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11 Oni Armaments are special burst-damage weapons that Musashi Miyamoto can call on during combat once his Oni Gauntlet has absorbed enough blue souls. They sit one tier above the base katana in terms of raw output, and they are spent from a dedicated resource gauge rather than being swapped in as a permanent weapon. Each armament has its own cinematic moveset, thematic identity, and link to the hero's own story, which makes them feel less like loadout slots and more like artefacts the Gauntlet pulls out of legend when Musashi is pushed hard enough in a fight.
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33 Overview
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55 An Oni Armament is a temporary transformation of Musashi's attack form. When the player triggers one, the base katana string is replaced for the duration of the armament's animation by a unique weapon with its own reach, arc, and hit count. The combat system treats the activation as a single committed action rather than a weapon swap in the traditional sense, so there is no menu shuffle, no sheathing delay, and no cooldown on the regular sword once the armament finishes. Musashi simply steps back into his katana stance and continues from wherever the animation ended.
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77 Because the resource that powers them is rare, Oni Armaments are framed as a limited-use answer to hard combat problems rather than a default attack. They are designed to cut through threats that a regular parry-and-riposte loop struggles with, such as dense groups of minor Genma or a boss that has just opened a long window.
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99 How Oni Armaments Are Unlocked
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1111 Access to Oni Armaments is tied directly to the Oni Gauntlet's progression. Each armament is earned as Musashi advances through the story and the Gauntlet grows more powerful, which mirrors the pattern established by earlier Onimusha titles where demon weapons are awarded at set story beats rather than crafted or bought. The Gauntlet is the piece of equipment that actually holds and channels the armament; without it, the blue souls a player collects have nowhere to go and no way to crystallise into a weapon form.
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1313 Blue Souls and the Oni Power Gauge
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1515 Oni Armaments run on the Oni Power Gauge, a dedicated meter on Musashi's HUD that fills as the Gauntlet absorbs blue souls from defeated enemies. Blue souls are the rarest of the three main soul colours Musashi collects in combat, which is the main reason armaments feel scarce even in long fights. Every time an enemy drops a blue soul and the Gauntlet pulls it in, a corresponding chunk of the gauge fills. Once there is enough stored energy for a single use, the armament becomes available to trigger.
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1717 Unlike health or standard stamina, the Oni Power Gauge does not regenerate on its own. Players cannot wait it out between encounters; the only way to top it up is to keep absorbing blue souls, which pushes the system toward aggressive play. Running, hiding, or avoiding enemies denies Musashi the very resource his biggest tool depends on.
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1919 Confirmed Armaments
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2121 ArmamentFormSignature BehaviourTwo CelestialsTwin daggersShort, rapid flurry with strong multi-hit output against grouped or large-bodied targets
2222 Two Celestials is the first publicly shown Oni Armament and appears in hands-on previews of the early campaign. The weapon takes the form of a pair of daggers that Musashi wields in both hands at once, which ties into the historical Musashi's own reputation as the founder of a two-sword technique. In practice, the flurry lands many hits in a short window, which both burns the enemy's health quickly and maximises soul drops from the targets it connects with.
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2424 How to Activate in Combat
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2626 Oni Armaments have a single dedicated input: R1 on PlayStation controllers, with the right-bumper equivalent on other platforms. As long as the Oni Power Gauge holds at least one full charge, pressing that button commits Musashi into the armament's opening swing. The attack then plays out as a scripted string rather than a combo the player dials in manually.
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2828 The activation window is generous on the ground but cannot cancel out of every animation. Players typically use Oni Armaments either at the start of a fresh encounter, directly after a successful parry, or at the opening of a boss punish window. Triggering one during an enemy's attack recovery is the cleanest path; throwing one out mid-combo with the regular sword can cause the armament to whiff its earliest hits as targets reposition.
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3030 Duration and Resource Cost
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3232 Each armament use spends a fixed chunk of the Oni Power Gauge and plays for a fixed length of time. Players cannot hold or extend the armament by mashing the input; once the sequence starts, it runs to its end and then returns Musashi to his katana stance. This predictability is deliberate so that the armament cannot be looped into an infinite combo and so that the player has to think about which moment in a fight is worth spending the gauge on.
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3434 There is no MP or consumable cost beyond the gauge itself. Oni Armaments do not eat health, ammunition, or items, and they do not degrade the regular katana's edge. The only currency is blue souls, which means the only way to use more armaments is to earn more of them by staying in the fight.
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3636 Yellow Soul Feedback Loop
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3838 Oni Armament hits are among the most reliable ways to extract yellow souls from enemies. Yellow souls restore Musashi's health when the Gauntlet absorbs them, which turns the armament from a pure offensive spend into a soft sustain tool in longer encounters. A player who commits the blue-soul gauge against a dense group can often walk away with the health bar topped up by the yellow souls the flurry produces, especially against clusters where each hit lands on a fresh target.
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4040 This loop is one of the more elegant parts of the soul economy in the game. Blue souls feel scarce, but spending them efficiently seeds the very healing Musashi needs to survive his next risky exchange, so aggressive armament use can actually stabilise a fight that more passive play would lose by attrition.
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4242 Strategic Use Cases
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4444 Broadly, Oni Armaments shine in four situations:
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4646 Crowd control. A flurry armament like Two Celestials sweeps through groups of lesser Genma and clears space around Musashi in a single activation, which is far faster than picking them off one at a time with the katana.Boss punish windows. When a boss finishes a long attack and opens a clear recovery gap, committing an armament into the window deals a big chunk of damage on a timer the player knows will not get interrupted by a reposte from the target.Health recovery. Against any encounter where yellow souls are in short supply, spending a blue-soul gauge to carve through enemies can be the most reliable way to refill the health bar without using a consumable.Breaking a stalemate. Extended mid-tier exchanges where parries and ripostes have become a grind are exactly the moments an armament is designed for; the sudden cinematic burst resets the pacing of the fight in Musashi's favour.
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4848 Relationship to Issen and the Base Sword
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5050 Oni Armaments are complementary to, not a replacement for, the regular sword and the Issen system. Issen and critical parries remain the highest single-hit return Musashi can get from his katana, and they cost nothing from the Oni Power Gauge. The armament, by contrast, is a reliable source of multi-hit damage that does not depend on timing an enemy's attack correctly. A well-rounded fight uses both: Issen to punish opened guards for near-free, and armaments to spend hard-won blue souls when a single critical strike is not enough.
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5252 Thematic Role
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5454 Capcom has framed each armament as a piece of story and lore rather than a generic equipment slot. Two Celestials, for example, is not presented as a random drop but as a weapon that reflects Musashi's own history with twin-blade combat. The expectation for later armaments is the same pattern: each one arrives at a story beat, carries a name with in-world meaning, and fights in a way that says something about the part of Musashi's journey the player has just completed.
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5656 Summary
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5858 Oni Armaments are the Oni Gauntlet's biggest offensive payoff: powerful, cinematic, blue-soul-fuelled weapons that sit outside the normal katana loop. They are gated by the rarest soul colour in the game, triggered with a single bumper input, and spent on the encounters that the base sword cannot solve cleanly. Their feedback into yellow souls keeps them from being a pure gamble, and their ties to Musashi's own story keep each one memorable rather than just a number on a damage chart.