By now, you should have learned some initial techniques to improve your combat potential. If not, check out some tactics in the first Sekiro Strategies blog. Now let’s take a careful look at a small selection of the more monstrous entities encountered in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. These first four are located reasonably early on in your adventuring, and each receives some helpful combat notes and takedown tips.

Chained Ogre

The Ogre suffers greatly when fire damage is inflicted on him, so equip the Firecracker or Flame Vent and utilize flaming attacks, perhaps with thrown Oil beforehand. Sprint to the Ogre before he frees himself to inflict some free strikes. Then strike him one or two times before retreating, running and maneuvering out of the Ogre’s devastating grabs, and as he’s recovering from his lumbering attacks.  When he comes at you with a his tackle move, jumping is far more effective than step-dodging. 

Also, if you do get caught by his grab, keep an eye out for a grappling hook point on his neck as he flings you away – there’s often a short window for you to grapple right back to him and get in some extra damage.    

General Tenzen Yamauchi

If you’re facing a Samurai General, or Tenzen Yamauchi himself, your keys strategy should be to deflect his attacks as much as possible, while also keeping up attacks from your side (so the General’s posture gauge doesn’t diminish). Strike with a thrust, or one-or-two slashes, then Step Dodge away. Remain just outside of his sword range, allowing a little more time to react to his aggressions. If all else fails, stagger him with Fistfuls of Ash.  If he uses a sweep attack, make sure to jump kick on him after you jump over it to deal huge posture damage.

Also, many (but not all!) of the Samurai General’s moves can be interrupted – notably, a quick Shuriken or sword attack can interrupt his perilous attacks and his posture recovery technique.    

Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa

This mounted fellow with an impressively-lengthy spear may seem intimidating. He is, especially if you haven’t brought Firecrackers to this confrontation; use them to freak out his steed before striking during the horse’s recovery phase. Also cover more ground, out-maneuver Gyoubu’s main attacks, and inflict greater damage all by using the Grappling Hook attack (from the Prosthetic Arts tree).

During his second phase, jump and sprint will help you avoid his spear-dragging grab attack.    

Shinobi Hunter Enshin of Misen

Watch the Shinobi Hunter in action at around 3:06 in the previous video. This foe is predisposed to thrust attacks with a halberd. Combat this by using Mikiri Counter after the Hunter starts a dash and thrust attack; it won’t be easy to defeat him otherwise.  If you don’t have Mikiri Counter yet, it’s recommended you get it.  Without it you’re going to need to rely on very accurate, consecutive deflects up to 4 times in a row in order to prevent his main combo from landing.  He has a move where he rears up and grabs you with his spear – Mikiri Counter can be used on this attack as well.

Also, some, but not all, of his moves are interruptible, so if he’s coming at you with something scary, experiment with using the Shuriken to create openings or stop his scarier attacks before they have a chance to reach you.  The Chasing Slice skill can be helpful for quickly closing distance with him when he backs off to recover posture.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is available now for PlayStation®4, Xbox One, and PC. Take Revenge. Restore your Honor. Kill Ingeniously.

For further details about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, check out the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice website, and follow Sekirothegame on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.