How Long Is Onimusha: Way of the Sword? 22h Main, 29h Full

The HowLongToBeat numbers

Five weeks after launch, HowLongToBeat has enough submissions to replace estimates with medians. We quote the median, not the average — one 66-hour completionist run would drag an average and not a median.

Read October 8, 2026. More than two-thirds of everyone who logged a finish chose “main + extras” — for this game, that is the normal way to play, and 29 hours is the number to plan around. Since our September 21 read, the story-only sample has doubled from 28 to 58 runs and its median has risen from 21h 00m to 22h 12m; the side-content and all-styles medians have not moved by more than a quarter of an hour. We re-read the medians roughly every two weeks (next around October 22) and change this page only when they move.

By platform

In September we called the PS5 main-story figure, then 16h 13m, the one to distrust, because it rested on a handful of story-only runs. With 105 runs in the PS5 pool it now reads 21h 25m, within half an hour of PC. The small samples were the whole story. Nothing here suggests one platform is meaningfully faster; Xbox, on ten runs, is still too thin to read.

Where Capcom’s 20 hours came from — and why it held

Two related figures exist, both from the development team. In a Famitsu interview, the team put the main story at about 20 hours — explicitly “an estimate, not final.” At Tokyo Game Show, director Satoru Nihei framed the whole experience at 20-30 hours: “We feel 20-30 hours is right for this game… it’s not that we aimed for it; that’s how it came out” ⚠ single interview, direct quote. Set against the medians — 22 down the spine, 29 with the optional layer — the estimate was honest to within two hours on the story and inside the range on the full game.

What the structure means for your playtime

This is a stage-based game — the director’s words, made sharper by Game Informer’s headline that it “isn’t an open world game.” What stretches the clock is the open-town Kyoto hub: a central district wider than a normal stage, with side streets, secrets, NPCs, merchants and side quests that can be done in any order, skipped entirely, or returned to after clearing an area. Completionists mining every side quest and upgrade track (see growth systems) are the 48-hour case; straight-line players land at 22.

Difficulty barely moves the estimate: the design goal is that action-game newcomers can finish (details on the difficulty page), so Story-mode runs shouldn’t balloon the count the way a punishing action game would. What does add hours is the tail: Carnage, the hardest difficulty, unlocks after the credits alongside New Game Plus and the Practice Grounds boss rematches, and the Platinum requires a Carnage run — which is why the completionist median is more than double the story one.

Context: how 22 hours compares

The takeaway: this is the longest Onimusha ever made by a wide margin — roughly double a classic entry — which tracks with it being the series’ first mainline game in 20 years and a full-priced flagship. Comparison figures are our compilation from HowLongToBeat medians and press guides, marked here as context rather than official data.

What reviewers clocked, and what it turned out to mean

The August 31 reviews disagreed enough that we listed them rather than averaging them. With the medians in, the disagreement resolves cleanly: it was never about speed, it was about how much of Kyoto each reviewer touched.

Line those against the medians and the reviewers were simply distributed along the same curve players are: the 15–20 hour reviews sit at the fast end of the 22-hour story median, the 25–35 hour ones inside the 22–40 hour range of main-plus-extras runs.

The “only 20 hours?” debate

Before launch, the length was the hottest argument on the Steam forums — a “short game? only 20 hours?” thread pushed past a hundred replies, split between players calling $69.99 steep for 20 hours and those pointing out it doubles the length of any previous Onimusha. The reviews then flipped the argument: no major critic calls the game too short — the sharpest dissenting reviews argue the opposite, that the optional layer pads the runtime (VGC says the filler creeps in “after 8-9 hours”). The medians settle it: the “20 hours” was the focused path, and most people who finish log nine more. If value is still the worry, the free demo — two quests and up to three bosses deep — is a generous sample.

Planning the purchase around the length? The editions page covers what each tier buys, and the trophy guide covers what the 48-hour completionist tail actually asks of you.

Frequently Asked Questions