Benkei — Way of the Sword Boss Guide (Fights 11-12)

This is the boss guide for Benkei in Onimusha: Way of the Sword — fights 11 and 12 of 18, covering both the standard encounter and the Fully Armed rematch.

The fights at a glance

The armor rule

The defining wrinkle of both fights: Benkei is a hulking, heavily armored soldier, and you cannot damage him at all until you have stripped away several pieces of his armor. The loop that gets you there:

1. Deplete his stamina bar — which comes down to deflecting the bulk of his polearm attacks.
2. Choose a red soul spot. With his stamina broken you get a choice: take the purple soul (health and Oni Power) or target one of the red-marked points on his armor — a leg guard, the shoulder plating, an arm piece — to strip it away.
3. Repeat until the armor is gone. Removing all pieces lets regular attacks damage him; it takes a while, and Issen can still land health and stamina damage throughout, so a confident Issen game speeds the whole affair up.

Save your Issen counters for his jump attacks if you are still learning the timing — he leaps into the air and slams down with his whole body, and those are the easiest to counter.

Benkei (fight 11): what changes in phase two

Phase two lights the gear strapped to his back on fire, but his attacks stay much the same — polearm strikes above all. Two additions:

• A lunging polearm attack.
• An occasionally drawn second polearm, unleashing white-glowing strikes that can only be deflected or parried — the first white-glowing attacks of this fight. The difficulty explainer covers why Carnage makes these windows tighter.

Both phases use their own separate health bar, but the approach — deflect, strip, damage — never changes. PowerPyx’s verdict: a fight that really tests how sharp your deflect timing is, but nothing to lose sleep over.

Benkei (Fully Armed, fight 12): the rematch

The rematch plays remarkably close to the standard fight — with one key difference: phase one already throws in attacks that were exclusive to phase two of the first encounter, including that rapid flurry of white-glowing second-polearm strikes. The core strategy carries over: deflect, or counter with Issen if confident. Do not underestimate him on Carnage — he deals massive damage. The soul choice after each stamina break now offers yellow, blue, or purple souls alongside the armor-stripping red spots.

Phase two introduces the genuinely dangerous material:

• The cannon throw — the single most dangerous attack, capable of killing outright on Carnage. Dodge the cannon itself; a direct hit slams you to the ground. Once it lands it splits the ground into cracks of fire, and a few seconds later the cannon detonates — time a jump to clear the blast. Eating it costs close to half a health bar.
• The dagger volley — deflectable straight back at him.
• The spinning axes — safer to dodge outright; sending one back demands perfect alignment, and the damage they deal makes dodging the reliable option.
• The blue grab — a genuine blue attack alongside standard kicks and face-grabs: dodge it with the exact timing the game prompts (the input specifics were stripped in our extraction — check the on-screen prompt). Getting caught costs a hefty chunk of health.
• The charged hammer — he mounts his explosive hammer on his shoulder like a cannon and charges it. Shoot it down with the Oni bow immediately: letting the shot fire is an instant kill on Carnage.
• The fireball lob — the same cannon rains fireballs around the arena; your best bet is simply putting as much distance between you and it as possible.

The legend behind the name

In folklore, Benkei is the warrior monk who served Minamoto no Yoshitsune — the same figure who headlines this game as its final boss. Whether the game’s Benkei shares that bond with the game’s Yoshitsune is not documented in Capcom’s material; like Shuten Doji’s legend namesake, the name is a deliberate nod, and the connection stays an open question.

Where this sits on the road

Benkei holds fights 11 and 12 of the boss list’s 18; Dokyo and the final boss follow at 17 and 18 (Dokyo guide, Yoshitsune guide). On the Platinum push, both Benkei fights return in Boss Rematch at every difficulty — part of the Glutton for Punishment sweep on the trophy roadmap.