The Onimusha Way Of The Sword Accessibility Feature More Games Should Copy

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest game in the Onimusha series. This is the first Onimusha game in a long while, and the audience went completely nuts when it was announced at the Game Awards. Even for a player like myself, who never played the other games in the series, the interest around it makes this new action-adventure game worth a look. Capcom has also been doing well in pushing accessibility forward in the video game industry. Resident Evil has accessibility, and Monster Hunter Wilds has decent accessibility. It is not perfect, but Capcom is trying and adding new things.

That makes one question important. Is Onimusha: Way of the Sword accessible for disabled players?

A reluctant Oni

As an action-adventure game, Onimusha has some familiar trappings of a Souls-like. Parry and dodge mechanics are important; the bosses are tough, and precise timing can make a fight a serious challenge. At the same time, it lacks some of the elements that make a Souls-like difficult. You collect souls to unlock different abilities, stamina, and health, but you do not lose those souls if you die. That removes one frustrating part of progress and lets the player keep going after a tough fight.

The story follows a reluctant hero trying to clear Kyoto of Malice before hell breaks through and consumes the land. He does not want to be an Oni. He wants to be a swordsman and become better at it, but the Oni Gauntlet that is forced upon him by a mysterious Man in White gives him a sense of purpose as he fights what it can turn him into. For a new player who is not well-versed in the Onimusha lore, it is still interesting and gives the action enough purpose.

Accessibility settings worth highlighting

The accessibility settings include several useful options. Subtitle size, colour, background, background opacity, speaker name, and speaker name colour can all be selected. Closed captions for sound effects are also included, which is great for deaf and hard-of-hearing players. Dialogue and sound effects are captured, although there are few indications of attacks happening off-screen or off-camera.

Players can increase the HUD size and menu text size. These options help, but the largest setting feels more like what the default font size should have been. Some tip prompts and pop-up windows need to be larger. HUD text can also be too small, especially when the player picks up items. The game lacks a high-contrast mode, so low-vision accessibility is limited in several areas.

Difficulty can be changed from standard to story. After a few deaths, the game can offer the option to retry or load from a checkpoint. These choices help, but they don't solve every accessibility problem. There is no way to adjust the timing window for attacks. Motor-disabled players may still need better reflexes for precise inputs, and some enemy attacks require repeated button presses. Hold timing can be adjusted, but more toggles and holds would be better.

Controller access is also limited. The game has two controller schemes based on defensive or offensive play, but you can't fully remap the controls on a controller. Mouse and keyboard controls can be remapped, which is good, but controllers should have the same option.

The game also lacks major features for blind and low-vision players. There is no screen reader, no navigational assistance, and not enough audio cues to communicate which buttons to press. Even the action prompt (which I’ll get to in a minute) do not have a sound effect. There are also not enough ways to show attacks that happen off camera for deaf and hard of hearing players. These missing options mean the game was not built with full accessibility in mind.

This one feature saved my butt

The option that, in my opinion, was the single most helpful accessibility feature in the entire game is called Action Prompts. Its description is vague, but the feature is simple. In battle, when enemies attack, a button prompt lets the player know what to button should be pushed. The player still has to time it right, learn the animation, understand the attack, and press the button at the right moment. It does not remove the challenge. It gives the player better information about whether to parry or dodge an attack.

That information matters in a game built around parries, dodges, perfect parries, and perfect dodges. It can be hard to telegraph an attack from animation alone. Some games use a color indicator, a red glow around an enemy, a flash on a sword, or a sound effect to show that an attack cannot be parried and should be dodged. Those systems can still be difficult for cognitive and low-vision accessibility. Knowing which button to press lets you focus on the animation and learn when to hit it.

This is why the action prompts are such a good option. They do not play the game for you. They do not make the boss easy. They remove confusion around what attack is going to happen, then leave the timing and strategy with the player. You still need to learn how to approach each attack. You still need to understand the animation, react at the right time, and decide how to fight. The challenge remains.

The first boss fight against Sasaki Ganryu shows how important that can be. The fight is hard, and the difficulty ramps up from what the game has presented up until this point. Even with action prompts, figuring out exactly when to press each button takes practice, and I failed many, many times. But the prompts give the player a fighting chance. They make the fight feel possible. That little feature can keep a player going through frustration because it gives enough information to learn, attack, and improve.

The action prompt remains the best feature in the game because it understands an important difference between information and challenge. Telling a player whether to parry or dodge does not automatically win the fight. It gives the player the information needed to take part in the fight. They still have to learn the boss, read the attack, time it right, and perform the action.

Some people may see knowing what attack is coming as cheating or believe it removes the learning of a boss. It does not. The player still needs to learn the attack animation and decide how to approach it. The option simply removes a confusing part that can stop cognitive or low-vision players from understanding what the game expects. It keeps the challenge while making that challenge clearer.

More action-adventure games should use this feature. A simple on-and-off option can help players without changing the experience for anyone who does not want it. It can sit beside colour indicators, animation, and sound effects as another way to communicate. Accessibility works better when players have different ways to receive the same important information.

The feature is also a good example of accessibility that does not need to be complicated. The game already knows which response an enemy attack needs. Showing that response as a prompt gives the player a direct way to understand the battle. That is especially helpful when a fast animation, a small flash, or a color is not enough. The prompt reduces confusion, while the perfect parry and perfect dodge still demand careful timing. A player can fail, retry, learn, and finally beat the boss because the game has made its rules easier to read, not because it has removed those rules.

Would I recommend this game?

Capcom is trying, and there are ideas here worth highlighting. The action prompts gave the player a fighting chance against a tough boss without removing the challenge. That is the strongest accessibility lesson in Onimusha: Way of the Sword. The game needs much more support, but this one feature is something other games should use and improve.