We may be halfway through August, but the crushing wave of games trying to get out before Grand Theft Auto 6 is cresting just ahead. So today, on The Game Informer Show, we’ve got a few looks ahead at some big name titles!
First up, Eric shares his thoughts after some hands-on preview time with Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, the massive new installment in Nintendo’s strategy RPG franchise. Then, Marcus returns from Amsterdam with impressions of 1666: Amsterdam. I promise, you won’t see the turns in that segment coming. After the break, we talk about the launch of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and Charles shares some early impressions of the 1.0 launch for Fields of Mistria. Grab a cold drink and listen in!
The Game Informer Show is a weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday for chats about video game reviews, news, and exclusive reveals alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry. Support the show by subscribing to our physical video game magazine!
I traveled to Osaka, Japan, to visit Capcom’s HQ, play never-before-seen parts of the game for hours, and interview the team making it. As a fan of the series, it’s clear to me that the “dark-fantasy” through line in the first four Onimusha games continues in Way of the Sword. That was particularly showcased in one section of the game I played through, which took protagonist Miyamoto Musashi into the underground lab of an evil Genma named Dokyo. There, the game’s dark-fantasy feel crossed over into full-on horror. Despite a couple of hours of gameplay that resembles a horror game, Capcom says Way of the Sword is not a horror game.
This Dokyo, highlighted in the Game Informer video above, is a particularly twisted Genma. She kidnaps people – including children – and experiments on them to create new Genma by fusing them with animals. In one scene, she hoists a man fused with a large pig into the air before disposing of him in bloody fashion. She can’t do this in the broad daylight of Way of the Sword’s early Edo-period Kyoto, so in typical Capcom fashion, the team created an underground lab befitting the demon.
“There was not really an intention to make a horror game […] but with trying to build the character of Dokyo, in particular, we wanted to really showcase her twisted nature and that unsettling side of her and combine it with the strange and eerie occult side of Kyoto myths,” lead writer Hiroshi Yamashita tells me, explaining why Dokyo’s lab feels like a horror level within an otherwise non-horror game. He adds that the scares of this lab – which, mind you, does feature jump scares that got me once or twice – are not indicative of the full game but rather just this specific stage built around Dokyo’s more gruesome nature.
Way of the Sword director Satoru Nihei describes this stage as one of the more horrific in the game’s dark-fantasy action experience, likening it to a “classic Japanese ghost house.” Somewhat familiar with this subgenre of Japanese horror, it’s clear in what ways: shadows on the lab’s shoji highlight horrific body mutations and animal experiments gone wrong, and the halls are dripping with blood that shimmers in the soft glow of nearby torches. Once-beautiful kimonos hang from the rafters above, and it’s evident they used to belong to the subjects screaming in agony throughout this stage. Even Dokyo herself is designed in a horror-infused way, with elongated appendages, a shrill and petulant personality, and the way she speaks as a mastermind of the maze that is her underground lab (which, during Way of the Sword, you are clearly trapped in).
Nihei says this specific stage heightens the anxiety and tension Musashi and Shizuka, the mysterious and ethereal woman trapped in his Oni Guantlet, are feeling, which is why the team “thought this [horror-inspired stage] was a good way to explore those feelings and contrary states in the setting.” There’s also contrast in Dokyo herself, who is quite demonic and inhuman in appearance, but speaks in English/Japanese and dons a beautiful kimono as if she’s a woman.
I came away from my time playing Way of the Sword most enamored with Dokyo – she’s unsettling and twisted, but very compelling and absolutely a scene-stealer in the game. I look forward to seeing more of the horror her stage promises, as well as the other parts of the game where dark fantasy morphs into something closer to Capcom’s Resident Evil series. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait too long because Onimusha: Way of the Sword launches on September 4.
I’ll continue diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Netflix has spent the last five years attempting to expand its chokehold on the film and television industry into the video game space, but it’s had limited success. Today, Game File reports that the streaming giant is receding from the gaming world a little more by closing two studios: Moonloot, which had yet to release a game, and Night School, known for its work on Oxenfree and Afterparty. Netflix is also cutting staff from its internal team, though it “declined to say how many jobs were being lost” when speaking to Game File.
Meanwhile, Night School made a name for itself long before its Netflix acquisition, releasing Oxenfree in 2016 and Afterparty in 2019. Under Netflix, it also released Oxenfree II: Lost Signals in 2023, Thronglets in 2025, and Unhinged, which launched very recently, on June 30. Game File reports that Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters praised Unhinged in a recent investor call, but given today’s news, it seems Netflix was still dissatisfied with Night School.
The indie studio’s acquisition in 2021 was one of Netflix’s earliest investments in the world of video games, so closing the studio is a significant step. Game File says Netflix is choosing to focus its future efforts on “kids gaming, party games, story-driven fare and games with mainstream hooks, such as a recently released FIFA game.”
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest game to grace the cover of Game Informer, and alongside my cover story, which subscribers can read right here, we’re highlighting many of the things we learned over the next couple of weeks. Already, our hub for the game is chock-full of exclusive features, interviews, and more, with videos on the way.
One of my interviews while visiting Capcom’s HQ in Osaka, Japan, was with Way of the Sword animation team lead Hiroshi Yugen. We spoke about how the team crafted its own unique version of the historical Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi, among other topics. We also discussed Capcom’s RE Engine and how it held up for developing Way of the Sword, and learned in the process that the team had to consult engineers within the company to create a brand-new system for the game.
Way of the Sword is the next game Capcom will release, developed using this engine, and I spoke to Yugen about how the engine held up, given that this Onimusha sequel features action much faster than the aforementioned games.
“We didn’t actually have any limitations posed upon us when developing Onimusha using the RE Engine,” Yugen tells me. “On the complete opposite end of the scale, there was actually a new feature that hadn’t been really done in any other game.”
That feature he’s referring to is the Dynamic Dismemberment System. It’s how Musashi can slice Genma enemies in two, slash through flesh that tears apart, and cut through arms, heads, and more. Way of the Sword reacts to that under the hood with visceral animations that create satisfying deaths for every single Genma in the game, assuming you deplete their stamina like a proper samurai and use Break Issen or one of Musashi’s other finishing moves.
“[This dismemberment] is not something that’s existed in any other title before, and it’s something that, on a technical level, needed to be added to the RE Engine [by Capcom’s engineers],” Yugen says. “Adding this feature was quite difficult because we wanted to combine it with the enemy deaths. In a lot of samurai dramas, they have a very exaggerated classic death where they are on screen for an extra five or six seconds and then slowly fall to the ground. To have that together with this dynamic dismemberment system on a technical level is quite tricky, so it’s something we really had to ask the programmers to introduce.”
He adds that in the early stages of the project, the team attempted dismemberment, but this early iteration caused the enemy to freeze. “It wasn’t animated enough,” Yugen recalls saying. “But I was very adamant. I want them to be moving at the same time as having that effect.”
If you haven’t seen the dynamic dismemberments in action yet, I highly recommend checking out the Way of the Sword demo that’s available right now. Complete a special move, like a Break Issen, and pay close attention to how the Genma’s body and flesh react to Musashi’s attack – it’s grody, but also amplifies the swordplay in a unique way.
I’ll continue diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Publisher:
Humble Games
Developer:
Chuhai Labs
Release:
(PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC), 2026 (Switch)
Rating:
Everyone 10+
Wild Blue Skies is not shy about the video game experience it is trying to emulate. You are Bowie, an anthropomorphic dog in a spaceship making your way through a series of levels, most on rails, some taking place in small open areas, to defeat the evil Grimclaw, an anthropomorphic tiger with a giant cyborg head. Developer Chuhai Labs and Vitei Backroom Inc. are transparently presenting their take on Star Fox 64 – a noble and welcome endeavor – but many shortcomings prevent it from reaching the nostalgic heights of its inspirational arcade action game.
Mechanically, controlling your ship feels okay, but it dips into slog territory more often than I would like. The perspective of the reticle makes it hard to see what you’re firing at (and there is no first-person option), and hitting the occasional wall bounces you around like a pinball. It can be especially frustrating on the open-ended levels that are not on rails. Locking on and firing your standard lasers are also mapped to separate buttons, meaning you have to choose between the two actions, which is limiting. Also, the range to lock on to fire an extra powerful homing shot is too short. By the time I locked on to enemies, it was often too late, and the enemy had disappeared off-screen.
The look of Wild Blue Skies is attractive, though, with bright colors and cool ship designs. I like the look of the main cast and their performances, along with the performances of all the bosses and secondary characters. Everyone’s characterization, however, leaves a lot on the table. The bosses all boast and yell with unfounded confidence, and I felt bad when teammates complained when I accidentally (allegedly) shot them. But even with the quality acting, everyone is undefined and generic. Dialogue could be swapped among the characters, I don’t think I would even notice.
The levels offer some visual variety, but are also generic. Moving from a desert level to an ice level is a nice change of pace, but little has been done to make them feel novel. Also, many of the on-rails levels begin with characters pointing out the limited visibility, whether in a storm or from snow. Narratively, I like flying through a hurricane in a game like this, but when the elements keep making things hard to see, it feels like a story excuse for poor draw distance. When you do make it through the hailstorm, or the tornado, or the lava flows, the bosses at the end arguably take too long to defeat.
Like its Star Fox 64 inspiration, there are incentives to replay the campaign to chase different challenges and see the alternate paths. Seeing the game to credits is completely doable, but I got frustrated by moments of unfair challenge. Health drops are infrequent, and deaths are often the result of running into a stray enemy, bouncing against walls, or getting overwhelmed by screen-filling danger that I didn’t feel equipped to avoid. It made many defeats feel like the game’s fault rather than my own, which is especially annoying when burning through lives sends you back to the beginning of the campaign.
Bowie and pals’ adventure successfully impersonates the Star Fox 64 experience, but it’s an underwhelming impression. Nostalgic moments and satisfying action appear occasionally, but it pays homage to a fault and doesn’t find space to present its own personality. It has the unfortunate timing of releasing and being compared to this year’s Star Fox on Switch 2 – an excellent remake of Star Fox 64. But even if I did not have that game in my immediate memory, I would be hard-pressed to identify anywhere that it has improved on the genre with design lessons learned since 1997, or even risen to meet the ones that already existed even 30 years ago.
Half-Mermaid, the studio led by Sam Barlow, the mind behind games such as Immortality, Her Story, and Telling Lies, has announced its next project, Precognition. Described as a sci-fi horror adventure, the game is being made in collaboration with horror filmmaker Branden Cronenberg (Possessor, Infinity Pool).
Like previous Half-Mermaid titles, Precognition is a non-linear FMV adventure, meaning it features live-action scenes. The story centers on Diana, a woman who is implanted with an experimental brain implant that allows her to receive visions of the future. Diana is tasked with exploring these visions, focusing on specific moments, and committing them to her present-day memory, which will have consequences affecting how the future ultimately unfolds.
“We’ve really been trying to test the limits of non-linear storytelling, focusing on how the game feels to play, while encouraging player agency and freedom,” Half Mermaid co-founder Sam Barlow says in a press release. “We’ve pushed ourselves even harder with Precognition by bringing the feel of investigation and mystery games into a world of cause-and-effect, with a story that spins out as a consequence of your choices .”
Half-Mermaid has enlisted Brandon Cronenberg to co-develop and write Precognition. Cronenberg, the son of acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg, wrote and directed Infinity Pool (2023), Possessors (2020), and Antiviral (2012). According to Barlow, Cronenberg was the “perfect person” to work with due to his horror filmmaking expertise and his existing familiarity with Immortality and Her Story.
“The films I make tend to be subjective and experiential, with the horror emerging as one person’s perspective of the world warps around them,” Brandon Cronenberg says. “The games that Sam and the team have made over the years are subjective experiences by their very nature – no two people will have the same experience with them. So it’s the perfect place to explore these themes further”.
Precognition was first teased in January 2024 as Project C, one of two announced projects by Half Mermaid that also includes the yet-to-be-revealed Project D. Interestingly, Precognition had previously been advertised as being published under Blumhouse Games during Summer Game Fest 2024, but that no longer appears to be the case. Kinetic Publishing, the publishing arm of Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games, has taken on funding duties and announced Precognition as part of a dedicated publisher showcase on August 12.
Precognition is set to launch in spring 2028 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. To read more about the works of Sam Barlow/Half Mermaid, be sure to read our previous reviews for Telling Lies and Her Story.
I went into the opening chapters of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave with close to zero expectations. I knew there was a colosseum and that fights would happen there… and that’s about it. Now, hours into the game, I never could have expected what’s played out thus far. Fortune’s Weave looks back at the series, bringing forward systems from the past like Fire Emblem Gaiden’s dungeon crawling (which Japanese players experienced in 1992 before it was remade in 2017’s Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia); but it also looks forward, literally, with a sci-fi future where magic can be shot out of guns and flashback plotlines make up the primary narrative. It hasn’t quite coalesced into the gripping marriage of strategy gameplay and war and political intrigue typical of the series, but its early hooks have me searching for my Switch 2 any second of game time I can carve into my daily schedule.
Fortune’s Weave wastes no time, throwing you right into a scenario I’m not sure I can entirely explain. But the hero you create using simple, to-the-point character customization options is playable only for a moment. Eventually, after seeing medieval-dressed characters interact with advanced computer systems and magic guns ripped from the future, you will reach an Obelisk Chamber, and a bright-colored goddess (I think?) named Fortuna who speaks on behalf of Sothis, the young goddess from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Sothis urges you to dive back into the past and rewrite the histories of fabled heroes so that they might help you in the seemingly apocalyptic present. Again, I think. A lot is going on, and what I’ve played in this preview-designated section is clearly just the placing of Fortune’s Weave’s first few chess pieces on the board.
There are four obelisks to choose from, each with an associated hero-turned-fallen-warrior-who-has-now-become-an-evil-flame-lord from the past. After selecting one of the four, you’re thrust into a narrative that leads to Dagsion, the Dagdan Empire’s capital. The Heroic Games, Fire Emblem’s spin on ancient Roman colosseum fights and gladiator tournaments, take place here and it is where each obelisk hero plays a special role. Though I’m not privy to those roles yet, it’s been fun seeing how Leda, a magical bard with a bloodlust for her father’s murderer, arrives there.
Leda’s life is ripped away from her as a girl – with her eyes set on revenge, she travels the world in search of clues and her next coin, wowing alehouse patrons with song and dance. I suspect each hero’s story flows into combat the way I’ve experienced it with Leda, who uses melodies from her mystical vihuela to buff nearby allies on the battlefield. That’s exactly what her Blaze Art does, a character-specific move that turns the tide when used correctly. But because it saps HP to do so, when and how you use it in the series’ trademark strategy grid-based battles matters. The same can be said for Combat Arts, which power up specific weapons but chip away at their durability. These two systems create new strings of tension on familiar grids, which is where the classic rock-paper-scissors style of turn-based strategy gameplay returns.
It remains satisfying to create forward pushes, flanks, and the like with intentional advances, and the accompanying battle animations are the best they’ve ever looked; the same can be said for all of Fortune’s Weave, which highlights Intelligent Systems’ commanding artistic vision with the boon of power that comes from developing exclusively for Switch 2. While I’m happy to see dungeon crawling return, the associated turn-based combat (notably not grid-based battles) is so far underwhelming – a button to fast forward through these fights or skip to the conclusion screen entirely suggests a lack of confidence in these systems.
Game Informer video editor Eric Van Allen deliberately chose a different obelisk when prompted, instead peeking into the history of Cai, a teenager in search of a better life.
Cai is an optimistic, Shonen-esque hero who’s stumbled into a greater lot in life than he realizes. It seems clear that he and his childhood pals’ path through the Heroic Games will probably not be as lighthearted as they hope. Going on excursions outside Dagsion to build up their renown is enjoyable. Quests, hunts for useful resources, or just a quick trip out to see more of the outlying country net some good returns and spur on the idea of Cai slowly becoming as recognizable and formidable as the other lords.
There is still so much Fortune’s Weave left to go for both of us, but the hooks are in – it’s time to see where these obelisks take us, and I’m happy to say I have no idea where that will be.
Despite its origins as a comic book publisher, Marvel is fighting game royalty on par with the likes of Mortal Kombat and The King of Fighters. But after the disappointing Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite fell massively short of expectations, and with the release of Arc System Works’ Dragon Ball FighterZ giving hyper tag-team fighting game fans a new home, Marvel’s reign in the fighting game world felt at its end. Just shy of a decade since Infinite, however, Arc System Works delivers Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a fighter that is as much of an advancement to the genre as it is an homage to the Marvel vs. Capcom era.
Marvel Tōkon is a 4v4 fighting game, but it’s no ordinary tag fighter. Each team shares a single health bar, but you can effectively play this as a 1v1 fighting game where your team’s only purpose is to come in for assists. This helps retain the high-octane fighting fans are accustomed to without the need to memorize four entire movesets. Super and special moves are also assigned to simple button presses alongside more standard fighting game inputs, making it easier to pick up any fighter.
Matches have a unique rhythm as they start with your main character and one assist, then you gradually gain access to your additional teammates. Not only does this style allow drastic momentum shifts, but it encourages you to be on the attack to gain control of your entire arsenal as soon as possible, making matches exhilarating at times.
While the hard-fought matches I played online aptly demonstrate the combo system’s depth, it’s still approachable. Despite my typical struggles with longer combos, Marvel Tōkon’s character-agnostic control uniformity helps keep the combat approachable for a wider audience. The characters are instead differentiated by unique traits and dedicated specials, which range from Doctor Doom creating barriers to Green Goblin summoning his glider.
Arc System Works is known for over-the-top fighting and absolutely gorgeous visuals, and Marvel Tōkon sits alongside Guilty Gear Strive as one of the best-looking fighting games to date. Arc’s signature 3D models that look like 2D drawings remain as impressive as they were back when we first saw Guilty Gear Xrd. Just as Dragon Ball FighterZ advanced on what Xrd did, Tōkon feels like another visual jump.
A major part of the visual praise belongs to the character designs, which are all unique, fantastic, and tasteful. The anime-inspired style just works for this game; Iron Man, for example, has armor that looks ripped out of a Mecha anime, while Hulk’s exaggerated proportions and armor make him as huge and intimidating as he deserves to be.
Story mode comes in the form of Episodes about teams in a worldwide tournament to take on a cosmic entity, The Champion, who has been travelling the universe and ending planets he deems unworthy. These narratives are told through visual novel scenes featuring the pre-set teams interspersed with fights. Each Episode takes around an hour to beat, and they’re all basic and predictable. Most stories follow the same format aside from a few differences in the Knights of Doom’s path.
Episodes also don’t serve as a tutorial in the same way story modes in fighting games sometimes do, with only very basic introductions to each character. Tōkon does have fairly in-depth training and tutorial options, but the character-specific tutorials are little more than some combo trials. They are useful, but don’t really teach you the full mentality and gameplans behind each character.
Online is standard for Arc games: lobbies, ranked and casual matches, plus a silly eight-player side mode called Arcadia Rumble. The netcode is great, with barely any noticeable issues when I’ve played, even over Wi-Fi.
A fighting game’s impact is difficult to determine at launch due to balancing updates and the community’s approach to it. Given the package Arc has delivered here, though, Marvel Tōkon is a more than worthy successor to Marvel vs. Capcom and Dragon Ball FighterZ. I believe it has the potential to become a fighting game mainstay for years to come.
Despite having played the demo a few times and playing through roughly three hours of the game within Capcom’s main development building in Japan, I still wasn’t quite sure what the Genma, the demonic enemies that plague early Edo-period Kyoto, were up to in Way of the Sword. So, I asked lead writer Hiroshi Yamashita.
“To set the scene, we obviously have the Genma in [this game’s] Japan, but we have the other realm in Hell, which is ruled by the Oni,” Yamashita says. “And within that space, the Genma also exist, and the Oni have kept them in place, but in the living world, from people killing each other and committing crimes, it generates this negative energy, this malice that you see in the game, and [that attracts] the Genma to the living world.”
Yamashita says the Oni are meant to contain the Genma, but because of the growing malice happening on Earth, “and for certain reasons” he didn’t share due to spoilers, mysterious rifts appear in Kyoto that allow the Genma to seep into the real world and invade.
“So, for the Genma, at a very basic level, their objective, their motives are pretty much just killing and eating – that’s what drives them,” Yamashita continues. “They’re these menacing invaders, but they’re only thinking on instinct. Within the Genma ranks, though, there are specific Genma who are maybe a little different and do have their own motivations and objectives. So, whilst the main Genma might not really have a specific objective because they’re just killing and spreading chaos, those others are more like scheming Genma.
“What do they get out of the Genma invading and doing all this chaos? Killing does create more malice, and as the malice builds up, it’s building toward allowing these specific Genma to do something. That’s going to be the main driving force for Musashi – working to try and stop them from completing this objective.”
Unfortunately, Yamashita wouldn’t spill any more on what that objective might be, but I did learn on this trip that Nobunaga, a recurring villainous figure, is not returning… so it’s safe to say the Genma aren’t trying to resurrect him (again).
Previously showcased Genma that rank higher than the standard killers include Dokyo and Rasho-Gan, pictured below. Dokyo, especially, is in a Genma league of her own. Not only does she have a terrifying screen presence backed by a standout voice performance (from what I’ve heard so far), but she has a “special” and “unique” place in the wider story of Way of the Sword. But Yamashita says we’ll have to wait until the game’s launch next month to learn more.
I’ll continue diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Yesterday, Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game released a new look at its upcoming high-speed action game. At 11 minutes long, it’s packed to the brim with flashy combat, uniquely designed enemies, and new story details (which have been scarce so far). The trailer ends with the reveal that Donnie Yen, an actor (John Wick 4, Rogue One) and martial artist, will appear in the game as Mó Yuan, providing the voice, face model, and motion capture. Yen is also listed as a creative consultant. You can view the trailer below.
These set pieces are intense to an almost comical degree, reminding me of an animated show or even some of Resident Evil’s zaniest action sequences. That said, it sounds like the trailer’s opening encounter isn’t even that far into the game. An accompanying post on the PlayStation blog from S-Game founder and CEO Soulframe Liang adds that, “Battling enemies atop a speeding wagon and crossing blades with former comrades like The Hunt are just the opening moments of Soul’s journey.”
The post continues to detail a special Phantom Blade Zero State of Play. The livestream airs next week on Monday, August 17 at 7 p.m. PT/ 10 p.m. ET/ 10 a.m. CST (note: that last start time technically takes place on Tuesday, August 18), and “will introduce never-before-seen characters central to our story while showing just how expressive players can be with their individual builds.”
If you missed it in the trailer’s title, Phantom Blade Zero is available to pre-order now. Doing so will unlock the Treasure Basin accessory and Legacy outfit early, though Liang says both items can also be obtained through regular gameplay.
Phantom Blade Zero launches on October 29 on PS5 and PC. For more on the game, check out our preview from last year, when we traveled to China to see its motion-capture studio in person.
