Onimusha: Way of the Sword is setting out to be the best comeback the CAPCOM series could have had after a 20-year long hiatus, but the playable demo released last month on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S left more than a few disappointed by the incredibly tame challenge level. While Producer Akihito Kadowaki confirmed the final game would hit harder than the demo, it wasn’t specified how difficulty would actually be tweaked. However, it seems like players will have greater control on the game’s challenge level with granular settings.
“We’ve built this game with the intention of essentially creating a new swordplay experience – the pinnacle of swordplay action games,” producer Kadowaki-san told Game Informer. “Just releasing [the game] and it being cool for [familiar] players is not quite enough. We want this to be accessible to as many people as possible. So, for people who are not familiar with action games, we want them to feel they can jump in, explore, and enjoy this kind of game. We created the modular difficulty settings for that – we have story, we have action difficulty settings, and even between those, you can change the settings [on a more granular scale].”
Having noticed a genre-wide issue with low difficulty, I couldn’t be happier to hear that Onimusha: Way of the Sword will provide granular control over the difficulty settings. Hopefully, there will be a setting that controls how aggressive enemies are, as enemies relentlessly attacking Musashi will likely be the best way to enjoy the Issen mechanics around which the new entry in the series has been built.
However, there’s another motivation behind such control on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword difficulty: getting as many players to enjoy and complete the game as possible. “Hopefully, we get as many people to enjoy the action and see the game through to the end because there are a lot of people that do pick up these kinds of games and then they can’t see them through to the end because they’re too difficult,” Kadowaki-san said.
For a series that has been on hiatus for decades, reaching as many players as possible with Onimusha: Way of the Sword is of maximum importance. Hopefully, the game will sell enough for the franchise to join CAPCOM’s tentpole series like Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry and Street Fighter.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack.
After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi “Suda51” Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA’s president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3.
When he’s not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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