Mace007 Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review

I dread boss battles in most games. The hyper specific weak points, the extremely narrow parry windows, the bloated health pools, the poorly telegraphed attacks, one hit kill mechanics, cheesy/extremely gamified animations to make the game difficult but make no sense from a momentum standpoint. None of that’s for me, but Onimusha buck that trend and contains some of the best boss battles this decade. I genuinely looked forward to all of them. The combination of parry, deflect, evade, Insen feels so tight. The deflect window is way more generous than souls-likes. Blades lock when they hit each other rather than clip through each other. Yes, yes, more please. The only downside is a load of low quality open world bloat with side quests that are likely required to upgrade your equipment efficiently. If you can look past that or grit your teeth through it, I think you’ll really enjoy these epic fights.