Onimusha Way of the Sword is the BEST Samurai Game on Switch 2 [REVIEW]

I played Oni Musha on the Nintendo Switch 2 and this game is absolutely amazing. Uh from character design to the way they designed the overworld environment, the variety of enemies, uh the combat, the dodging, the parrying, and the fact that this is on Nintendo Switch 2, which makes it portable. Let's dive into my review of Oni Musha: Way of the Sword. Huge thanks to Capcom for the review copy. The main character in this game is the legendary swordsman Miiamoto Mousashi. And he is surprisingly not just a dull samurai. You'll notice that as soon as you play the beginning of the game, this character is full of life. And one thing I really loved about the game is that they really have a ton of facial expressions to make you feel like this character is really human. Definitely a lot of life to this character and very interesting facial expressions. And I love how the team really animated him. Now, let's talk about that gauntlet that Mousashi has. What he has is an oni gauntlet, and that lets Mousashi absorb souls from the enemies that he does take out. Now, souls have different colors that all do different things. Absorbing yellow souls restores your health. Red souls are used for upgrades. Blue souls charge up special oni ornaments that can be used to fight, which is really nice, and have these kind of effects. We also unlock more of these as we progress throughout the story, which makes you want to play and look really forward to that. For example, wind whippers are really good for crowd control and can also be combined with nearby torches to put enemies on fire. And I just love that they went out of their way to include that kind of physics feature when it comes to the fire and using the wind. And they also have the earth shaker, which is a really good one cuz it completely breaks the stamina of the bosses. The two celestials are really good to drop yellow souls to heal up. Now, something about bosses. Bosses are going to drop souls during fights, and absorbing them between fights makes you vulnerable to attacks if you don't notice. And if you don't absorb them, bosses can absorb them and become even more powerful. So, this is something you always want to be paying attention to, and it makes the gauntlets have a use case in all scenarios, including these boss fights. Let's talk about the combat. Now, overall, it does have that gloomy feel, and there is parrying and all that, but I would not call this a Souls game in any capacity. The combat system actually has a lot of good depth. You can block, you can parry, and you can deflect, and you can dodge and perfect dodge. You just have to be really aware and choose according to the situation what exact move would work the best. Most of the attacks can be parried or deflected, and some of them are even better if you dodge depending on what the enemy's move is, which gets a little predictable as you learn them. Now, if you parry multiple times, you go into something known as a blazing state, which is going to increase the attack power and blue soul drops and and will deal more stamina damage to the bosses. One of the things I really love about this game is that you can deflect and parry constantly. You can also deflect arrows and projectiles, and that makes it feel pretty good. Honestly, deflects and parries is one of the best and most satisfying things in this game. Now, you also have something called blade barges, and it happens when both you and an enemy strike at the same time, and you'll just have to choose the opposite move of the enemy. It's a lot of fun, and this is what it pretty much looks like. You also have blade clash, and this can happen between parries and deflects, where you both lock your swords, and you either will have to spam X or A to win it. Failing to do so will then impact your stamina gauge. You also going to run into scenarios where the enemy's hands will glow, meaning they're going to grab you, and all you have to do is just dodge them before your enemy grabs you, and you could pretty much throw them down to the floor. One of the really fun things about Onimi Musha is using the environment during fights, such as using wooden boards. You can use cards to ram them into the enemies, and you can use fire and explosive barrels. So, positioning is also very important depending on the group of enemies that you are facing. Let's talk about enemy variety because I feel like that's always a big question a lot of people have. I'm happy to report that there is a good amount of variety in this game. In the early parts of the game, you'll find these base Genma and then you'll find more powerful GMA that you fight at the starting part. And as you keep progressing in the game, the variety actually does progress and you really start to notice it as you progress. It's very obvious. Like you'll find GMA with shield. You'll find rolling GenMas. You'll find GenMas that float around and shoot projectiles. And then later on the game, you'll get more parasitic mutated gmas. So the powerful GMA variants definitely show up and they hit very hard. I'm not going to spoil anymore because you have to find out what you're going to fight later on in the game. Let's talk about how the map area functions. So, if you open up your menu, you'll see how the map pretty much looks. And the main area is pretty much going to be eastern Kyoto, which you're going to be walking through as you progress the story. As you clean up more malice, you'll gain access to more areas, and the map will consistently keep increasing and increasing. Basically, you explore, you find materials, you take out enemies, upgrade your stuff, and keep going. There's also some hub areas in the game where you get that feeling of returning back to a safe area as your hub. One thing good about the game is that there are something known as spirit mirrors and that is going to be your fast travel points helping you get across the map and it's also where you're going to be upgrading your equipments and your skills. And the cool thing is the upgrading is very straightforward in the game. It's not too complicated at all. You have an option for sword, you have an option for clothing, and you have an option for the gauntlet specifically. Then there's going to be tabs for your basic skills and special skills. And as you progress, you get more upgrade options. You can save your game here and manage huzuki pouches and manage the items. Now, let's talk about some really cool examples of realtime events that just happen randomly in the game and you're going to run into an example where somebody's going to need your help. And if you don't do anything about it, they pretty much just die. They're gone. They get wrecked. And you have the other choice. If you're fast enough, you can go ahead and save those people. It's nice to do that. And you It plays out something like this. One thing I do want to point out about the game is that boss fights really do feel like boss fights. and they all are very, very unique. Each fight, nothing really feels like it's repeating over and I love the fact that these bosses kind of have their own personality to them. I bumped into this one boss which felt like a cursed spirit from Jiu-Jitsu Kaisen and it was pretty cool. Let's talk about the difficulty of the game. I really do wish there was a medium option because you either have the action version, which is really hard, or the story version, which is really easy. The action hard difficulty feels very difficult, but it is very satisfying if you like a challenge. And as you master the mechanics, you get really good at the game. It is a ton of fun and you truly do get that satisfaction that you get in difficult game. Now, the easy version or the story mode, I just hate the fact that the buttons constantly show up on the enemies. Uh I feel like at a certain point, I know what's happening. Uh and it's it just gets a little too easy. So, I kind of wish there was a mode in between where it's going to help. But if you're one of those people who do enjoy playing games, honestly, to get through the story and feel like you're having a semi- challenge and don't like it too hard, cuz I do understand there's a ton of players out there like that, definitely play easy mode. You still feel like you're playing the game at the same time. It's just if you like challenges, don't don't even try the story mode. Now, let's talk about the handheld mode. I think one of the best features again about any single game on the Nintendo Switch is being able to go into handheld mode. And one of the things about Capcom is that they make their games so functional on the Nintendo Switch 2 that taking it out and playing it handheld doesn't really feel like a downgrade at all. Some games do in general feel like downgrades on a Switch 2, but it is optimized extremely well where I'm able to just play wherever I go. So, it is a ton of fun uh to do it. So, honestly, Switch 2 wise for handheld, great, great game. Pretty much all Capcom games run really well handheld. So, uh, that is definitely a big win for those. Overall, pretty much I would say the boss designs are incredibly amazing. The way the game progresses is fun. The main character, uh, is great. I played this game in both English and Japanese. For my Switch playthrough, I am playing in Japanese. On my PlayStation playthrough, I am playing in English. So, I'm getting an experience of both. They're a lot of fun. Uh, honestly, this is a solid 8.5 out of 10 game for me. I love it. I think Oni Musha is definitely something to try out. And if you're on a Nintendo Switch 2, the fact that you can use this as a hybrid uh game where you can play a docked, you can play on a handheld is really