throughout the game and how the use of the Japanese folklore to kind of have these grotesque monsters that really feel at home in the world that you're in, but it also just makes it to these badass fights that you're having.

I can't say that there was one where I was like, oh, that really in particular, but they've all, I mean, I really enjoyed the one where the guy had the little tentacle arms and he went to grab a house and drop it on your head and you got to bow them up before you. Like, they were all really fun, and I think that's what I like about the game is that it does this nice mix where you're fighting. For the most part, the regular enemies don't really involve too much of a challenge.

And you feel really badass, and then you get these skill checks, like, constantly over and over. But when it does work, you really, I mean, like you said, when you hit the dodge right, and then you dodges out of the way and it kicks the guy right in the face in this beautiful, just comfortable. food movie style. It's one of the best action games I've ever played. And one of the things I want to bring up is that, again, since I've been on the road, most of the time I've been playing this, that I've been playing this entirely on Steam Deck, and it still looks beautiful and it runs well. Really? Yeah, it's been great. I've been doing it on Rog Alli Axe. Same thing. It's, it is buttery smooth. It is fantastic. Much better than Don Walker, which was pretty chunky, but playable.

This one works just great. It's the only thing I've been playing it on. Yeah. The character designs for me, uh, there's a guy that's just fingers, basically. The fingers, dude, is so good. And it's such a good reveal because you meet this dude.

Before you even see him, you hear about, uh, this, this demon who's granting wishes for everybody. And they're always like, uh, kind of gift of the magi, uh,

wishes where it's like, oh, I don't want to have to, comb my hair anymore and he's like I know what to do cut off your hands like I don't want to like sew seeds anymore

you know that's not what happens in Gift to the Magi right like you know that's not what happens It's a little different But I traded my fingers To get you a nice new chain For your pretty watch I was just like

It seems like this guy just really Like chopping off hands His answer to everything Is finger finger related Yeah and then for you to find out Oh He took some knees

He took a leg too He took a guy. Yeah, there's some eyeballs too, you know, but just some great character design. I love Gan Ryu, who is your self-appointed rival. Oh, he's the best. He's a fuckboy piece of shit who like gets absolutely slimed the first time you meet him in a hysterical cutscene, but then comes back with his own gauntlet. And it's sort of your foil where he is basically being corrupted by this like demonic power. and his hunger for it.

But the first boss fight you have with him is for, for my money, like the first boss fight, that was a, you can't play the game any further until you like get good at the stuff we've taught you so far because this guy's going to kick your ass up and down the street, which I really appreciated because up to that point, I was not viving with the combat because all the enemies are like pretty easy to take out. Like it was not that difficult. And I was like, if this is the whole thing, man, this is going to be a snooze. I thought it was going to be like, Sekiro, which is one of my favorite games of all time.

And then you get in that boss fight with him, and it's so good, like, the things you have to do and the shit that he throws out at you and the dirty tricks, he's like throwing your way. For a first boss fight, is so bold and beating him feels so good because he's such a fucking creep, too. I really like that trick because when In The Soulslike, and I've been watching a lot of videos about Sekaro recently, which makes me when I go back and give it a shot. but I didn't make it must pass when you get introduced to that snake because every single fight was a challenge from the get-go. Like, from the moment one, every single fight is a challenge. What I like about this game is that it takes a moment to, since it does give you so many options for fighting,

it gives a moment to also build your confidence, to make you look like a badass, to make you feel like Musashi, where you're just like, oh, I am one of the best fighters. I love fighting. Let's bring more people. I'll slice you and have two before actually being like, well, these guys are cannon fodder and here's the real enemies. Right.

There's a sort of stamina break system in the game, very much like Sekiro, where if you can wear down an enemy's stamina, you get to do a killing blow on them. For bosses, you get a choice. So whenever you get them drained of all their stamina, which you usually do by blocking their attacks, pairing their attacks, not relenting on your own sort of like offensive output, which I really, really dig. It freezes them and you get to choose where you attack with your like killer strike. And it gives you some options.

Some of the different like areas you can target will just do like additional damage. Some will create more souls, which are things that you can swallow up in combat to charge your special abilities or to heal or to gain resources that you'll spend to upgrade shit later. But the really cool thing in boss fights is, you can choose certain body parts

that you will essentially go hack off and if you're fighting a boss with say for instance a big snake on the back of it that shoots lightning at you that you hate you get them frozen in that point you cut off that snake tail they can't hit you with that shit anymore so there's also like this strategic layer to it

where it's like ooh I need I need healing and I'd love to charge up my special weapon here but if I can break his axe like awesome because then I don't have to fuck with that axe anymore It's really, really, really deep. I need to go back to the Widdle Baby's way of playing this game, which I just love.

We had a lot of issues with games. I think it was like Wollong, Apollo dynasty. These games where you get to that first big boss battle, and it basically is like, do you want to keep playing? We're going to make your life hell for the next two hours. You need to get good at this. And I respect it for what it is, but it's not my thing. Here, in that the easier mode, I still felt like it was a challenge for me, but the health was basically like one-ups, basically, like continue buttons while fighting each boss. So the question wasn't like, could I beat them or could I not beat them?

It's can I beat them without having to recharge my health? And then I had those four fill-ups that were effectively like an entire session worth of points. play against them. Your health and I don't know if it's like two or four times multiply, but it's significantly higher whenever you're playing in this mode. But because of that, and then also the prompts on screen, it felt like I was still learning how to actually play the bosses without having to just restart over and over and over again and bash my head against it. I was actually seeing the different phases. And then you pretty early get the opportunity need to go back and replay bosses on any difficulty that you want.

And you can switch the difficulty at any time of the game on top of that. And after beating the characters in the easy mode, I could go into the normal mode and just clean the floor with them just as well. Yeah. Because I knew how to do it. I just wasn't stressed out during the process. And like that is so good. It is so cool to have a game like this where I still feel like I am.

not button matching. Like, I am in control of doing well here that I am learning the patterns. But at the same time, I'm not, like, completely pulling my hair out because I'm frustrated and don't want to play it anymore. That's great. It really is a... I didn't really think of it that way. The offering of a difficulty choice. This game is not a Soulslike. I would not call it that. You go down in a boss fight and you get, like, a game over screen. Do you want to retry it immediately? Like, a lot of the Souls sort of trappings are not present here. I keep comparing it to Sekiro. but there are some pretty big kind of structural differences. But it is, I do think it changes that conversation to have a game that is very, very difficult in the fashion of a soul's like. That also gives you an easier difficulty setting because like I didn't change it even though I was getting my ass handed to me by a few bosses.

And I felt, you know, like I wanted to get farther in the game so I could talk about it here on the show and it would be easier to do so if I wasn't getting killed so much. but I found that just the harder, the action mode felt better, and I didn't want to like stop doing that. I loved fighting so much while playing this game. My only issue really with it is the times where you don't fight as much because you are exploring open world Kyoto. The open world is strange. The fact that it has an open world is kind of strange. it is like a, it's like a weird sort of, uh, not very exciting playground where you go around and there's NPCs that can give you side quests, but you're fighting the same enemies that you're

fighting sort of in the other more, I guess, uh, linear parts of the game. And then the linear parts of the game are so rad. Uh, I just finished the, the terrible castle with all the horrible animal, human hybrid monsters, uh, so, so, so cool, so rad. And then you go back to Kyoto and you have to kind of just putter around for an hour or so until you get to the next totally rad linear part. The good news is you don't really have to engage with the open world stuff. I did a few of the side quests and like you get some like charms that you can equip, but they are not that like impactful. I don't think the game has like super great like itemization and and meaningful customization and stuff, which is kind of a bummer, but also it just means

you don't have to play the parts of the game you don't want to play, which is great because the parts of the game I do want to play, I can't stop playing because they are so fun and so good. Yeah, I would say that the, yeah, I'd have the same agreement that the open roads of it almost feels like just kind of this thing of, well, every game has some type of hub world and we need to have some type of hub so that you're going around

and you can talk to these characters and get little side missions where it really does feel that the pace of just following along with the story. and just doing a linear missions is where it's at in this game. And it's what I enjoyed at it. I feel like it's, for me, like, as, you know, I have a four-year-old now and I have my older son, but, like, I have so much less time to play that this is a perfect dad game where I just don't have to, like, worry so much about that side stuff.

And if I miss something, I miss something. But the action keeps me hooked, the story keeps me hooked. It looks great. It's just, it's really what I love in a game. It might be one of, surprisingly, because I was not it. I thought I'd like it, but I'm really surprised with how much I love this game. Yeah. Yeah.

It wants to be a linear game so badly to the point that even when you're in the open world, there are basically gates that actually is just these giant doors that will close and shut, depending on where it wants you to go at any time. So it's kind of creating corridors. There's also ways in which the Kyoto changes as, demons take over where quite literally you will get hemmed into certain streets. It really wants you to go where it wants to take you from action set piece to action setpiece. And it does feel like this minor concession to what people expect. It does remind me a little bit of

pragmata, which came out earlier this year too. And just kind of a recurring thing with Capcom where they seem to be balancing the games that they like to make with maybe what they think Western audiences like. I think of the open world sequence in the new Resident Evil too. I mean,

Monster Hunter Wilds, I think. I can't remember which was the first Monster game. It was a recent one that had a sort of more open world structure.

I think it was Wilds, which I didn't love. Yeah, and they're all kind of different experiments. Yeah. Yeah. It's the,

the tailored stuff is so good and so tight. It does make me wish that, I don't know, it had just sort of been that.

But I, Again, I don't think the open world stuff is so, it's pretty inoffensive for the most part. Can we take a second and just talk about the course adjustment that Capcom has done in the past few years from being pretty much a publisher that people were making fun of for a while? And it's being like, oh, they don't take care of their IPs. They don't put their IPs back out. People are begging for a new Mega Man. Now we know we're going to have new Mega Man coming. We got new IP like Pragmata and a generation where we do not get much new IP at all.

Right. And for a AAA publisher, definitely. Then that game was very enjoyed. Another great, I mean, talk about a dad game, that game, I was like, man, I wish I had a daughter. Yeah, I guess that is about his peak dad game. But also it's like, we're going to put some pants on you. But, yeah. It is why, like, I think about the Xbox 360 era of Capcom was so rough, man.

You had Lost Planet and Lost Planet 2, which were, like, interesting ideas, but not great games. And then you had Resident Evil 5 and 6, which is not the low points of the whole franchise. And, I don't know. Dead Rising. Dead Rising they were doing weird shit with. It seems like, but I don't know. RE7 really started to pull things around. And then once RE Engine was like, you know, the backbone of all of their stuff and they started to put out all the really incredible Resident Evil remakes and all these other, you know, original IP with it, it's really been, it's, it is a level of output that is, uh, unparalleled, I don't think in the industry today.

And I don't know the reason for it. I don't know like what, what is happening behind the scenes at Capcom that sort of brought this about. but that name carries a seal of quality, I feel like, now, that it definitely did not in, you know, the 2010s era. I mean, I do think they focused things. Yeah, the Bionic Commando. Remember when they did Bionic Commando? Oh, hell yeah. I think that's, like, a big part of it is this focusing on, they used to have just a bunch of studios all over the place.

They were trying to do a little bit of everything. It was really unclear whatever they wanted to do, just all mixed up. And it does feel like since Resident Evil, it was a real focus on, okay, here's where we're going to invest. We're going to get Resident Evil figured out. We're going to make an engine that we can actually build everything on. Monster Hunter, we know is going to sell no matter what in Japan. Let's, like, build that out.

And it, I don't know, it feels like a very patient process when you think about it. And very, like, always making the bold bet tied to a safe bet. Yeah, we're going to make New Resident Evil games or in first person. we're also going to remake those games. Yeah, we're going to make Monster Hunter, but we're going to make Monster Hunter stories to try to, like, cushion that. I don't know, it's so practical.

And then the things that weren't practical, like Dragon's Dogma, they still stuck with because they believed in it, right? Yeah. Well, and now it seems like it's going to work. Like, they have the new, I guess, pseudo update slash remake. I don't know what we call this,

the new version of Dragon's Dogma too, but like, they have a patience that I don't think you see from pretty much any other publisher. Pragmata gets canceled by anybody else, right? Yeah. This stuff just doesn't happen. Yep. Hey, let's take a quick break. This game's great.

I'm enjoying it. I'm going to finish it. I think I'll probably stick with it. I'm maybe 10 hours in or so, maybe some more. I don't know how much is left, but. I think you're about halfway. Okay. It's a big game.

It's fucking fantastic, man. I just could do these sword fights all day. And that's good because the game has so many sword fights in it. Let's take a little break. I want to come back and I want to talk about another brave little swordsman, a little guy Pye named Link in this Legend of Zelda Occurative Time remake that we saw a little bit of footage of during the recent Nintendo Direct. So quick break and then that.

I got to give a shout out to Nintendo for... Yeah. Never disappointing me with how in their Nintendo directs, they will feature shit. They will announce things that would be relevant news to maybe 11 people currently living on the earth. They started out their Zelda 40th anniversary Nintendo Direct stream with a new update of a new sign that they're going to be hanging up at the Nintendo Museum at their headquarters in Kyoto. It's fucking rad, man. That's great. You got a new sign?

That's awesome. It's got a timeline. Have you ever been there? I have. It's wonderful. It's amazing. It's a beautiful place. But it's, there was a lot of great stuff.

Top billing. Top billing is this and there's new collectible trading cards in the Nintendo iOS app and there's updated calendar art. Anyway, then you get to see the gate for like 30 minutes and I think it looks pretty great. But I don't know that everyone feels that way based on just kind of the conversation happening around this Nintendo direct as it was happening. Here's the thing.

Can you show a new Zelda game without at least a third of the audience being pissed saying that they hate it and they never want to play it? And then of course they all like it just based on the aesthetic of the game? Yeah. Like it's like what Zelda game doesn't have a reaction like this from a portion of its fans at reveal? I guess that's true. I guess that's true.

Dating back to Windwaker first being announced and people saying like, well, wait a minute, Where's our photo realistic link? I don't want this cartoon shit. And now here's a photorealistic link. And everyone's like, where's all the cartoon shit, though? I don't know that. Also, like, look at this. I grabbed the manga for Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask, and O'Crean of Time.

That's just the character. Yeah, it's a lot like it. They just made a 3D version of what they liked to do. Like, I think there's this, like, weird disconnect between, what people expect from a remake in 2006, which is, I don't know, stylized and surprising, versus what Nintendo is doing with its remakes,

which is, what if we made the promo art playable from the original game? What if you could play Star Fox as those weird puppets? What if you could play O'Rean of Time as like the sort of CG that you would see in your prima strategy guide? Yeah. And I personally love that.

I think that's really cool. I think that's probably what the people who were making the games wanted to make back then, and they just, like, couldn't. But you're right. People seem, some people seem very grumpy about it. A lot of people have said that the faces are creepy. Go play the Nintendo 64-era Zelda games.

They're creepy-ass games, man. Like, I just played through Majores Mask for a stream and the weird little soulless puppet golems that you create to solve puzzles and shit. Like it's distressing to see. And so having a, I don't know, a protagonist who is a child throughout half of the game and also has a creepy, creepy, creepy face, a smooth and creepy face, like some sort of haunted,

like Bun Raku puppet. He looks pissed. Child Link looks angry, pretty much, Constantly, which I get it. It's weird, but also those games were weird. Go back and play them. Everyone looks crazy. I got no problem with it.

Child link looks like he's look maxing all over the place. He's using oil a little lay. His peptide stack is strong. The skin is flawless. Really, what more could you ask for? I can understand it because when I looked at it, I wasn't blown away by it, by any means. I was like, oh, yeah, that's what, yeah, if you were to update it, that's what it would look like to me.

And I'm more interested in the camera controls and being able to jump whenever I want. I think that'll be interesting and fun. And I'm wondering if anyways, that could be somewhat game-breaking because to not have to account for people jumping all over the place and now you can is going to be wild to me. But I think with this game, it's, we have to look at the fact that this is, this is, this, merely additive, is it going to be $60, more, more likely for sure. But at minimum. Yeah, at minimum. But this isn't a game that's hard to find.

Like, you can play this game anywhere, whether it's on the, you know, analog 3D or old Nintendo 64 or is it on like the online. You can, it's on 3DS. You can find it in many different ways and still keep the charm of the original version. It's one of the things that I've been loving is going back and playing old Nintendo's games with my youngest and just seeing how it's still magical to him and how the little Pokemon, like he doesn't need them to be photorealistic to be like, oh, that squirrel! Like, it's really cool to me.

But I also imagine, like, playing this version with him will also be very, I mean, that's pretty much my plan is to get this game and play through it with my son. But also, if you were like, oh, I don't like it and I just wanted to replay the original, I think that's, I would completely understand that. I wouldn't play the Grezo Nintendo 3DS remakes. Those are like way fucking better. But I understand. First of all, it's $60 digital pre-order now.

So it is fully $70 for that physical version, which they made such a big deal out of like, the cover is embossed. Like that's great. Give me a gold cartridge or don't give me anything at all. I'm also excited to play this with Henry because he's like, we read all the manga of the Ocariida Time thing, but we tried play in the game.

and it's like, it was the jumping. The very first time that he had to like just run at an edge and then just trust it that Jesus Christ would make his character jump across the pit and not fall immediately like every other video game on earth. I am worried I'm going to just muscle memory beef it a million times playing this game just running at an edge and expecting my little guy

to do his thing and get over the gap only to fall and perish. But I think it looks fantastic. Fantastic. And I am, I'm really excited to play it. And I'm very excited that it hasn't been delayed and it's still coming out November 5th. How much do you all want the game to be different from the original version versus how much do you think that they'll just keep it the same? I don't need it to be different at all. To be honest with you, I saw that they're adding more dialogue and some more voice acting. And I think that really all I need to flesh out the story and just add. You want that original water temple? You're fine with it?

No, I mean, if they want to update the water temple, that'd be fun. But I just want to, I honestly want to just see it up. I want to see what it looks like in this new version. I'm okay with being frustrated by it. But yeah, I think if you want to do some quality of life improvements on the water temple, I will accept that, absolutely. Yeah. I want there to be a fast forward button where literally the game just pulls out and it's Shigeru Miyamoto himself. And he's like, here, let me help you.

And then he presses fast forward. We zip through the water temple. and then we're back in the game. That seems like a great option for me. It was such a tough area, but isn't it? I mean, we all remember it. I have fond memory. Yeah.

I get like, I don't know, I've done it so many times. I feel like I could, I feel like Water Temple. You just got to learn. The annoying thing about Water Temple is if you miss like a cycle of raising and lowering the water, you have to like go through the whole fucking thing again, which is very, very annoying. But yeah, I don't think they're going to change a lot. I would love it if they would include a. a master quest style sort of option.

If you wanted to do sort of like the rearranged version or just have the like, you know, modern master quest difficulty of, you know, hearts don't drop. You have to find your healing through like these things. Having like different difficulty options, I think would be great. But based on what they showed of the, of the decou tree dungeon, like that looked pretty much exactly how I remember it. Yeah. way vainier like way the the who of us isn't the the vaininess of the decou babas is really really

uh profane they are real and their tongues are huge and i i don't know there's it seems like someone's trying to sneak their kink into into my my zelda game but i suppose it wouldn't be the first time uh i think it looks great we are missing the other nintendo direct that is happening this week. It has not happened as the time we record this. So maybe people are going to be curious why we didn't talk about fucking super duper smash brothers and

I can't believe they announced that. Yeah. That was surprised. Yeah. That would be amazing if right before Fire Emblem came out, they were like oh and also intelligent systems they've made a new advanced wars too. We just want to make sure everybody's

happy. I would be on board with that. They got to make up for that. last advance worse it's not good before we go to like the last bit and give our other things we have been playing I want to go back to Capcom real quick

if they make more games and they reboot more franchises like they say they're going to and they almost certainly will now that Onimusha it seems like it's going to be a huge hit do you have one franchise that you're like that's the one they got to bring it back shit man

I I shit talked Lost Planet earlier. Yeah. I did think that there was some shit in Lost Planet 2, which was a much more multiplayer-focused affair that I do remember enjoying quite a bit. That's not the one where you're driving a truck, is it? No, it's the one where you're on like an icy planet and you're collecting orange goo from aliens to stay warm.

That game was fun. That game was pretty cool. I think Okami is kind of crazy. haven't done more Okami shit. Like, I don't know. Just wild, that game is so fantastic. Yeah, something coming. We know that Jeff Keeley, you shed a tear when they announced it at Game Awards,

but I don't know if that's just like a remake or something. Oh, okay. Maybe, maybe. I just would like a silly Dino Crisis. That would be fun. Yeah, just a silly, silly Dino Crisis game. Got it. The Dino Crisis timeline is hysterical because it's like 99 Dino Crisis.

2000, Dino Crisis 2. 2002, Dino Stalker, 2003, Dino Crisis 3, nothing. 2025. Dino Crisis bundle where you can get one, add two on Windows PC.

But then again, it was 20 years after Onimusha that we got this one, so maybe, maybe Dino Crisis. I'll take another rival schools. I know I did the joke earlier, and also, again, this is why I like doing this podcast. It's the only place in the world

where I can make a joke about rival schools slash Project Justice and other people laughed, and I really, and it made me feel so good. Uh, they have some, their, their bench is pretty deep. A Power Stone in 2027? I've been begging for that forever. I didn't even for, oh, I forgot.

I see, I want that so much that I have put that out in my head. I love Power Stone. I don't think there's been another fighting game like it, do a bar room brawl like that. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, because like, I feel like they don't want to step on their own toes. Like, they don't want to make games that are going to compete with Street Fighter. I worry about Dino Crisis because I feel like, eh, it's a little too close to Resident.

evil but Power Stone there's nothing else like that that they're working with they should just do that that and Steel Battalion and we're set we've got everything we need we're like Power Stone with more destructible environments that we could have now would be so much fun

be so fun 20 person ballroom or like bar fights yeah dude oh man that'd be sick breath of fire I forgot that was Capcom the whole ass like JRP world that is really solid that they haven't done anything with. You just do this.

We just need to let them make some more handheld Zelda games again. Yeah, I don't know. They're undefeated. Maybe they can finally make a good Ghost and Goblins game. Maybe not, maybe with the RE-Eng, the power of the RE engine at their disposal. Do we want to do some honorable mentions? Ron, you've been playing anything else on the road? Yeah, I've been playing a couple of things.

Before I went on a road, I don't know if I talked about this last time. I don't think so. But I had the, I, since launch, I had tried to play, well, I'll start the short one first, sleeping dogs. I've been meaning to play that forever, never had started it up in between playing Simone Musha out here, really enjoying it, really surprised by how good it still looks. So, like, 12 years later in the story and the voice acting is very top-notch. That was like the John Wu action-inspired one, or am I? to give something else. No, this was, it started out as that true crime streets of L.A.

They were going to make a sequel. Activision's like, we don't know what to do here. And then it gets turned into kind of like a GTA, but is it, where is it set? It's set in Hong Kong. Yeah. And it's a lot of like hand-to-hand combat and like knives and stuff like that. Yeah. It's so good.

And let it run and chasing people. But I've only just started playing that. But I've been since launch, I have restarted Cyberpunk 277 probably five times and made it about two hours in each time. And every time I fell out of love with it. And mostly because I truly, A, I was not understanding the story.

I thought all the dicks and butts and all that stuff was just them being silly and fun. I didn't know it was such a statement on where they feel the world is headed in an advertisement and in general. And then the use of the color red and every UI element was terrible for me, and I hated it and physically caused me pain, which would probably be another reason why I should have got my autism diagnosis earlier. But this is why we subbed you out for Russ is he also struggles with the color red for different reasons. He just can't see it.

But once someone told me that you can change the UI elements to purple, I went and gave it one more shot. And now I think Cyberpunk is one of my favorite games of all time. I have never had an open world this beautiful where the city is the main character the story is so fun.

I crucified a man. I didn't think that would ever happen. And I've just done things in this game. I've never done anywhere else in any game and I freaking love it. And to go from it being a game that I truly did not see any, I was like,

why do people, I would go online and people would be like, this is why cyberpunk is one of the best games of all time. And I'd be like, this game sucks. But now I see it, just like my, I thought a Jacket Potato was terrible, but now I know I was wrong and I was wrong about cyberpunk. And now that they're doing the upgrade, I'm going to give the Witcher 3 one more try.

Yeah. Now's the time. I love it. I think you were the last hold up, because I wasn't here for that first episode. You were, you had hit the SWATTS. swap out me button. And I think every person who is on that episode has come around to this being like,

well, okay, that doesn't reflect some great change in our spirit as much as it reflects. Like, they made the game actually good with a bunch of, bunch of, I agree. It's impressive,

though, that they managed to make it good enough to win people over because it's hard to win all of that business schedules. We're all playing other games. No, really, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but it really struck me, truly as like human progress, not even like just video games, just like, how can you, you took

something that I truly was like, this sucks, even at a mechanical level was not working well. And yeah, yeah. Through hard work and dedication and a shit ton of money and effort. Now I go, I love, this is one of the best experiences I ever had. And it really, like, it almost made me like literally started tearing up being like, man, this is why you don't give up because you don't know what you can become. Yeah. Have you hit the Phantom Liberty stuff yet? Not yet. Not yet. I'm getting close. God damn. I was just selling my barber on this because he plays a bunch of games and was like talking about how disappointed he was in it. I was like, oh man, you got to go back. Idraselba. It's fucking great. It's so good.

Man, I want to go back and play cyberpunk and I think I did like early last year. So it's probably too soon for a revisit. But we could, I think maybe early, early 2027, we all get back together? There's too much other shit. And Ron's right. I do owe it to Witcher 3 also to try it again with this remake because Witcher 3 is the one that I still like had. Yeah, I feel like you're the last holdout on that one. Yeah. It turned around for me relatively recently. I'm ready. But I love the blood of Don Walker. I really, really enjoyed that. So maybe maybe now I'm primed. Maybe now I'm set up. I'll leapfrog from there to my honorable mentions before at that point because I did

finish the blood of Don Walker. Have you played that one at all? Ron? No, I've been looking at it, but it just didn't, it didn't look like a full priser for me. So I was like, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, I heard there's a little bit of jank, a little bit of kinks. I'm like, if I give it a few months, price will come down and it'll be even better,

most likely. It does this thing that I love, uh, that games do of this scale specifically, I feel like is the main offender of, uh, giving you some traversal powers, like, uh, vampiric teleportation and walking on walls and then also allows you to climb on jagged, rugged mountains that will not adhere to the rules of all of these travel abilities you have. So the number of times that I was like trying to get up a hill and I would teleport up it, but I would hit a weird slope and that it would launch me back downwards like 100 miles an hour. It felt a bit, it did feel a bit rough around the edges. I really, really liked it. I stand by all the stuff

I said in our episode about it. The sword fighting is so cool. The vampire. Power powers are so great. The writing and acting is fantastic. I did not enjoy the ending of the game, which I was sort of nervous would be the case because it has a lot of endings because the structure of the game is you've got a month and you're not going to be able to do everything. And so the choices you make are going to inform the ending that you get. And I always worry about games when they're like, we have 30 endings. And it's like, I bet you don't have 30 great endings because that's a lot of ways to end a story for them all to hit. It just, but I don't know, I feel like I feel that way about a lot of open world sort of

RPG games where I invest so much time in all the little stories that happen along the way that the conclusion rarely kind of hits, hits for me. So that was unfortunate, but I really, really liked, you know, the actual game part of it. An ending I did enjoy is after putting it off for a while because I was worried it would be bad and it would make me sad from it being bad. Rachel and I just watched all of the final season of the bear, which came out, I think now, like a month or two. It's been out for a little bit.

And I love the first two seasons of that show, and then the third and fourth were a little bit rocky to me. And then I think this last season kicks ass. And it did not sound like it was going to kick ass because it's set during one day, basically, one fateful day at the restaurant where everything is going wrong. I always get very nervous about sort of bottle seasons like that.

But I think it really, really ties the story up with a lovely bow. And I was so happy for it because when that show hits, man, I still think about that Forks episode in season two where Cousin Richie has to stage at the restaurant learns to be confident in himself.

It's like one of my favorite TV episodes ever. I think that, I think this last season does a good job of kind of getting back to, to that show when it's working best. That rocks. Mine is Star Wars Zero Company. I can't get away from this game. Are either of you playing this?

No. Y'all, it's so good. It's just because I don't like the genre, but I like the everything about the game that I've heard. I don't really like the genre that much either. I like, I liked XCOM when I was a little kid before even the reboots. I don't usually play these sorts of games, but we talked about it on rescues,

and that kind of helped me figure out what is going on. Being third person pretty regularly, actually walking through these worlds, even if it's not like the most impressive, like your animation looks like you're kind of like walking on a slip and slide, it puts you in it just enough that you don't feel like you're just managing a spreadsheet.

And you feel like you are like in this world. And the way that it gets you into the Star Wars, lore is so good because you get to have fights with characters that are names that you know and they feel for maybe the first time as powerful as they are in the movies because they're not the main characters they just show up now and then so you can basically break the game whenever you put these people into it and it feels so so awesome also it's much like the world itself is much smaller than XCOM. The battlefields are, and the fights are just faster, and they're a lot more hand-to-hand

and the way that they use the force. They don't do a good job of communicating it early in the game, but it's a lot about pushing people around the map, like knocking them off the platforms, literally throwing them off of the map, and really roughing them up versus just, you know, like spamming them with bullets that 70% of the time may or may not hit. I mean, it's Star Wars. They don't have, they haven't invented bullets. it's in that.

And you would know that if you were like a bigger Star Wars guy. That's true. That's true. Like laser ions? Yes. Yeah. Oh, thank you. That's exactly right.

Laser ions. Also, the writing is just super fun. It is very boots on the ground, the fight like the combat itself, but also the sort of conversations that they have. The number of times they just like shoot the shit about their opinions of different pod racer racers, it's good. It's good stuff. Great. Ron, were you playing anything else other than?

sleeping dogs. Cyberpunk and then watching cyberpunk the anime. Oh, it's great. It's really good. Okay, that is going to do it for us this week here on the Besties. A few quick announcements. First, we got a live show coming up, October 9th

at Town Hall in New York City. You can get tickets at bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. Please come see us. We've never done a live show before and it's going to be fun. We've got some fun stuff planned. We also have a Patreon where you can get access to episodes of the Resties where

Russ and Chris talk about other games that we don't talk about here on the besties. We also do a monthly bracket battle episode where we get a special guest on and we decide things like who would be the best roommate from the opening game. Of course,

of course. So much fun in those episodes. Do you want to read off some of these new backers here, Chris? Yeah, we've got Austin B, we got M. Bo. We got Norris. We got Northwest North and we got Papa Squat. Amazing.

All that at patreon.com slash the besties. Ron, do you have anything, any shows coming up anyway? Of course I always do. I'm going to be in Louisville at the Louisville Comedy Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Jim Cornett, come on by. Your tickets free. September 2050's 26. I will be in Eugene, October 1st through 3rd.

If you are in Oregon at all, I'm going to be taping something. and celebrate my 20-year anniversary in comedy that weekend. So I would love it if anyone can come out in support. That's October 1st through 3rd, again in Eugene, Oregon. And then October 9th and 10th, I'll be in Spokane, Washington. But I'm going all over the place, October, and November and December. So just go to Ron Funches.com. I'll come see me.

Keep an eye out. Ron, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you at home for joining us. Next week, we're going to be talking about that nasty, bladed, Canadian hero known as Wolverine, he's back and he's got, guys, I went months of playing games without dismembering people. And then the last like four games that we've played have been so dismemberment focus, so heavy on the dismemberment that it's starting, I'm starting to get like Tetris effect, but for dismemberment because of how many people I've dismembered in games. Well, it's almost October.

That's it. It's not even seasonal yet, right? Like, I'm chopping up people left, right, and center. It's not even a spooky month yet. But anyway, Wolverine, you, I don't know if I'm breaking embargo, but you chop people up a bunch. So we'll have probably more erudite thoughts to share on Wolverine when we discuss it next week here on the besties. So join us next week and every week here on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games.