Whether you'll enjoy putting a stop to another horde of demons will depend upon your experience with previous Onimusha games and action games in general. Even though Dawn of Dreams boasts a new approach to characters and combat, the gist is the same: An epic quest, undertaken by a young hero with lots of promise, guts and hair.

Once you start playing as Soki, the aforementioned hero, you'll no doubt recognize many of the elements of other action games. Travel from area to area, fight more and more enemies. The difference isn't how the game starts. You'll have little trouble fighting off all the bad guys with good timing and disciplined blocking. Dawn of Dreams becomes different than other action games – better – as time goes on. The enemies get tougher and more numerous, of course, but you'll also be introduced to new moves and magic gradually. The combat slowly becomes more and more complicated, making for a learning curve that doesn't feel like a learning curve at all.

Soki is one of five main characters. You can choose a companion to fight with Soki, and switch between the two at any time. There are also basic commands available to give the computer controlled character, but they usually just get him or her beat up badly. They seem to do best when told to just stand in a corner and not get in trouble and concentrate on whichever character you're controlling directly.

But the other characters come in much more handy when the objective is not fighting, but puzzle solving. Each character has unique abilities, and in some instances you'll need particular characters to progress. This is not a new dynamic to games of this type, but it's new to this series, and it's not nearly as superfluous as it seems. The other characters actually feel important. This is probably because they are almost as much fun to play as the main character. They are each useful in combat in different ways, instead of being obviously inferior to Soki.

If the inclusion of more characters is one signal of a change in the series, the new scope is evident in other ways, as well. There are a ton of weapons to be found and distributed among the characters. There are also lots of puzzles and minigames, most of which are interesting and rewarding instead of just annoying distractions.

On the subject of annoying: the story manages to be as epic as promised, but contains far too many clichés and cheesy lines to be taken seriously. Even so, it's not unwatchable. The cutscenes are beautiful and, in general, the story acts as an appropriate backdrop. The occasional awkward translation or hammy line read by an overzealous actor just keeps it from being as good as it could have been.

Dawn of Dreams is also plenty long enough to be worth the effort, and the save and continue mechanisms keep the backtracking to a minimum. The animations are excellent, smooth and great to look at. Combined with a combat system that's just as smooth, Dawn of Dreams is nicely polished fun. It avoids the annoying pitfalls of similar games (like bad cameras_. Whether you've tried the previous chapters in the Onimusha series or not, Dawn of Dreams is an easy recommendation.