Onimusha: Way Of The Sword Made Me Realize I’ve Been Playing Action Games Wrong

Clicking The Lock-On Off Just Clicks

This isn’t a new tactic in action-adventure and action-RPGs. Players have been fighting without lock-on for decades, and Souls players in particular have long discussed the advantages of doing so. A netizen in the Dark Souls subreddit asked two years ago why people hate locking on in the game, and user Gabosh responded that unlocking “simply [allows] you to manually control the camera or aim spells” and is “useful against giant enemies or 1v2 boss fights.” Someone in the Dark Souls 3 GameFAQs forum asked a similar question nine years ago, explaining that Souls games become “SO much easier if you don’t lock on and just learn to free aim.” And even in Elden Ring’s Steam discussions page, someone decried how sick they’ve grown of the lock-on system two years ago, with user Sockwallet saying that you should “NEVER use lock-on for melee in Souls games, [because] it gets you killed.” Evidently, I never got the memo that locking on was bad.

But many of these discussions highlighted two things I learned in my own testing: control and freedom. I thought that, as I fought through Onimusha’s hell-transformed world, locking on was the way to go. It squared me up with the enemy in front of me, ensuring that I was always looking ahead at what was coming.

Sometimes, though, what’s coming isn’t in front of you, and when you’re locked on, you’d never see that. I learned that the hard way during my fight with those two annoying Jolteon knock-offs. By unlocking, I had much more freedom over the camera, giving me greater awareness of my surroundings.

On top of the freedom, I gained a greater sense of control over the flow of battle and protagonist Miyamoto Musashi’s movements. While locking on let me react to the enemy, employing free aim let me react to the fight as a whole. Instead of the camera dictating who I fought and where I was positioned, I was able to scan the arena, reposition Musashi based on enemy tactics, and make informed combat decisions in response to what was happening around me. I stopped circle-strafing and stood my ground more. I stopped dodging haphazardly and parried more effectively. I stopped letting the camera determine my next target and, instead, thinned the pack based on enemy priority. In essence, I became a combat strategist, analyzing the battlefield and enemy movements to attack and defend at the perfect moments.

A Tactic For One Is A Tactic For All

Ever since my encounter with the Nue Twins, I’ve opted for free aim in almost all combat scenarios. Whether I’m fighting a horde of monsters, two bosses at once, or one big bad, my lock-on is typically off now. I’m enjoying the control and freedom too much to relinquish it to the automation of Onimusha’s lock-on system. I’ve gotten so accustomed to it that, after beating the game in roughly 40 hours, I went back to other action games like Ghost of Yotei and Mortal Shell 2 to see just how effective free aim is. And yep, free aim works! I don’t know why I never considered not locking on before this, but I’m glad to have experimented with it now.

Locking on certainly has its place–don’t get me wrong. The final boss in Onimusha: Way of the Sword is a real piece of s**t and a great example of this. It’s a 1-on-1 duel, locking onto your opponent makes sense here. But even then, toggling the lock-on off during certain segments of the fight–particularly the second phase–provides a better sense of control and freedom, and those two traits are important in action games. I’ll continue to lock on when necessary, but from now on, I’m entering fights with no target in mind, allowing myself to flow like water from one enemy to the next, regardless of what game I’m playing.