Furi - Onnamusha

I came back to Furi specifically because of this DLC, and within twenty minutes of picking Onnamusha Rider over the classic Stranger I realised I had effectively bought a second game wearing the skin of the first. The bosses are identical, the arenas unchanged, the story beats land in the same order. None of that matters, because the character underneath your thumbs is a genuinely different proposition that reshuffles every read you ever built on those fights. The core of what Onnamusha adds is a three-stance system built around constant decision-making under pressure. Spark is fast, light, and forgiving, giving you a double-dash and heals on parry but outputting weak damage. Storm flips all of that: slow, vulnerable on the dodge roll, but capable of punishing an opening with serious force. The third stance, Star, sits locked behind a gauge you fill through active play in the other two. When it triggers, it briefly merges the best qualities of Spark and Storm into something genuinely electric. On top of all that, a burst mechanic rewards frequent stance toggling with a short window of amplified bullets and harder slashes, which means there is always a reason to keep switching rather than camping one mode. The result is a combat vocabulary that feels closer to a fighting game character than the more intuitive, reaction-based rhythm of base Rider. Here is the honest caveat: this is not a first-playthrough character. The community consensus is firm on this point, and having lived through the learning curve myself, I agree completely. Onnamusha demands that you already own the bosses' patterns at a level where you can afford to split attention between stance management and incoming fire simultaneously. Veterans who felt Furi was slightly thin on player expression will find exactly the depth they were looking for. Newcomers will find an experience that punishes hesitation so heavily it can obscure rather than reveal what makes the base game so compelling. Start with classic Rider, learn the fights, then come back. The Onnamusha run will feel like a reward rather than an obstacle course. A word on balance: some players have found Onnamusha, once mastered, actually makes certain encounters easier than classic Rider, particularly on Furier difficulty. The double-dash in Spark stance carries invincibility frames through both hops, and a skilled player reading stance transitions well can burn through boss health pools faster than the original character allows. Whether that reads as broken or as the satisfying payoff for a steep learning curve is genuinely a matter of preference. The game does not collapse under it, but if you are hunting the purest difficulty test, classic Rider on Furier is still the benchmark. Furi's soundtrack, its hand-crafted visual identity, and the sharp pacing of its boss rush structure are all still completely intact here. Onnamusha does not add new bosses, so if you burned out on the roster the first time, this DLC will not fix that. What it offers is closer to what The Game Bakers themselves described when they made it: a way for people who loved the game to genuinely rediscover it, fighting the same jailers with new hands and finding new answers. For that specific audience, it absolutely delivers.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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