So the combats, both ranged and hand-to-hand, is well done and fun. What else rocks about this game? Well, sadly, nothing really. Graphically, it can be really quite plain, even when weapon effects such as energy streams and explosions are flying around the screen. While the level architecture can be convincing (apparently it was done by a professional architect) the textures look rather washed out and plain, and you'll often get a massive stretch of wall that almost seems to scream out “make me look more interesting with some extra detail.” Also, while Konoko and her numerous outfits and kung fu moves look particularly swish, the rest of the enemies are all rather generic and uninteresting to say the least.
The story is certainly one of the better and more original tales I've seen in a game, but it takes almost half the game to really warm up and get interesting. While the voice acting of the characters is generally rather good, their mouths don't move during the cutscenes at all, and seeing as Half Life managed it over two years ago, models that speak with their lips sealed just look odd these days. And you thought Daikatana would be the last game to display that problem so obviously.
And then there is the greatest hammer blow to Oni overall – the save system. Oni simply saves the game automatically four or five times per level at certain points and my save file for a completed Oni is a mere 200k. Cool, I thought, a hands free save system. However, then I met the first boss. And it saved. And I had no ammo and my health bar was so low as to be invisible. As you can guess, the boss killed me within seconds. In such situations, your only choice is to play again from the previous save point and try to get more health. For one boss I had to complete the previous section three times before I had even half a health bar left, and proceeded to narrowly defeat him. Not fun at all. Even worse, I seemingly once somehow missed the trigger point for a save as the load game menu had a sequence of saves for one level that went from 1 to five, skipping four. I swear Oni would've taken me at least a day less to complete were it not for the annoying save system, which of course equates to almost a day's worth of frustration.
Finally, the puzzles in Oni are of two types – dodging moving lasers and finding terminals to unlock doors or activate something. That's it. They're all pretty simple and obviously intended to mix the gameplay up a bit without getting in the way of the action, but that doesn't excuse just how repetitive they can get. You'll even have to defeat some bosses by, guess what, dodging lasers to get to terminals. Excuse me for yawning cavernously at this point. Towards the end, some of the laser dodging bits can get insanely complex, so much so that I ended up just running through them and taking damage from the sentry guns that tripping the lasers activated.