I never do this but... transcript

Onimusha Way of the Sword is one of the best games I have ever played. And it won't be for everybody. But if you like challenging but fair melee combat with amazing boss fights, this has the best sword fighting melee combat system in any game I have ever played. Now, maybe there's better games out there, but I haven't played them. The combat system in this is absolutely phenomenal. And uh honestly, I'd give this game a 10 out of 10 if they actually had just taken a few things out of the game.

I wasn't as interested in the openw world combat stuff. And I know I usually don't review games on the channel. I review more of the performance of games on the channel. Uh but I wanted to make an exception for this one just because uh well, for one thing, I just spent 3 hours beating the final boss. I'm going to skip over this little bit. It's kind of kind of graphic. I don't want to entirely want to get demonetized [laughter] here uh for the video, but whatever.

I really just wanted to tell you guys how good this game is. Uh, so I spent like 3 hours on the final boss. So if you're not interested in a game that is tough but fair, have to learn the bosses, etc. Um, maybe this isn't for you. But I think this is fantastic. So let's explain the combat system a little bit. You can see that there's a yellow bar, that's health, and you can see what I just did there was called an isen.

When enemies attack you, if you time your attack perfectly right before theirs would hit, you not only dodge their attack, uh, but you strike for tons of damage, and you get some of these little orb things that I'll explain a little bit more after that. Uh, now that's awesome. However, it's also extremely risky and the timing window on that is incredibly tight. So, the other thing that you'll more often be doing is blocking.

Now, there's a normal block, uh, but if you time your block properly, uh, you'll actually kind of deflect the enemy attack, and that doesn't use up your stamina the way a normal block would, and it can actually damage the enemy stamina. And that's a lot safer than going for the ends. The isens are like, I got just got one right there. their best may see an enemy telegraph an attack so you can get that timing down perfectly because the deflecting attacks has uh not quite as tight of a window.

Now, what just happened there is sometimes you'll cross swords with the enemy. There's a light attack and a heavy attack. So, whichever one you did, you need to then do the other one to win the the crossing of swords. All of this goes together to just feel really good. And you can see the enemy's stamina bar is recharging there. So, you have to be aggressive and be hitting uh or else uh they'll refill that stamina bar.

Now, what you just saw there was a blue attack from the enemy. So, she attacked with her mouth blue. In that case, if I had tried a normal block, her grab attack would have succeeded. So, when grabb attacks are coming in, you have to perfectly time a dodge with B. So, this is a game unlike with a Souls game where I would be dodging most of the time rather than blocking. Uh, this is a game where I'm usually trying to go for the deflection blocks.

Sometimes I'm going for the en which feels great and I really only do the actual dodge attacks uh when those blue attacks are incoming. Uh, and they're specialized for that. So, you have to really be on your toes for the type of attack that's coming in, its timing, and do you want to go for the more risky uh is attack. just overall it's a really really good uh sword fighting combat system. Now when you break the enemy's stamina you can get a big hit in but there's even still some strategy with that uh where you can choose to go for extra uh health damage or you can choose to go for more orbs.

Now those orbs that you see floating around, yellow recharges your health. Uh, blue fills up a blue meter behind me here, and purple fills up a purple meter behind me here. Red orbs are more of a uh currency that you can use to upgrade items. Now, this is pretty cool, too, uh, because the the blue system that we're charging up here, this is your secondary weapon, and there's a variety of them that you can use and equip.

So, that's one of the ways you can get uh, some customization to your combat style, but you have to charge it up to a certain point before you're able to use it. and certain enemy attacks will actually drain your orbs away from you. So, you have to be doing well to actually charge this up to be able to use it. Uh because you can just lose the gauge and never actually fill it up. You don't just wait for it to fill up.

Now, the purple one, uh it you don't unlock until much later in the game. Uh again, this bit's a little bit uh bloody. Let's skip a little bit further. Okay. Um so, uh the purple one you fill up a little bit later in the game, and that switches you into like a superpowered mode. Now, when you're in the superpowered mode, the for a limited time, by the way, um the isen attacks have a looser window. I'd say they're more like the normal uh deflection attacks, which are easier to land.

So, suddenly you can start landing a bunch of those attacks, and they do bonus damage when you're in that mode and and stuff, too. So, it really rewards that more uh aggressive style and makes it a little bit easier to pull off. It just feels really good. But the thing with those orbs though is you have to hold left trigger to try to suck them in and absorb them. And enemy bosses and even some normal enemies can actually absorb them too.

Uh the thing is when you're trying to absorb them though, sometimes you're not doing the other thing that you'd rather be doing. Uh so there's actually a little bit of a strategy going on with when and how you want to absorb those. Uh there's also items you can use um to boost your stats a little bit during combat um or or do like a gradual heal over time. And those items um again you have to find the right window to be able to use them.

Now the item usage I would say is the most soulslike thing in the game uh where you can kind of cycle through a few different uh items with the D-pad over here. Um, one of them on top is just your normal uh, you know, Estus flask kind of idea. Um, but it's uh, really not a Soulslike. So, I think superficially this can look a lot like a Soulslike, but it really isn't. The combat feels very very very different. Um, so overall, like I said, um, amazing boss fights, really, really good combat system.

Best sword fighting combat system from any game I've ever played. Maybe I've missed uh another game where it had a better sword fighting system. Uh but best one I've played here. Here I got got my purple charged up. So you can see me switch into this mode. And like I said, the isen window is easier here. So when he attacks, uh I attack and get the timing right and get in a few hits here that do a ton of damage. Now what you're seeing here is actually me playing a boss replay mode.

So, it also I think the game knows its strength is the boss fights and it lets you go into a replay mode uh and redo any of the boss fights and you can change you know what uh you know version of the Estus flask in your right bumper that you're bringing in here. But also that's why I don't have any items. Now, what you saw there with the A and the B, uh, sorry, Y and B at the same time is sometimes enemies go into a block and you actually have to use a different attack to overcome their block.

And they can even go into a counterattack parrying stance uh where unless you use that uh Y andB attack, if you use a normal attack, they'll actually parry you for tons of damage. So, really seriously uh very very interesting combat system. I would have given this game a 10 out of 10 if it had a better uh I guess we'd call it the open world section, but basically it's not a whole world. You have the city of Kyoto and you can expand the area that you're able to access over time and it fills it in with all the map marker checkpoints and stuff.

And what you're seeing on my map is a bunch of things I didn't do. Uh this was uh before I went into the final boss fight. It gives you the warning that you know the point of no return. Although if you do then finally beat the game, uh you can come back um uh to your save and still continue to do things. There's also like a new game plus E uh sort of thing with an even higher difficulty level, but you get to bring in some of your stuff there.

Uh so that's all great, but this is the part that I think is a little bit weaker. So, and this might just be a me thing. Like I don't like the uh go do a bunch of checkpoint things on a map. Uh games that have an open world with a bunch of stuff to do. I'm only interested if the things you're doing are interesting and if the uh stories they're telling is interesting or the gameplay is interesting. And one thing here is that a lot of what you do in this more open world uh is just less interesting.

This game strength by far is the boss fights. Like sometimes you'll run into, oh, somebody's being chased by monsters. The normal enemies are just uh kind of pushovers for the first half of the game. It's not till much later in the game that the normal enemies are even worth being there. Also, when you interact with uh just random characters in the open world, uh the voice acting, the motion capture, all of that takes a huge step down uh compared to the really good motion uh capture and uh acting and face capture and all of that that you get in the rest of the game.

Because that's another thing I'll say is the the game's uh voice acting and characters and writing is very good. And even the themes of the game uh tie really well into the gameplay itself because like I said, the game play is very much uh challenging but fair. This is a game for people who love the challenge. You embrace the challenge and that's literally like the ending line of the game. It's about, you know, uh just uh life being about overcoming challenges.

I'm not getting the exact uh quote right, but this game is absolutely about the love of the combat and overcoming difficulties and proving you're the best. So, uh the themes uh uh voice acting, everything really, really good. So, in my opinion, if they just uh ramped up the normal enemy difficulty a lot more at the start of the game to make it feel like less of a pointless waste of time uh and then the um uh in my opinion actually remove some of the openw world stuff that's of lesser quality.

Either make it of higher quality or just remove it from the game. Although, I know there's some players who just like having more stuff to do. Now, maybe if I had done all that stuff, I would have upgraded my weapons further and uh not taken three hours to beat the final boss cuz my stuff was definitely nowhere near maxed out because I just wasn't interested in doing that other stuff. So, uh that could be a me thing.

But overall, I really think this is um just such a fantastic combat system that I had to highlight it on the channel despite my channel usually being about PC performance. And that's actually another great thing about this game. I already did a video testing out the PC performance. Uh, but this game does run well on uh what am I doing here? Um, uh, on older hardware as well as newer hardware. It can look good. I actually played a good deal of this game, including some of the big boss fights on my Steam Deck.

Now, the Steam Deck's not locking to 60 fps. Uh, in Kyoto, it's more like 30-ish FPS. That's the most demanding area of the game. uh Capcom's res uh sorry not Resident Evil engine, Reach for the Moon Engine, RE Engine is um uh not at its best the larger the the environments are. Uh however, the missions and boss fights uh perform pretty well and on Steam Deck I like when I was doing the final boss on the Steam Deck um it was like 40 FPS.

Now I did come back to the main PC when I actually beat the final boss but I was uh doing some of it uh on the Steam Deck there and it was fine. It was completely playable, albeit at low low settings. I'm using like DLSS quality, defaults to performance mode. Sorry, FSR quality, not we're on the Steam Deck here. Upscaling quality. Anyway, uh I guess I don't want to uh drag this too much uh on too much longer because like I said, my channel's mostly about PC performance, but this game performs well.

This game looks solid. The boss fights uh are certainly the highlights, and the um combat system, like I said, I just absolutely love this. So, if you don't like challenging combat, this isn't for you. But this is completely fair combat. I could absolutely see somebody who knows what they're doing with enough practice beating these bosses, no hits. Like, is everything. Um, it's your fault if you get hit in this game.

So, it's it's really really good. Uh, it does have a lower difficulty option, which I never tried. So, maybe that would be um more fun for people who want something a little bit more chill. But I really think that the strength of this game is how challenging it is and how good it feels when you beat it. So it has a similar similar feeling uh to Souls game where wow I just beat that u boss. But I think by locking into a single weapon type here.

I mean like I said there's the secondary weapon but you don't really use it much. Uh the main weapon here just being the sword does mean there's less combat variety than something like a Souls game. Uh, but by focusing just on this type of combat, I feel like it can reach perfection. So, um, really, really cool. I think it's worth checking out if you haven't yet. And, uh, I'll I'll shut up now and and eventually go back to making my my normal videos, but I spent too long beating the final boss to do one of my normal videos today.

So, I figured I'd just make a video about this game because it is [laughter] really good. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed the video, even if it's not my usual stuff. Uh, and I hope all of you have an excellent