Onimusha is finally back after a 20-year hiatus with Way of the Sword, which launches this September. In anticipation of its release, and for Game Informer’s latest cover story, I traveled to Capcom’s Osaka, Japan, HQ to play the game for a few hours and interview the development leads working on it. As an avid fan of the series, I was keen to learn if Onimusha: Way of the Sword is connected to previous Onimusha games in any way, so I asked the team.
The tl;dr answer is no; there are no connections between Way of the Sword and other games in Capcom’s samurai action series. However, as was abundantly clear while playing the game, there are homages everywhere with (demon) eyes to see.
“So there’s no direct kind of connection to the old games in the game world [of Onimusha: Way of the Sword], but we have tried to pay homage to some of the elements from those older games,” director Satoru Nihei tells me. “So some of the enemies you’ll see, for instance, are based on some older enemies; that’s so fans of the series have something they can touch base with.”
Below, you can see the Reynaldo Genma from Onimusha: Warlords side-by-side with the Chijiko enemy from Way of the Sword. In the former, this tentacled demon can send its tentacles underground to attack from below, and they also split and mutate into multiple enemies when you “kill” one; the latter can do the same, using tentacles (and more) to attack you and splitting into two, unless you defeat them with a special move that prevents the split mutation from happening.
Reynaldo (left), Chijiko (right)
The Raynaldo/Chijiko is just one of the homages I spotted during my time playing Way of the Sword at Capcom. Another is the Bazuu, an enemy in various Onimusha games. In Onimusha: Warlords, for example, one of its primary attacks is a spinning roll towards you that hits over and over. Though I don’t have the name, there’s a similarly designed enemy in Way of the Sword who also attacks by rolling into you, and it features the same armadillo-esque look, too. There’s also the soul-sucking Gyaran from Onimusha: Warlords; though its Way of the Sword counterpart doesn’t seem to suck Musashi’s souls, instead firing projectiles your way, it’s hard to deny a visual similarity between the two.
“All of the enemies in this game are brand new, so while we do pay homage to some of the older games, we’ve kind of taken elements from them and remixed them for the new Genma in this title,” Nihei says.
I look forward to discovering more of these homages in the final game when Onimusha: Way of the Sword hits PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC on September 4.
I’ll be diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Anything else you want to know about enemies in Onimusha: Way of the Sword? Let me know in the comments below!