Onimusha: Way of the Sword Modernizes A Classic Franchise While Retaining Its Soul

Welcome back to Remastered! This week, I have a first for the newsletter: a pre-release review of a major AAA game! Onimusha: Way of the Sword was one of my most anticipated games of the year, so I’m really excited to share my thoughts on it with you all.

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Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review

In an Onimusha game, every combat encounter should feel memorable and deliberate. Classic Onimusha accomplished this through fixed camera angles and tight level design. Each area of those games feels perfectly composed to frame the action properly so you, as the player, can see when and how you should strike. While radically different from its predecessors in many ways, combat in Onimusha: Way of the Sword feels equally deliberate.

Capcom’s new retro revival reimagines Onimusha for the modern era, and does so wonderfully. By combining the methodical combat design of Onimusha with the parry- and deflect-filled action gameplay popularized by games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Capcom has created the best-feeling action game of the year.

The developers weren’t afraid to try new things when releasing the first new Onimusha game in 20 years, but they also understood which big and small details to retain so that this new game still felt like classic Onimusha. With Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Capcom methodically presents a blueprint of how to do a retro revival that still feels like a modern AAA game.

Way of the Sword does not have blatant narrative connections to previous games in the series, so from the start I understood that this wasn’t a blatant nostalgia play. Instead, this Onimusha game follows the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. In this game’s universe, he and a rival swordsman named Ganryu are killed by demonic Genma, but are revived when a mysterious man in white gives them a gauntlet that can absorb souls.

Ganryu starts to gain a taste for human souls and goes insane as a result, but Musashi ultimately embraces the titular “Way of the Sword,” solely slaying Genma while making friends with the Oni living inside his gauntlet along the way. If you simply like samurai stories or action narratives set in decrepit worlds, this story won’t be confusing even if you don’t know a thing about Onimusha. Retro revivals can very easily go the route of replaying the greatest hits, but Way of the Sword does not. 

I am not an Onimusha lore expert, so I’ll be interested to see those fans break down the connections between Way of the Sword and the classic titles. From my more casual series fan perspective, though, I can commend Capcom for remembering that Onimusha games were very quirky. It’s easy to remember Onimusha as a dark and serious samurai IP, but that’s not always the case.

Classic Onimusha games have plenty of moments where you’d stumble across some weird boss or character to remind you that the game had a sense of humor. Way of the Sword acknowledges that small but important part of Onimusha’s identity, finding spots to place a wacky reaction from Musashi or a particularly flamboyant character moments that don’t get in the way of more serious scenes.

That respect for details both big and small works for the narrative, and it is also what allows Way of the Sword to go in a new but completely understandable direction with the game’s combat. You’ll still be killing Genma with a sword to absorb souls and use a special attack, but this game also lets you do so much more than that.

Action games have greatly expanded what you can do after a parry or block in combat, and Way of the Sword takes full advantage of that. Rather than button-mash your way through hordes of Genma, Way of the Sword wants you to be more deliberate with attacks and actively encourages parrying, deflecting or Issen-ing (hitting the attack button right before an enemy blow lands) as much as possible.

That’s not to say this Onimusha game is slow-paced. Some enemies and late-game bosses will really test your reaction time, occasionally to the camera’s detriment. But just as the fixed camera angles of older Onimusha titles encouraged deliberate swordfighting, the way that deflections and Issen feed back into combat and reward the player makes each button press very intentional.

In boss fights, I would rarely attack unless the enemy tried to strike me first. While I could possibly have played more efficiently, landing a series of deflections and staggering to deal massive damage as a result was too satisfying to ever pass up.

And while it can occasionally give off the same vibes and game pace as Souls-related titles such as Sekiro and Bloodborne, I appreciate how Way of the Sword never goes full Soulslike. It wouldn’t have felt like a tribute to classic Onimusha had Capcom done that, and it would have made mastering its combat an elongated, more frustrating process.

The only shortcoming to Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s combat comes in the lack of enemy variety in the late game. By two-thirds of the way through the game, you’ve pretty much seen every type of Genma the game will throw at you outside of a few important boss fights. Having some more rank-and-file Genma or mini-boss variety could’ve gone a long way in the latest stages, letting players prove their skills by taking on new foes rather than just allowing them to get more and more efficient at taking out older ones again and again.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword definitely cemented itself as one of my favorites of the year by the time I rolled credits. I really respect how Capcom chose to revive this franchise, proving that you don’t have to play into nostalgia. Instead, it’s possible to reinterpret the core elements that made a franchise special in the past, and turn it into something more recognizable in the medium's modern era. As more and more developers return to taking safe bets and reviving fan-favorite franchises in the coming years, I hope they all take note.

What's Old Is News

Gamescom has now completely wrapped up, and these were some of the biggest announcements from last week that weren’t in major showcases:

• Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement was delayed until 2027.
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 launches on October 14. 
• I missed shouting out the frog-filled, retro-inspired RPG Amphibian from last week’s Future Game Show.
• Devolver announced Volvy’s Adventure: Reslimed, a remaster of a fictitious retro platformer starring the publisher’s mascot. It’ll launch on November 19, the same day as Grand Theft Auto 6.
• On that note, Grand Theft Auto 6 had its gameplay debut last week, and its rendition of Vice City looks very faithful to the classic game of the same name.
• Tim Curry, who iconically boasted about going to space in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, and Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime in several Transformers games, both died on August 26.
• Atari is working with Activision to re-release several of its classic Atari 2600 games on new cartridges. 
• Time Extension reports that a Japanese retro gaming showcase called Game Center CX is finally considering PS3 and Wii games as retro.
• Last week, I wrote an article about the forgotten licensed game Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters for Polygon. In response, Game History Secrets' Liam Robertson revealed on Bluesky that it "was built from the remnants of a cancelled Justice League video game."

I actually beat Onimusha: Way of the Sword earlier last week, so I’ve been playing some other games over the weekend:

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 - The original Fireteam Elite is a Game Pass guilty pleasure of mine, so I was looking forward to the sequel. Unfortunately, it’s quite a by-the-numbers co-op shooter, and one that I forget about as soon as I turn it off. Look for my full thoughts on this one soon on Polygon. 

Star Wars: Zero Company - I’ve only played a few hours of this one, but I can already tell it’s probably my game of the year. XCOM and Star Wars make for a genius combination that feels tailor-made for me, and Zero Company’s deep strategic combat and RPG systems deliver. On top of that, I also really respect how this game finds a new kind of story to tell in the Clone Wars, as its ragtag group of fringe Republic outcasts feels like something you’d more often find in Star Wars’ Age of Rebellion. I highly recommend picking this one up.

That’s all for this week! Remastered will return September 10. Subscribe so you don’t miss out on that newsletter, and consider supporting independent games media by contributing to my Ko-fi.