Onimusha: Way of the Sword — Skills Guide and What to Get First

This is the skills guide for Onimusha: Way of the Sword: how the two skill trees work, what they cost, and which abilities published guides say are worth your first Power Stones, Oni Stones and Red Souls. For the stone hunt that funds all of it, see the all 109 Power and Oni Stone locations page.

How do the two skill trees work?

Skills split into two trees, named identically by both sources:

A few things to know about the economy:

• Issen is already yours. Some skills “will already be unlocked when you gain access to the skill tree, such as the incredibly useful Issen skill” (IGN) — the counterattack our Issen explainer covers in depth.
• Stones unlock, Red Souls upgrade. PowerPyx’s costs show a two-layer economy — stones buy the unlock, and numbered power tiers above it are bought with Red Souls. IGN’s blanket “most skills are unlocked with Power Stones and Oni Stones” blurs that split; PowerPyx’s itemized costs are the closer source.
• Progress gates purchases. PowerPyx gates individual skills behind story missions (Reflex Combo appears during “The Oni’s Apprentice”) and the first three Oni Portals (Chain Issen length 1 opens after the second).
• Where you buy: at any Spirit Mirror, per PowerPyx, through “Enhance Equipment/Abilities” — the same mirror system that handles the gear upgrades on the upgrade materials page. This venue detail is PowerPyx-only; IGN never names where skills are purchased.

Which Basic Skills should you get first?

IGN recommends five early Basic Skills:

Which Special Skills should you get first?

IGN’s four Special picks, plus one strategy note from PowerPyx:

Oni Vision itself — the soul-detection mode our soul farming guide runs on — is where those two upgrades plug in.

What should you do with Red Souls?

Three rules from the sources:

1. Spend Red Souls on skills first. IGN’s tips page: “Prioritize the skills that you want to get in the skill tree when it comes to spending your Red Souls… those will provide the most noticeable bumps in your combat ability”. You start the game “relatively lacking in Red Souls and other resources”, so early picks matter.
2. Hold Oni Stones for Oni Vision: Treasures. PowerPyx’s collectible guide: “Hold off on spending Oni Stones until you can unlock Oni Vision: Treasures” — the vision upgrades make finding the stone chests that fund everything else much easier. It is the one point where both sources independently agree on a specific purchase order.
3. Dump the surplus at Yorimasa’s Monument. After the “Careful What You Wish For” quest, the monument trades excess Red Souls for consumables and upgrade materials (IGN) — the same stock that feeds the charm and gear tracks.

How does this end — the Well-Rounded grind?

Two trophies live at the bottom of the tree, per PowerPyx:

• The Winding Way of the Sword — “Learn and upgrade all basic or special skills”: one full tree.
• Well-Rounded — “Learn and upgrade all basic and special skills”: everything, fed by the full 109-stone supply (54 Power Stones + 55 Oni Stones) listed on the collectibles page.

That endgame sweep is a pillar of the 60-70 hour Platinum roadmap, so skill purchases you make in hour one are the same ones the Platinum eventually requires — nothing is wasted if you keep buying.

What this page does not claim

Honesty notes carried over from the sources: neither IGN nor PowerPyx publishes a complete skill list (the general cluster — sprint, item, soul absorption, charm capacity — and five of the six Oni weapon trees go unnamed), a total node count, per-tier cost scaling, or any damage percentages. The Power-Stone-for-Basic / Oni-Stone-for-Special mapping is suggested by PowerPyx’s examples but never stated outright. Treat any specific cost above as one source’s printed figure, not a Capcom official number.