Onimusha: Way of the Sword is set for release next year, but Capcom doesn't plan to make fans wait quite that long for some demon-slaying action. The HD remaster of Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny is set for release next month, giving players a chance to relive the second game in the series on modern consoles — and with a few useful upgrades.

As the second game in the series, Samurai's Destiny builds on the gameplay in Onimusha: Warlords, but it's a stand-alone entry. The villain is back for more, but the lead character and the setting are new.

Gameplay focuses on combat, with an emphasis on deliberate moves rather than button-mashing. Timing your attacks and blocks goes a lot farther than just being aggressive. Like Warlords, if you time your attack at the same time that an enemy attacks, you'll unleash a powerful one-hit kill.

Where Samurai's Destiny expands on the Warlords experience is in the scope of the world. The game area is larger, and there are four different sub-characters for you to play as and interact with. You can change how the other characters think of you by gifting them items. How the sub-characters think about you can change which one appears at various key moments in the game.

Compared to the original PlayStation 2 release, the HD version of Samurai's Destiny has a few key gameplay changes. The pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles are still present, but modern analog control has been added. The classic "tank" controls are available on the d-pad if you really want them, but it feels more natural to move relative to your position with the analog stick. There were a handful of places where this could be disorienting (due to camera placement), but overall, it works well. The analog control is especially useful during a boss battle.

Another important change is the ability to manually trigger your Onimusha transformation. In the original version of Samurai's Destiny, every time you collected five purple orbs, you transformed. This happened no matter what. Now, when you collect five purple orbs, you are granted the ability to transform, but the timing is up to you.

Visually, Samurai's Destiny stays true to the PlayStation 2 release, only with higher-resolution versions of the backgrounds and character models. This isn't a full remaster, with all assets created from scratch, but it is a lot cleaner than running the original release through an emulator.

Quality-of-life features include auto-saving and quick weapon switching (no need to go into the menus), but the biggest QoL feature is the ability to choose the Japanese voice acting. While the graphics got a slight upgrade in the conversion to HD, the English voice acting is just as bad (and out of sync) as ever. Seriously, trying to play Samurai's Destiny in English is like watching an extremely cheap dub of a foreign film. The English language delivery is flat, as though the actors read the script for the first time in the recording booth, and the voices don't match the movement of the characters' lips.

Switching to the Japanese voice acting (an option not available in the North American version of the PlayStation 2 original) is an instant upgrade. Yes, fans may have some nostalgia for the "bad" English acting, but that's rose-colored glasses for you. It's not "so good it's bad," it's just bad "bad."

For veteran players (and those who like supreme challenges), the HD version of Samurai's Destiny includes a Hell difficulty mode, where one hit means game over. There's also an easy mode for players who just want to enjoy the ride with minimal frustration.

One complaint that players had with the HD version of Warlords was the fact that it was a bare-bones port. Capcom appears to have listened to the feedback and included a nice special features section. The HD version of Samurai's Destiny includes a gallery mode packed with more than 200 original sketches, the full 43-track soundtrack (playable from the special features menu), and full credits for the original release and the HD version. Additionally, The Man in Black, Team Oni, and Puzzle Phantom Realm minigames are available to play from the outset.

In some ways, Samurai's Destiny is very much a game of its time, but the core gameplay loop still holds up. I didn't get a chance to run through the entire game, but from what Capcom allowed me to play, the magic is still there. Check back next month for our impressions of the full game.