Forbes has reviewed Onimusha: Way of the Sword and judged it as one of the strongest heirs to the series’ PlayStation 2-era legacy. The game takes the old Onimusha formula and pushes it into a modern third-person action setup with full camera control, while keeping the swordplay and demon-slaying at the center.
That matters because Onimusha was once one of the defining series of the PlayStation 2 era, and this new installment arrives after a long gap. The game still leans on the mix that made the name memorable: ancient Japanese history, folklore, gruesome body horror, and a hero armed with an Oni Gauntlet that gives magical power against the Genma.
What changes most is the structure. A large portion of the game runs through a discrete open-world setup, with ancient Kyoto serving as the hub, and the map is described as manageable rather than sprawling. The pace is measured, and the open-world stretch does not drag. Upgrades are spread across the journey too, with the sword, clothes, gauntlet and charms all improved through items found in the world, while red orbs return from Genma and feed into the upgrade path as well.
Combat is where the game makes its case. Story difficulty presents much of the combat messaging in a helpful way, and the system is built around block, dodge and parry timing. Those moves reduce enemy stamina, regular attacks chip away at it too, and once stamina is gone, heavy strikes can kill ordinary enemies outright or strip a large share of a boss’s health. Issen also returns, rewarding a button press just before an attack lands.
The one wrinkle is that the difficulty setup does not read as neatly as the rest of the design. The game starts with Action difficulty selected, yet timing prompts were first absent there even though they can be turned on in Action difficulty. That makes the recommendation to begin on Story mode easy to understand, especially for players who want the game to explain its systems before asking them to master the rhythm on their own.
For now, the clearest takeaway is that Onimusha: Way of the Sword is not being treated as a nostalgia exercise. It is being framed as a real revival, one that modernizes the series without stripping out the combat identity that made Onimusha matter in the first place.
