I first saw Onimusha: Way of the Sword at last year’s Summer Game Fest, but I didn’t get to go hands-on with it myself until the Tokyo Game Show. It was the best game I played at an absolutely stacked show, so when I got another crack at it earlier this month, it didn’t disappoint. I’m not quite sure it was the best game I saw at SGF this year – competition was fierce between this, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Alien Isolation 2, and some that I simply can’t talk about yet – but it’s easily in the conversation.
My demo of Onimusha was a two-parter. The first part was a hands-off presentation inside a theater. It was impressive and featured a couple of boss battles I wish I’d gotten to play. But an action game is only as good as it feels, so I’m going to focus on my hands-on demo for this preview. And man, does Onimusha feel good.
My demo dropped me into a mission called “Careful What You Wish For.” Musashi finds himself at Yasui Konpiragu Shrine, which has been overrun by Malice and is now the home to a Genma who is relieving shrinegoers of their burdens in a rather deranged way. The first woman I ran into had come to the shrine because she envied what she looked upon. Can’t covet without eyes, right? So there’s your solution. Another man came to the shrine hoping to be rid of the pain in his knee. No knee, no pain. Problem solved. And two lovers who wished to be together forever are turned into living dolls. Worst of all, everybody seems pretty happy about all this. Something has to be done, and Musashi is the one to do it. Musashi and Shizuka, the voice he hears in his gauntlet, figure the best way to do this is to make contact with the soul of Yorimasa, an Oni who was revered as a hero in the mortal realm. But to do that, they’ll first need the help of the Eight Stout Pillars. Problem is, there’s only five of them in their shrine; the rest have been scattered around the shrine by humans bewitched by the Genma. This is where my demo really starts.
Before I get into that, though, I want to quickly pause and talk about Musashi himself. If you’re not aware, Musashi is modeled after legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, who is best known for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa. You know, the guy who directed films like Seven Samurai, Ran, Kagemusha, The Hidden Fortress, and Yojimbo. Onimusha has a long history of using the likenesses of real actors for its characters (see Jean Reno in Onimusha 3), but what Capcom has done to capture Mifune is incredibly impressive. From his facial animations to the way he scratches his head to his iconic shoulder shrugs, Capcom has nailed Mifune’s mannerisms and transferred them to Musashi admirably.
Back to my hunt for the missing Three Stout Pillars. Shizuka was there to guide me, and Way of the Sword has a very generous “Hey, follow the shiny ball of light to the objective” thing going on if you’re really not into exploring yourself (though you should, because the shrine is neat), so it wasn’t exactly hard to find my missing stone friends.
But the real motivator here is the combat. Action games have to feel good, and Way of the Sword feels amazing. Let’s get something straight out of the gate: Way of the Sword is not that kind of action game. It’s not Devil May Cry and it’s not Ninja Gaiden. It is not what I would call Combo Mad. What it is instead is deliberate. It’s got the standard light attack/heavy attack combos that you’d expect from most non-Combo Mad action games, but the trick here is you can transition between them seamlessly, and it feels fantastic. What makes Onimusha special, really, is the defensive play. You can parry almost any attack in Way of the Sword, opening them up to retaliation. If that’s not your bag, you can deflect attacks, which builds up your foes’ stagger meter (and can be used to deflect projectiles). You’ve also got your dodge, which is the only way to avoid grabs, and you generally get a pretty sick counter for timing them perfectly (known as a Reflex Dodge). If you’re feeling nasty, though, you can attempt an Issen counter, which requires you to attack just before your opponent’s attack lands.
Time it right, and you’ll execute lesser Genma on the spot, but time it wrong and you’ll get hit, so you’ve either gotta know what’s coming and be confident in your reflexes or guess, and the latter is likely to get you killed if you’re not paying attention. When you’re cooking, Way of the Sword feels incredible. You don’t really fight enemies so much as move through them, you’re encouraged to make use of these defensive techniques.
Chaining together parries and deflects builds a meter that activates Blazing State, which juices Musashi’s blade and causes enemies to drop more blue souls when killed. There are three kinds of souls: yellow (health) and red (currency), but blue souls power your Oni Armaments, powerful weapons that can clear rooms or deal devastating strikes to single foes, provided you have enough souls to charge them up. Chaining Reflex Dodges opens up mighty Reflex Combos to really lay on the hurt. And then you have stuff like Blade Barrages, choreographed sequences when two blades combine that require you to press the right attack to come out on top, or Blade Locks, where you’ll have to overpower your foe. Way of the Sword gives you a ton of tools to deal with those nasty Genma however you like, and that’s pretty rad. If I have one complaint about my time with it so far, it’s that it might be too easy. I played on the harder of the two modes we had access to during my demo, but the only time I felt challenged was when I decided not to use healing items at all and rely strictly on yellow souls. Admittedly, I’m a bit of an action game junkie and this was a demo where we had access to things Musashi wouldn’t have until much later in the game, but as someone who craves a challenge, I hope Onimusha keeps the hits coming.
After I’d rounded up the last of the missing Stout Pillars, it was time for a showdown with the Genma holding the shrine hostage. His name was Rasho-gan. Nasty bugger. When I met him, he was in the process of severing a woman from her fingers because she didn’t want to play the Shamisen anymore. She, like every other victim of the shrine, is overjoyed. He tries to sever Musashi’s arm, and nearly gets away with it, but Musashi reminds me that he’s not getting anything from him before the fight starts. Rasho-gan’s a great fight; he tested my mastery of Musashi’s defensive techniques. The trick was not committing too much to attacking and letting him come to me. It felt a little too easy at first, which of course was when a second health bar appeared. He had some new tricks – at one point he was dropping parts of the shrine on me like I was the Wicked Witch of the East – but the goal was the same. Hit those parries and deflects and Issens, cash in for big damage when I could, and avoid overcommitting. I managed a fairly comfortable but contested win the first time, but I beat my demo with time to spare, so when I was asked if I’d like to do the fight again, I jumped at the chance. The second time, he barely touched me. Onimusha had let me display mastery, and I loved it for that.
Often, you leave a demo satisfied. But sometimes, you put down your controller with another thought in mind: “Yeah, I could keep going.” If Capcom had let me, I would have played Onimusha: Way of the Sword all day. But the ride’s gotta end sometime, and I was happy with what I did get to see. Plus, I got to fight the boss twice. That rules. If Way of the Sword manages to maintain the quality of the two demos I’ve played for its full release, Capcom will have yet another hit in what seems like an endless string on their hands. Just… do me a favor, yeah? I need a higher difficulty to satisfy my degeneracy. It’s a disease, and there’s only one cure. Besides, Musashi wouldn’t mind the additional challenge, either.
Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.
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