Seven Years of Calling It Fantastic

Capcom's Onimusha: Way of the Sword arrives with the same critical benediction the studio has deployed before — 'fantastic,' 'impressive stride' — and this matters because those exact words preceded a seven-year drought in Devil May Cry, the franchise that teaches us what happens when mechanical language exhausts before commercial appetite does. The game exists in that dangerous place where production values are high enough to silence design innovation. Critics reach for praise because the spectacle is real even if the challenge has stopped evolving.

Devil May Cry 4 released in 2008 to identical language: fantastic action, impressive style, stunning combat. The mechanics were recycled from Devil May Cry 3. Boss encounters repeated themselves with cosmetic variation. The player could feel the difference. Reviewers praised the game. Players felt the attention drift that arrives when challenge no longer matches skill, when feedback becomes predictable. Seven years passed before Devil May Cry 5 appeared. The franchise had lost momentum that production value alone could not restore.

Onimusha follows the same arc. 'Drawn-out' is a phrase that means something specific: the challenge has flattened enough that your attention intrudes. The self returns to consciousness because the game stopped requiring all of it. You notice the UI. You notice the time. The hours don't vanish; they drag. That sensation arrives not from poor design but from exhausted design. When a franchise has mined its mechanical seam and production values become the only argument left.

The disconnect between 'fantastic' and 'drawn-out' resolves if you read 'fantastic' as meaning spectacle and narrative scaffolding rather than moment-to-moment engagement. Capcom is a studio that understands this distinction perfectly in its design, yet the critical vocabulary refuses to name it. A game can be beautiful and mechanically spent simultaneously. The praise masks the fatigue.

This is what happens inside any sustained creative practice when mastery becomes maintenance. The work looks the same from outside. The critical language stays identical. But the person doing it knows the difference between a problem requiring your full attention and an obstacle you're solving on autopilot. And the distinction, once felt, never reverses. If you recognize yourself in that exhaustion, you are watching a franchise teach you something about your own work worth listening to.