| Onimusha: Way of the Sword | ||
| Release Date | Demo Review | Review |
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest sequel to Capcom’s iconic action samurai series, where players fight against demons in feudal Japan. Learn more about the game’s plot, gameplay, release date, our first impressions of the game, and more.
Overview
What is Onimusha: Way of the Sword?
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an action game by Capcom set to be released on September 25, 2026 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. Set in a curse-ridden Kyoto, Onimusha: Way of the Sword follows legendary sword saint Miyamoto Musashi as he battles hordes of yokai and cursed spirits.
The game emphasizes a precision-driven combat system built around reactive play, where perfectly timed counters, lethal one-hit finishers, and devastating Oni Armaments allow players to turn the tide of battle with skillful execution.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword features:
⚫︎ Fictional Japan Setting
⚫︎ Expressive Characters
⚫︎ Samurai Cinematography and Visuals
⚫︎ Reactive Action Combat
⚫︎ Semi-Open World Design
⚫︎ Collectible Cosmetics
⚫︎ New Game+
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | ||
|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 PS |
 Xbox |
| $69.99 | ||
Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review: On The Way to Becoming Capcom's Next Blockbuster IP
Coming Back From Hell
Everyone has that one game that they wish would make a comeback. Be it a remaster, a remake, a reboot, or even a straight-up sequel, we all have a game that we want to see get the modern treatment. I won’t open a can of worms and talk about the titles that NEED that kind of treatment, but one thing I’m sure of is that Capcom has been doing a hell of a job reviving their older titles, especially with the recent Onimusha.
For the uninitiated, Onimusha is one of Capcom’s older action titles. One that also had a formula similar to their other blockbuster action game series, Resident Evil, but this time set in a fictional, demon-fueled feudal Japan. It’s no secret that the game was already due for a new title, especially since it’s been over two decades since a new game was released.
After finishing the game, Onimusha: Way of the Sword might be Capcom’s best game in recent history as well as a culmination of all that they’ve learned and done well with their recent releases. Now, this may come from a biased position as both a fan of the series and a fan of action games in general, but believe me when I say that this game excels in most of the things that it offers—on both a technical and creative level.
The amazing portrayal of the historical characters, the simple yet enthralling story that keeps everything interesting, and, most of all, the engaging combat system that’s designed to make players look cool while pushing themselves to be better through its mechanics, Onimusha: Way of the Sword is what action games aspire to achieve when trying to capture a new audience, especially coming from an IP that hasn’t seen any action for 20 years.
A Tale of Demons, Demon Slayers, and Hell
Onimusha: Way of the Sword follows the fabled samurai, Musashi Miyamoto, and his journey to become the strongest through the titular Way of the Sword. While this doesn’t exactly pan out as he had hoped due to an untimely death at the hands of demons or the Genma, he gets a second chance at life by receiving the Oni gauntlet and becoming an Onimusha. Reluctant to receive strength that doesn’t come from his own, he travels across Japan to find the true meaning of strength, while keeping the Genma at bay from opening the gates of Hell.
Similar to what I already said in the demo review, Musashi’s character is well-defined, and may very well be the strongest element of its narrative. His nonchalant demeanor, combined with his quiet confidence, is something the game expresses in droves. Moreover, he is by far Capcom’s most expressive character to date, showcasing a wide range of facial expressions that show how far they’ve come when it comes to animation.
Moreover, his character arc is quite simple to understand and relate to, especially when you have prior knowledge to how he’s often portrayed. For context, Musashi Miyamoto was a renowned swordsman, known to have an undefeated record across 62 duels. Media would often represent him as a samurai on the path of becoming a swordsman with no equal. In the same vein, this is accurate to how Way of the Sword showcases Musashi.
While his initial portrayal comes off as arrogant because of his reluctance to accept the strength offered by the Oni Gauntlet, this also becomes the point where players get to relate to the pride one has as someone who looks to better themselves through their own effort. And it’s in multiple points in the story where he learns to love the opportunity that the Oni Gauntlet provided him in being able to fight against even stronger and more legendary opponents.
Outside of his desire to become stronger, he's also very similar to the likes of Kasuga Ichiban in the Like a Dragon series: tough on the surface, yet a big softie on the inside. You get an idea of his personality in the opening minutes alone, where he had to pass up his only piece of food to those in need. Even if he is rather callous at times, he also shows that he's empathetic to those around him, especially during the few arcs that focused more on the supporting cast. He's a character that's immediately likable, and it helps that he's probably Capcom's most animated and expressive character to date.
But that’s not to say that Musashi is the only bright spot of the bunch. From the stoic Ono no Takamura who acts as Musashi’s guide and mentor as a fellow Onimusha, to the bright and cheerful Izumo no Okuni who supports Musashi from the sidelines, along with Shizuka Gozen who provides Musashi the strength to begin with, the game manages to make every character steal the spotlight from an already charismatic protagonist, which is a feat of its own.
And we can’t forget about the villains either, as all of the key antagonists are some of Capcom’s best as well. For starters, Sasaki Ganryu’s unhinged nature is on full display over the course of the game, and he’s the example of an Onimusha pursuing the "wrong" kind of strength through consuming human souls. Dokyo, on the other hand, is cut from the same cloth you’d expect from the "evil scientist" type of character, making you feel uneasy by how she always seems to have an ulterior motive outside of being crazy.
But both of them can’t hold a candle to Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the game’s biggest antagonist of them all. Capcom offered the biggest subversion when they revealed him to be the main villain, since the historical figure is often portrayed as a tragic hero who was believed to be wrongly hunted down after fulfilling his duty. In Onimusha, however, he’s depicted as a psychotic warlord who conquered Hell itself with the sole purpose of spreading chaos if and when he opens the gates of Hell.
This is also where I’d like to again highlight the game’s visuals and voice work, as it’s where the characterization comes to fruition. You can clearly see the range of emotions that exude from both the dialogue and facial expressions.
All of these in combination create a story that’s not only entertaining but also compelling. Sure, the premise and theme aren’t anything new we’ve seen in the franchise, yet it manages to balance its dark, gritty tone with well-placed comedy and witty moments. It’s a narrative that encompasses a full package, as it’s not afraid to keep things light or make things as heavy as they have to be in a story revolving around demons, death, and Hell.
Strong Combat Identity That Wants You to Become Better
I’m going to go out on a limb here. Onimusha: Way of the Sword features, quite frankly, the best combat and gameplay loop of the series. Sure, the bar isn’t exactly that high considering how long it’s been since the release of Dawn of Dreams and Samurai’s Destiny, but as mentioned earlier, Capcom manages to keep the identity of the franchise while integrating a modern flair. This was actually the reason I was initially apprehensive about the game getting a modern reboot, as its slow pace and gameplay loop didn’t seem to mesh well with the direction action games have continually taken toward faster pacing.
However, this is the sole reason why Way of the Sword stands out.
For context, the Onimusha series has always been a more defensive, reaction-based action title, which is why it warrants a comparison to Resident Evil rather than their other, faster-paced action games like Devil May Cry. But Way of the Sword manages to layer many of its core mechanics inside of its methodical combat loop, and invites its players to push themselves to use them for stronger rewards.
A clear example of this is the difference in reward given by a dodge, a parry, a deflect, and, most especially, an Issen Counter.
Dodges and Parries are pretty much what you expect from almost every action game. Both of which give players a small opening to deal damage and whittle down the enemy’s health, while the latter deals a small amount of damage to their Break gauge. Deflects, on the other hand, don’t offer a bigger opening for combos, but deal strong Break damage to enemies as well as reflecting ranged attacks back to their origin.
However, the iconic Issen Counter, which is done by timing an attack right when an enemy is about to hit you, deals massive damage to both the enemy’s health and Break gauge. This often kills normal enemies outright and even gives the player a small opportunity to do a short combo as well.
But the mechanics themselves are not the sole reason why the combat loop is good. It’s because the game continually gives you a reason to use all of them, pushing you to engage with the multitude of tools it keeps layering on top of itself. As you progress, enemies will get tougher and more erratic in their attack patterns, especially in boss fights, where players will have to learn and adapt to specific tells and actions.
All of these shine the most in the boss fights, which is undoubtedly the biggest highlight that the game has. One particular early game boss, the Rasho-Gan, is a great example of this. The boss uses a combination of ranged attacks that require the player to either dodge or deflect, while having varied attacks that are exploitable using all of the aforementioned defensive tools. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s also one of the bosses that showcases a small puzzle element to their boss design, where you’re meant to use the different weapons in your arsenal.
On the topic of bosses, one of the things that make its combat satisfying is the fact that momentum is also a very big part of the game’s design. The game rewards you for not getting hit, and it’s in how the bosses will not have access to their powered-up states if you manage to parry, deflect, and counter all of their attacks until they get to their next phase or if they reach a certain health threshold. Likewise, the game punishes you for messing up as well, where fights become a lot harder to manage even as early as its first opening seconds.
But if you were to ask me who the perfect boss was, it would be the final climactic showdown against Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Final bosses often test the players to their limits, pushing them to use every mechanic in the game to counter everything thrown at them. His design of being able to pull off similar moves as you requires you to be ready to answer their response at a moment’s notice. It’s a perfect blend of gameplay that requires you to focus on defense while being a visual marvel to showcase his psychotic nature, arrogance, and overall strength.
It’s this combat philosophy that showcases offense through defense that elevates the game further than most games in its genre. Each defensive mechanic has a clear execution barrier, with even better-defined risks and rewards. You can opt to slowly whittle down an enemy through easier means of dodging and parrying, or you can speed things up by doing well-timed deflects and Issens. It’s a masterful execution of satisfying combat that encourages you to subtly improve, pushing you to use everything they have to engage with the many enemies Musashi faces.
A Lot of Padding Means Less Meaningful Action
However, the gameplay loop isn’t flawless. For one, the gameplay loop suffers from not being a fully-linear game akin to something like PRAGMATA or Resident Evil: Requiem. There’s a lot of filler in between every big chapter as you slowly rid Kyoto from Corrupted Malice, and it eventually ends up being a bigger lull in the game than one might expect it to be.
And if you’re going to make a pseudo open-world, you have to give players bigger reasons to explore. Sure, the side quests do offer a semblance of that, but even then they weren’t great in showcasing the different parts of Kyoto. Most of the time these quests ask you to revisit areas you’ve already been to, which makes it feel like an even bigger chore to begin with.
The gameplay also suffers from the normal encounters being a hit or miss. If you’re expecting this to be a rant about the game "not being aggressive" enough, then you’d be wrong. The combat shines in boss fights the most, but it’s also when fighting multiple enemy varieties where fights feel a lot more engaging than they initially are. The problem is that the latter doesn’t happen as much as they should.
One of my most memorable fights in the game was from a side quest that involved Musashi investigating a nightly procession which turned out to be a collective of Genma parading around Kyoto. After fighting so many bosses at this point, I was confident that I could just breeze through everything with ease. And that was where I got my rude awakening. A combination of heavy enemies, archers, ninja-like enemies, a unique tentacle enemy (Chijiko), and another boss, is where I realized that the combat is perfect where it was.
It was a fun experience, one that I hoped that the game would continue to have, but there aren't too many of these that exist in the game’s default difficulty modes. At the end of the day, the normal encounters do fulfill the intention of making Musashi extremely strong, but it’s because of the game’s open-world design that magnifies the experience of not having enough variety in its normal encounters and reasonable exploration that stifles the entire experience.
Impressive Performance On All Fronts
Finally, I want to end this review with giving props to Capcom constantly improving the RE Engine with every game that they release. It’s no secret that the engine has had trouble when it comes to more open-world design with games like Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon’s Dogma 2 having similar problems when it comes to performance. That said, the improvements that they’ve made to optimization is clearly noticeable, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword showcases this the best.
I played the game on a base PlayStation 5, and it’s quite refreshing to see that the game manages to uphold perfect 60FPS in both pacing and stability in its Performance Mode. The level of detail in the game is also indicative of the game’s great art direction and visual quality, especially in areas where there’s a lot of different lighting contrasts, foliage, and great hair quality. There are times when the lighting in indoor scenes look flat, but if that’s the price to pay to have perfect stability, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay every time.
Is Onimusha: Way of the Sword Worth It?
Absolutely! A Revival That Was Well Worth the Wait!
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is quite possibly the best comeback you can have for a series that’s been asleep for so long. Capcom managed to perfectly blend the things that made the franchise iconic with modern action game flair that makes it completely shine in the best way possible. For $69.99, the game is very much a triumph in almost all fronts, and is what I would categorize as what a perfect action game should look, feel, and be like.
I would consider this game as a must-play for anyone remotely interested in action games and even more so to people who are fans of action games. Like its well-balanced narrative, it manages to scale its combat just as well. It’s accessible to players who haven’t touched a reaction-based action game through various accessibility options and difficulty settings, as well as give seasoned players a system with enough combat mechanics to showcase skill expression.
FAQ
How Long Does It Take to Beat Onimusha: Way of the Sword?
An initial playthrough of Onimusha: Way of the Sword takes about 20-25 hours, with an additional of about 4-5 hours to fulfill side content. Aspiring completionists will have to take about 30-40 hours to get all necessary achievements, as it will require an additional playthrough plus grinding for other specific challenges.
Is Onimusha: Way of the Sword a Souls-Like?
No. While the game has all of the necessary mechanics to be considered a souls-like, the game is not a souls-like.
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