Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - GOTY Edition

This is the final boss for the "immortal severance" ,"return" and "purification" endings.

As far as I know there are no cheese strategies so you have to do this the hard way.

Genichiro can be killed easily by high pressure, try to deflect his attacks and attack him as often as possible. Watch out for his mortal draw attack. It has a long windup so it is rather easy to dodge. Do not use more than 2 healing gourds for this fight. You can kill him with minimal losses, use a pellet at the start of the isshin fight, there should be enough time before he attacks you.



Now for the main fight. Isshin has 3 phases

Phase 1: In this phase Isshin only uses his sword. He has 4 main attacks and a 3 hit combo which is very slow and should always be deflected. His first attack is Ichimonji double. Sidestep and punish. Second attack is a form of the Ashina draw technique you can unlock in the Ashina style skill tree. He charges up the attack and dashes towards you to hit you twice. Simply run away quickly and run back when he did his two strikes for easy hits. The third attack is some kind of wind slash. He slashes twice, just run to the side and try to attack him quickly. He has another attack where he slashes around him in a very wide radius. You either jump over it or run far away. You should ideally finish this phase using only 1 healing gourd. If you have less than 5 gourds after this phase, restart. The randomness of the following phases forces you to have spare healing gourds.

Phase 2: This phase is super difficult. After you give him a deathblow he sends out a shockwave that knocks you away. You can run behind him if you are fast and hit him once or twice but watch out for the spear he draws out from the ground since he can damage you while doing it. He uses a spear and a sword during this phase. His reach is massive, keep your finger on block just to be safe even if you think you are far away. I have not found a way to bait his thrust attack for easy mikri counters but always keep an eye out for them. When he leaps up into the air you have two options: 1. Sidestep for a freehit or two. 2. Try to deflect but keep in mind that he does another followup attack sometimes that you also have to deflect. You can chip away at him whenever it is safe but I won't recommend it.

Play very aggressive. Keep attacking him, when he deflects you have to react fast because the wind up time on his attacks is very short. Keep an eye out for thrust attacks, counter them with mikri for massive posture damage, after mikri he will be too far away for a hit, step closer, hit him and step back again.

Phase 3: This phase seems daunting at first but it is much easier than the others. Try to memorize the wind up animation for his lightning attack. Jump into the air and hit RB at the lightning bolt and try to hit him with it for massive damage and a stun. Follow up with a hit and back off.

Thats it. There is no easy way to kill him. This fight is a true test of skill. If you absolutely can't finish it watch one of the speedrunners do it. They have a few tricks I didn't mention.

There is a cheese strategy to get past the hardest part of this boss fight, phases 3 & 4, where he pulls out the spear. Run to the boss's right until he does a jumping overhead attack. When he does this, run towards and to the right of him to get behind him, then hold to perform a stab, which does more damage than a regular attack. Only do one attack, then run away and bait him until he does it again. Repeat until dead.

First off, the guide by Buda is spot on with tips on how to fight and you should definitely follow it. This is not to compete with that guide, simply to add some tips you may not know.

1. Do not approach this fight as trying to win at first. Look at it as training on each phase. Practice on Genichiro until you can beat him without healing. Practice dodging the black swings, learn the timing on parrying, learn the difference in his unblockable swing and thrust. You need to be able to counter his thrust every time. As you're learning his moves, if you beat him, let Isshin kill you and repeat until Genichiro is no longer a threat.

2. Now do the same with Isshin phase 1. Practice parry timing, learn the tells of unblockable swings and thrusts. You need to be able to counter every thrust. When he sheaths his sword, run away from him and to the left, then punish him after the double slash. When he raises his sword, spam B to back Up A LOT, his two sword slashes will miss you. Run away from his whirlwind attack.

3. You should be able to beat Genichiro and Isshin phase one without using a gourd. I felt like I needed all ten for phase 2 & 3 of Isshin because his attacks are so powerful and it's hard to tell if he's going to use a 3 hit combo or 5.

4. Now learn his new moveset. The spear CAN be parried, timing is just different. Practice till you can do it. Master the mikiri counter! Does major posture damage! Once I realized the reach of his thrust was INSANE, countering became a lot easier. I tried many combat arts on him, I thought that "Praying Strikes-Exorcism" worked the best. You can't spam it though, punish him when you dodge an attack.

5. For Isshin phase 3, learn the lightning parry or learn to dodge it, whichever you can pull off with confidence. Remember, phase 3 is close to phase 2 except he's more aggressive, uses the unblockable whirlwind attack, and the lightning attack.

6. Accept that you will die on Isshin phase 2 & 3, until you learn his moves. That way you won't get overwhelmed. Since you have mastered Genichiro and Isshin phase 1 though, it won't be as frustrating.

7. DO NOT use more than your first resurrection until you are on Isshin phase 3 and are confident you can beat him. If you do, you will have to grind out deathblows to fill you nodes back up. The first one refills at an idol, but the other two take about half a skill point worth of boosting deathblows to fill back up. If Isshin kills you twice just die.

8. That being said, a "Bundled Jizo Statue" will replenish a node completely! Unfortunately they only work outside of battle. Save these! If you almost have Isshin phase 3 killed, and you use another resurrection, these can be used to refill the node before your next try without having to boost.

9. You know those Dragon's Blood Droplets that heal Dragon rot? Well turns out they have another use. If you have the black mark across your resurrection nodes, you can USE THIS IN BATTLE to RESTORE RESURRECTION! This means that if you die and resurrect in Ishhin phase 3, then you can use a Droplet and regain the ability to resurrect. An example : You make it to Isshin phase 2 with 3 nodes. He kills you. You resurrect. You now have 2 nodes with a black mark. You deathblow phase 2. This takes your black mark away, and you are now on phase 3. He kills you again, you resurrect. You now have 1 node with a black mark. You use the Droplet, black mark goes away, giving you 2 resurrections in 1 phase!

10. Don't forget about your sugars! Yellow one helped speed up Genichiro and Isshin phase 1 for me, and blue one helped on phases 2&3.
Also, when an opponent parries you, it makes the same sound and flash of light that your parry makes. So attack until you see that, then get ready to parry.
Good luck

In this video guide I will show you how to defeat Sword Saint, Isshin Ashina. This will be the final boss if you decided to side with Kuro. The fight will take place in the same spot where you lost your arm. There will also be four health bars that you need to deal with this time around.

A few things I used in the fight to help out are high monk, umbrella, and ceremonial tanto.

First Phase: You will be fighting Genichiro again in his Way of Tomoe form. The good thing about this first fight is he still uses all of his previous moves, only difference is that he uses the mortal blade swing. His posture is also very low, so breaking that will be priority. First you will need to get behind him before he uses the mortal blade and get a few hits. I just keep deflecting his attacks will hitting once in awhile to build his posture. When he did his thrust attack I just used high monk to jump over them and attack him with that. Just repeated this until his posture broke.

Second Phase: Now comes out Sword Saint Isshi Ashina. The first health bar will be the most tedious one to whittle down. All you need to do is back away and lure him into attacking you. He will usually do one of three moves. One he will charge at you from a distance followed up by a combo. If you try to lure him our by running forward a bit then back again he will lunge at you and miss. Don't attack when he does this move.

Another attack is he will use the Ashina Cross. When he sheathes his sword wait for him to lunge at you and do two quick swipes. Just simply run around him and do a thrust attack at him. Thrust attacks do a little more damage than one hit attacks.

His last move he will do is start running around then come at you with a three hit combo. Just run round and try to get behind him for a thrust attack. If you hit him head on with this he might block it and attack back so be warned.

Just keep punishing him on these last two attacks and he will eventually fall. This will be slow and tedious but it will be able to save your healing gourds and be less complicated for learning all of his other moves.

Third Phase: Now he will be pulling out a spear and have a big area of attack. Plus a while bunch of new moves. All your gonna do is run away and go to one of the ends of the map and wait for him. He will usually do one of two moves here. The goal is to try to get him to use his gun on you and block it with the umbrella.

One of the gun moves he will do is just start charging at you then draw his gun. Pay close attention for you can tell when he reaches in his robe to draw it out. Deploy the umbrella and block all four shots then when he's close enough press the RB to attack and use the gunshots absorbed into the umbrella to do extra damage to him.

Now you are going to run to the other side of the map to ensure he keeps using his running attacks and use his gun. The other attack his he will be running at you again and do a jump attack. Deploy the umbrella to block it. He will then shoot his gun four time like before, keep blocking the attack and keep the umbrella out. He will do another jump attack and all you need to do is walk around the left side of it followed up by another attack with the umbrella.

These will be the two attacks you will be using against him for the whole second health bar of his. Once you get this down it won't take long to knock his health bar down.

Fourth Phase: This phase will be the same as the last one. The only difference is he will be using lightning attacks once in awhile. When the fight starts just wait for the kanji to pop up then jump in the air to get hit with the lightning and press RB in the air. This will throw the lightning back at him and give you a few hits on him as well. Now all your going to be doing is the same as the third phase. Use your umbrella to absorb the gunshots and get the extra damage on him with it. If you run out of spirit emblems use the ceremonial tanto to get more. Just be sure to heal up afterwards so you don't get one hit killed. Keep repeating the process until he is dead. Don't worry to much about countering the lightning just keep your distance. The achievement will pop once you execute him.