I beat the Great Shinobi Owl. Died a couple times, but I eventually got the timing of the attacks down.
Also, I have to say that Fountainhead Palace is very, very beautiful. Major props to the art team for this game.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."I was thinking of finally giving this game another go, but I just can't shake the mild sense of dread even reading about later areas gives me... does anyone have any advice at all? I made it to the interior of Ashina Castle before giving up, as I just wasn't having fun fighting the shinobi or the samurai inside, and knowing that they're still technically early game is very morale-draining.
It's been fun.What's your skill set up atm Red? Because a lot of the skills in the Ashina skill tree will make your life a lot easier. In the Shinobi tree you should also snag Mikiri, Shinobi Eyes, and the skills that increase your stealth. In prosthetic I recommend getting Fang and Blade because its use with Mist Raven is especially deadly.
Also the castle interior is just one area open to you at the place you are. You can also explore the reservoir and Senpou temple. There's also an extremely potent shinobi tool that you can acquire with a bit of exploring (well, technically three, one in the reservoir, one in the castle itself, and one in a part of the surrounding castle area known as the old grave and its that last one I'm referring to). Upgrading it will trivialize deflecting and outright no sell and shut down certain mid-late game midboss types.
Otherwise the best piece of advice I can possibly give is that you shouldn't treat the game like an action rpg like the souls games. Not in the same sense as they were anyway. You're playing a ninja, act like one. Use every tool you have available to tilt every encounter in your favor. If you see a group of enemies pick them off one by one. Use hit and run tactics. Don't be afraid to take out enemies one by one and slink off to wait several minutes for them to de-aggro only to dart in again and take out more. Use choke points when you can't do that. Use the sugars to give yourself an edge (gacchin's is especially effective in sneaking in and take out a key target that would be harder to stealth kill otherwise). The game let's you pause for a reason. You have items. Use them.
Edited by Silentedge89 on Apr 1st 2019 at 4:15:28 AM
I beat the bull by running left and right and getting in the occasional opportunistic stab or two when it was recovering from one of it's charges. Hope that helps.
Some enemies you're really meant to beat by wearing down their health, ignoring their Posture bar entirely.
Edited by Gault on Apr 1st 2019 at 5:26:50 PM
yey![]()
Yeah, it seems that there's always a tactical choice/balance between trying to wear down their posture as quickly as possible (which requires being real damn good at parrying and is a pretty high-risk/high-reward strategy) and concentrating on whittling down their health in order to slow down their posture recovery or to just kill them normally, which is more of an endurance strategy. Speed-runs will obviously be going for the former method.
Did it. Finally finished the game. I'd gotten used enough to Genichiro that he was just a pest who was in the way, while Isshin's first phase was simple enough to go through. It was the second and third phases that really tripped me up during the twenty or so attempts it took me to finally bring him down. I had a couple of attempts where I was so close, but the camera going wonky on me since I got backed into the rock face seriously screwed me up. Still, that was a fun ride, and I'm already hopping onto NG+ to finish the rest of the achievements.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.@Silentedge: Skill setup is... probably not great, honestly. A big part of the problem is that I have the Japanese version, and while I can read Japanese, it takes a while and kind of wears me down. (I was excited to get the game, what can I say?) At this point I feel like I may as well try to grind and get as many skills as possible in the Ashina tree, since those seem to be mostly persistent buffs. My biggest problem gameplay-wise is that I have trouble reading parry timing (or even deflect timing to some extent), and it's really frustrating how the game more or less demands that you take hits with your face and doesn't really give feedback. It's like "oh, sorry, that was wrong, so you lose half your health and this fight is now unwinnable. Feel free to try again after another 15 minutes clearing out mooks, though!"
Edit: Yeah, I think I probably won't get back into it after all. It really sounds like there isn't much waiting for me but frustration, so... yeah. Sorry for the trouble, folks.
Edited by RedSavant on Apr 1st 2019 at 7:14:41 AM
It's been fun.
I felt that way for the first few hours too, but I'm glad I didn't give up.
And yeah, though most of the time your aim is to break posture, some enemies, particularly bosses, recover their posture too fast to make that viable. Wearing down their HP to the point where their posture no longer recovers fast is the best way, in those cases.
It's actually a perfectly valid tactic to rapidly fill up the posture bar, but it requires precision timing, and is thus highly risky, in order to prevent your own posture bar from breaking, as perfectly deflecting an attack will never cause your own posture bar to break, regardless of its level. This is best observed when up against enemies who do consecutive strikes, such as Genichiro and the Long-Arm Centipedes. The True Corrupted Monk is also another good example of this. You could whittle at her HP, or you could deflect every single one of her attacks, which are highly damaging to your own posture bar, and can and will kill you if you miss a deflection.
My own fight against the final boss when I finally succeeded, for example, had me tailing the boss' ass like a pesky gnat during the entire fight, refusing to let their posture bar recover even a little, even if the endeavor was extremely risky, especially with said boss' attack set.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.Well, currently I'm working on the Guardian Ape, and as far as I can tell its attacks can't be blocked or deflected, and doesn't leave you enough openings to really whack him and break posture. I've only been able to get it through bringing its HP down. During phase two, its attacks can be deflected, but they're so slow you can't do any meaningful long-term posture damage as far as I can tell.
Also I'm just not good enough to deflect every attack perfectly :P
Decided to use the Father's Bell Charm to go to the alternate version of Hirata Estate to get more prayer beads. Pro-tip: do NOT go there until your Vitality is fairly high, since that level throws a bunch of powerful enemies at you with little to no way to approach with stealth.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Considering Isshin said that Tomoe, Genichiro's master, almost killed him even in his prime, I wonder if we'll fight her in any upcoming DLC for the game?
One out there DLC I'd like to see is a crossover with Nioh where we fight William Adams, and the usage of the Dragon's Heritage was meant to be a counter to the usage of Amrita by other warlords.
They even take place within the same timeframe around the very twilight years of the Sengoku Period before it ended.
Watch SymphogearYeah, that is a shitter. Guess I'm farming blue samurai then. I hate those fucks. Especially the pair in the back room that come and join in when you start fighting the two guys below the hole in the ceiling.
Is there even any point to fighting the Headless other than for beads? From what I've seen, it's just another route between the Outskirts and Senpou Temple, right?
Edited by artfulscruff on Apr 1st 2019 at 7:43:47 PM
![]()
Fighting the Headlesses also give you an item that works like Sugars, only you can use them again and again, at the cost of their effects not lasting as long.
But yeah, the main reason to fight the first Headless is to get to the Bell Demon's Temple early. The Bell Demon makes the game harder, but increases the odds of you finding better items from enemies, and it can be dispelled whenever you want.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Right, well, the main thing for me would be getting the bead then. I saw in the Vaati tips vid that was linked a while back that you could reach the Bell Demon's Temple by passing the Headless, but then I got there via Senpou, and I did find a cave somewhere that seemed to lead to the Headless from the other side.
I don't think you actually get prayer beads from the Headless enemies, only the Spiritfall items.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."

Just made a go at the Shichimen Warrior because I heard aerial deathblows trivialize him, but I never seemed to be in position for them to trigger. Long story short he kicked my ass. How close do you have to be for the deathblow prompt to appear?
"...always on the verge of death, yet repeatedly baffling Christendom by continuing to live."