Onimusha: Way of the Sword brings Capcom’s samurai action series back after a 20-year absence. It also exposes how difficult that revival was: the game preserves the famous Issen counter while replacing much of the focused survival-action design that once gave the series its identity.
Capcom’s original Onimusha occupied an unusual place in the company’s history. Its 3D action design grew from the foundations of Resident Evil, while its development helped inspire Devil May Cry. The series became a bridge between Capcom’s early survival-horror experiments and its later, more free-flowing action games.
That history created a difficult path forward. Earlier entries gradually became longer and less focused as the action genre changed, and the series eventually went quiet in 2006. Its identity rested on two major ideas: high cinematic ambition and a distinctive blend of exploration, resource management and close-quarters combat.
A cinematic samurai comeback
The series has always pursued film-like spectacle, including real-world stars in its digital-period dramas. Takeshi Kaneshiro played the samurai hero Samanosuke, while Jean Reno appeared as a time-travelling French police officer. Way of the Sword follows that tradition by presenting a digital version of the late screen legend Toshiro Mifune as Miyamoto Musashi, the celebrated warrior and poet. The character also echoes Mifune’s role in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy.
The second defining feature was mechanical. Onimusha adapted the spatial movement and resource concerns of Resident Evil into a melee-focused format. Attacking did not consume ammunition; instead, defeated enemies released souls that could be spent on upgrades and ammunition. Players could avoid danger with deliberate movement or hold their position and attempt an Issen: a precisely timed counterattack that produced a much larger reward.
The Issen became the series’ essential idea. It turned every enemy into a risk-and-reward decision, asking whether the player would safely reposition or trust their timing for a more valuable result. For more background on arcade and game-design history, explore RETROCADE’s Arcade Blog.
One familiar mechanic, a very different game
Way of the Sword includes the Issen, but much less of the structure around it. Rather than exploring a compact, connected environment, players move through an open world filled with side missions and collectibles. Movement is no longer restrained and carefully spaced. Musashi’s attacks slide him towards targets, while enemy strikes track heavily. Combat also feeds several overlapping upgrade systems through a wide range of currencies.
The result is a game that appears to preserve Onimusha’s central feature while substituting many of its supporting principles. That creates compromises between the open-world format, the upgrade economy and a combat system that still wants to reward strict timing.
Five defensive answers to every attack
The original combat system made positioning meaningful. Turning was limited, movement was measured and avoiding an attack depended on understanding where danger would land. Staying in place exposed the player to damage but created the opportunity for an Issen.
That structure had an inherent limitation: the Issen is largely binary. A player either hits the timing or misses it, whereas movement allows a broad range of outcomes from clumsy to precise. Once enemy timings become familiar, the apparent risk can disappear. Earlier games experimented with different Issen variations to restore decision-making, with mixed results.
Way of the Sword pushes the timing-based approach much further. Its defensive toolkit includes five distinct reactions: the Issen, parry, reflex dodge, deflect and blade barrage. Enemies use attacks designed to demand different responses, timings and rewards.
The system will inevitably invite comparisons with Sekiro, but its structure also resembles Punch-Out!!. Boss encounters ask players to read animations, select the correct response and repeat it with accurate timing. As patterns become familiar, the satisfaction comes from turning observation into complete control.
Outstanding boss fights, stretched too far
At its strongest, the game’s boss design is exceptional. Later duels can be brutally demanding, but their attacks are not inherently impossible. Progress depends on watching carefully, remembering successful responses, maintaining composure and trying again.
The audiovisual feedback makes those victories especially satisfying. Correct parries, counters and defensive reactions land with powerful sound and impact. Boss fights represent the clearest expression of this new direction for Onimusha, and they are likely to create a devoted audience despite the game’s other problems.
There is, however, a serious pacing issue. A boss-focused challenge can sustain this pattern for a while, but Way of the Sword was played for 25 hours with substantial optional content still unfinished. The comparison to Punch-Out!! reveals the problem: learning an opponent’s patterns is compelling, but repeating that structure across a much larger adventure can become exhausting.
Mob combat works against the design
Outside boss encounters, the combat system is far less convincing. Bosses use intense attacks and limited openings, forcing players to find moments to heal. Retreating is not always safe because enemy stamina recharges quickly. Ordinary groups of enemies do not create the same pressure or demand the same level of adaptation.
Musashi’s moveset is built around single-target parries, so groups often wait their turn to attack. In the earlier games, an Issen had a hitbox that could reward herding enemies together and defeating several foes with one counter. Here, Issen attacks are locked animations that can be extended only through another timed input or by reducing an enemy’s stamina.
Armour does little to solve the problem. It generally becomes a prompt to use a particular armour-breaking action rather than an interesting change to the encounter. Most groups therefore feel like collections of individual targets defeated in a fixed sequence, rather than combinations whose make-up changes the strategy. Enemy types begin to feel repetitive after only a few appearances, while recurring minibosses add to the fatigue.
An open world that dilutes the samurai action
This weakness would be easier to accept in a short, linear action game. The open-world structure instead asks players to revisit areas, repeat fights and gather small quantities of materials for incremental improvements, such as increasing sword damage by 2 per cent with resources including iron and whetstones.
Navigation relies on map markers, breadcrumb trails and a detective-vision-style ability for locating hidden chests. The world adds plenty of activity, but little of it strengthens the core combat. Repeating a battle after mastering the relevant enemy does not feel like a meaningful test, and thinly distributed upgrade materials can leave players choosing between tedious collection and remaining underpowered.
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The open world feels less like a natural expansion of Onimusha than an obligation attached to a modern big-budget release. The older games already had repeatable content: players could replay them. Turning that idea into a large map filled with recurring tasks weakens the concise rhythm that once suited the series.
Grand presentation, ordinary story
The narrative follows the series’ tradition of lavish presentation paired with an underwhelming plot. That mismatch mattered less in the 2001 original, whose shorter and more engaging structure carried its story forward. In this longer adventure, generic writing and uneven pacing become harder to overlook.
The digital Mifune likeness gives the production considerable visual ambition, but the character is placed in familiar shonen-style situations rather than a compelling historical fantasy. Grey visuals and photoscanned performers reinforce the serious tone without giving the story enough personality to make that tone effective.
The setting offers better possibilities than the game uses. Way of the Sword takes place in Kyoto during the early Tokugawa Shogunate and includes the Imperial Palace, yet it does little to explain the political and historical significance of those locations. The original games were not renowned for sophisticated storytelling either, but they had more fun connecting their Oni mythology to battles and events from the Sengoku period.
Verdict
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is neither poorly made nor without merit. Its boss fights provide a demanding, polished and deeply satisfying test of timing. For some players, those encounters will justify the entire experience.
Unfortunately, that strength occupies only an estimated 10 to 30 per cent of the playtime, depending on how often players die and how much optional content they tackle. The rest alternates between combat that does not suit group encounters, repetitive open-world tasks and a story that rarely supplies a strong reason to continue.
Capcom has revived Onimusha, but the result is caught between the series’ focused past and modern expectations of scale. Its best duels point towards a compelling future; the surrounding open world and diluted structure show how much was lost along the way.
Review details
- Developer: Capcom
- Genre: Cinematic open-world action game with RPG elements
- Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC
- Platform played: PlayStation 5
- Release date: September 24, 2026
- Play time: 25 hours, with substantial open-world content remaining
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