Capcom has published another game progressing on the story of its horror of action Samurai, onimusha – but in 2026, Onimusha: Way of the Sword will arrive as the next game in the series. Before Gamescom, Capcom gave us the media an overview of the game with a short 15 -minute demo, a simple taste to show us where the next game takes place in two decades from the last main line Onimusha.
Onimusha: The way of the sword continues the tradition of the franchise to base the characters on historical figures, then to make them fight demons. Players assume the role of Miyamoto Musashi – one of the most famous swords in Japanese history – responsible for destroying Genma, an army of demons that is raging. You will hack, you will sink, you will adorn, you will kick the ass.
Onimusha’s games have always been something of an arcade hack-and-splah with betting mechanisms, a novelty when the series made its debut in the early 2000s, but other games adopted in the decades that followed. The Samurai Games of the period have been in vogue in recent years, of Sekiro: Shadows of 2019 died twice at 2020 Ghost of Tsushima (and Ghost of Yotei who is coming out soon) to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows of this year.
Although my demo with Onimusha: Way of the Sword was brief, it seems that Capcom has resisted to imitate the stealth and hyper-mobility of these more modern samurai games and preserved the idiosyncrasies of the originals. Musashi receives the power of ONI Gauntlet, through which it can absorb the orbs of the hordes of demons that it kills – and no, you always I can’t jump.
Most modernizations in Onimusha: the way of the sword goes through the Parry system, which has four different ways of diverting enemy attacks, presuming time properly. However, it is always a game on the cut of demons with your sword in a frankly brutal way, exhausting their block counter to enter a final oblique bar which will frequently cut them in two in a horribly satisfactory way.
A short edge of Onimusha: Way of the Sword
The demo opened with the player while Musashi walked on a forest path to go to a temple, passing villagers while fleeing and demon soldiers eating swords that pursue them. Killing them was easy – the game was on the difficulty of action (with an even easier story difficulty if I wanted it), and even with my intermediate skills Sekiro and Elden Ring, it was a breeze, so I hope a more difficult option when the game is released.
A dark fog gathered around the temple, which Musashi called Malice, which looks like a concentration of demonic presence (but what do I know). While I approach the doors of the temple, oni Gauntlet, the piece of armor of a demon of the soul which is emblematic for the franchise, speaks to Musashi. When he moves to touch a brilliant orb, the ghostly memories of villagers walk in the temple. To enter myself, I had to use Oni Vision – essentially a Batman style detective view – to find the right spiritual link to cut.
Naturally, more demon soldiers are waiting for me in the temple, giving me a chance to use my special weapons – a pair of twin blades that I can invoke when I accelerated enough energy in the ONI power gauge using my ordinary sword. Presumably, I will use a variety of magic weapons in this way in the full game, but it seems that most fights will use my faithful Katana (and a lot of parade).
I finally entered the main sanctuary of the temple overlooking the valley below, which had another ghostly memory to look at – recalling the wickedness of corrupt nastiness of the elderly to throw their children in the abyss. Sinister things. But I was quickly shaken with my reverie by an old friend of Musashi who praised him with a blade. There is a tacit story between your legendary sword and the apparently dislocated newcomer (named Sasaki Ganryu), but he also has an oni Gauntlet, and a desire to reduce you.
Unlike fodder that I had fought before, Ganryu as a boss was a satisfactory and long fight, requiring many counters and measured to break the position of your opponent. When you do it, you have the choice to know where to get your critical blow – in the boss’s body for additional damage, or in its ONI glove to get more orb currency.
Although you have healing objects to use normally, I could not apply them during the Boss battle – but successive attacks will make healing orbs appear, rewarding a precise game while forgiving false steps. It is a promising alternative to other punitive Slash-and-Parc games, such as the titles of the souls of Fromsoftware and their imitators.
With the defeated boss, the demo ended, and therefore our first overview of a brand new Onimusha game in two decades. While Onimusha: Way of the Sword arrives in the wake of several other action games in historical Japan, Capcom’s contribution has the feeling of arcade and brutality, combined with a demonic mystery, which could distinguish it from the simulators of more anchored and more realistic samurai.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword was released in 2026.
