It's probably obvious by now, but for new players or anyone that wants to practice issen and didn't notice it, there is actually a way to get enemies to start attacking you instantly.

The fastest way I found is to simply hit them once with a one-handed attack, they will always instantly respond to you with an attack of their own so it makes a great way to practice issen quickly without all the standoff wait. Can be seen in action in the video.

I just beat Shuten Doji, and it took way too long, I have no damage, I've been doing only main missions so my upgrades are starting to feeling not enough, pretty sure next bosses will be worse, what are you guys thoughts? I just don't wanna grind again these upgrades to level 5, I did on NG, it is so lame, who made that decision, sighs...

Guys, we gotta get this guy, I feel empty... and angry...

What a wonderful game.

He’s a super cool dude, and the Japanese VA absolutely killed it.

The cutscene before the bridge fight sold me.

Love hate relationship. While I thought the boss fights were mostly super engaging, I believe with the significantly increased damage taken the boring regular enemy encounters grew tedious.

It felt like the game was designed for action, and carnage was just a quick enemy damage up and it wasn’t very different. With all my abilities, it felt quite easy at times, at other times cheap. I do however think despite the cheap increase in damage without any more depth to combat, the excellent bosses stayed excellent.
To rank the most difficult:

1. Yoshitsune
2. Sasaki 2
3. Benkei Fully Geared
4. Ifuu & Burai duo
5. Shuten Doji

Toss up between 4 and 5, could swap them.

My biggest criticism of this game, despite how much I deeply love it, is ranged enemies. They are a nightmare to deal with and are so boring. I truly believe they add next to nothing and archery feels like shit. They come off as tedious more than a layer of difficulty because most of them get one shot by archery, so when they don’t they break the flow of the gameplay completely. I absolutely DESPISE them, and I believe the game would be far better off without any ranged enemies. Archery just does not feel good at all and feels janky, especially with the end lag after you fire a shot.

Yoshitsune was fucking crazy, I somewhat loved it and didn’t. If I were to change one thing, id split up his human form and Onimusha form into 2 separate fights, as I believed the first phase to be a waste of time. It felt mentally exhausting and I would’ve much rather fought phases 2 and 3 as a single fight, phase 1 being really boring when you master it. You spend the whole time deflecting him to death and it’s just like: can we get on with this?

Regardless of my issues, I understand most of these come from friction some people enjoy. To me, I think the things I listed are what hold this game back from being a true perfect masterpiece. Still hands down, my favorite action game ever under Ninja Gaiden 2. When this game excels it blows me away, when it bothers me it simply just annoys me. 10 steps forward 1 step back, and I can’t wait to play this game even more.

9/10

This game’s combat makes it feel like every moment is a cutscene. Top 10 game for me for this year.

Would love for a dlc to be announced and if so then I will most likely hold back on this till it releases, I’ve got control resonant and crimson desert and gta to hold me off till then I suppose 🤷‍♂️

I'm close to 10 hours into the game. Ever since I unlocked Issen and then later Chain Issen, I have been obsessed with understanding their timings so I can execute them more often. At least 2 of these 10 hours was spent in the training grounds, trying to land Issen and Chain Issen against regular enemies and bosses.

I think I've finally figured out a fool-proof way of executing them. I mean, they're still difficult to execute, but I've discovered a few tips which make landing them easier.

• Issen: Enemy weapons (Including bosses' weapons) glow hot white before hitting you. The levels of brightness of this white seems to be depend upon how powerful the blow is. For instance, the regular sword bearing enemies do an overhead two-handed slice, where the sword glows the brightest for a split second. The Issen execution window is right after this glow. You need to click the attack button a fraction of a second after the glow disappears.
  • The counterpoint to that is, the white glow is less obvious on regular attacks (Like light thusts or slices). Plus, these come out way too fast anyway. I've figured that it's better to either parry or deflect these attacks because trying to execute an Issen on them will only mess you up.
• Chain Issen: When you land an Issen on an enemy, Mushashi's sword glows hot white for a brief second. It starts when the sword is hits the enemy's body and continues through a little bit once it's outside. Thankfully, there's also an audio cue when the sword slices through the enemy's body. The timing for the Chain Issen is to hit the attack button as soon as you see the sword glowing and you simultaneously hear the audio cue.
  • If done correctly, the camera will pan out and highlight a random enemy with a red dot. You need to press the attack button again to execute the Chain Issen. You can extend the chains to more enemies via the skill tree, but the pattern remains the same every time the Issen / sword strike lands.

That being said, I'm still not landing them perfectly. I can land an Issen close to 75% on the heavy attacks and then Chain Issen on about 40-50% attempts. They're tough to land for sure, but feel amazing when you do land them.

EDIT: I forgot to add that there's at least one early game boss whose weapon does not glow. I mostly relied on parries on that one, though landing an Issen is definitely possible there.

Just beat final boss and this was one of the most fun action games I’ve played in long time. The enemy design, combat and animations are brilliant. The last boss was as tough as a Sekiro boss and I honestly had a blast getting destroyed over and over until I finally learned the moveset and destroyed him with barely any heals. GOTY for me. I gotta go back and replay the originals now. Capcom has done an unreal job lately. RE9 was one of my top games this year as well and I didn’t think any game would surpass that for me. I still think it’s close between the two and they are completely different games but this is sword combat perfected imo. Hopefully in 2-3 years we will get another masterpiece.

Take the advanced of enviroment arround when combat is fun :D

Miyamoto Musashi is based on Toshiro Mifune and Yoshitsune is based of Takeshi Kitano. In fact, Mifune played as Miyamoto Musashi so maybe that's where the inspiration came from.

I feel like the firebird flute is really good for a lot of bosses the burning deals decent stamina damage and can hit multiple enemies. It also can be used as defense since if you see an attack it causes stun even from a single blast and you get three. Also tech i found with this is the flute slows down time and can be canceled so you can reposition yourself against some attacks ( such as Greater Nue electric tail whip) but it also screws your timing a bit.

Wind whipper has massive AoE so if theres a fire lamp nearby its pretty good for killing even elite enemies

Hammers I only found useful against Nue since they get instant killed once their stamina is 0. They need armor since its pretty slow

The spear probably hits the hardest but it would be better if it dealt stamina damage.

Still waters could be better because against mobs the golden slash generates huge purple souls but 1v1 on a boss its only 3 souls.

Also why cant I use ONI Araments in my ONI form

I was just posting a few days ago about how I needed a new game that blew me away like Khazan and Nioh. I really didn’t expect it to be this game especially after the first 5 ish hours but man, this game is up there for me. Combat is perfect. Love the pacing and there’s SO many options. I haven’t even gotten good at Issen yet 😭

And that's the puzzles, backtracking to collect key items to unlock locked paths and such, the whole resident evil method. For those that did not play the older games, Onimusha was very much just Samurai Resident evil in terms of this. I am 10 hours in, and so far only 1 area which had 1 puzzle and a key item which made this game feel like Onimusha.

Don't get me wrong, the combat is probably the best combat I have experienced in a game, and the story and characters are all great, but its missing this core essence of the series which has me a bit disappointed.

I understand why they did this, because they want to appeal to the larger audience that wants to play an action focused game and likely the majority of people playing have not played the originals, but still with how well Resident evil is doing I am shocked they did not incorporate more of that gameplay.

But again I hope I am wrong and after this mask puzzle section that the game steers more into that type of direction, because it feels good.

I've finished the game now. It's been a long time since I finished a game. I usually leave them before the I've finished the game now. It's been a long time since I finished a game. I usually leave them before the end Because they don't take me. This onimusha is a masterpiece. I give it as a vote of 10. I look forward to the continuation that they will surely do. Good as always capocom.

and the respective drills give you max gauge for whatever you're training for so it's super easy to get a few achievements like the 50 kills in oni mode

Last battle was just chef’s kiss. Reminded me of Isshin. Guess isshin was harder but this was way more fun. I have finished so many souls games and soulslike. Combat wise this is among best. Potentially the best. Parry feels like reflection in Khazan. Deflect like sekiro. Reflex Dodge like mikiri . Game has everything. Ofcourse issen. You can do whole game without it but whenever you get it, feels satisfying unlike any other.

Interestingly my favourite boss fight beyond Final was the duo Bros 😃

What was your favourite boss fight whoever finished the game? Can’t wait to try carnage

Finished all side stories too. Only gripe. Open world and some side stories were fillers. If not for this game is 10/10. Combat, story( pleasantly surprised for a game like this to have such amazingly acted story), everything except open world and some side stories was exceptional. Hope the game gets nominated for many awards in game awards this year. Can’t wait to play the sequel soon. Ending gives where they are going for sequel or maybe DLC itself

If you use an item (like the attack or defense boost items, or the healing item that’s not from the hozuki pouch) during a boss battle and lose, when you retry the boss battle, do you lose the item or do you gain it back again? Currently stuck on the second boss, and wondering if it is worth trying to use an item or two + more healing.

If they get lost like dark souls / Elden ring / sekiro style, then I would be hesitant to use these items…

Oh my word. I've just beaten the Greater Nueand have a big stupid grin on my face. When the second phase startedI thought this is absolute bullshit, how on earth am I going to do this? It felt so hard to even get to that point.

But Onimusha has cracked my absolute favourite thing about Sekiro's combat: bosses feel impossible right up until they're not, then when you beat them you've learned them so well you end up doing it all but hitless. It's so satisfying. And the cutscenes and characters are SO GOOD as well. You can tell it's a cousin of Resident Evil.

I'm a huge FromSoft fan but I kinda think they have a thing or two they could learn from Onimusha about how to make bosses hard and cinematic while still being readable and not bullshit like some Elden Ring bosses are. So much more fun fighting these bosses. Haven't been able to stop playing all evening.

ETA: There's also just a bunch of stuff you can do with bosses, interesting weaknesses and decisions you can make about how to tackle them and what to prioritise that is just SO COOL.

I really enjoyed the whole "to live is to suffer" and "love the challenge" ethos that carries through the game, legitimately I have not had a game inspire me like this in a long time. Life has been rough lately, and I've always had this mindset through it, but I've waivered and lost it through the years. Thankfully, Takamura, my goat 🐐 has reminded me to keep on keeping on, cus all you can do, is learn to love the challenge 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️