Onimusha: Way of the Sword Missions — All 24, Not 21

All 24 main missions, in order

Zones and objectives are in the open; boss names are folded below, so you can use this table to plan a route without learning who you are about to fight.

Counts and strategies for every one of those are on the boss list, which folds the names the same way.

What each mission rewards

Completion rewards for missions 1 to 19. IGN built a rewards table for its mission list but hid every cell behind a tap-to-reveal spoiler; its individual mission pages print the rewards in full, and this is those pages gathered in one place. Treat every row as “at least” — a few of IGN’s reward blocks keep extra cells hidden, and those rows say so ⚠ single source for every row except mission 2, whose charm Maxroll independently names as the Charm of the Healer.

Three rows are worth singling out. Mission 2 gives your first charm, the Charm of the Healer. Mission 3 gives the Tasuki Sash, an outfit item — see the costumes page. And mission 8, Patching Up the Pouch, is the one that changes how you play: the upgraded pouch heals more per use and takes you from four uses to five. Missions 20 to 24 are not listed — IGN has not published those pages yet, and we are not going to fill the gap with guesses. Every material in the table is explained on the materials page.

Is it 21, 22 or 24 missions?

This is the question the autocomplete keeps asking, and the answer is that four different counting rules are in circulation, not four different games. Two entries decide the number:

• “The Light of Vengeance” (12). It is a main mission and the first Mystery of Kyoto. Maxroll’s chapter for it says your next mission is to complete that Mystery while “all other mysteries are optional”; PowerPyx files it under Mysteries. Lists that treat it as a side quest lose a row.
• “Way of the Sword” (24). Several lists stop at “The Clash at Rendaino”, the point of no return, and never count the finale. It is a real, separately titled mission — the Japanese walkthrough charts give it its own heading, 剣の道, which is “Way of the Sword”.

There is one more wrinkle worth knowing if you are comparing pages: the 21 and 22 lists are not independent of each other. They share the same misspellings, down to “Bloodbath of the Bridge” and a side quest called “The Growing Ghost” where the trophy list says Growling ⚠ our observation from comparing the lists, not something any of them states. One of them even hedges in its own FAQ, noting that the published list has 22 entries while its coverage focuses on 21. And a caution about ours: the game does not print these numbers on screen — Maxroll’s own boss text refers to “Mission 11” for the mission its index numbers 13. Use the numbers to navigate this page, not to argue with anyone.

Spelling: we use Rendaino, which four sources share. Maxroll writes “Rendiano”. Same place.

The 18 Chance Encounters and what each pays

These are the notebook-icon side jobs, unlocked as a set after The Curse of Kiyomizu-zaka Slope and then released in waves as the story advances. The reward column is the part no English page has published — it is assembled from a Japanese quest database and cross-checked against the per-material and per-charm lists on two English guides, matching both the charm effects and the stone counts rather than trusting a translation.

Two honest gaps in that table. First, the start points for the five Ace Archer challenges are undocumented — the Japanese database that carries every other quest has no page for them, and the only lead anywhere is that the Kiyomizu-dera course sits near the Nio-mon Gate mirror. We are not going to invent the other four. Second, two rewards are contested: the stone counts on An Ugly Business and The Odd Couples differ between sources, so treat those as “at least” ⚠ reward data is single-source for non-stone items; two rows have conflicting counts.

The five Hidden Treasures in that list are the ones that start with an NPC handing you an Old Drawing. Their locations, and the disagreement about when they unlock, are on the collectibles page — note that Hidden Treasure No. 4 also pays a Tamahagane and No. 5 a Skeleton Hozuki, which the most-cited English list omits.

The 8 Mysteries of Kyoto and what each pays

Butterfly icons, tracked in the Curious Cases menu, unlocked after What Lurks in the Shadows. Six of the eight pay a charm, and one of those charms is the reason to do them at all if you like the Oni Armaments.

“Worm-ly Ways” — the autocomplete spelling “worm-my ways” is a typo of it — is in Eastern Kyoto, started by talking to a woman of the Sanshi sect north of the Yasaka Pagoda mirror, and it must be done before Some Unfinished Monkey Business. One practical warning about that second one: the conversation that starts it teleports you straight into a dedicated arena, so equip before you talk. One player also reports, as of September 15, a hard crash every time at the teleport at the top of the stairs — frame generation off, the frame cap toggled both ways, files verified — leaving the quest uncompletable for him ⚠ single report, troubleshooting thread #144.

A translation error to ignore: one English guide renders the Sadist’s Strength Charm as raising attack power while you are suffering a status ailment. The Japanese text says the opposite — it raises damage dealt to enemies who are ailing. Build around the second reading. Charm slots and the full charm economy are on the collectibles page.

Neither set carries into New Game Plus. All 26 reset, which makes a second run a second harvest of stones — useful, given the Oni Stone shortfall documented on the materials page. The charms themselves, and their levels, carry over — GameRant, Power Up Gaming and AppMedia’s carry-over table agree. Every charm’s effect and the quest that awards it are on the charms page.

Every named puzzle, solved

The mask puzzle (What Lurks in the Shadows)

Shoot 3, 4, 1, 2 counting from the left. Five guides give that same order, in those words or in that sequence. The derivation, if you want to solve it rather than look it up: count the light holes in the shadows cast outside the room, and the number on each shadow tells you the order. Your reward is the Unsettling Mask, which is the key to the masked door earlier in the level.

Do not follow colour-based instructions for this puzzle. Two published guides map the masks to different colours, so at least one is wrong and there is no way to tell which from outside the game ⚠ direct conflict between two sources on the colours. Position from the left is unambiguous, so use that.

The lamp puzzle (same mission)

Two levers and then the central device: pull the first lever, which spawns a large armoured mini-boss; kill it; pull the second lever; then return to the device in the middle of the room and interact. Sources disagree about which side the first lever is on — one says right, one says left, one says south — so go by the room, not by a direction: it is the lever you reach first on the way in, and the pullcord in the mask’s mouth is the other interactable people miss.

Find the hidden path (In the Light of an Icy Moon)

The monument reads “When going through hell, one must keep going.” That is the instruction, not flavour text.

1. Interact with the monk statues until you find the one described as Hell.
2. Walk straight forward from it, into the rock wall. It is not solid. No source calls this a boulder, despite the word going around.
3. On the other side, Oni Vision reveals an Oni Glyph that opens the portal. One guide says Oni Vision is also needed to make the monument itself appear; another says it is visible already ⚠ minor conflict, harmless either way.
4. Then “Take the Oni Shortcut”: shoot the red circles on the movable stone panels with the Oni Bow. Walk backwards to spot the first one, and start with the wall visible to the north-east — the order matters.

The exit glyph teleports you to the Great Swamp, which is where the Still Water armament is (see weapons).

The Oni Portal puzzles — all three

People search “oni portal puzzle” and find nothing, because the term is not used consistently anywhere. Here is what it means: an Oni Portal is a hidden door, marked on your map and revealed with Oni Vision, containing a movable-block puzzle you solve by shooting red orbs with the Oni Bow. Clearing one unlocks the next tier of the skill tree, which is why skill guides keep referring to “after the 1st Oni Portal”. There are three, and this is the only English page that maps them:

Portals 2 and 3 each unlock two skill tiers, portal 1 unlocks the third tier, and each one also pays Power Stones and Oni Stones ⚠ the per-portal solutions come from one Japanese guide; the skill gating is corroborated by an English trophy guide. Do not confuse these with the Oni Refuge in mission 2 — a different place, a different puzzle, and where the Oni Bow itself comes from.

The well — there is no well puzzle

Two different wells, neither of them a puzzle, which is why the search never resolves:

• The one you climb down in A Strength in Refuge, to reach the first Oni Portal. Look for the well in the corner and use the ladder inside. The reason this is hard to find written down: the biggest walkthrough site describes the same route without ever mentioning a well.
• The well behind Rokudo-chinnoji Temple, where Genma Note #23 appears after the final boss. Post-story only ⚠ single source. We have not confirmed these are the same well, so we are not saying they are.

Windswept Kennin-ji

The objective is “investigate the temple grounds”: follow the voices to Dharma Hall, find it sealed by threads, and use Oni Vision to reveal two red spider threads, one east and one west. Kill both spiders and the hall opens. On the boss waiting inside, four sources agree on the one thing that matters: shoot the inflating bladder on his back with the Oni Bow — one of them calls it the only counter — and his wind blade can be deflected back at him. He is rated 4 out of 10 even on the hardest difficulty. Sources disagree on whether he carries an axe or a sword, two to one for axe, and nobody recommends a particular Oni Armament for the fight, so we will not pretend there is a consensus pick.

One gating detail no other page states: you cannot enter Kennin-ji Temple until you have finished both “A Strength in Refuge” and “Patching Up the Pouch” ⚠ single source.

The chest behind the locked cave door

This one is in mission 2’s Oni Refuge, and the solution is the reason you were given a bow. Take the Oni Bow from the chest nearby, walk around to the broken window at the back of the locked room, and shoot through it at the door: “the arrow will hit the mechanism on the other side and unlock the door.” Inside is a loot box holding Cotton Cloth ⚠ one source names the contents.

Citizen Savior, and the encounters that are not quests

Citizen Savior is a trophy, not a side quest — awarded for rescuing 30 townspeople from marauding Genma. Those rescues are ordinary open-world encounters around Eastern Kyoto: they do not appear in the Curious Cases menu, they are not part of the 18 or the 8, and nothing on your map counts them for you. Sweep the town while you are doing Chance Encounters and it comes naturally; leave it and you will be hunting civilians after the credits. The rest of the trophy road is on the trophy list.

Point of no return, and what a second run resets

“The Clash at Rendaino” (23) is the point of no return — after it the town closes and the finale runs. Finishing the game drops you back before that mission with the map open, which is why nothing is missable. Starting New Game Plus instead resets all 26 side activities, your equipment enhancements and your red souls, while your purchased skills carry over. There is no separate New Game Plus button: choose New Game, and the game asks whether to load your cleared save. Answer yes; a player who skipped that prompt started a fresh Carnage file with nothing carried over. A second player, on October 8, went further: starting Carnage from scratch overwrote their cleared save, so the finished game and its carry-over were gone, with no way back. On October 9 a third player said they had also overwritten a Carnage save, one that had already reached the Mount Oe boss. Copy your save folder before you start New Game Plus ⚠ three player accounts; two describe an overwrite, and neither says exactly which prompt they answered. Spend souls before you cross; the full carry-over rules are on the trophy page, and the collectible consequences on the collectibles page.

One rule that matters more than any single mission warning: keep a manual save from before every rift and scripted encounter.Nine players have now been permanently locked out of quests by the same mechanism — a rift or event script stalls, the game state is reset, and they come back outside the arena or behind a barrier that will not break. It is not caused by crashing: players have triggered it by quitting, by dying, and in one casejust by fast-travelling away and back. Reloading the autosave reproduces it and nobody has found a way to recover, so a manual save is the only way back⚠ nine independent single accounts.If a rift does not appear, do not quit and do not fast-travel — load your manual save. If you have no manual save, restarting is a gamble that has gone both ways: on September 15 one player described three stalls in a single run — the rooftop chase in mission 11 and the final rift in mission 13 among them — that each cleared on a restart, while three of the nine lockouts began with a quit or a restart. The full pattern is on theperformance page.The Light of Vengeance (mission 12, the rift after the second talk with the father) is now the one to be most careful in, with three lockouts and a fourth “same problem” report on September 15 that gave no details. Mission 15, Shadows Fall, has two — possibly at the same rift. Mission 18, Okuni’s Kabuki Dance, has an unresolved softlock report involving the boat to the sandbar island — make a manual save before boarding. And in mission 19, The Demon on the Mount, a player reports that at the objective to destroy the gate, climbing down to the second platform before shooting the barrels leaves the gate intact for good — reloading, leaving the area and restarting the game did not reset it ⚠ single report, September 10. Shoot the barrels first, and save before you try. Both are tracked on the performance page.

Frequently Asked Questions