Having played a portion of it recently at Summer Game Fest: Play Days, and the free demo available on the XBOX Store, Way of the Sword feels more like a reinvention of the series – and it’s glorious. Instead of isometric views, now we follow closely behind the hero, like a third-person action-adventure game. The mystical horror elements remain strong, and genuinely creepy at times, but combat has evolved significantly with a variety of slick moves to pull off.

Musashi is fast, no doubt inspired by the actual legendary tales of his prowess with a sword, and can easily slice up supernatural beings with ease, utilizing a variety of parries and dodges to whittle down the most powerful of foes, and pulling off stunning finishing moves that leave them scattered across the ground.

Like previous games, the Oni Gaunlet is a centerpiece to Musashi’s power (even if he doesn’t want it). Able to absorb Genma souls from defeated enemies, Musashi is able to unleash tremendously flashy and powerful attacks, like The Two Celestials, a pair of large blades that strip souls from defeated foes, or the Wind-Whipper, a twin-blade that creates a devastating tornado around Musashi, leaving enemies quite literally in the dust.

This adventure is amplified by the cinematic storytelling on display to help us resonate with Musashi’s journey, with well-produced cutscenes, voice actors eating ham sandwiches, and larger-than-life bosses help bring us into this world. In one scene during our preview, Rasho-gan, a tremendous demonic entity covered in arms and hands, tricks a young lady to cut off her fingers to appease him. To suggest his delivery is over the top would be an understatement, and I loved how much scenery he chewed up along the way.

All of this is to say that Way of the Sword is feeling like a radical new entry in the series, and we had the pleasure to learn more about this long-awaited revival by speaking with Director Satoru Nihei and Producer Akihito Kadowaki about bringing Onimusha back, reimagining the legendary Musashi, and updating the series’ signature combat for today.

After nearly two decades away, what convinced you this was the right moment to bring Onimusha back?

Producer Akihito Kadowaki – “It’s been 20 years, and during that time many people internally have wanted to make a new one. It’s been one thing that we wanted to revisit, but just assembling the right people at the right time was quite difficult.

“During that time, we’ve put out numerous titles like Street Fighter, so it was very hard to get together as a team, especially when you consider that games take four to five years to make with hundreds of people. So that was quite a challenge. But around 2020 was when we managed to assemble all the pieces, and RE Engine was coming into its own. And that provided us with an opportunity to finally start this project.”

How did you decide that Miyamoto Musashi should lead this new story, and what made him the right fit for this darker vision of Edo-era Kyoto?

Director Satoru Nihei – “So there are a couple of elements that influenced it. One of them is that even though Musashi is quite a legendary figure and has appeared in a lot of media over time, we really wanted to give our own take – a Capcom take – and have our own unique version of Musashi to portray. But on top of that, in terms of the Kyoto setting, the real-life Musashi obviously gets to Kyoto as well on his journey as a swordsman. So that made him quite a good fit as a way to both explore and have this story set in Kyoto.

“As for the dark fantasy elements and twist on Kyoto, there’s obviously a lot of myths and legends that exist in Kyoto’s history. And we felt that it was a good match for the Onimusha world, having the Genma be essentially the cause of a lot of these myths. All of that came together to make Musashi a really good fit for the project.

“And for Musashi himself, obviously he’s a legendary swordsman and has quite a reputation, but we felt it would provide quite an interesting contrast where he wants to rise to the top through his own strength, but when he’s been given this Oni Gauntlet and this great power, he doesn’t want it. We thought that would create quite an interesting bit of tension to explore as part of the core of the story.”

The setting of Kyoto in Way of the Sword feels both historical and supernatural. What steps do you take to blend real Japanese history with dark fantasy in a way that still feels grounded?

Director Satoru Nihei – “In Kyoto, there’s a lot of myths and legends that come from there. And when researching and starting the project, a lot of yokai legends – the Japanese monsters – a lot of those legends originate from Kyoto. There are a lot of stories, so we felt like it was a good match. But having those dark fantasy elements, we also didn’t want to sacrifice some of the core elements of Kyoto. So, in terms of developing the world and the recreation we’ve made, we’ve tried to highlight a lot of the charm of Kyoto. Obviously, it’s a very famous tourist attraction. A lot of people come to visit. So, we wanted to keep the elements of nature and the beauty of the place alive but also blend it with a nice balance of eeriness and darkness.”

Producer Akihito Kadowaki – “Regarding those Kyoto legends, we’ve taken and given our own spin within Onimusha fiction and layered into the lore. We also had all those plans for the story and those connections looked over by historical experts to give their input on to know how accurate they are, and to make sure we didn’t diminish the actual real history there.”

Director Satoru Nihei – “To add one more point, in terms of Onimusha lore, there’s always been this relationship between hell and the oni. An interesting point of Kyoto, is Rokudo Chinno-ji Temple. Separate from Onimusha, it has this lore itself as being a connecting point between hell and the real world. So being able to have those real locations and tie them into that and having it connect so well with the world that we wanted to portray was an exciting thing.”

How did you approach modernizing classic Onimusha mechanics like Issen, parries, and soul absorption without losing what longtime fans loved about the series?

Director Satoru Nihei – “With the Issen, that’s obviously a very cool part of the Onimusha identity and something unchanged from the classic feel of it. At the core of that is the timing and the risk and reward of that mechanic. Obviously, you must pull it off just before you get hit. If you mess it up, you’re going to eat a lot of damage. So that tension is something we wanted to keep. So even though it has been updated in some ways, we wanted to make sure that classic element is kept.

“In terms of how we’ve changed it and still hope that it will come through in players’ hands, obviously the new technology that’s available to us now allows us to do things that we couldn’t do before with that Issen. So, one of the things that we’ve added is the dynamic dismemberment system – wherever the blade passes through, that’s where it severs. That’s a new angle that we’re going to introduce while maintaining the cool feel of it.

“For soul absorption, obviously, for a long time that’s also been a point of tension for the combat. Do you decide to take souls now? Do you keep them on hold for later? And that’s something we also didn’t want to really give up. But obviously the action is a bit faster now, much faster than the previous titles.

“In terms of balancing that tension with the faster-paced combat, we’ve obviously updated it so you can absorb souls while moving. So that’s how we’ve changed it in that sense, but while keeping the core identity of those mechanics.”

It has been stated that the game is not trying to chase the “impossibly difficult” action trend. How do you balance that challenge and satisfaction in combat?

Producer Akihito Kadowaki – “Trying to find that balance between satisfying gameplay and difficulty, rather than making a very difficult game, we are really focused on trying to make an action game that people are going to enjoy, and that a wide range of people can enjoy.

“So, we have two difficulty modes: we’ve got story mode and action mode. And while action mode is geared toward people more familiar with action games, even with that higher difficulty, for players who do want to finely tune the difficulty for themselves and lower the bar a little bit, you can start with that action difficulty with the action guide to really fine tune the challenge that people face there. So we’ve really put a lot of work into trying to create a lot of different difficulty options rather than just a binary choice – a way to fine tune that experience for a lot of people and make it accessible.

“We have put a lot of thought and other work into trying to make it accessible and also adjustable for the taste of a range of players. So, for instance, when switching between the Oni Armaments, it slows down so you don’t have that pressure of trying to change in real time. Things like that – we’ve put a lot of thought into it, trying to make it a scalable and accessible experience on the difficulty side.”

What makes a great rival or boss encounter in Way of the Sword, and do you have a favorite you can talk about (without spoilers)?

Director Satoru Nihei – “The boss battle with Ganryu, the main rival of Musashi, is one of my favorites. It was one of the first ones we really worked on and developed, and just that relationship with Musashi, the action on display there — it’s one of the little things I’m quite proud of, so I quite like that battle.

“When designing a boss or creating those encounters, we don’t want it to be solely like, you know, this is an obstacle. You get to this stage, this is an obstacle, and you don’t really have a reason to fight them other than just to progress. We feel that creating that motivation, that backstory, and tying that as well to the setting that you’re in, is really important when designing bosses. So that’s something we definitely have in mind when we’re making them.”

What have been the biggest challenges in designing an enemy so they feel unsettling and memorable, but still fun to fight repeatedly?

Director Satoru Nihei – “First, from the side of the action and combat, same as with bosses, we try to create unique attacks and unique actions that are very closely tied to that particular enemy to make them more memorable and engaging to fight. So that was something we really had in mind when designing each enemy.

“And in terms of appearance, obviously, we have the dark fantasy setting, but rather than just going straight into that angle, trying to incorporate elements of Japanese oral history with those elements is important for this particular title.”

Dylan wakes up to find his cell open and his chest actually impaled by the shape-shifting melee weapon, the Aberrant, that he’s apparently been granted by his sister and the FBC’s resident governing body/extradimensional cosmic horror, The Board, which addresses him directly in their signature, fourth-wall-breaking, alien rumble: “You will serve as intern/player character/lackey.”

Reaching to pull it out, I faced the first choice of the game between three different melee weapons: Flurry (fast-attacking, close-range twin daggers with a boosted critical chance), Slash (a wide-swiping scythe for attacking groups), and Slice (a high-single-target-damage axe with bonus damage from behind, which is what I went with).

These kinds of substantive mechanical choices do a lot to immediately separate CONTROL Resonant from the first game. Jesse’s kit opened up and allowed for specialization over time, but broadly played the same no matter what. With Dylan, on the other hand, I was making significant build choices right away. You can unlock the other weapons eventually and experiment more, but the game immediately starts getting you used to the idea of mutually exclusive choices.

Dylan steps out of his cell to find the Oldest House on high alert, with alarms blaring and no other living people anywhere to be found. A handful of bureau employees infected by the Hiss (the infecting alien force Jesse fought (and apparently ultimately failed) to contain in the first game) are stumbling around to serve as tutorial fodder for me to learn the basics of attacking and dodging. Emerging from the front door, Dylan finds Manhattan to be in similarly rough shape to the Oldest House – apparently, the Hiss has fully escaped.

A radio on one of the floating bodies chirps out a distress call that Dylan answers. FBC agent Zoe is extremely relieved to make contact with anyone, even if Dylan is understandably cagey at first about his identity, and she directs him towards her. I then begin to fight my way through the apocalyptic streets and alleys of NYC.

In one of these alleys, I face off against my first larger enemies, towering above with giant heads that they smash down on me. A wall blocks my advancement until I clear the impromptu arena of the larger threats, with smaller, basic enemies respawning continually in the meantime. It requires a bit more situational awareness than the previous fight to make sure Dylan isn’t hit from behind, which is just a taste of things to come.

After this I am presented with another set of three choices for my secondary weapon: Crush (a huge, slow, smashing mallet), Drill (a directed, sustained damage weapon), and Extend (a whip-like chain staff for range, which I chose to complement the close-up damage of Slice).

Eventually you also choose from a third pool of weapons for combo-finishers. That means that you mix and match your main move set from a different set of weapons each for light, heavy, and finishers attacks. Combine the heavy mallet smashes of Crush with the rapid attacks of Slash, and you’ve more or less built your own Kirkhammer.

One element that hadn’t occurred to me before playing was how much CONTROL Resonant is also a 3D platformer. Making my way up to some rooftops, I see one of the demo’s more striking images: a sort of ribbon of hundreds of pigeons stuttering frozen midair and spiraling down toward a doorway. I make my way over to it and enter to find a sort of pocket dimension of plant-covered building tops in a black void.

Following an impression of his sister Jesse, Dylan finds a number of what look like 16-bit game consoles that unlock movement abilities like a dash, double jump, and levitation, followed by platforming challenges to tutorialize the new skill before adding another. It culminates after he re-emerges into the city with a little test where he leaps and dashes over the biggest gaps yet to reach the first boss, a Resonant Entity.

According to Zoe, Manhattan was already under assault by another Altered World Event before the Hiss even escaped the Oldest House, compounding the situation. The Hiss and this Resonant AWE seem to be at odds with one another, at least, as we observe the Resonant Entity removing all Hiss from its surroundings from a distance.On reaching it, the Entity itself takes the form of an enormous woman’s head, cut off at the mouth and embedded in a slab of pavement, telekinetically picking up rocks and garbage to throw at me. It was unsettling and spectacular, which is exactly the intersection where I want a CONTROL boss fight to sit.

I scrape through on the first attempt and am given my third and final build choice of the demo: one of three options for a Resonant special ability. These were Barrage (pulling up rocks from the ground to launch at range), Seekers (summoning a sort of auto-firing turret that you can also throw as an explosive), and Shield (pulling up a shield of floating rocks that you can also use offensively by dashing into enemies). You will eventually have three of these equipped at any given moment, giving you a full suite of six unique attacks and abilities that you can build and tweak à la carte. That’s a huge amount of variety even before you take into account the skill trees for each of those weapons with which you can further customize them, or passive abilities you can equip from artifacts that you craft.

I was able to take a sip directly from this firehose of complexity when I jumped to a later save file when Dylan has a full suite of abilities unlocked. The Evacuation Zone is an open combat area, filled with various types of enemies coming from all sides, both melee and ranged. It was a lot to juggle, and Dylan’s expanded kit was overwhelming to take in when jumping ahead like that, rather than building it up incrementally like you will in the normal course of play. It’s good, though – the fact that I wasn’t able to just button-mash my way through the later gameplay section means there will be some real skill to master, which is exciting in the context of all this deep build variety and room for experimentation.

“Lush” is the first word that comes to mind to capture how Legacy of Atlantis looks. This was especially apparent in the transition to the next section, shown in recent trailers, where Lara emerges through a waterfall to a gorgeous vista of the Lost Valley before diving into a pool of water. As was in fashion at the time, the Survivor trilogy was acclaimed for its gritty realism, offering a darker and more grounded take on Tomb Raider than we’d ever seen before. Legacy of Atlantis retains that realism in terms of visual fidelity, but turns up the vibrance. Everything is a little more saturated, a little bigger, a little more dramatic. It doesn’t go so far as to feel stylized or exaggerated, but it’s full technicolor realism, and it looks great.

That sense of pizzazz also showed itself in the action, when in the next section Lara whipped out her classic dual pistols to battle dinosaurs. After building up a Focus meter, Lara can leap into bullet time, slowing time down to a crawl as she dramatically flips through the air and unloads her pistols at superhuman speed, making Swiss cheese out of any velociraptors caught in her crosshair. After the Survivor trilogy’s more grounded and realistic focus on combat, Lara’s bullet-time finesse is a fun and stylish way to integrate her signature acrobatics from earlier entries, heightening the experience.

The velociraptors and T-Rex also newly have feathers this time around, which is both a cool glow-up and better in line with current paleontology. They’re indicative of the whole project of Legacy of Atlantis – the underlying bones are the same, but now we simply know more, and can make it cooler.

After the demo, I also interviewed three of its lead creatives: Jeff Adams, Experience Director, Crystal Dynamics; Raul Siqueira Game Director, Crystal Dynamics; and Arek Tomaszewski, Art Director, Flying Wild Hog. We discussed coming full circle with the Tomb Raider series and returning to its origins with 30 years of knowledge and technology to leverage, and what separates this game and this Lara from both the original and the Survivor trilogy.

With this being the second remake of the original Tomb Raider, how much do you feel you need to be faithful to the original vs. how free are you to play and invent?

Adams: We’re clearly fans of the originals, and we want to make sure that it is a resonant experience for people. I want them to be able to see the clear, tentpole connecting points that they remember from those adventures, but at the same time, we also don’t want to be pigeonholed by them. We want to be able to have the opportunity to say, ‘hey, this would be a place where we can take this to make it feel it’s more appropriate for a modern audience’ and also helps us tell the story that we want to tell.

Siqueira: I think, just to add to that, the word that we’ve been using a lot, both internally and externally, is we reference it as a reimagining, because we want to make sure that people understand this isn’t just the same game, but we just made the graphics better. We are trying to bring a lot of new blood and new things into it. Obviously, we’re being respectful, and then that line between what the original and Anniversary did versus the new stuff that we’re doing, that is kind of where we find a good ground. So “reimagining,” to us, just means: how do we take the feelings and the ideas of the original and preserve it and present it in a way that is fit for a modern audience.

Tomaszewski: The T-Rex boss fight is a good example of it. So, from the T-Rex design itself, we try to be very respectful and keep it as it was in the original one, but we’re adding the red feathers, which obviously adds a new quality to it. And then the combat itself is basically an original one was very simple: just shoot and run. Here, we try to make a new, cinematic experience and expand on what the original was.

Adams: Yeah, go back and play Anniversary. You’ll see glimmers of the past existing there, but it’s not been presented like this before.

Now that there have been 30 years of subsequent Tomb Raiders since the original, what are some ideas from later games that you’ve been excited to reintegrate back into this new take?

Siqueira: We looked at a lot of different things. I think the Survivor trilogy, being the closest touch point for us, served as a good entry for us to look at, like, the core three that we talk about in Tomb Raider, which is puzzles, traversal, combat. Obviously, Survivor had a heavier focus on combat. We made it a little bit more complex. There’s a lot of depth to it. 
Arek was kind of touching on this in his previous answer, but we wanted combat in Legacy of Atlantis to not be just point-and-shoot, but we also didn’t want people to think that this is a combat game – we wanted to find the right amount of depth to put into it.

So, we introduce things like the Focus Mode, which you played, which is, like, our currency of combat. Basically, dealing damage and taking damage fills the meter, and you spend it to go into bullet time, or a slowed-down mode. That, to us, was a really cool way of merging the two, because, in the original, Lara used to do a lot more acrobatics – very different than Survivor, which is more grounded. So, we decided we absolutely need to have acrobatics, but from a game perspective, how does that work, right? Like, if you’re taking longer times to perform a jump or a dodge, you’re just more vulnerable. You’re exposed to taking damage. So, we figured out that when you push the button and slow down time, you get a cool move that celebrates Lara’s personality and traversal, and it also gives you an opportunity to deal more damage, and then just celebrate it. 


So, there’s lots of little things like that where we look at Survivor, look at Angel of Darkness, look at all of the games before. What did they do that we like, what did the original do, and how do we combine the two of them together? 


Tomb Raider has obviously always been on the cutting edge of 3D gaming visuals from the very beginning. Is there anything you’re particularly excited that you’ve been able to achieve in this one that was not possible for previous iterations?

Tomaszewski: Tomb Raider was always setting the bar for visuals very high. When you played the Survivor series, it was amazing. The original one, if you played it, it was like, what’s going on? Why is it 3D? How can you move in all those directions? So, we are trying to be believable to what the original was, visually from the color palette, and we want to recreate the feeling of amazingness of the environment. But it also gives us an opportunity because the Survivorseries was very gritty. It was very realistic, in a way – in the movement, in a color palette, in what Lara could do. Here, we can recreate it with more freedom and add more flavor to it. But obviously, we’re trying to build the world in a beautiful way and just create this feeling of discovery of a place that hasn’t been discovered. And at this point, with the Unreal Engine, we can just do so much to make a beautiful world. 


As a new take on an iconic character, what separates your version of Lara from previous versions?

Adams: Alix. It’s very direct, but it’s true. We’ll write things down on the page and we’ll be very proud of ourselves. Like, ‘yeah, that’s great – that’s gonna be awesome,’ and we’ll mock it up. And then we take it into the booth, and we’ll put it onto the stage, and Alix comes along and she transforms it. She brings the classic cool of Lara back, and she brings it real human expression. So, there’s layers. I hate to use the onion analogy, but there’s layers to the way she performs Lara, and that’s situational. And so, it’s gonna be really fun to see how people respond to her when she’s in the moment of dealing with others, versus those moments where a little bit more of that humanity comes through. But the way that she pulls it off, I mean, it’s truly watching a craftsman at work. It’s a really amazing thing to see.

Siqueira: That’s true. We also have the privilege of doing Survivor trilogy, knowing that that is the past, and Legacy of Atlantis is the present. It gives us a really good opportunity to make sure that everything that we did prior is represented, or that it makes sense in the nuances of the character is written and portrayed. We want you to know that this is the Lara that went through the Survivor era, grew up, and became who she is in Legacy of Atlantis. Adams: Yeah, all that stuff counts. It absolutely counts. But she’s not beholden to Survivor here. That’s not where we’re finding her right now – that’s in her past, but it is real

What are you most excited for players to discover when they get their hands on it?

 Tomaszewski: (all laughing) I have 16 things, at least, that I cannot tell you about. They will be excited about discovering those things, because of the way we were excited to creating them. We’re all Tomb Raider fans, given this opportunity to recreate those worlds and add our flavor and we have been super respectful to the fans and what they expect. There are a lot of little things they would find and be excited about. But there’s also massive pieces of environments and combat and story that will get them excited. Come back in few months.

Siqueira: Ask that question again in February.Yeah, I think the Easter eggs are definitely just a warm feeling in the heart – making them, placing them in the game, and then we are just all really waiting for everyone to see them and see how much love and passion went into them.

Me personally – we were just talking about this – but I am excited that dual pistols are back. We didn’t get a chance to really bring that to a modern era in the Survivor trilogy. So, finding our voice in how do we bring dual pistols in a way that it’s fun, balanced, and it feels awesome in combat? It’s one of the things that I am most proud of, and I’m really excited for players to get their hands on. 


Adams: When we released our first trailer, we were watching a lot of reaction videos, obviously, and I think seeing the reaction to just those small little fragments of the game, makes me really look forward to actually seeing that once the whole thing comes out. But for me personally, the part that I’m most excited about is just those little moments that people experience while they’re moving through the world where they’ll stop and they’ll feel like, ‘wait a minute, this actually feels really like I’m out there.’ And it really would put them into Lara’s boots, unlike any way we’ve been able to do before because world looks great and she moves so well.  

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis comes to XBOX Series X|S on February 12, 2027, and is available for pre-order now.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis

Amazon Game Studios

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

Experience the pinnacle of adventure with Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, a stunning reimagining of the 1996 genre-defining game. As Lara Croft, harness your wits and athleticism to explore exotic locations lost to time—from the jungles of Peru to the ancient ruins of Greece, the deserts of Egypt, and a mysterious Mediterranean island shrouded in myth. Traverse treacherous landscapes, solve deadly contraptions, and face lethal predators as you hunt for the scattered pieces of the Scion, an artifact of immeasurable power. Whether you're a veteran raider or new to Lara's world, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis delivers jaw-dropping visuals powered by Unreal Engine 5, modern game design, and new surprises, while honoring the spirit and atmosphere of Lara Croft's debut adventure.

Squaring up against an enemy, Makoto can throw a few jabs with his left (LB), follow up with a right-handed roundhouse (RT), then charge (hold LT), to finish with a brutal left haymaker. And that’s barehanded. Even more variety is introduced with three of the 13 weapons featured in the game, which are more persistent than those seen in previous titles.

By pressing Y on the controller, Makoto can pull out a weapon and even cycle through them in his inventory by holding that button down (displayed as a transparent overlay at the bottom of the screen), with an arsenal that, for this demo, included a variety of knives and larger blunt objects such as a crowbar and sledgehammer.

Rounding out the moveset are a variety of grapples, blocks, parries, and dodges – this is where the face buttons come into use. By combining the shoulder buttons with face buttons – holding B with a tap of LB or RB is a directional parry, for example – it opens up opportunities for effective defensive counters to attacks if correctly timed. This also comes into play for when Makoto finds himself knocked to the ground – another new RGG combat element – to fend off attacks like we’re in a UFC-styled cage match until his stamina has recovered enough for him to get to his feet.

Enough explaining – here’s how we fared across three different decades and encounters during our hands-on time with Stranger Than Heaven.

1915 – Kokura, Fukuoka

While this was billed as a combat demo, I couldn’t help but soak in the setting. RGG Studio has proven its talent at making cities feel alive and that’s very much the case here in 1915 Kokura. Citizens went about their business, walking through the mostly unpaved streets interwoven with railway tracks, past ramen stalls, vegetable stands, and other stores. I can’t wait to fully explore Kokura in the final game.

But this was my opportunity to get acquainted with the controls. Facing a group of bedraggled grunts, it was immediately clear that combat is heavier and more intimate than previous RGG titles. Battles feel high stakes as you balance who you’re hitting and who might be lining up an attack on you.

I tried out combos, like mixing up left- and right-handed strikes; light and heavy; charged attacks, all while blocking and avoiding as many attacks as I could. Once I pulled out my dagger, the tide turned quickly, and knocking down an enemy revealed an opportunity for a brutal finisher: pulling both triggers over his prone form, Makoto plunged a knife into his gut so powerfully I instinctively cringed.

The effects of combat seem bloodier than previous RGG titles. The longer a battle goes on, and the more damage is inflicted on both Makoto and enemies; you see the effects of bloodied faces, on clothes and on bodies. Moreso than previous titles, there’s a clearer realism and brutality to combat.

But that was it for this group. No sweat.

1929 – Kure, Hiroshima

As the year increased, so did the challenge.  A group of thugs led by a positively gargantuan gangster, armed with a long blade that almost seemed superfluous considering his size and obvious power, were my next opponents.

At the start of battle, Makoto pulled out a massive crowbar and I started swinging. The weapon is so weighty that missing contact with an enemy almost makes Makoto lose balance and opens him up to counters.

This is new: one enemy grabs the crowbar, preventing me from swinging. However, Makoto’s left hand is still free, so with a flurry of presses of LB, Makoto smacks him until he lets go. Once the regular-sized gangsters are dispatched, I switch to Makoto’s smaller knife to make more nimble quick stabs and slashes on the big guy.

Throughout all of this, I’m still learning to manage Makoto’s health; it’s a new system of items with both instant and recovery-over-time effects mapped to the D-pad. On my second attempt I’ve emerged from Kure successfully. I’m getting the hang of this!

1943 – Minami, Osaka

Our final challenge was just one wiry, heavily tattooed yakuza with a sword. How hard could it be? Well… this guy is fast, putting my blocking, parries, and dodging to the test, while resisting a lot of my previous strategies.

I eventually find the most success in a battle of attrition; getting in a few slashes, blocking most of his counters, and using my left hand to punch through his blocks when he starts deflecting my knife. I was also able to land a few stuns with a swift kick to his ribs using LT.

I keep my health as topped up as possible, but eventually he pulls a crazy takedown move and one shots Makoto with a vicious impalement with his sword – we’re told as the battle drags on, he becomes more desperate and will unleash these types of high-damage attacks. After a few tries I get tantalizingly close to victory. I know the challenge is real, as when a neighboring player wins, the whole dev team applauds!

I leave eager to learn more about this deep system, and hungry to have my revenge on my tatted-up nemesis.