There is a particular kind of excitement that comes from seeing an old favourite step back into the light. Onimusha has been absent for so long that its return initially feels less like the arrival of a new game and more like discovering a forgotten room in a house you thought you knew. I have missed its peculiar mixture of samurai drama, supernatural horror and wonderfully tactile action, so Onimusha: Way of the Sword arrives carrying the weight of two decades of expectation. Yet that weight quickly gives way to something warmer. This is the first new entry in the series in more than 20 years, and from the moment its battered Kyoto emerges from the darkness, there is a reassuring sense that Capcom hasn’t simply remembered Onimusha, but remembered why it was so easy to love in the first place.
Release Date: September 4th 2026
Developer: CAPCOM Co., Ltd.
Publisher: CAPCOM Co., Ltd.
Price: £59.99 / $69.99 USD
Reviewed On: PC / Steam Deck
* Copy Purchased For Review *
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Within this familiar world, Miyamoto Musashi finds himself in an Edo-era Kyoto transformed by Malice, where streets, temples and palaces have become breeding grounds for the monstrous Genma. His journey is framed as much around purpose as survival, with the Oni Gauntlet drawing him further into a conflict where history and supernatural horror increasingly bleed into one another. Rather than burying its adventure beneath exposition, Way of the Sword allows its strange characters, grim mythology and increasingly surreal circumstances to provide the momentum. There are mysteries here best discovered for yourself, but the atmosphere is immediately clear: Kyoto is being slowly swallowed by something it cannot understand, and Musashi is the unfortunate man standing between those two worlds.
Soon enough, however, atmosphere gives way to the sound of steel. Combat feels wonderfully deliberate, with a physicality that makes every movement seem to carry weight. Musashi doesn’t simply swing a sword; he commits his entire body to each attack, making the spaces between strikes almost as important as the strikes themselves. Enemies react convincingly, positioning matters, and encounters quickly become less about hammering buttons than understanding where you are in relation to everything around you. It is a simple pleasure, but an increasingly rare one: the feeling that your hands are gradually learning how the sword should move.
Parrying takes that sensation of rhythm and turns it into something almost musical. A well-timed deflection can transform an enemy’s aggression into an opening, creating a satisfying sequence of attack, anticipation and response. Rather than encouraging you to simply react to whatever appears on screen, the game asks you to watch, recognising the small movements that precede an incoming strike. Initially, those movements can be difficult to read amid the chaos, but repetition gradually brings clarity. What once seemed impossibly quick becomes familiar, and familiar eventually becomes instinctive. Few things in an action game are quite as satisfying as feeling that transition happen beneath your fingers.
Supernatural abilities give that foundation another dimension. The Oni Gauntlet provides Musashi with a second language for dealing with his enemies, allowing careful swordplay to sit alongside something considerably more extravagant. Souls become both resource and reward, while Oni abilities create new possibilities in encounters that might otherwise settle into predictable patterns. Crucially, these powers never make the sword feel redundant. Instead, they broaden the choices available to you, offering different ways through a battlefield while preserving the importance of timing and positioning. Onimusha has always been comfortable with the collision of the historical and the fantastical, and here the supernatural feels like a natural extension of its combat rather than an interruption.
Few encounters bring those ideas together more effectively than the bosses. Modern Capcom spectacle is present in abundance, but beneath the enormous creatures, dramatic arenas and explosive abilities sits a genuine test of everything you’ve learned. An imposing enemy can initially seem unreadable, its attacks filling the screen with movement and noise, until patience reveals the pattern underneath. You learn when to retreat, when to parry, when to strike and when to spend one of your more powerful abilities. Victory consequently becomes more satisfying than simply watching a health bar disappear; it comes from making sense of something that once seemed chaotic. When everything finally clicks, the fight feels less like something you’ve survived and more like something you’ve understood.
A similar sense of satisfaction carries through the quieter stretches. Way of the Sword is, at heart, an old-fashioned action game, and it doesn’t apologise for that. Exploration, story and spectacle provide breathing room, but sooner or later the road leads back towards another fight, another room and another opportunity to put what you’ve learned into practice. Modern games can sometimes be wary of repetition, yet Onimusha recognises that repetition is precisely what allows mastery to take root. You perform the same actions again and again, only now you’re doing them with greater confidence, greater precision, and perhaps a little more style than you managed the time before.
Beyond the swordplay, Kyoto provides an equally compelling reason to keep moving forward. Way of the Sword is sumptuous without becoming too polished for its own good, and its historical setting is rarely allowed to remain simply picturesque. Traditional architecture is constantly interrupted by smoke, darkness, fire and the grotesque presence of the Genma, turning familiar spaces into something distinctly uncanny. The RE Engine gives the environments an impressive sense of texture and physicality, while the contrast between elegant old Kyoto and the ugliness invading it gives the game much of its visual identity.
Musashi and the people he encounters fit naturally into this strange landscape. The protagonist carries the weathered presence you would expect from a wandering swordsman, while the supporting cast bring enough eccentricity and personality to prevent the story from becoming overly solemn. A theatrical quality runs through the presentation, particularly during the larger confrontations, where expressive animation and dramatic camera work turn sword fights into little pieces of cinema. Musashi’s appearance, inspired by legendary actor Toshiro Mifune, gives him an especially striking presence, grounding the supernatural spectacle in the face and physicality of a very human protagonist.
Sound completes the sense of physical presence. Steel clashes against steel, attacks land with satisfying force, and the surrounding world is given enough atmospheric detail to make even quieter stretches feel alive. Music follows the same ebb and flow as the combat, sitting quietly beneath exploration before swelling alongside a particularly dramatic encounter. More than anything, the audio gives the adventure momentum. Even when nothing spectacular is happening on screen, there is always the sense that something is waiting beyond the next doorway, somewhere in the darkness of Kyoto.
Steam Deck proves a particularly pleasant home for the game, too. Way of the Sword is an ambitious modern release, yet it feels surprisingly comfortable on Valve’s handheld, with testing finding it capable of maintaining around 30fps for much of the experience at its default settings. The larger Eastern Kyoto hub can place more pressure on the hardware, but elsewhere the experience remains remarkably consistent. A stable 30fps also suits combat this deliberate, allowing the swordplay to retain its responsiveness without asking the handheld to perform miracles. It is another small indication of the care that has gone into this revival.
Verdict
Summary
Perhaps that is why Onimusha: Way of the Sword feels so much more satisfying than a simple exercise in nostalgia. Capcom could have treated the series as a museum piece, polishing its familiar ideas until they became something sterile, but instead it has allowed them to breathe. Swordplay is tactile and precise, the supernatural elements give the action a wonderful sense of escalation, and Kyoto is both beautiful and unsettling. Most importantly, the game understands that bringing Onimusha back doesn't require reinventing it. It requires remembering the feeling of stepping into a dangerous room, drawing your sword, and wondering what might be waiting on the other side. I am so pleased to have Onimusha back. After twenty years away, Way of the Sword doesn't feel like a relic returning from the past; it feels like a series finally picking up its sword again, discovering that the edge is still wonderfully sharp.
