We go hands-on with the famed blade prior to the game’s release
It’s been 20 years since the last main line entry in the Onimusha series. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is looking to make up for all of that lost time with a new title for fans and a series entry point for new players. Capcom shared a presentation and unique event demo for those in attendance at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days, and after my hands-on time with it, it has clearly has jumped towards the top of my most anticipated games for this year.
Set in Edo-period Kyoto, players control Musashi Miyamoto, a samurai who has been equipped with a sentient gauntlet that allows him to absorb the souls of the enemy Genma he’s defeated. The demo focused on restoring 8 stone figures to their original location together to gain their power and dispel the miasma from the area. We were able to locate the missing figures in whatever order we saw fit and then face head to head with a strong boss-like Genma at the end. Shown briefly during the presentation, Kyoto’s map is actually more open than it has appeared so far in footage. Although the section in the demo was limited, the play space felt open and well designed for making things easily navigable with well designed sightlines to important objectives. For those familiar with other semi open-world games, random encounters can occur, like a citizen needing to be rescued out of a tree who was chased up by some antagonizing Genma, rewarding us for engaging in the activity.
Combat is the focus however, and luckily there are plenty of options to cut down our foes. On top of our not so standard light and heavy katana attacks, we are able to parry attacks, reflect projectiles, fire a bow and arrow, and activate a special skill known as an Issen. If we strike right as an enemy is about to hit us, Musashi performs the Issen, placing him directly behind an enemy with a devastating hit. On weaker enemies it can be an instant KO and on stronger enemies and bosses it does a large amount of damage. I felt the timing window is extremely tight to pull off, so the game is designed for it to be much safer to block or parry an attack than try the move. It feels impressively satisfying to land and oddly feels comforting to know that if we panic and see an attack late while stumbling over then we might pull it off and buy ourselves a little more time to survive.
The demo’s final Genma was blighting the shrine and “fixing” unsuspecting patrons’ problems by removing their ‘affliction’, causing more serious issues. Don’t want to practice your instrument anymore? Let’s get rid of those fingers. The Genma then seemingly uses these donated appendages in the fight. Playing the demo on the action difficulty, it took me 3 times to clear it (our own Dali didn’t even make it that far, but we were passing off the controller). Combat options give us the ability to be hyper aggressive and respond to every attack, or lay back and wait for an opportunity until we might be more comfortable to move in. The battle felt fair and had decent tells for us to identify attacking patterns, but just my lack of ability and knowledge from what would include hours of previous play in the story held me back from completing it more timely. But I finally did, and that’s only due to really getting to understand his attack patterns.
There is currently a demo available for the game on several platforms that is a different section to what was show to the press at SGF, so anyone interested in going hands on with the combat for themselves would be smart to get prepared.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is only a few months away, but after my time spent with it at Summer Game Fest this year, it can’t come soon enough. The game will be available on PC, PS5, XBOX, and Nintendo Switch 2 September 25th.
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