Onimusha: Way of the Sword finally gave fans a playable taste earlier this month in the form of a free demo, and Capcom heard you: the game feels too easy. Criticism was widespread enough that producer Akihito Kadowaki even addressed it in a video message to fans on social media, and Capcom responded to those concerns in more detail for me in an interview at Summer Game Fest.
Capcom has seen “very positive feedback” about “the combat, the swordplay, the characters, and the relationships,” Kadowaki and director Satoru Nihei tell me in a joint interview conducted via translator, but they admit, “a lot of people say that they find the demo too easy in some cases.”
Reiterating comments from their Twitter video recognizing this fact, the devs say their demo represents “quite an early part of the game,” and that Capcom “custom built the demo to give Musashi skills that you would get later on in the game.” Those two factors “combined to make” the demo “easier than it should be,” but Capcom is “quite confident” that players will find a more satisfying difficulty curve in the final game.
That said, I still wouldn’t go into Way of the Sword expecting a Soulslike level of challenge. We’ll have a more extensive report about the hands-on demo that was shown at Summer Game Fest soon, but I found it quite similar to the demo that was released to the public. The boss shown at Summer Game Fest was substantially harder than the one in the public demo – at least in my experience – but I still found the basic enemies to pretty much be pushovers.
That sort of rhythm seems, at least to some extent, to be an intentional design choice. “If every enemy was really tough to fight,” the devs explain, “it would lead to stress, eventually, for some people.” Capcom is “definitely trying to gear it so that the basic enemies, you can enjoy fighting them at an easier pace,” though there will be “quite challenging” additions to the basic roster of enemies later in the game.
“Then we have some mid-bosses that are not necessarily the big sort of story bosses, but they’re also quite difficult.” Then, of course, the main bosses will be “more difficult” still.
I also asked whether there would be more challenging difficulty options for players who want to be tested, and the pair tease that while “we can’t go into the details right now,” there will “definitely” be something to encourage hardcore players to stick with the game.
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