The Marvel superhero Captain America’s story arc is about being frozen for decades and awakening in an unrecognizable world he must adapt to. Similarly, it’s been nearly two decades since an Onimusha game came out: The franchise went under the ice when action-arcade games reigned, and has emerged after parry-precise Soulslikes became the dominant subgenre.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is a valiant attempt to split the difference, with a world of funky demons to kill using precision-timed swordplay that will please Elden Ring fans.
The result is more hit than miss, with largely satisfying swordfighting that allows for clumsy button-mashing in hectic moments, but rewards — and often requires — careful timing. The deeper into the game you go, the harder its repetition and some frustrating boss design grates on the experience.
It’s fun to stroll up to demonic enemies and expertly deflect their attacks until masterfully cutting them down; it gets old to run through the same fight a thousand times with the most basic of mooks while jogging from one similar task to the next.
Amid the resurgence of games set in feudal Japan, from 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Ghost of Yotei, Onimusha: Way of the Sword distinguishes itself with a fantastical retelling of historical figures.
You take on the role of the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, though the game portrays him in his younger, uncouth years — skilled with the blade but rude with his manners, believing in strength above all. An untimely death at the hands of demons and rebirth, thanks to the Onimusha series’ iconic soul-gathering Oni gauntlet, draws Musashi into battle against the demon horde that threatens the human world.
It’s a fun premise, and several characters challenge the loner Musashi into smoothing out his rough edges, from Shizuka, the elegant Oni trapped in his gauntlet, to the imposing Takamura, wise warrior with his own spirit gauntlet, to Okuni, a nimble kabuki dancer avenging her troupe. The ghost of famed Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu sends Musashi out to solve the peasantry’s problems to harvest fodder for her tales (and save her fluffy story-ferrying spirit hounds), rounding out the game’s early retinue.
Most of the game’s plot follows Musashi’s pursuit of the famous samurai general Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who has taken over Hell with his demon Genma army and sent them rampaging through Japan. It’s Yoshitsune who revives the young swordsman with his Oni gauntlet, though he does the same for Ganryu, a self-described rival to Musashi who grows unstably enamored with his gauntlet’s power.
He’s a dark mirror for Musashi in the quest for strength, but our hero is curbed by the nobler influence of his new companions; in one tense scene where Musashi is tempted down Ganryu’s darker path, Takamura reminds him of the Buddhist notion that life is full of suffering — but embracing the challenge is worth it. It’s a thesis for the game, though one that unconsciously applies to pummeling through a lot of similar fights to get to more climactic moments.
Capcom/Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET
I played about 15 hours of the game, and most of that was spent in a wide area of Eastern Kyoto, the imperial capital. I enjoyed stalking the city’s dirt streets, cleaning up Genma scum, though most reappear every time you save at a Spirit Mirror (this game’s version of a Dark Souls bonfire). I used those to teleport around many corners of the city, cleaning up this or that shrine, tackling this or that tough enemy. It’s a way to pad the time and make expansive use of the game’s area; more rarely, I teleported out to remote zones like a forested temple or a mountain fortress.
The more I played, and the more I was sent back around areas I’d already visited or to new ones that hardly looked different, the more I found Way of the Sword’s recycled gameplay wearying. There’s a sense that this game was made with a shrewd budget, and its emphasis is in the right place — making sure the combat is tight enough, and that every encounter ends in a cinematic slash of your sword. But the most novel highlights in the game felt too brief, and I wished they were the norm rather than the exception.
Dokyo, a monstrous lieutenant of Yoshitsune, is a wonderfully spooky foe who deserves more screen time for her macabre antics.Capcom/Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET
Where Onimusha’s resurrection feels incomplete — and bends to Soulslike tropes
In fighting demons and fitting Japanese history into its storyline, Way of the Sword stays true to the Onimusha franchise. The older games had more freeform action, so updating swordplay to the careful precision-parry of other Soulslikes ably fits Musashi’s character as a legendary duellist. His rudeness is an enjoyable flaunting of the more delicate, honor-bound portrayals of samurai ideals in other games, flavoring the skilled efficiency with which he — and the player — carve through groups of enemies.
But there are other elements seemingly adapted from Soulslikes that I grated against. Does nearly every single boss need two health bars with a second phase? Does their stamina need to be whittled down with parries until I can make a climactic strike, a la Sekiro? Do enemies and bosses need to swiftly alternate between unblockable attacks that can only be parried and others that can only be dodged, sometimes with questionable telegraphing?
While you can use attacks to whittle down an enemy’s health bar bit by bit, the most efficient method is to parry down their stamina meter to make way for climactic slashes that take off chunks of health — and eventually end the fight.Capcom/Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET
I was relieved that the game has multiple difficulties and doesn’t punish you for switching between them on the fly. I played on the tougher “action” difficulty until I hit a wall with a fight against Ganryu later in the game, switched to the easier “story” setting to get through it, and went right back to the former thereafter.
Amid the routine gameplay of purging Genma are a handful of sublime moments that I wish comprised more of Way of the Sword. Early on, Musashi enters a courtyard that’s suddenly more vibrantly colored, as if in a spirit realm, and filled with people who’ve been cheerfully mutilated. A powerful Genma had been preying on them with macabre solutions to their petty problems, taking fingers, limbs and eyes. When Musashi finally perceives the fiend, it’s got massive body-slicing shears and a face full of mismatched grinning mouths. The boss fight is fun, the theming great — but sadly, I didn’t find such a strong combination elsewhere in the first half of the game.
Capcom knows how strong this segment is; I’d already played it twice, at previews during Summer Game Fest and before the game’s release. Much of the rest of Way of the Sword is amenable but not as exciting, with themed areas that range from period-appropriate to slightly jarring. There’s an underground lab that felt like a blatant wink toward Resident Evil, with mechanical elevators so out of place that even Musashi comments on them.
Ganryu, rival to Musashi, grows increasingly mad under the tutelage of the fallen Oni Gioh. This fight likewise tested my sanity until I turned the difficulty down.Capcom/Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET
The rest of the bosses are mostly fine, deployed as difficulty spikes for players to slam their heads against while they learn specific attack patterns. That’s a repetitive pillar of the Soulslike experience I don’t find valuable or interesting, but for challengemongers, all bosses can be replayed, with a bonus costume awarded for rebeating them all.
While the bosses technically all have different attacks, most of them feel similar to each other, following similar combat flows in smaller square arenas. Ironically, I wish Way of the Sword had inherited the Soulslike tendency for bombastic set pieces in unique zones when creating boss encounters — early on, Musashi tackles a huge boss off a cliff and through floating rocks, feeling much like Gandalf’s midair duel with the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings films, but this was another luminous exception. (You can try this fight for yourselves in the recently expanded free Onimusha: Way of the Sword demo.)
There are parts of the player’s toolkit I never ended up using, like items to increase defense or attack that wear off so quickly that I only got a few sword slices out of them. There’s also an extremely cool-looking mechanic called Issen (attacking the moment before your opponent) that requires such precise timing that I only ever did it by accident. A whole section of the skill tree is devoted to it, which was kind of dead weight to me — and despite a range of special Oni weapons, I got through most of the combat just alternating between parrying and light attacks. It made me feel like Captain America emerging in a tech-laden future, still relying only on bashing enemies with his shield.
Musashi’s brash attitude brings a lot of personality to a game otherwise fixated on combat.Capcom/Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET
At the end of the day, Way of the Sword is a serviceable update to the Onimusha formula that offers something different to other Soulslike games, though it’s clear that Capcom hewed toward what many players now expect in their action experiences: higher-difficulty combat that rewards precise timing to earn your power fantasy. In reviving the franchise, they’re playing to today’s hits, even if Onimusha didn’t originate some of them.
I wish the game distinguished itself with more of its own brand — more about demon hierarchies and politics, more funky powers, more of Musashi as a self-interested asshole rather than a brute refining into a benevolent hero. There are worse lessons to take from Soulslikes, and Way of the Sword stands above most clones of the genre. I just wish it didn’t feel like it took the middle road of compromise at nearly every junction, rather than do something more radically its own.
David Lumb
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