What Makes Onimusha Stand Out

The take that there are too many games with parrying is no longer hot. There’s no escaping that parrying feels good when done well, the issue is how to not make the whole game around it, unless you’re going into the Clair Obscur territory of timing greatness. And thanks to Capcom being consistently on top of the game design game, they won’t just make another swordfighting game. They make another Onimusha game, a swordfighting game from an era when swordfighting game were hot before they weren’t and then they are again.

In Way of the Sword, I collect souls. Of course I do, it’s a swordfighting game from 2026. But wait! Just as in previous Onimusha games, I don’t do it automatically. I hold a button to absorb them. And that’s where Capcom’s design acumen is clear. Push and pull is coming from different directions. It’s no longer just level-up souls, it’s also health souls and special-attack-energy souls. So I take a risk: gather them now and gain an advantage, but potentially expose myself to a powerful attack. Some blows in Onimusha hit really hard, so I really have to think it through. Or, given the nature of the game, react through.

As expected, Capcom goes further. Souls eventually disappear and bosses can collect them before me to power up, so it’s never safe to wait after I finish them off to absorb. And there are harder to execute finishers that give me more souls, so I always want to take more risks and more often than not, I fail. But that’s how I know a game is great: when failing in it is no less fun than succeeding. I can always try out another approach, be more aggressive, park the bus, and when I’m about to start getting bored and want to proceed, a new strategy works out.

The hallmark of a truly great and difficult game is that rare self-admission of how fair it feels. I never think it’s unresponsive controls, even though some animations are deliberately slow to pull off and aren’t cancelable. I never think it’s enemy patterns not being clear. I never think I was played. It’s always my fault. So I try again, again, and again, and I don’t mind, no matter how long it takes. Because I know that even if I lose dozens of times and admit my loss, eventually I win, and it feels like my victory.