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Benkei is a boss in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, fought twice on the bridge district of Eastern Kyoto. He is one of the game's armoured opponents, and the fight is built around stripping that armour before any damage can be dealt at all.
Confirmation
Benkei is named directly in two of the game's achievements, Benkei: Out, but Not Down and Baited by Benkei. Both are description-hidden, so the achievement roster establishes that the character exists and is a story beat without describing the encounter. Capcom's pre-release character material did not include him, which places him among the opponents held back for players to find.
The First Fight
Benkei opens the encounter encased in heavy armour that takes no damage whatsoever. Ordinary attacks, Issen and Break Issen all fail against it. The armour has to be broken open first using the arm-awakening strike, the same Oni Strength application used to break enemy guards elsewhere, which takes roughly five connected hits.
Once the armour is off, the fight becomes a conventional stamina-drain encounter. Draining a full health bar, or letting one of his unblockable attacks land, pushes him into a soul-empowered state in which his polearm is upgraded and he wields two at once, chaining unblockable attacks back to back.
The Second Fight
The rematch keeps the armour opening and adds two ranged threats:
Attack | How to Answer It |
|---|---|
Thrown war hammer | Two separate dodge windows, one for the landing and one for the lightning that follows it |
Cannon | Can be destroyed with the Oni Bow before it fires |
Paired polearm unblockables | Dodge or deflect; they cannot be parried |
The bow line is the notable one. This is one of the encounters where the Oni Bow is not an optional convenience but the cleanest answer to a specific threat, which makes it a useful checkpoint for whether a player has been investing in ranged options at all.
Placement
Benkei sits in the middle stretch of the campaign, in the same bracket as Burai and Dohatsu-ten, and he is rated among the harder fights of that stretch in both appearances. He also appears in the Genma Notes catalogue, and can be challenged again afterwards at the practice ground.
He is the last opponent standing between the player and the endgame sequence: the castle boss rush begins immediately after his rematch.