Onimusha: Way of the Sword is, on one hand, a demanding action game built around intense boss fights. On the other, it’s surprisingly forgiving when it comes to mowing down regular enemies, letting you dispatch them almost however you like. Those two seemingly contradictory philosophies coexist throughout the game, often overlapping in ways that make it easy to misunderstand at first—but they also form one of its greatest strengths.
After the public demo featuring Kiyomizu-dera Temple, many players came away saying the game felt too easy—at least until they reached Sasaki Ganryu, the boss waiting on the famous stage of Kiyomizu’s main hall.
I’ve always felt that action games built around combat generally offer one of two kinds of satisfaction. The first is the thrill of overcoming seemingly impossible opponents through persistence and mastery. The second is the joy of defeating enemies with style—making every encounter look as cool as possible.
Most action games lean heavily toward one or the other, but Onimusha: Way of the Sword may be one of the rare exceptions that embraces both equally.
Style over substance?
Much like Sifu, Onimusha: Way of the Sword dynamically changes combat animations depending on the positioning of both the player and the enemy. Purposely guarding while your back is turned or luring enemies close to a wall triggers unique contextual animations that make every encounter feel cinematic.
Unlike Sifu, positioning isn’t a core strategic mechanic, but it does give players remarkable freedom to choreograph stylish sword fights.“
Unlike Sifu, positioning isn’t a core strategic mechanic, but it does give players remarkable freedom to choreograph stylish sword fights. As Miyamoto Musashi, you can elegantly deflect attacks from virtually any direction, creating the impression of a superhuman swordsman effortlessly handling every threat.
The game’s one-handed and two-handed attacks essentially function as light and heavy attacks. When both combatants attack simultaneously, they clash in a mechanic called Blade Barrage. Switching from a one-handed attack to a two-handed one—or vice versa—allows you to win the exchange, resulting in another satisfyingly cinematic sequence.
Parries have become a staple of modern action games, but Onimusha: Way of the Sword features two distinct defensive mechanics: Deflect and Parry.
Parry works similar to other action games. Use the guard button with precise timing, and you’ll stagger your opponent, creating an opening for a counterattack.
Deflect, however, works differently. By holding the guard button and pressing the DualSense controller’s X button at the moment an enemy attacks, you can safely intercept incoming blows while dramatically reducing the enemy’s Stamina gauge. This gauge functions much like the Posture meter in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: once it’s completely depleted, you’ll have an opportunity to unleash a devastating attack.
That creates an interesting decision during every fight. Do you prioritize creating an immediate opening through Parry, or focus on breaking the enemy’s Stamina gauge with Deflect?
The two mechanics don’t just deepen combat—they also make every encounter look spectacular. According to director Satoru Nihei, Parry and Deflect feature over 300 unique animations, changing depending on the enemy’s size and type.
And then there’s Issen, the mechanic that has always defined Onimusha.
Issen is a devastating counterattack triggered by striking at the exact moment an enemy attacks. It’s flashy, immensely satisfying to pull off, and instantly kills most standard enemies. The catch is that its timing window is tight and a failed attempt will put the player at a high risk. More than anything else, Issen encapsulates both the brilliance and the difficulty of Onimusha: Way of the Sword. It represents the series’ unique balance between risk, reward, and style.
Issen is the very definition of high risk, high reward. Yet against ordinary enemies, there’s little practical reason to attempt it, as they’re easy enough to defeat through conventional attacks, so players focused purely on efficiency can simply ignore the mechanic here.
Boss fights however, make the risk of utilizing Issen even greater. Missing the timing often results in taking massive damage, and since the bosses themselves are already challenging, I rarely felt I had the luxury of attempting an Issen during my hands-on session. Other journalists at the event shared similar experiences, with several telling me they had simply “given up trying to use Issen against bosses.”
So if it’s unnecessary against regular enemies and often too risky against bosses, what purpose does Issen really serve?
The answer, I think, is simple: it looks bad-ass.
Most of the time, attempting an Issen isn’t the most efficient strategy. But when you pull it off, the payoff is immensely satisfying—not only because it feels stylish, but because there’s always the possibility of a huge reward. At first glance, Issen seems designed primarily for players who want to show off, yet mastering it ultimately becomes one of the game’s greatest challenges.
A Little Smarter Than the Genma
During this hands-on session, I explored a brand-new area called the Oni Refuge. While the word Oni itself is Japanese for demon or ogre, in Onimusha, the Oni are depicted as an ancient, supernatural race of spiritual beings in war with the evil Genma faction. The Oni Refuge is a place created by the Oni to hunt the Genma.
The area begins inside a cave repaired with kintsugi – a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold – before opening into a surreal landscape where massive rocks and fragments of ruined shrines and temples float through the sky. Unlike stages based on real-world locations, this is unapologetically fantasy. It’s unsettling, mysterious, and possesses a uniquely Japanese sense of beauty.
The level design also takes advantage of the setting in ways that simply wouldn’t be possible in a realistic environment.
Early in the stage, Musashi acquires the Oni Bow, a magical bow with an unlimited supply of arrows. From that point on, it becomes the centerpiece of the area’s design. Simple environmental puzzles have you shooting massive boulders just as enemies walk underneath them, or firing at giant cubes blocking your path to clear the way forward.
At one point, Musashi quips, “There’s no way a Genma brain could solve a puzzle like this.”
I was relieved to discover that I’m at least slightly smarter than a Genma. That said, anyone hoping for elaborate puzzle-solving may come away disappointed. Compared to Capcom’s other recent releases, Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, Onimusha: Way of the Sword feels much closer to a pure action game. Exploration exists, but it’s probably best viewed as a complement to the combat rather than a defining feature.
Combat inside the Oni Refuge is largely designed around creative uses of the Oni Bow, making its environmental interactions feel like a natural extension of the action rather than a break from it.
Boss Battles Reinvent Soul Absorption
At the end of the Oni Refuge awaits Daidara, a gigantic man-eating Genma. Unlike Sasaki Ganryu, the humanoid boss featured in the demo, Daidara is a towering monster. Its sweeping club attacks and charging assaults are relatively easy to read, but getting caught by one deals tremendous damage.
The most interesting aspect of the fight, however, isn’t the monster itself—it’s how it transforms one of Onimusha’s oldest mechanics. Soul Absorption has always been one of the defining features of the series. After defeating enemies, Musashi can absorb the souls they leave behind using his Oni Gauntlet by pressing L2. Different-colored souls restore health, fill special attack gauges, or grant experience points. To be honest, it’s a system that has remained largely unchanged since the PlayStation 2 era, and by modern standards it doesn’t feel particularly interesting.
Daidara changes that entirely. The gluttonous beast can absorb souls as well. If it manages to consume them before you do, its stomach swells and it powers up, turning Soul Absorption into a frantic race between player and boss.
Because Daidara rarely lets up its offensive pressure, you’re constantly forced to dodge and defend while simultaneously trying to absorb souls before it can. Even if it does succeed in powering up, though, all isn’t lost. By relentlessly attacking its enlarged stomach, you can recover a huge number of the souls it consumed.
It’s a clever evolution of a classic mechanic. Soul Absorption still feels unmistakably Onimusha, but it also gains a level of interactivity that makes it feel surprisingly fresh in 2026. Previous games featured enemies like Gyaran that could steal souls from the player, but never in a way that created such a meaningful back-and-forth during a major boss fight.
According to director Satoru Nihei, Daidara isn’t the only boss that gives Soul Absorption its own unique twist, which has me looking forward to discovering what the rest of the game has in store.
Action Over Exploration
After the Oni Refuge stage, I returned to the Rokudo-chinnoji Temple, the player’s central hub. Ringing the temple bell transports you to a separate dimension where you can revisit combat tutorials and rematch previously defeated bosses. It’s also a convenient place to practice techniques you’ve just learned. Interestingly, Deflect—which was available from the start in the demo—is actually unlocked later in the full game.
From Rokudo-chinnoji, I ventured into Kyoto, a wide-linear area that serves as the game’s primary exploration zone, completing several main quests along the way. Most of the regular enemies here weren’t particularly threatening, making these sections feel like a welcome breather between the more demanding boss encounters. Before long, I found myself attempting Issen again—not because I had to, but simply because it was fun to fight stylishly.
I had already fought Rasho-gan back at Summer Game Fest in June, where my demo ended with the frustrating feeling that I had been just one step away from victory. As it turns out, I wasn’t close at all, as Rasho-gan has a second phase.“
Random events where villagers are attacked by Genma can also occur here. Saving them rewards you with items, while failing means they really do die. These events are pretty straightforward, and I have to admit it already began feeling repetitive during my three-hour hands-on session.
There are other optional exploration elements as well, including hidden items scattered throughout the world. One reward I particularly appreciated was the ability to unlock additional outfits for Musashi, although that’s not exclusive to the wide-linear areas.
Even so, I wouldn’t say exploring Kyoto itself was especially exciting. What stayed with me wasn’t the exploration, but the boss fight against Rasho-gan, whom I encountered at the Yasui Konpiragu Shrine within the area.
Cutting Ties
I had already fought Rasho-gan back at Summer Game Fest in June, where my demo ended with the frustrating feeling that I had been just one step away from victory.
As it turns out, I wasn’t close at all, as Rasho-gan has a second phase. In fact, every boss I’ve fought in Onimusha: Way of the Sword seems to have a second phase. As it should be in a well-crafted action game, each boss dramatically changes its attack patterns as the fight progresses. Once Rasho-gan enters its second phase, it begins using a troublesome grab attack that caught me over and over again.
What I also appreciate is that, much like Daidara’s Soul Absorption battle, each boss introduces its own unique gameplay twist. Rasho-gan masquerades as a deity of matchmaking and broken relationships, and its body is bound together by mystical threads. By literally cutting those bonds, you can temporarily weaken the boss.
Rasho-gan proved to be a formidable opponent, taking me quite a few attempts to defeat. Little by little, I learned its wide variety of attack patterns and eventually realized that relying on Deflect was far more effective than trying to Parry. It was the kind of satisfying victory that only comes from a well-designed boss fight—one where you can genuinely feel yourself improving with each attempt.
After finally bringing Rasho-gan down, I returned to carving through regular enemies with ease, and that’s when I realized what makes Onimusha: Way of the Sword feel so different from its peers.
Its bosses are every bit as demanding as those found in a Soulslike, but the journey between them isn’t built around constant punishment. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is a game that manages to challenge the player without becoming exhausting, allowing the game to shift naturally between moments of intense concentration and opportunities to simply enjoy stylish swordplay.
Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan.