A good boss battle is one of the most sublime feelings in the world, like pulling your blanket out of the dryer so it’s all toasty. Amazingly, my favorite boss battle of the year might come from a game that doesn’t even release in 2025, but from Capcom’s long-awaited revival of the Onimusha franchise, Way of the Sword. At a recent preview event, I had the chance to go hands-on with Way of the Sword, and ended up playing the demo three times just to go through the boss battle at the end again. It’s made me more excited for the game than anything else, because it finally made me realize what this Onimusha is going for in terms of combat — it’s a game about duels.
Onimusha has long been one of Capcom’s most fascinating franchises because of how uniquely different every single entry is. The first Onimusha was a straight-up copy of Resident Evil set in Feudal Japan, while Onimusha 3 transformed into more of a Devil May Cry action game with a bizarre time travel story. But those drastic differences have proven to be Onimusha’s biggest strength, and it’s already starting to look like Way of the Sword knows it.
This modern reinvention of Onimusha plays a lot differently than past games, but it’s also very clearly not a Soulslike or character action game. That’s exactly why I call this a “Dueling Game,” because it’s heavily focused on the flow of sword battles, the importance of parries, and facing down one enemy at a time.
Way of the Sword features a new protagonist, the legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto. The demo I played had Musashi slowly making his way up a mountain path to a temple, where the demon-like Genma are eliminating droves of people.
This demo was heavily focused on combat, giving me a sense of how the game would flow — and more than anything, this does feel like an evolution of Onimusha. You have your basic light and heavy attacks, but then three different kinds of parries/counters. Pressing L1 will let you block incoming attacks, but if you time it right, you can pull off a cinematic parry, sending sparks flying as the metal blades grind against each other. Holding down L1+X will let you Deflect the blow briefly, staggering the enemy, or even sending arrows right back to their shooters. Then you have the series’ trademark Issen mechanic, where if you hit the attack button at the exact moment an enemy attack lands, you can pull off a dazzling move that instantly eliminates said enemy.
These three different kinds of parries are increasingly more difficult to pull off, with Issen requiring some real practice to land. But as I learned these mechanics, combat in Way of the Sword genuinely started to feel like a dance, a back and forth of attacking, defending, and parrying. I wanted to go through the demo three times to really understand the depth, and the more I played with combat, the more I appreciated how remarkably different Way of the Sword feels from anything else out there — and that all came to a head with the boss battle.
At the top of the temple, Musashi runs into his infamous rival Ganryu Sasaki (based on the real-life rivalry), and an intense duel kicks off. I don’t typically use slang, but you might say this battle had some of the most “aura” I’ve ever seen. Every movement and frame is hand-crafted to look as cinematic as possible, like a clip from an epic Samurai film, but you’re playing it.
Sasaki and Musashi can slowly walk circles around each other before you or the boss decides to make the first move. This is where the emphasis on parrying becomes vitally important, as Sasaki has lightning-quick attacks and strings of attacks that are difficult to simply block. Because of that, you need to use timed parries or deflections, while mixing in a few dodges for some of his more damaging blows.
In my first few tries, I had trouble getting the cadence down, but I slowly started to work into a rhythm, dodging and parrying Sasaki’s attacks like an expert, and having a blast in the process. While Way of the Sword does feel good to play, part of what really makes it shine is the truly impressive animation work. Sparks flying off blades make each battle feel gritty and visceral, and as Musashi gets damaged, he starts to stumble a little more, and his dodge rolls become clunky dives.
But there are even extra elements layered into combat to make it even more thrilling. Successful parries will build up an Oni gauge that, when full, lets you use a combo with a magical Oni weapon — in this demo, a pair of daggers with a flurry of strikes. If you can deplete Sasaki’s stamina bar you also get a chance to pull off a powerful strike, choosing between two parts of his body. The part you choose gives you more orbs of a specific type, so choosing his head will award you with red orbs for upgrades, versus his lower body will give you blue and yellow orbs to restore health and your Oni weapon. These elements add a layer of strategy to how you approach the battle with Sasaki, and put an even greater emphasis on timing your parries right. This isn’t a battle where you can just attack willy-nilly to win; you have to be deliberate and careful with every move.
If I’d had the time, I honestly could have sat there and fought Sasaki three or four more times — it felt like every battle with him went just a little bit differently. But I was blown away by just how gripping the combat feels in the moment, how it scratches an itch I almost didn’t know I had. There are a lot of games that focus on defense and parries, like Sekiro, but Way of the Sword’s focus on actual swordplay is fascinating, almost straddling the line between an action game and a 3D fighter. It feels like you’ve taken the duel-focused boss battles of Ghost of Tsushima and applied that idea to an entire game — and that’s genuinely exciting to me. It feels so drastically different from any other action game out there right now.
Of course, Way of the Sword is an Onimusha game and layers in supernatural weirdness that tinges it with a sense of the unknown. Onimusha has always been about a unique blend of grounded reality and the supernatural, and Way of the Sword already feels like it’s nailing that with its duel-focused systems and grimdark aesthetic.
I mean it wholeheartedly that dueling Sasaki is one of my favorite moments I’ve played in any game this year. And more than anything, I’m glad that Onimusha: Way of the Sword has its own unique identity. It’s not trying to emulate past games, it’s not trying to ape Soulslikes — it’s a game that’s wholly unique, and nothing is more Onimusha than that.
