Onimusha: Way of the Sword is... unfortunately shaping up to not be the modern Onimusha I hoped it'll be.

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
So, I wanted to be on a media blackout until release for this one, but something just urged me to watch the latest gameplay as if to warn me and so I did.



Uh, where to even start with this one....

I guess let's start with visuals. Idk what the fuck are they doing, but RE Engine is just looks terrible and awful in most of the games outside of DMCV and RE2-4R, to the point that when it comes to DD2 and latest Monster Hunter Wilds, you need to use RT via RE Engine tool to make the game look great and not flat and dull af. Law and behold, they did it again with Onimusha while during tutorial videos it looks WAY better with much better GI, shadows and lighting, pretty much like in DD2 and Monster Hunter Wilds and with all that RE Engine's performance is awful and terrible beyond belief while the game lacks proper atmospheric, lighting effects, GI and shadows. Now, you'd think that since Onimusha with its much more downscaled and compact environments will look as good as RE4R at least, but no, it looks just as bad as Kunitsu-Gami. Now, it's not about graphics, it's about the mood, the atmosphere and realistic look modern engines can provide and RE Engine can do that like RE4R already showed, but anything it had to offer to visually simply can't be found in Way of the Sword and mind you, the game is set in natural environments during Edo period in Japan, but what RE Engine does here is makes it looks flat, cardboard and lifeless, unlike how the first two games looked and especially the second one with its upgraded visuals with lots of atmospheric effects original game haven't had. The art assets also look low poly and lack detail, but I guess we have to download 50GB Hi-Res texture pack and have overpriced GPU with 32GB VRAM to make it look better while the game lacks everything else I mentioned? Great, simply amazing.

Now, the gameplay. It's not Onimusha and not even close to Onimusha 2 with its way faster and smooth gameplay in comparison to the original. It feels and looks like Ghost of Tsushima with very unsatisfying stop and go executions without smooth and pitch perfect transitions Ninja Gaiden 4 has for example, there's a lot of emphasis on blocking and deflections with executions and dismemberment, yet executions and dismemberment lack any sort of visual impact and satisfaction unlike again in Ninja Gaiden two with excellent visual and sound impacts. Deflections and blocking looks flat and boring visually, which is definitely not something you need to do in a game like this. Like, it's cool that you can block enemy attacks while not facing them directly with unique animation and shit, that's cool, but other than that combat just looks boring and flat. They also tried to do Sekiro boss fights but given everything I just mentioned, it's nowhere near the same quality in terms of animations, smoothness, visual and sound feedback. Uh, don't get me wrong, I get it, you can't just make Onimusha like in good old days, but it doesn't look like they're trying to make the best modern Onimusha at all and stay true to original two games bot combat and visuals-wise at all, just in full 3D.
It just doesn't look like the modern Onimusha game I imagined when they first announced Way of the Sword. I really hoped it'll be similar to RE2R in terms of staying true to the best parts of the original game and at the same time with cool modern and welcome additions, changes to gameplay etc. just like they did it again with RE4R, but instead...

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what they showed of the game so far. I can't be the only one here who doesn't really like what they did, am I?
 
Too reliant on Parry, slow combat.

Seems like they want to try and make some choreographed Old Samurai Duel movie fights but I'll stick with Nioh and Sekiro.

Still hoping they port Dawn of Dreams at some point.

 
I'm afraid to watch because I'm trying to stay spoiler free. Hopefully they improve what needs to be improved.

Whichever team at Capcom did RE2R and SF6 are the best. Let's hope some of them are on this!
 
It's been ages since i played the other games so i don't remember them well.

I'm not feeling the main character but i like the foes namely Sasaki.
Combat seems fine, a bit methodical but i need to play it to know better how it feels.
Same with level design, hope it's interesting and not same feudal Japan we've been seeing in many games.

Anyway i'm glad we're getting another Onimusha game.
 
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Never played this franchise.

If its gameplay is like NG4, am in.
It's nowehre near like NG4, it's much closer to the old RE design with fixed angles, lots of puzzles incl environmental ones, two playable character with completely different combat, slower combat in the first game and more faster and fluid in the second one.

Im glad this isnt NG. I will enjoy this.
To be clear, I don't want it to be, cuz NG is a brutal and fast character action game while Onimusha is much slower and more methodical, basically RE-like in terms of camera, some puzzles etc. the first 2 games at least. Like, I for sure haven't expected fixed camera angles and have no problems with a more free camera, but the combat is just not doing it for me from what I've seen and the fact that it's so visually bland, unexciting and Ghost of Tsushima-like is not helping either.

I forgot to mention puzzles btw and I really hope there's going to be just as much of them as well as secret areas just like in the first and especially the second game, cuz... well frankly, I don't want just pure combat heavy Onimisha cuz it's not what Onimusha is to me and why I don't like the 3rd game at all.
 
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Monsters and MC look great, but the world is very ugly and being night most of the time doesn't help.

Overall, I think it will be a fine game, but not among Capcom's greats. More hyped/intrigued about Pragmata.
 
It's nowehre near like NG4, it's much closer to the old RE design with fixed angles, lots of puzzles incl environmental ones, two playable character with completely different combat, slower combat in the first game and more faster and fluid in the second one.


To be clear, I don't want it to be, cuz NG is a brutal and fast character action game while Onimusha is much slower and more methodical, basically RE-like in terms of camera, some puzzles etc. the first 2 games at least. Like, I for sure haven't expected fixed camera angles and have no problems with a more free camera, but the combat is just not doing it for me from what I've seen and the fact that it's so visally bland, unexciting and Ghost of Tsushima-like is not helping either.

I forgot to mention puzzles btw and I really hope there's going to be just as much of them as well as secret areas just like in the first and especially the second game, cuz... well frankly, I don't want just pure combat heavy Onimisha cuz it's not what Onimusha is to me and why I don't like the 3rd game at all.
Cool.

I will be interested if combat evoked some survival elements, like decent difficulty.
 
I'm basically expecting something slightly similar to the old Onimusha. They never had great combat. The focus was on looking cinematic. Cinematic camera angles, cinematic actor faces. I think that's pretty much what this will be. Cinematic today basically means a large focus on motion capture animations.

I still am relatively optimistic. We don't get this kind of project from Capcom a lot. Combat here looks cinematic which is good enough. Only real question for me is if they also have quality exploration, puzzles and dungeons similar to the old games. If they make it Capcom's Ghost of Tsushima, but with puzzles, it could be pretty cool.
 
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Can't comment on the gameplay, as I haven't played Onimusha before, but I agree that the flat lighting and poor contrast levels look very unappealing. Seems to be a theme with RE Engine games.
 
quality exploration, puzzles and dungeons similar to the old games.
This can save the game for me tbh, as well as different perspective on the story with a second playable character just like in the first 3 games (I haven't played the 4th one so I've nothing to say about it), so far we've seen nothing of all this but I have a feeling that they plan to release the game in late October next year so there's plenty of time to make the game better still and show more of it too.

Can't comment on the gameplay, as I haven't played Onimusha before, but I agree that the flat lighting and poor contrast levels look very unappealing. Seems to be a theme with RE Engine games.
The thing is, it's not a problem at all in RE2-3R and especially so in even better RE4R visually cuz it has a lot of more visually taxing effects RE2-3R don't have, but they still look infinitely better than DD2 and MH Wilds for example. I just don't get why they're ruining some of the RE Engine games so bad visually especially after them saying that they're upgrading RE Engine to be even more impressive with better performance - none of which is true if we don't count RE4R.
 
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For those that have never played Onimusha, here's a playthrough of 2 to give context to OP's opinion. Classic RE but samurai and magic.



Realistically speaking the gameplay is about what I'd expect from a modern Onimusha given the design direction of 2-4RL: not your dream modernisation and won't necessarily replace the originals, but good enough in its own right.
 
I think it looks pretty good but I'll keep my expectations low because it's Capcom.

I don't really have a problem with the graphics themselves, but I don't get why they made it look so washed out.
 
I think the reason it looks washed out is that Capcom is sending out footage with the wrong HDMI level settings or something similar to that, maybe some mismatch of SDR and HDR output containers, capture methods, etc.

Some of the trailers, like the 3rd one, have a more contrasty appearance so I'd assume a grayish appearance is intentional to a point, but I severely doubt its meant to be that flat looking.

2nd thought: They just fucked up the HDR in general and when you play in SDR it'll be much more contrasty.

These things have been happening for years and years with Capcom, they had basically fixed it in RE8 and RE4R, but RE2R and RE3R are still fucked to this day. The reason they could be going backwards in terms of understanding/presenting HDR properly is because this game will have been a separate development path/team to even RE8 and especially RE4R.

3rd thought: The game has RT and when its turned off theres no real back up solution and all this footage is with it off for performance reasons.
 
Controversial thought, but I think Onimusha and Dino Crisis are very overrated series that mainly sold on novelty value (usage of real-life actors for Onimusha, full 3D environments on PSX for Dino Crisis 1) over anything else, I think Capcom really should be investing more into original IP than revisiting these two (Pragmata is easily their most interesting project to me in AGES).

But we live in a reality where Capcom is doing the safest blandest remakes and sequel games for the most part, and the gaming community doesn't seem inclined to pick on them for it.

No Jean Reno, no buy.
Literally the only Onimusha that I played to completion.

Was shocked to discover that it's controversial amongst the fanbase lol.
 
No Jean Reno, no buy.
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Literally the only Onimusha that I played to completion.

Was shocked to discover that it's controversial amongst the fanbase lol.
The only good thing about it is the god-like CGI intro. The rest of the game is just nothing like the first two.

Haven't really paid any attention to it, just hoping it's good. I need to take this time to replay the first game again, it's been a long time.
Do it with this incredible and god-like AI remaster - https://www.nexusmods.com/onimushawarlords/mods/18 Infinitely better than what Capcom did.

Hopefully it's in the works for the second game as well.

3rd thought: The game has RT and when its turned off theres no real back up solution and all this footage is with it off for performance reasons.
This unfortunately can't explain why DD2 and MH Wilds look just as bad, washed out, boring, flat and lifeless. DD2 actually had RT in the code but it wasn't finished, still, it looks infinitely better with it on but there's a lot of problems with denoiser and grain.
 
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The game looks simply spectacular—the physics of the clothing, the facial expressions, the movements, etc. Everything is top notch. Watching the final boss battle, you're amazed at the cinematic level that has been achieved in video games. It's incredible.

The only "problem" with it being a YouTube video is that the enemies' AI looks very basic, but that's just it, a YouTube video played by someone from IGN... they're probably playing on easy mode with help.
 
huh? Looks pretty great to me. I only played a tiny bit of earlier instalments, so I don't really care if it stays true to the original formula
 
Hope they do a good job with this one and don't forget about some cool puzzles between all the action. Still have to play all the other games except the first game which while very short still was a pretty fun game.

Monsters and MC look great, but the world is very ugly
This sounds like all RE Engine games I've played.
 
Looks like the combat is very much like Sekiro: a parry + stamina meter + glory kill combat system. The player character just moves slower. But it doesn't really matter how fast the player character moves since the combat relies a lot on locking on to enemies and player positioning is less important.
 
The game just doesn't look quite right to me. I guess it just looks too dark and dreary without a supernatural feel and a hint of mystery for me to explore the world. I'll still play it day one because I've played nearly all the others.
 
It was always going to turn out to be an average game. The franchise itself, most who revered it - loved it when they were kids. As a grown-up that same experience doesn't translate very well and you actually realise that it is a really basic game, with not much going for it. A solid 7 at best; which isn't awful by any standards. But it certainly doesn't warrant the initial hype imo, and the sales will probably leave much to be desired also.
 
would've loved to've been in the recording session where that one guy did all the gravely, deep-throated growling, grunting & groaning for what seems to be just about every enemy in the game...
 
Last gameplay video looked cool and fun to me. I'm not highly invested in the franchise though and don't care if it's faithful as long as it doesn't shit the bed as a game. I'm looking forward ro it as of now.
 
You got nothing to worry about, OP. It's going to be fantastic.

I will say that REengine is only so good though. Capcom should give it an overhaul after seeing how "well" it performed with larger open areas like DD2 and MHW.
 
Monsters and MC look great, but the world is very ugly and being night most of the time doesn't help.

Overall, I think it will be a fine game, but not among Capcom's greats. More hyped/intrigued about Pragmata.
Yea the indirect lighting looks horrid. All the dark environments look poor for what your hope in a 2026 game but the MC and NPCs look very nice just like DMC5s characters did. Capcom is debuting RE Engine Path Tracing with RE9 and every time I look at this game I wished they debut it with this game first, it fucking needs it.
 
Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what they showed of the game so far. I can't be the only one here who doesn't really like what they did, am I?
Looks fucking fantastic, fun, and has a much better designed combat system. Onimusha games combat previously were easy as hell (serviceable at best like the Prince of Persia game's combat) and secondary to the exploration & puzzles.
I love what they did.
I don't know, it looks quite fantastic to me.
same!
 
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You got nothing to worry about, OP. It's going to be fantastic.

I will say that REengine is only so good though. Capcom should give it an overhaul after seeing how "well" it performed with larger open areas like DD2 and MHW.
The problem with performance is always in their open world games (and if it's not related to Denuvo), just like with UE4 which was never designed for these kind of games in mind. And yeah, I do agree that they need to rework the engine significantly to make it work for open world games and perform great at the same time, cuz it looks like they don't even know what to do to fix performance in DD2 and MH Wilds and just said "Fuck it!"

Capcom is debuting RE Engine Path Tracing with RE9 and every time I look at this game I wished they debut it with this game first, it fucking needs it.
RE4R showed that they don't need RT or PT to make the game look great lighting-wise, they just for some stupid reason stopped doing the same for the rest of their games. PT will kill performance just like in any other game where it's available even with DLSS. Worse of all, there's no mods to enable RE4R features in other RE Engine games that was released after, cuz it looks like they're just not part of the code and you can't just port them over, you can only work with what's in the code of any particular game unlike with UE5 games.

Looks fucking fantastic, fun, and has a much better designed combat system. Onimusha games combat previously were easy as hell (serviceable at best like the Prince of Persia game's combat) and secondary to the exploration & puzzles.
I love what they did.
No it wasn't easy as hell, don't make it look like something it never was. What you can do in terms of combat is relatively simple, meaning that there's not a lot of moves and stuff, but you still need to think what you do and how you do it to fight enemies effectively. Good luck going through the challenge tower in the first game to unlock secret weapon and thinking it was easy.

OP complains about a lot of games.
No I'm not, and if I do, it's not to just shit all over them for the sake of it, I always try to do it objectively if possiblke and only if I have very good reasons which I can always explain.
 
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Puzzles, exploration, interesting settings, and fun characters are the main things I associate with Onimusha. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of that from this game yet. The combat looks good but thats not the draw of the series for me.
 
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The problem with performance is always in their open world games (and if it's not related to Denuvo), just like with UE4 which was never designed for these kind of games in mind. And yeah, I do agree that they need to rework the engine significantly to make it work for open world games and perform great at the same time, cuz it looks like they don't even know what to do to fix performance in DD2 and MH Wilds and just said "Fuck it!"


RE4R showed that they don't need RT or PT to make the game look great lighting-wise, they just for some stupid reason stopped doing the same for the rest of their games. PT will kill performance just like in any other game where it's available even with DLSS. Worse of all, there's no mods to enable RE4R features in other RE Engine games that was released after, cuz it looks like they're just not part of the code and you can't just port them over, you can only work with what's in the code of any particular game unlike with UE5 games.


No it wasn't easy as hell, don't make it look like something it never was. What you can do in terms of combat is relatively simple, meaning that there's not a lot of moves and stuff, but you still need to think what you do and how you do it to fight enemies effectively. Good luck going through the challenge tower in the first game to unlock secret weapon and thinking it was easy.


No I'm not, and if I do, it's not to just shit all over them for the sake of it, I always try to do it objectively if possiblke and only if I have very good reasons which I can always explain.
To be fair RE engine has suffered from these issues forever. RE4R has similar issues in that the screen space reflections look awful and the RT reflections fix the accuracy but then Capcom arbitrarily severely reduces the resolution of the reflection to the point where it looks bad anyway.

I recommend you to look at DFs review of Path Traced Dragons dogma 2 and Path Traced RE9 preview where they talk about RE Engines classic issues and how path tracing resolves them. DD2 path traced is a mod and it's incomplete but RE9 has native path tracing made by Capcom.
 
The problem with performance is always in their open world games (and if it's not related to Denuvo), just like with UE4 which was never designed for these kind of games in mind. And yeah, I do agree that they need to rework the engine significantly to make it work for open world games and perform great at the same time, cuz it looks like they don't even know what to do to fix performance in DD2 and MH Wilds and just said "Fuck it!"


RE4R showed that they don't need RT or PT to make the game look great lighting-wise, they just for some stupid reason stopped doing the same for the rest of their games. PT will kill performance just like in any other game where it's available even with DLSS. Worse of all, there's no mods to enable RE4R features in other RE Engine games that was released after, cuz it looks like they're just not part of the code and you can't just port them over, you can only work with what's in the code of any particular game unlike with UE5 games.


No it wasn't easy as hell, don't make it look like something it never was. What you can do in terms of combat is relatively simple, meaning that there's not a lot of moves and stuff, but you still need to think what you do and how you do it to fight enemies effectively. Good luck going through the challenge tower in the first game to unlock secret weapon and thinking it was easy.


No I'm not, and if I do, it's not to just shit all over them for the sake of it, I always try to do it objectively if possiblke and only if I have very good reasons which I can always explain.
And yea Path Tracing is heavier than hybrid RT and certainly native RT (Avatar, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Indiana Jones ATGC and Doom TDA) but if you have modern Nvidia hardware it runs well enough. I have a 5060ti 16GB and play some of my games with path tracing including cyberpunk, the experience is insane. 40 series onwards has hardware level Path Tracing optimizations (Shader execugion reordering and opacity micromaps).
 
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