Sekiro Shura boss fight

[Spoilers, obviously]

For the first fight, many of Emma's attacks can be easily interrupted. You can attack 3 times, deflect her counter-attack, attack 3 times, deflect and so on. The only things you need to worry about are her red "danger" moves - run away from the grab attack, jump twice (air kick) for the slash and Mikiri counter the thrust. The thrust is the most clearly telegraphed danger attack; she performs a delayed strike and passes you, pauses and then performs the thrust.

She also has a 4-hit combo that you should try to deflect for posture damage. She steps back, pauses briefly in a pose and then strikes with 3 quick hits, a half-second delay and one final hit. When she lowers her arm during the pose, that's when you should begin deflecting. If you deflect most of them, the final hit will actually only push you away without damaging you, but she'll follow it up with a powerful Ashina Cross attack - when you see the glint of her blade in the scabbard, either attack her to interrupt it or play it safe and run to the opposite end of the room.


Unlike Emma, Isshin isn't easily interrupted with regular strikes, but the firecracker prosthetic tool is useful here. You should focus on attacking twice and reacting to his counter-attacks, don't get greedy. This is especially important in the second phase.

In phase one, his most dangerous moves are the Ashina Cross and the Ichimonji: Double sword art. Same as with Emma, just run to the end of the room to avoid the Ashina Cross and run back in for a couple of strikes. Also as with Emma, the glint of his sword gives it away, but he may also perform a quick slash and a red "danger" slash which can be jump-kicked for posture damage. When he does the Ichimonji, you can either deflect it or dash to the side and attack. My preference was to use the same sword art against him for posture damage and to reset my own posture.

At some point, he may quickly strike you and dash away. At the end of this dash, he'll either hold his sword in front of him and lower it very slowly or he'll stand facing to the side. If he has the sword held out, he'll perform an Ichimonji if you get close, so it's usually safer to wait for him to go back to a neutral position. If he faces to the side, only attack him once so that you can react to his next move. That's because there's a good chance he'll dodge your first strike. If you strike twice, he'll dodge and attack you before you have time to deflect. After dodging you, he'll either perform a slash that you should deflect or a grab attack that you should avoid by jumping backwards.

There are two opportunities to Mikiri counter him; one is when he walks slowly to your right and the thrust is performed very quickly (my counters missed here and just side-stepped them, probably a timing issue), the other is frequently performed after deflecting a couple of his regular strikes and there's plenty of time to react to it.

Phase two is more of the same but with the addition of 4 fire attacks.

The first is where he raises his leg, steps forward in the Ichimonji sword art fashion and spreads fire in an arc in front of him. Dodge twice to your right when he raises his leg to avoid this and get behind him to attack. If you dodge left, there's a good chance you'll be hit as his sword sweeps further behind him in that direction. Since he steps forward to perform this move, it's safe for you to dash behind him even when he's up against a wall.

The second fire attack is where he stamps his foot down, pauses and arches his body, and then spews fire directly at you all the way across the room. If you're far away, you can outrun this by sprinting to either side. If you're close, you need to jump sideways just before he emits the flames as you can still be caught if you run.

The third is where he stands still and does a summoning movement with his hands, followed by an eruption of flame pillars. He then dashes at you with a single strike (which can be deflected), performs the One Mind multi-hit attack and follows it up with another dashing strike to the side. To avoid this, you can do one of two things. The easiest is to use the firecracker prosthetic tool to interrupt him while he's still in his pose. The second is to run to one of the corners of the room and stand on the snow. As soon as the pillars of flames rise, jump to the side and run in an arc to get behind him. His first dash and the One Mind attacks will be performed in the corner where you were standing, the follow-up dashing attack will be to the left of right of it, so position yourself to avoid that final hit.

The fourth is a delayed slash followed by a flaming foot stomp and a wide arc of flames directly in front of him. It can be difficult to avoid this one, you need to either jump away early or deflect the first slash and jump-kick his head during the flame slash.