I have a confession to make: I’m kinda sick of soulslikes. Don’t get me wrong, FromSoft are great, and there are diamonds within the slew of imitators who have trodden in their footsteps, but at what cost, Collectors? As a man who likes his action to be responsive, balletic, and powerful, I have mourned the slow death of the hack’n’slash genre even as the star of soulslikes has risen, ascendant.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is back to change that.
Before I stepped into the samurai shoes of the legendary Miyamoto Musashi, I was faced with a choice: Story or Action? Fancying a challenge, I chose the later, though it’s nice to know that you can engage in some good old fashioned hack and slashing without much resistance if you want to.
Making my way through an Edo-era village, I sliced and diced my way through several dozen Genma demons using a mix of light and heavy attacks, close-quarters throws and punches, and occasional decapitations. The combat was smooth as butter, and while there is a guard button that you can hold down to repel enemy attacks, I didn’t use it much, preferring to roll, dodge, and parry. Even on Action, the Genma were fairly easy to chop down, with Musashi also able to deflect the arrows of ranged assailants back at them, staggering them in turn, and opening them up to a severe case of limb loss.
Closer to the village's temple, I found myself surrounded. A chain of parries later, though, and Musashi entered a Blazing State, giving his slashes even more power and quickly turning the enemies into Genma Julienne. I lucked my way into an Issen counterattack at one point, attacking a split-second before a foe tried to attack me, unleashing a colourful wave of absorbable souls, and turning my adversary into meaty chunks. "You’re the only one so far that’s managed to pull that off," Capcom's PR manager told me, and I felt a warm glow of completely accidental pride.
If slaying Genma proved fairly trivial, the arrival of Sasaki Genryu, another gauntlet wielder with a bit of a beef with Musashi, promised a greater challenge. Having completely ignored health top ups thus far, I got trapped in Genryu’s aggressive pressing attacks. Even when you break through his stamina bar, if you don’t press the advantage, he’ll recover and come back at you with vicious speed.
So I died, fairly quickly. But a respawn and an ego check meant I went in with a bit more caution the second time around, reading his attacks better, and parrying deftly to turn the tide of battle. Most of his sword-based offense was easy to guard against, but there was a ground-shaking stomp that seemed better suited to a dodge roll, leveraging the slight slo-mo window after a well-timed evade to literally stick the knife in.
Frankly, this early boss fight was just a joy to be a part of. It reminded me of certain parts of Nioh as you take on an enemy who is almost a mirror of you (Dark Link fans, rejoice).The ebb and flow to a battle with a near-equal allowed the combat system to really shine – Musashi, a fluid and responsive host, and Genryu an opponent who would react, evade and counter in turn as well. As I whittled his health bar away, pulling off a couple of devastating combos towards the end, I got a little overexcited, entered one button press too many, and missed the button prompt to trigger a cinematic finisher. But I’d won, Genryu was defeated, and I ended the demo with a massive smile on my face.
So many games start you in a relatively weak state, your prowess growing as you rack up XP points and new skills. But Musashi is already a master swordsman – it simply wouldn’t have made sense to go that route. Instead, you can dispatch individual grunts with ease, with Onimusha inviting you to play with its systems, master your skills early on, and then deploy them deftly against more numerous foes and larger more powerful bosses.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is shaping up very nicely indeed. It’s a game that wants you to feel like a badass, because Miyamoto Musashi was a badass. There’s less interest in forcing you to git gud than encouraging you to feel powerful and then inviting you to demonstrate that against hordes of demons or equally brilliant bosses. In the same way that Space Marine 2 last year felt like a throwback to a simpler time of big blunt power fantasies, Onimusha does something similar – reminding you that action games don’t have to be bastard hard to be fun, engaging, and rewarding.
God, I hope it can keep this feeling going through the entire game. It's going to be something special if it can!
