Way back in 2016, I downloaded and played the first Nioh public alpha. Team Ninja, the veteran action game developers behind Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, working on a game that took inspiration from Dark Souls, was too much of a perfect idea to ignore. Within 10 minutes of playing that alpha – which was so bastard hard the devs had to tune down the difficulty for the next demo, and consequently the full release – I knew something to be true: I would get the Platinum trophy in this game.
Onimusha: Way of the SwordDeveloper: CapcomPublisher: CapcomPlatform: Played on PS5 ProAvailability: Out 2026 on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Fast-forward nine years, and here I am, sitting on a PSN account with Platinums each for Nioh and Nioh 2 (thanks, PS5 versions). Those games struck a chord with me: the mythological fantasy setting of Sengoku-era Japan scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had, and the fighting-game inspired, stance-based combat that has grown and mutated into something deep and mechanically satisfying represents a high tide in the action-RPG genre only rivalled by FromSoft, in my humble opinion.
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I had that same sense of instant rapport with Onimusha: Way of the Sword. On paper, the Nioh games and Capcom’s reboot of its 10th best-selling franchise are very similar: linear, hardcore action-RPGs with an emphasis on combat and a deft use of horror elements to make the setting of Japan in the 1500s seem even more threatening. Onimusha – despite being packed with demons and supernatural elements – is slightly more grounded than Nioh has ever been, though: in playing as Miyamoto Musash, a legendary Japanese swordsman based on a real historical figure, your movements and reactions are more realistic than William Adams or Hideyoshi’s ever were in the Nioh games.
The result, in your hands, is a character that is lithe, responsive, and precise. In a hands-on preview at Capcom’s offices ahead of Gamescom, I got to play a 20-minute demo that pushed Mushashi through a dark, gloomy castle under the control of Musashi’s real world rival, Sasaki Ganryu. The demo culminates in a battle with the storied samurai, and it was in this encounter I thought ‘yep, I’m going to 100 percent this game’.
The fight itself is fast and brutal: in true Soulslike style, Ganryu gets a big health bar across the top of the screen, and – once more like Nioh – a stamina bar, too. The core mechanic in Onimusha: Way of the Sword is a light/heavy attack system, supplemented by dodge rolls and parries. Now, I’m the sort of player that basically never uses the guard button in Souls games (Dex builds for life), so the dodging/parrying system in Onimusha felt like coming home. As far as I could tell, you can parry every attack from the boss, though some (like his flying overhead stomp that looks like something out of Tekken) are often better dodged, since the ‘bullet time’ effect you get from ducking out of the way and the window it opens up are more reliable than the tight timing required to parry more effectively.