Across his quest, Jubei learns of his oni heritage which grants him powers to slay the demons and meets new allies who also wish to defeat Nobunaga and his army of Genma.

The game retains the action elements from its predecessor such as the use of multiple special weapons that can be upgraded with souls collected from defeated enemies.

Each character that the player befriends will have different cutscenes as well as personal story arcs that Jubei gets to experience, although the main narrative will largely remain the same.

[5] Samurai's Destiny features a control scheme found in many survival horror games published by Capcom, most notably Resident Evil.

[6][7] Other similarities include open-ended gameplay, the use of herbs and medicine to restore health, and the inclusion of puzzles which must be solved in order to progress.

Jubei collects an assortment of short and long-range weapons throughout the game, including a bow and a matchlock rifle.

The rarest variety is the purple orb temporarily powers up Jubei into an "Onimusha", increasing his attack damage and becoming invincible.

Samurai's Destiny features a gold mining town called Imasho which is free of enemy encounters.

In the areas surrounding Imasho, defeated Genma often leave behind piles of gold which can be spent on gifts for other characters (Ekei, Magoichi, Kotaro and Oyu).

[8] Since the death of Fortinbras by the hands of Samanosuke, Nobunaga Oda has taken command of the Genma as he continues his campaign to unite Japan while wiping out any threat to his power.

The clan's only survivor, Jubei Yagyu, who was away at the time of the Genma attack, finds the destroyed village and goes to search for the culprit.

Jubei then embarks on a quest to find the orbs in order to defeat Nobunaga, first traveling to the mining town of Imasho.

In Gifu Castle Jubei meets Hideyoshi Toyotomi and finds out of him that the Oda clan wanted him dead, thus attacking his village.

Jubei saves Oyu from Hideyoshi Toyotomi before getting into a fight with Gogadantess, a self proclaimed "greatest swordsman of all the demons".

Oyu and Jubei finds a flying machine and catches up to Hideyoshi Toyotomi who is piloting a war zeppelin.

In a post credit scene, Jubei is shown sitting on a horse at the edge of a mountain overlooking a castle in the distance.

While the game is graphically similar to its predecessor, the character models look more realistic and the backgrounds were given more animations, such as using real footage of water for lakes and river.

The game was also re-released with its Warlords and Demon Siege into the 2008 compilation Onimusha Essentials for North America.

[14] The same day the game was released in Japan, Capcom also published a fan DVD containing a guide and movies featuring the development staff.

[15] A 44-track CD original soundtrack was released by Capcom on March 20, 2002, while ADV Films published it in North America next year on June 3.

[28] Capcom VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development Christian Svensson referred to Onimusha 2 and its predecessor as one of their most successful titles,[29] but the staff noted it had poor sales in Europe.

As a result, they tried appealing to the European fans by adding more Western tones to their next work, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege.

[24] It has been praised for retaining the action elements from its predecessor and adding replay value,[19][20][23] but the use of the D-pad rather than the joystick's left analogue to control Jubei has been the subject of criticism as players would have difficulties getting used.

Dunhan summed it up as "bigger, bloodier, and deeper than its predecessor, Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny is on many levels the perfect sequel".

[20][23] Despite finding the plot too similar to Warlords, Greg Kasavin from GameSpot praised the game's presentation for balancing action and cutscenes, but criticized the lack of its original Japanese audio leaving the players to listen to an English dub that was deemed as "mediocre".

[23] IGN's Jeremy Dunhan saw Jubei as a more interesting character than Samanosuke Akechi from Warlords based on his personality and actions.