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Onimusha vs Sekiro

The comparison comes up because both games ask you to answer an incoming strike instead of avoiding it. That is where the similarity mostly ends.

Updated September 8, 2026

Is it a soulslike?

Not in the sense most people mean. Capcom describes Onimusha: Way of the Sword as swordplay action — storefront taxonomies file it under action, adventure and RPG. It is single-player, with adjustable difficulty, and its progression runs on souls absorbed from fallen Genma rather than on a bonfire-and-recovery loop.

If "soulslike" means "a hard action game where timing matters", the label fits and tells you very little. If it means the FromSoftware structure specifically, it does not fit.

Where the two genuinely rhyme

  • Both build the whole fight around a defensive read, not around evasion.
  • Both punish passivity — waiting out an opponent scales badly in each.
  • Both give the counter its own dedicated payoff rather than folding it into normal damage.

Where they diverge

 Way of the SwordSekiro
The counterIssen, timed to the moment the enemy commitsDeflect, timed to the moment the strike lands
Break stateBreak Issen once posture is goneDeathblow once posture is full
GrowthSouls absorbed from Genma; Oni Strength and Oni AgilitySkill trees and prosthetic tools
TraversalOni Armaments widen where you can goGrappling hook
DifficultyAdjustableFixed

Which one you'll get on with

If Sekiro's fixed difficulty is what stopped you, this is the more approachable of the two. If what you liked about Sekiro was that a fight became a rhythm you eventually heard, the Issen loop is chasing the same feeling from a different direction — the read is on the wind-up rather than on the impact.

Coming from Sekiro, the adjustment that costs people the most time is input timing: the same reflex fires too late here. Give it one deliberate session of counter drilling before judging the combat.

Sources