Onimusha’s Boss Battles Carry a Flawed Hack-and-Slash Experience

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is at its best in its boss battles, and those fights carry an action game that is otherwise uneven. That is the core of one critical take on Capcom’s revival of its samurai series, which launched on September 4, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. The wider critical response has been more positive, with an average around the mid-80s on review aggregators.

The boss battles

The bosses are the clear highlight. Reviewers across outlets singled out their staging and difficulty design, and the encounters are where Capcom’s parry-focused combat makes the most sense. Timing a deflection against a demon’s heavy attack, then punishing the opening, is when the game feels sharpest and most rewarding.

Players take the role of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi in early Edo-period Kyoto, a city sinking under demonic miasma. Musashi’s Oni Gauntlet lets him absorb the souls of defeated enemies, and players can build their approach through separate skill trees for weapons and abilities, choosing between a range of Oni weapons as the game progresses.

Where it falls short

Outside the major fights, the experience is less consistent. Some stretches feel like filler between the headline encounters, and several reviewers pointed to mini-bosses that repeat too often. Others noted a difficulty spike in the mid-to-late game that feels artificial rather than earned, which can make the path to the next great boss feel like a grind.

The game also moves away from the strictly linear structure of the PlayStation 2 originals. Kyoto is built as a semi-open space with side quests and upgrade materials for weapons and health, which adds reasons to explore but also stretches the pacing between the set pieces that the series is known for.

Reception

Critics have largely come down on the positive side. The PlayStation 5 version holds a Metacritic score of 85 from more than 80 reviews, and OpenCritic lists an average of 86 with a 94% critic recommendation rate. Praise has centred on the combat, the bosses, the character work and the recreation of historical Kyoto.

Why it matters

Way of the Sword is the first new Onimusha game since Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams in 2006, following the remaster of the original Onimusha: Warlords in 2019. Its reception suggests Capcom has successfully brought the series back, even if the result is not flawless.

For players deciding whether to buy, the answer depends on what you want. If you enjoy demanding boss fights and parry-based combat, Way of the Sword delivers some of the best encounters in the genre this year. If uneven pacing and repeated mini-bosses tend to wear you down, it may be worth waiting for a price drop. The Switch 2 version gives Nintendo players a rare chance to play a major Capcom action release at the same time as other platforms.