Simple 2000 Series Vol. 118: The Ochimusha - Doemu Samurai Toujou is the greatest Simple Series game I have, or likely ever will play

This is a Simple Series title, there's not much to the gameplay, and there's even less available information available about its history; it was developed by Tamsoft, released on May 31st in 2007, and, going by its title and general premise, is likely intended to be a parody of "Onimusha" by Capcom. After some digging I found a very old and slightly broken page on D3's website listing all Simple 2000 Series games including The Ochimusha, a single article written during the prerelease period, and a few miscellaneous online videos, which ended up surprisingly being the most useful resource for information prior to playing it myself. No guides, no trailer or advertising, maybe a mention in a magazine somewhere but not that I could find, it's not surprising since it's from a line of games treated as throwaway budget titles, but this is a game that's largely forgotten to time.
Which I think is a huge shame, cuz this game is really good, it's not the deepest or most polished thing in the world, but it's charming! It has some unique mechanics, feels good to control, has a surprising amount of extra unlockable cosmetics, and can be beaten in barely over an hour. Unless you're me and decide to go for 100% completion with minimal help and no ability to read the Japanese language, in which case it will take over 20x that!

There are no 100% guides for The Ochimusha, online or offline, not even in its native language, and in-game hints are cryptic to say the least, even with an understanding of Japanese. This is why it took me over 24 hours to complete a Simple Series title that should have otherwise taken 5 hours max, and since I don't have a ton to say about this game, the rest of this page will be a bit different from my usual output; instead of just talking about the completion process, it'll be a guide for you, yes you the player to complete everything too! Or at least it'll be as close to a 100% guide as possible, to be honest even after unlocking everything myself I still barely know what the actual unlock criteria for a few of these are... but if you just bash your head against a wall for a few hours like I did I'm sure you'll find the solution eventually!

Beyond finishing the main campaign, as well as doing 1 full loop of the seemingly infinite grinding mode (the 2nd option in the main menu), almost all of the completion process consists of clearing a set of 12 title boards that require completing miscellaneous objectives. These objectives are only slightly hinted at by the title of each board, along with an extra description of said title that's only given after already completing the title's objective. I completed almost all of these on the final stage, most can be done on other stages too, but for the sake of consistency, unless stated otherwise I did all of these on the final stage, therefore I can only confirm that they can be done on that stage.

First up is the speedrun title, I don't know the exact time limit for this one is, but I assume it's below 10 minutes. My only advice is go to the final stage, ignore all enemies aside from the 3 required bosses, and just run to the end as fast as possible. My clear time was 6:45, so it's pretty forgiving, you won't need to optimize a route too much, just pay attention to whatever the next objective is, and try to kill each boss fairly quickly.

I'm not actually 100% sure what the exact requirement for this one is; but I'm fairly certain it's either to defeat 100 enemies in every stage, or reach a combo of over 100. The former is self-explanatory, but I also think it's the less likely of the two, what I think is more likely, but also slightly harder to pull of is reaching a combo of 100. The combo meter only lasts for a very short period of time, short enough that a combo will end immediately after finishing an attack string before another one can be started, which means the only reasonable way to get this is with a special attack. Go to a location with a lot of enemies grouped up within a small area (I would recommend the area directly outside the spawn location of the final stage), switch to the kunoichi's dual swords and use her special attack; this should result in a combo of about 150.

Complete a stage while defeating as few enemies as possible. This one can very easily be obtained at the same time as the 1st title, go to the final stage, kill no more than the required boss enemies.

I'm fairly certain that this is for killing the boss of a stage while demon mode is activated, however I'm not 100% sure if it works on the boss of any stage, or only the final boss. Stand right outside of the final boss arena, let every enemy attack you while absorbing their weapons to build up your demon mode meter, then enter the boss arena, fight it normally until the very end and activate demon mode to finish it off.

The exact opposite of the last title, clear 1 full stage without ever activating demon mode. One of the easiest in my opinion!

Clear a stage with extremely low health. You don't need to go through an entire stage on low health luckily, so this one is deceptively easy! Run to the stage boss, get its health down pretty low, then let both of your characters take a ton of damage before finishing it off; you need to have as low health as possible without dying, not just within the red, but so low that the health bar is barely visible.

I'm not gonna lie, I have absolutely no clue what the actual, specific requirements are for this one, but I know it has something to do with the farmer enemies. My best guess is to disarm and kill a ton of them but I have no clue exactly how many or if that's even actually the real unlock condition. The run in which I unlocked this title I tried a ton of different things involving the farmers, but just defeating, or possibly disarming a large number of them seems most likely. About 10 spawn in the village at the top-left region of the bottom-left map segment; go in, do your thing, then to respawn them just exit into another map, return to the village, and repeat.

Finish a stage without using any weapons, only your fists. This sounds like it would be more obnoxious than it actually is, I cleared this on the final stage and it's impressive how strong the protagonist's fists actually are, not quite as damaging as a sword or spear but they can still easily defeat even the final boss. I'm not sure if unequipping everything before starting the mission is necessary, that's what I did but it's very possible that swapping to an empty hand before fighting anything is all that's required.

This is the most confusing title in the entire game, my 24 hours of playtime could have been cut down by at least 10 hours if this did not exist. There is a secret special attack that's performed by pressing both left-trigger and the circle button at the exact same time, the timing is very precise requiring both buttons to be pressed on almost the exact same frame, this attack is not mentioned anywhere in-game as far I know and I found it by complete accident. What exactly do you have to do with this special duo-attack for this title? I'm not 100% sure myself! After learning this attack existed it didn't take very long to unlock, so it's not especially difficult once you have the first piece of the puzzle. On my successful attempt I defeated 83 enemies and the final boss using the duo-special, and I used it about 10 times; which of these caused it to trigger I'm not entirely certain, but I believe it was most likely rewarded for defeating a certain number of enemies, or using the attack a certain number of times in a single stage.

Clear any stage without ever switching to the 2nd playable character. This is probably the easiest in the entire list, I actually got this one by complete accident during my main playthrough before I even started hunting for these achievements because I didn't realize there was a 2nd character until near the end of my playthrough.

Finish a stage without taking any damage. I did this one in the final stage on the lowest difficulty, I think it is possible on other stages so maybe the final boss stage isn't the best decision, but on easy difficulty even the final boss is a pushover. Run past every enemy, and once you're at the boss pull out a bow or gun and shoot from afar; attack patterns are so predictable that using a ranged weapon isn't absolutely necessary if you'd prefer to be up-close, but it is definitely a lot safer.

One of the most straight-forward, but also definitely the most time-consuming even with knowledge; max out proficiency on all weapons for both characters. This takes a while, and because weapons do have limited durability it's very possible to run out of whatever weapon type you're working toward before maxing proficiency. Each weapon type is dropped by a specific enemy type, for most it's obvious based on whatever weapon they're holding, and enemies are frequent enough that you'll most likely stock up more than enough of each weapon, so running out shouldn't ever be a concern. With the exceptions of hammers. Hammers are only dropped by farmers, and as mentioned in title #7 those only spawn in one small area of the map in very small quantities. Only a few missions ever require you to go through the village, so out of all weapon types, hammers are the ones that you will most likely have to go out of your way to farm for. Knowing what all of these objectives are, this game would not take long to complete at all, single-digit hours for sure, and I would absolutely recommend trying it yourself. This was a very fun game and all of my frustration with it comes entirely from going through everything blind; if you have even the slightest interest in the Simple Series, or the hack & slash genre I cannot recommend this game enough.

Although, I can't deny, as fun as this game is, this is definitely the biggest edge-case on my entire list. I personally think it just barely falls into the category of a musou, but the argument could very easily be made that it doesn't at all; even I only qualified it as one thanks to a few mechanics, and the fact that it was developed by Tamsoft, a company that would later go on to make several musous. Next game will definitely be a much more traditional musou, this was just a preliminary detour in preparation for a much larger series!