// PC GAMER — GAMING
Onimusha: Way of the Sword proves the parry formula is far from stale, you just need to get freaky with it
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Listen, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little biased towards parry-based action games. Sekiro will forever be my favourite FromSoftware game because of just how excellently it captured the back-and-forth feeling of swordplay, not only with its timed deflection mechanic, but its mandate to have you keep the pressure on.
But I appreciate that, for some, parry fatigue might be setting in. My fellow writer Mollie Taylor's sick of it, for instance—and I do understand. I think there are some games which use it as a bit of a crutch, and even the ones that don't can wear out their welcome.
Take Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for instance. I liked it, but I wouldn't want every turn-based RPG I play to have a timed block in it. Still, it's fun to have the occasional one where stats can be overcome with deft enough bumper hands.
But to paint every parry-based system with the same brush seems short-sighted to me, because this deceptively simple mechanic has a ton of juice still left inside it: no other game proves this more than Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which, as far as I'm concerned, has broken new ground in terms of what parries can do.
Onimusha has one parry button, or at least, it has one parry button on the surface: your block, which when timed just as a blow is coming in, will send a series of sparks flying. The trick that Onimusha pulls—and most good parry-based games will do this—is in actually giving you several parry buttons. Onimusha is parries all the way down. You've got:
This is the trick to making a parry-based action system feel good, like finely-chopping veggies so you don't notice them in your soup. Not only do each of these parry-like mechanics have a unique attack they counter, they also serve different purposes, giving you a toolbox of ripostes to your enemy's assault.
The basic parry builds up a meter, the Blazing State, which increases your damage and stagger—naturally graduating you to the more demanding deflect ability as time goes on once it's full. Deflecting also counters unavoidable attacks.
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The genius here is in the back-and-forth minigame between parrying and deflecting, since your Blazing State depletes over time, and refreshing it is easier than building it up from scratch. Meaning that even when your sword's on fire and you're deflecting, you still want to throw in the odd parry to keep your weapon ignited.