Onimusha: Way Of The Sword review – Capcom’s hot streak continues

Try to imagine Evil Dead as directed by Akira Kurosawa, and then turned into a Resident Evil-esque action adventure, and you have Onimusha – another top notch game to add to 2026’s tally.

We shouldn’t pretend that we’ve liked everything Capcom has released recently, but they’ve definitely had an amazing run the last few years, and even though the company is over 40 years old this still feels like an equal to their arcade-based golden era. Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata are the obvious standouts this year but we’re not sure that Onimusha: Way Of The Sword isn’t better than both of them.

What’s so encouraging about Capcom’s current success is that it comes via a very healthy mixture of sequels, remakes, brand new IP, and revivals of long dormant favourites. Onimusha is one of the latter as, apart from a few simple remasters, there hasn’t been a proper new game in the series since 2006.

The original games used the template created by Resident Evil, with similar fixed camera views and controls, but swapped zombies for samurai and demons. This new game reuses the same graphic engine as Requiem and the Resident Evil remakes but otherwise there’s no real connection to Onimusha’s sister series… other than that Way Of The Sword is really good too.

Way Of The Sword is nominally a reboot but the set-up is still very similar to the previous games, as you play as a samurai who ends up with a magical gauntlet fused to his arm, and who then becomes embroiled in a plot to open up the gates of Hell in 16th century Japan.

More so than ever, the game is filled with famous characters from Japanese history, as well as traditional myths and legends. As over-the-top as the game is, it’s actually a fascinating overview of Japanese mythology, with one strand of side quests rewarding you with a number of folk tales from the era. You play as Miyamoto Musashi, who was a renowned swordsman of the time, and in the game is modelled after a young Toshiro Mifune, just for a double dose of Japanese iconicity.

An oni is a type of yōkai from Japanese folklore (onimusha means oni warrior) and while it’s often translated as demon, in many cases it’s closer to a Western troll or ogre, as they’re not always evil. As such, you do have some useful allies but you’re still fighting the hordes of zombie-like creatures, and other, weirder monsters, largely on your own. You do so by primarily relying on your sword, as while the gauntlet gives you access to various magical abilities the focus is on melee combat rather than gadgets or spells.

The combat in the old Onimusha games was very basic and uninteresting but Way Of The Sword is fantastic. That’s been obvious since the first previews, with a great sense of kinetic energy, with beautifully over-the-top sparks and flashes as swords smash into each other. The combat feels impressively physical but it’s also very tactical, with a strong focus on parrying.

That’s been fashionable ever since 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice but Way Of The Sword is nowhere near as demanding as that, with a well-judged balance between complexity and accessibility. There are a lot of systems that are piled on during the course of the game – including dodges, counters, deflections, and the like – but always you’re looking to parry a move so you can charge up your ‘blazing state’ gauge, at which point your sword bursts into blue flames and you can do extra damage to your foe’s stamina bar.

Once an enemy runs out of stamina they can be dealt with much more easily but the same is true of you, including the fact that enemies, or at least the more advanced ones, can also activate a blazing state. Although they never look as cool as you, especially when you parry enemies even when your back is turned or finish off a bunch of them in slow-motion, after you chain together multiple perfect issen counters.

The combat is top tier, with the only problem being that the camera can get very confused when you’re backed up against a wall or in an enclosed space, which is not uncommon. The game’s also surprisingly difficult. Although combat is easy to learn the boss battles can reach FromSoftware levels of challenge towards the end of the game, so if you need to drop the difficult level down a notch don’t be ashamed.

As ever, the sense of euphoria on beating a tough boss is incredible, especially as all the enemies are so unrepentantly evil and often archly comedic. Way Of The Sword isn’t a survival horror game, and there’s not that much gore, but some sections are definitely unsettling, in terms of both atmosphere and the bizarre enemy designs.

Evil Dead isn’t quite the right comparison but the mix of monsters that take such glee in their depravity and an inappropriately flippant protagonist is not disimilar. And yet there is also a hint of depth to the characterisation, with both Musashi and his arch-rival Ganryū Kojirō proving to be surprisingly self-aware in some of the game’s quieter moments. Although that’s based on us playing with the Japanese voiceovers, since we couldn’t bear the English ones – which for some reason feature a range of British regional accents – for more than a few minutes.

Technically, Way Of The Sword is an action role-player, but it’s only your clothes, sword, and gauntlet that have stats. There are multiple skill trees to unlock though, full of useful abilities that either deepen your combat options or add additional new abilities, especially when it comes to a range of special oni weapons that do things like activate health-giving daggers or fire flaming phoenixes from a magic flute.

The stats, and one of multiple pouches that store your health restoratives, can only be improved with collected materials, like cloth and iron, while the various skill trees depend on different collectables, as well as the souls of the enemies you collect, which come in different flavours, including raw currency, health, and fuel for your oni power gauge.

In some games, collecting resources can be a chore but here it gives purpose to otherwise inconsequential fights, since you’ve always got something to gain. This is important because the central hub of the game is an open world recreation of Kyoto, initially fenced in by an evil miasma but which gradually opens up as the game continues.

There are a number of other more linear stages you can fast travel to, including surreal oni worlds, but Kyoto is a fairly realistic recreation of feudal era Japan (enough that Capcom consulted with the caretakers of the real-world buildings depicted) and complete with all the side quests, random encounters, and hidden secrets you’d expect of a modern open world game.

The mix of open world and more linear sections is arguably not that different to Resident Evil Village but Way Of The Sword is much more expansive and intricately designed. It also feels like the perfect way to restart a dead franchise, built on a solid foundation of excellent combat but fuelled by an unerring confidence in both the game premise and the developers’ own abilities.

It’s hard to imagine a franchise refresh working any better than this and it creates enormous confidence for the future of Onimusha, for Capcom, and for any other games company willing to follow in their footsteps.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £64.99
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 4th September 2026
Age Rating: 18

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.