Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review

After remastering older releases, Capcom is back with a new title in the Onimusha series with Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

See whether players should take on this new encroaching Genma menace with our review…

Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review

Following the story of Miyamoto Musashi, Onimusha: Way of the Sword follows history’s greatest duelist.

After defeating another challenger, Musashi is chased through some woods until he thinks he is in the clear. Unfortunately, demons are invading the same time of his escape, with a group surrounding Musashi and killing him.

Sending him to the underworld, Musashi is granted an Oni gauntlet against his will, tossed right back into the world.

Every attempt to remove this Oni Gauntlet proves useless, and Musashi eventually accepts his role to stop the Yokai invasion.

Said Oni Gauntlet in Onimusha: Way of the Sword lets Musashi absorb the souls of killed demons, allowing him to get stronger.

Considering how many demons are in Japan, you’ll need all the help you can get.

With a new mission and a new weapon, Musashi sets out to Kyoto to help its people and gain new allies.

An action RPG at its core, Onimusha: Way of the Sword will have players fighting a good deal. Combat is straightforward – but it’s important to be patient. While rushing in and spamming light and heavy attacks is an option, that won’t get players very far.

Rather, Onimusha: Way of the Sword requires players to properly utilize counters or perfect dodges to do the most damage.

After performing a successful parry, players can then do a heavy attack and possibly land a fatal hit. Even when missing a kill, I still had a skill that lit my sword on fire after three successful parries – it really made boss fights more tense!

Thankfully, Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s parry system is generous, so even people bad at it (like me) can still feel powerful.

Beyond basic attacks, Onimusha: Way of the Sword also features Oni weapons.

When absorbing enough blue souls, players can then use these Oni attacks to do serious damage and even break guards. A standout maneuver is a spinning tornado attack that hits multiple enemies and knocks them back, allowing players to regain footing.

Combining Oni attacks with normal parry and strike combos will have ripping through enemies like rice paper. While I can’t tell you how many demons I’ve cut in half, I loved it every single time.

Red souls gathered from enemies can then be used to unlock new skills, improve bow damage, or even improve one’s sneaking ability. That fire blade mentioned earlier was a skill I learned, in fact.

While not every skill is as useful as a flame blade, most are worth obtaining.

These red souls can also be used for charm upgrades that grant specific buffs to help refine one’s play style. The starter one increases healing, while the one I primarily used increased damage after a successful parry.

While not game-breaking, these additional options are most welcome.

Weapons and armor also play a big part in Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Not taking any souls to upgrade, these specific items can be found scattered throughout its world and by doing side quests – and are always worth it.

Playing on Normal, there were more than a few times when I overstepped because I didn’t go back to upgrade. Dying isn’t terrible in Onimusha: Way of the Sword with players spawning at the last shrine, but still best to avoid this altogether.

Side quests in Onimusha: Way of the Sword range from simple kill missions to big stories that culminate in a big boss fight.

Clearing out some of Kyoto’s ended up having more people come out and explore the area – I loved that. Demons still roamed the streets, sure but some people were brave enough to come out.

Regarding its boss fights, way too many of Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s foes had multiple HP bars. It can be frustrating being one phase, only to see a second HP bar yet again.

While I love the combat, even I have my limits!

There were no bugs during our review period, and I experienced no frame drops playing on Performance mode on my base PlayStation 5.

The way of the samurai shines bright in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, marking a triumphant return for Capcom’s long-running action RPG series.

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