Onimusha: Warlords

For those that are new to the series, the Dark Realm is a 20 floor gauntlet of progressively difficult enemies. This guide will focus on helping people who are attempting this on playthrough one, while going for associated achievements for not upgrading swords, not healing with herbs or medicine, and not upgrading health/magic with jewels. It will be difficult. But you will save yourself a lot of time fighting the final boss over and over again suffering unskippable cutscenes...

To access the dark realm, wait until the last possible moment before taking the great bow/arrow to the Demon Gate...that's the save point on the ground floor of the castle. You'll find an upside down man in the corner who will offer to take you. Before you go...

Get the Ogre armor from the decoder box behind the waterfall in the East area. Your gauntlet should have naturally hit level 3 if you hit the enhance option on a save mirror recently, but if not, do that, too. You should have some bullets if all you have used them on is the bee boss. Enhance ALL of your bullets to burst bullets; you should have 30-40 shots. Upgrade your arrows to fire arrows while you're at it. You should also have a talisman and 3 soul absorbers from thorough exploration and saving soldiers. If you are lacking any of these things, I suggest following the other guides and doing this achievement on another playthrough and taking on the final boss with regular weapons.

So dont be shy about using that burst ammo for crowd control. It's great on the insects, tentacled enemies, and even ninjas if you're quick enough (remember you cant block with the gun equipped). I even popped some of the large samurai, ogres, and invisible guys when I was out of magic. Fire arrows can work on strong single targets in a pinch if you are trying to save magic, but be cautious of enemies with wide attack radius, because you dont have a lot of room to work with.

You'll get one more talisman on the way down and those are your only means of healing if you aren't a counter master.

Once you get to the "blue" area, you are close to the end. Your soul absorbers are clutch here. Just activate it and hold b and all enemies dissolve...it will get almost all your enemies, depending on how fast they spawn in. Definitely save one for the final floor, which is three ogres and three invisibles.

Good luck!