Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Onimusha: Way of the Sword was provided by Capcom for review. Thank you!

Over the last year, there’s been a game that I have played over and over at events and was completely enamored by: Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Throughout my timeline, I got a chance to check out its side quests, story, and the combat. I was already quite taken by it, and felt that if the full game was anything like it, it was going to be one of my favorite games this year. Now that I played it, it falls through on a lot of its promises, and even with some minor nuisances, it’s definitely an experience I recommend playing through.

What stood out most to me about the game as I played as a combat, which felt both fluid and dynamic. This sticks throughout the full gate, and it could be an addictive experience. We are essentially slicing through scores of Genma using our sword and the powers of the gauntlet on our hand. We have a one-handed and two handed attack, dodge, and block. It’s simple to understand, just press the button to attack and combo into different ones, but the way we can use them is where it gets fun.

Each attack deplete both the enemies health and stun bar at different rates, and once they are fully stunned, we can execute them or deal some huge damage (in the case of bosses). Other than attacking, we can parry to open them up and deplete more stun, reflex dodge at the last minute to effectively dodge weapon-less attacks, and both of these can feed into their own bars to make us more powerful (Blazing State) or give us extra attacks. 

If I had to describe how combat feels in one word, I’d say satisfying. Parrys have such a wonderful sound to it, with some of them getting an up close slow motion panning when we enter Blazing State. Pulling off parrys, Reflex Dodges, and Reflects feel appropriately difficult, and have great rewards. And the way we execute enemies, whether it’s when their stun bar is gone or Ishin attacks to chain one-hit kills, looks brutal. The camera work for a lot of the attacks, effects, and locking sword moments are just phenomenal.

I also love the boss battles. Not only do they feel adequately challenging, but it took some of the mechanics up a notch. Stunning bosses when they still have most of their health gives us a chance to choose a body part on them to either deal big damage or recharge our Oni Armaments quicker. It’s a nice touch that makes the epic boss battles feel more special.

We can also use Oni Armaments to give us a boost in battle. These are special attacks we can use with specific tools that have a range of effects. One specifically targets health souls to replenish our health, another can target the stun bar, while a different one can attack and hurt enemies in a wide range. They can all be swapped out during fights, and each of them have a use. I found myself consistently going between the stun and health Oni Armaments in boss fights, with the stun getting me to deal massive damage more often and health to replenish when I need.

It’s hard to discuss just how wonderful Onimusha's combat feels. I would go out and seek smaller skirmishes just to keep battling. The only issue I can think of is that targeting can be a little iffy. Even if we lock onto enemies, some of our tax will still keep going in the direction they were before, even if the enemy dodges or moves. Manually turning in those moments can be a little obnoxious, but there was no issue for the most part.

The progression systems were a hit and miss to me, but I didn’t mind them. To actually get more powerful, we are going to have to find materials to improve our gear. This is how we will get our health, attack, power, and Oni bar up. It takes a while to find the materials, and seeing the effects of our increased power can take a little bit of time to actually show up. I could barely tell I was attacking with more power until I had invested deeply into enhancing my sword.

But I do like how we can acquire more skills. We will use a combination of red souls that we get from killing enemies and Stones we can find in treasure chests. These skills help significantly, and almost every single one serve served a purpose that helped significantly. Whether its making it so we can charge our bow faster, allow, allowing us to charge up our Oni Armaments for greater effect, or even something simple like making us run faster through Eastern Kyoto, they each served a purpose, and I felt I was getting enough of them quickly enough to satisfy.

The story behind Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an intriguing one that has more positives than negatives. We play as Miyamoto Musashi, who is constantly looking to challenge and fight others. However, as he’s running away, he struck down by demons called Genma, and returns to life attached with a gauntlet, making him an Onimusha. Now, armed with his gauntlet, he would have to work with new friends and an Oni spirit to battle the Genma and stop them from taking over.

This is an interesting tale, filled with some weird surprises and awful moments. The voice acting was a little all over the place, but the script itself was both dramatic and somewhat humorous that got me to giggle here and there. There were even some really horrifying moments that made me gasp, and I’m glad that they didn’t spare any expense with the brutality of these demons. Some of them would roam the streets, slaughtering people, while others would go to a much more evil place. However, at the end of the day, it was all entertaining and worth playing through until the end.

As much as I enjoyed running around the world and seeing its post apocalyptic like setting, I do wish there was a little bit more color. I understand the monotone palette with everything going on, but I did miss seeing some color. However, I would say it effectively captures the state of its world in the moment, so I understand it.

I like how the game of weaves in characters that actually existed throughout history. Musashi was a real swordsman, Okuni was an actual Kabuki dancer, and our rival, Ganryu, is based off of Sasaki Kojiro, who founded the Ganryū school. It’s interesting seeing how the history weaves within the fantasy world created for this game, and it actually prompted me to start looking up facts about each of these characters in history.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword - Steam Deck Performance

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is another example at how great Capcom’s RE Engine can be for optimization on the Steam Deck. Despite of being a brand new AAA game, it can run at a mostly solid 30 FPS with decent looking visuals on the default graphics settings. With how big and detailed the world can be, it’s impressive it can run this well without compromising on visuals too much.

I did try changing settings and framerates around to see if we could get better looking visuals, but it doesn’t work well. In the more contained places, we can get more out of it, but in our hub of Eastern Kyoto, there’s a lot of high CPU usage that stop us from doing much. So, for stability purposes, I would keep the settings at their default without changing any TDP limit since the hub will drain a lot for stability when running around.

Eastern Kyoto will be the biggest drain on battery and runjung around the city can cause spikes in CPU usage, which results in some stuttering and high battery drain. Other areas aren’t as big and more contained, and that makes them more stable and sticking around 13W-14W battery drain. 

結論

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an incredible Action RPG with combat that feels unmatched. The actual fighting just feels incredible between the slashing, parrying, and dodging, everything just clicks where it needs to and made me want to seek out grunts to kill just so I could get more. There are a few nuisances here and there, like with locking on, and the voice acting isn't always the best, but the story and world are enjoyable to experience.

It's also very well optimized, with the game sticking to 30 FPS most of the time, except for when running around Eastern Kyoto. This is a great experience on the Steam Deck, and one worth playing through on the go.

このレビューはPC版に基づいています。

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