Review by: Mitch Dyer

If you need any indication as to what Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad is, aside from its overt subtitle, the opening cinematic of a 12-year-old school girl and her fresh-out-of-the-shower and totally naked sister watching zombies on a television should clue you in. The massive text scroll that follows this cinematic, which looks significantly worse than the uninspiring in-game visuals thanks to loads of screen tearing and blurry textures, will also fill you in as to what’s going on. Provided you can stomach the three to five minutes of scrolling. If I’m not being clear, Onechanbara has precisely no story – at least not one that you’ll want to invest any emotion. Instead, you can blindly hop in to the mindless action and start cutting up zombies as a chick in a bikini and a cowboy hat and be on your merry way.

Without any context, Onechanbara is ludicrous and kind of hilarious. Packs of ten or more zombies will swarm you at a time, and you can effortlessly dispose of them with stylish sword swings and high kicks. As you soak sword (and skin) with the blood of your enemies, a bar beside your health fills. Keep up the bloodshed long enough and your voluptuous Asian tease will erupt in a red aura and become immeasurably powerful. Watching zombies explode in to red mist after a single sword slash is sadistically hilarious, but you’ll have to sacrifice your health to wield it. What makes it an even more interesting mechanic is that it doesn’t turn itself off without the assistance of a specific item. So while you’re happily obliterating the undead army, you’ll also have to keep an eye out for the Devil May Cry-style health and item orbs.

While its offensively overused breast physics (even when standing still they sway like laundry in the wind) might give you an idea to the contrary, the breadth of combat options in Bikini Samurai Squad will probably keep you entertained. Swapping out between the three made-for-fan-service ladies lets you take a spin with three distinctive fighting styles. While the two main characters use swords, they’ll progressively earn new stuff, like a second, swappable katana; the third character changes the pace by using firearms. Each of the girls also has enough nuances to their killing, like rhythmic attacks and stylish slow-motion blows, to keep you high-fiving yourself in sick satisfaction.

But the combat is the sole saving grace of Onechanbara. It’s a technical mess riddled with problems. An atrocious camera makes meandering around the poorly designed, straight-line levels feel more work than entertainment. Repeated environments show off the total lack of variety in the world, and standard tropes of old games, like hunting down the last living enemy for the key to open a door or a gate, make Onechanbara feel like it was hacked together without any modicum of care.