The demo for Onimusha: Way of the Sword might have seen you instantly deflect arrows and take on one of the final bosses with a mere flick of some buttons, but some more time with the game in my Onimusha: Way of the Sword preview showed me just how careful and deliberate you'll need to be in the full game. It's a dark, gory, and distinctly Onimusha game, and I think the full game will prove to be a hit for new and old fans alike.
This is, at its core, not just a good Samurai game, but a totally immersive experience. Way of the Sword owes that to its stellar worldbuilding. The writing is compelling, with its story and characters being believable while entertaining, and the art direction for the environment is incredible. I'll get back to this, because I know you want to know about the combat first, the difficulty of which is currently the topic of hot debate - is it easy enough? Is it too easy?
Now, Ganryu was fine to take down in the demo, but you were never supposed to kill him, unlike the bosses you meet in the rest of the game, which are difficult to the point of frustration. They're easy enough to read in terms of attack patterns, but actually executing what you want to do is really quite difficult with no practice. The timing windows are very narrow for pretty much every move you can pull off, and bosses - especially Daidara, the large beast you fight after Ganryu - don't leave you time to move before they lock onto you.
It's for this reason that the difficulty options don't change how hard Way of the Sword is that much - it's much more about getting really skilled and practicing your moves than it is about packing a punch, and a narrow mistake with timing in both modes can leave Musashi on the floor gasping for his last tethers to life. At least Way of the Sword offers us a training ground, but with the time I had in the game, I wasn't able to start feeling like I was doing a good job.
According to director Satoru Nihei, this is an action game where death is supposed to be more incidental. The game could have fooled me. Now I'm not the greatest gamer in the world, but other people playing the preview around me died too - a lot. During one boss in a corrupted area in the game, Musashi needs to shoot down tethers before the boss crashes large and heavy items down over his head, but the margin for error is absolutely tiny. We were cursing under our breath.
Another thing that the Way of the Sword devs were keen to get across in prior interviews is that WotS isn't an open-world game. I would say that this sentiment is misleading. It's a semi-open world, a bit like you'd find in Like a Dragon or Yakuza. While doing your linear main quests, you're free to explore Kyoto at any time you choose, and are able to help residents fend off the Genma for small rewards, much like you can in the worlds of Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Ghost of Tsushima.
You also work to increase the map size over time, ridding the area of corruption and allowing you to play in a bigger field. It's missing the sheer number of interactable NPCs or side quests that you'd get in a game like Skyrim, but it feels disingenuous to claim there is no open world, because technically, I could spend my whole time helping townspeople and not doing the quest at all.
What I will add on the subject of the Genma and NPCs is that, even without the reflect ability from the demo, which you can unlock later, the mobs are pretty easy to pick off in both story and combat modes. They do group up, but never seem to rush you at the same time, making it pretty easy to wear them down. This provides a break from the punishing gameplay of the bosses, but may lead some to disappointment from people hoping for non-stop thrills.
Now that we've talked about the combat, let me return to my glazing of the writing and design teams. When the level design is at its least good, it's still atmospheric and detailed, and when at its best, in an area called Oni Refuge, it took my breath away a few times. The ornate details make the environment feel sufficiently war-torn, and there's always the element of fantasy involved in any destruction nearby due to the fantastic design of the corruption.
I wasn't massively impressed by the animation of the cutscenes, particularly when it comes to the people in them, but the writing was engaging enough to keep me interested and committed to the game. This is both impressive, as this magical realism genre isn't my favorite, and necessary. Because the game doesn't have fluffy side quests, it relies on its storytelling in the main quest to keep you playing, and it's an easy sell here with a colorful cast of heroes and villains, and an intrigue to the events that unfold. The whole game feels like it could have fallen apart without it.
The biggest question mark for me is how it will perform on the Nintendo Switch 2. I was able to try it out on the Switch 2 at the preview event, but only for a few minutes. Games like Pragmata have a fuzzy quality to them in handheld mode despite an awesome docked experience, and from the small chunk of time I got with WotS on Switch 2, it seemed pretty similar. Though framerates were smooth and the controls well-executed, I wonder if Switch 2 players might be better off playing this on their TVs - only time will tell, though.
Whatever genre names you want to use for Onimusha: Way of the Sword, this is shaping up to be a great game that will take you some time to master. It does not give its players easy or cheap ways out, and expects you to respect the level of detail and care that its developers have put into it. I think that's a very noble goal, and I'm looking forward to seeing Onimusha fans get really good at this game.
The game comes out on September 3, but until then, come yap with us in the Pocket Tactics Discord server about what you're looking forward to, and follow us on TikTok for more reviews, news, and opinions.