Onimusha: Way of the Sword Bosses — All 13, in Order

1. Ganryu — the duelist from the marketing, fought early.
2. Daidara — the demo’s headline Genma brute.
3. Byakue — the demo’s hidden challenge, a story fight in the full game.
4. Rasho-gan — the eye-covered Genma from the previews.
5. Nue — the chimera; its blue and red variants count as one entry.
6. Greater Nue — the scaled-up rematch-as-story-fight.
7. Ifuu & Burai — a two-on-one duo fight.
8. Benkei — the warrior monk of the bridge, as the legend demands.
9. Dohatsu-Ten — the fight behind the “horn” searches.
10. Ganryu, Altered — the duelist returns changed.
11. Shuten Doji — the demon of Oeyama.
12. Dokyo — the story’s human architect of the Genma menace.
13. Yoshitsune — the final boss. Details in the next fold.

Order follows GameRant’s campaign-order list, cross-checked against PowerPyx’s coverage of the same fights ⚠ one-line encounter notes are ours, kept deliberately vague.

The Boss Rematch menu in the Practice Grounds splits and upgrades the story list into 18 entries. The five additions beyond the 13 above: Enhanced Byakue, Enhanced Dohatsu-Ten, Fully Armed Benkei, and Ifuu and Burai fought solo — fights that only exist in the menu, several of them harder than their story versions. One trap for list-comparers: PowerPyx orders its guide by this menu, which is not story order — that mismatch, not any factual dispute, is why the two big lists look different at a glance.

The last fight is Yoshitsune, a three-phase duel that both published guides and early players call the hardest fight in the game. The phase that earns the reputation is the third: normal attacks stop working, and the fight expects you to bank and spend Oni Awakening to deal meaningful damage — go in with the gauge ready rather than spending it at the door. There is no checkpoint between the three phases: a loss in the third sends you back to the first, opening cutscene included, and Story difficulty does not change that — two Steam players said so independently on September 17, one of them playing on Story, one after going to YouTube to learn there were three phases at all ⚠ player accounts, not a Capcom note. By September 19 a second thread on the same complaint had run to 46 replies, and it adds three practical things. First, several players find phase two hard to read: the arena turns yellow-orange, which one detailed account says clashes with the blade-barge flash you are meant to answer, while the grab is blue and the unblockable pink — so listen for the grab’s sound cue rather than watching for it; two players admitted they finished the fight with a trainer. Second, one account says retrying refunds the consumables used in the attempt, so Stimulants, Mirrors of Revival and Greater Talismans can be spent freely while learning ⚠ single account, stated twice in the thread; not tested by us. Third, the same account says Shuten Doji is the only boss with a checkpoint between phases, for story reasons ⚠ single account. A deaf player, in a separate thread, says the audio cues are why Story difficulty does not feel like Story at this fight. The lavender slashes he sends across the arena are the other common trap. Five players in a September 30 thread explain them the same way: they are projectiles, not unblockable attacks. At range, dodge them. You can block them, and you can parry them only when you are close enough to parry the sword itself, which is why a parry that worked once can fail the next time. Three of those players call them good Issen targets; one says the second and third slashes are easier to time than the first, and another that the third is very easy. How to tell them from a real unblockable: one player says a true unblockable comes with a slowdown and a lens flare and is a different shade, and another says it has its own whoosh that these slashes lack ⚠ one account each for the two tells. And if your normal attacks show zero damage in phase two, that is his armour, not a bug. He carries a shield or armour layer in that phase, and keeping up normal attacks eventually breaks it; special attacks and counters still land meanwhile. By September 24 four players in the same thread had given that answer independently, and the player who asked came back to say it worked. One adds that a parry followed by Pillar Strength or the hammer Oni Armament breaks the armour faster ⚠ single account for the faster route. Do not confuse it with phase three: there, several of the same players say, only Oni form and Issen damage him, so zero damage from normal attacks is expected. Players in the same thread who beat him point at the same preparation: gear at level 4 or 5, and charms that fill and strengthen the Oni gauge — see the charms page. The mission leading in is the point of no return, and the game says so explicitly; with zero missable trophies, you lose nothing by walking through it. What happens after the fight belongs to the ending page, folds and all.