Onimusha: Way of the Sword PC Performance Review: Capcom Has Another Solid PC Port

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is now out on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2, and it is another big launch in what has been an excellent run for Capcom. More importantly, it finally brings Onimusha back with a proper new mainline game after a very long wait.

I've been playing Onimusha: Way of the Sword on PC for a while now, and while I'm still making my way through the story, I've spent plenty of time fighting enemies, getting my parry timings right, and, of course, messing around with the graphics settings. And so far, the PC version has left a really good impression on me.

I've primarily been playing at 4K on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, and the game has been surprisingly easy to run. So, rather than turning this into a full review of the story and everything Onimusha has to offer, I wanted to focus on how the PC version performs, what settings you get to play around with, and whether there are any catches when you start pushing everything up.

Testing Rig

For testing, I paired the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which sits on the MSI Z890 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi motherboard, alongside 48GB of Kingston Fury Renegade non-binary DDR5 RAM clocked at 6000MT/s (using XMP Profile 3). Storage was handled by a WD Black SN850X (2TB).

Onimusha: Way of the Sword was tested on the Acer Nitro XV275K P5, a 27-inch 4K Mini LED gaming monitor with a 160Hz refresh rate. The GPU driver version used for testing was 6.17.44.

Graphics Settings

Onimusha: Way of the Sword gives you a decent number of graphics settings to play around with, but thankfully, the menu doesn't feel unnecessarily complicated. There are a handful of presets if you just want to pick one and start playing, while individual options are there if you want to spend some time fine-tuning things yourself.

You can manually enable or disable ray tracing, turn Frame Generation on or off, and adjust DLSS Super Resolution. There's also a toggle that lets you switch between DLSS Preset M and Preset L. The game also gives you a proper explanation on the side to make sure which one suits your rig the best.

One setting I found particularly interesting is CPU Performance. You can choose between Balanced, Prioritize Performance, and Prioritize Power Saving. Depending on what you select, the game can either make greater use of the CPU or reduce its workload to save power. For my performance testing, I kept this set to Prioritize Performance.

I also really like that Capcom gives you a VRAM indicator right inside the settings menu. As you change graphics options, you can see an estimate of how much video memory the game expects to use. This became particularly useful once I started combining 4K, ray tracing, and Frame Generation on my 12GB RTX 5070, and the indicator kept moving towards the red zone.

There's another tiny option that I appreciate as someone who uses two monitors. The game simply lets you choose which display you want to use. That sounds incredibly basic, and it should be, but I've played games recently, including Control Resonant, where something this simple has surprisingly been skipped.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword PC Performance

This is where Onimusha: Way of the Sword has impressed me the most. I've been playing on the latest build, and so far, I haven't experienced a single crash. The game has also been remarkably smooth, especially considering I've been testing primarily at 4K. Even before getting into the numbers, this feels like a well-optimized PC release where I can spend more time actually playing rather than constantly jumping back into the settings menu. Speaking of which, it doesn't make you restart the game when switching presets, DLSS, and whatnot. That's an added bonus.

For all my tests, I kept the resolution at 4K, DLSS Super Resolution at its default setting, and CPU Performance set to Prioritize Performance. I started with the Low preset, with ray tracing and Frame Generation disabled, and averaged 100 FPS, with a 79 FPS 1% low. That's already an excellent starting point, but I was more interested in seeing what happened once I started turning things up.

Moving to the High preset while keeping ray tracing and Frame Generation off brought the average down to 82 FPS, with a 63 FPS 1% low. That's the setting I was particularly happy with. I'm still comfortably above 60 FPS at 4K, and visually, I get to enjoy the game without cutting back on much.

The RTX 5070 was doing almost all the heavy lifting here. GPU utilization stayed between 97% and 99% across my tests, while CPU utilization generally hovered between 13% and 16%. My GPU stayed around 80 to 81 degrees Celsius, while the Core Ultra 9 285K remained at roughly 60 degrees Celsius. In other words, these 4K tests are very clearly GPU-bound.

Things get considerably heavier once ray tracing enters the picture. At Low with ray tracing set to Low and 2x Frame Generation enabled, I averaged 71 FPS, with a 53 FPS 1% low. Pushing everything to High, including ray tracing, dropped that further to 57 FPS, although the 1% low interestingly remained at 53 FPS.

There's another catch here, and it's VRAM. At 4K High with ray tracing set to High, the game estimated 10.80GB of VRAM usage with Frame Generation disabled. Simply switching on 2x Frame Generation increased that estimate to 11.47GB out of the 11.66GB available to the game on my RTX 5070. The VRAM indicator even turns red at this point, so you're basically brushing against the limit of a 12GB graphics card.

That hasn't translated into crashes during my testing, but it is something worth keeping in mind. Personally, on an RTX 5070, I'd much rather run the game at 4K High without ray tracing. I'm getting around 82 FPS, VRAM isn't being pushed quite as aggressively, and most importantly, the game still looks excellent and feels consistently smooth.

Gameplay and Experience

Of course, good PC performance only gets you so far if the game itself isn't fun, and thankfully, I've been having a great time with Onimusha so far.

Combat has easily been the highlight for me. There's a satisfying rhythm to fights once you start getting comfortable with parrying, deflecting attacks, dodging at the right moment, and figuring out when you actually have an opening to attack. I definitely spent some of my early fights getting the timing completely wrong, but once it starts clicking, cutting through enemies becomes incredibly satisfying.

It also helps that the combat feels weighty. Sword hits have a nice sense of impact, and tougher encounters make me pay attention rather than simply hammering the attack button until everything around me disappears. I'm still working my way through the game, so I'm not going to pretend I've seen everything its combat system has to offer, but what I've played so far has kept me wanting to jump into the next encounter.

The story has also been intriguing enough to keep me going. Onimusha puts Miyamoto Musashi at the center of a supernatural version of Kyoto filled with Genma, and I quite like the contrast between its historical setting and all the supernatural chaos happening around it.

Verdict

So far, Onimusha: Way of the Sword feels like another solid PC release from Capcom. It looks great at 4K, gives you enough graphics options to tune the experience to your hardware, and most importantly, it has been remarkably stable throughout my time with it.

The RTX 5070 managing around 82 FPS at 4K High without ray tracing or Frame Generation is the configuration I've enjoyed the most. You can push things further with ray tracing and Frame Generation, but that's also where the 12GB of VRAM on the RTX 5070 starts feeling a little tight, with the game's estimate reaching 11.47GB at 4K High with High RT and 2x Frame Generation. But that's really the only thing I'd keep an eye on.