Are you a gamer who has an interest in playing a Souls-Type game but have avoided trying one for fear of getting your virtual ass handed to you over and over, leading to you rage quitting and questioning why you play games to begin with? I’ve been there. But what if I told you that playing and beating a Souls-Type game is not the impossible task that you may have been led to believe it is? Join me as I share my experiences and gameplay footage of the many boss battles I fought my way through in Nioh; you might even learn a thing or two, like how to properly beat some of these bosses after seeing them smack me around a bit. Welcome to Nioh Respawn: Blade of the Noob, and enjoy yourselves.
Boss #10: Yuki-onna
Now this f@$king ice bitch pissed me off immensely. Even though I only died to her about 6 or 7 times, just dealing with this damn popsicle-throwing pain in the ass was a frustrating experience. As I mentioned in an earlier article, many of the bosses and even regular enemies in Nioh (namely the demon/yokai enemies) have few openings and leave you with precious little time to get in there and do some decent damage to them before they start attacking again. Well, Yuki-onna is most certainly one of the top offenders of this particular type of enemy behavior. The second she’s done tearing me apart with one of her many ice-based attacks, she’s throwing another one at me before I can even get to her and retaliate. Not only that, but a lot of Yuki-onna’s attacks, especially that DAMN “dashing stab” attack that she starts spamming the shit out of in the second half of my first attempt against her (which you can watch below), are pretty difficult to see coming ahead of time. That damn dashing stab attack also tracks my movements very well.
Only by biding my time, recognizing her different attack patterns, taking full advantage of the few openings she gives me, and making sure to retreat after scoring no more than three hits on her was I finally able to best this icicle in my side. And how satisfying it was to finally defeat her in my last attempt, which you can watch below.
Boss #11: Ii Naomasa
Well, it’s out of the blizzard and into the fire. After having defeated Tachibana Muneshige not too long beforehand, I figured I wouldn’t have too much trouble with the next human warrior I would cross blades with. As it turns out, this fiery bastard, Ii Naomasa, ended up being tougher than I anticipated. I managed to put up a decent fight against him during my first attempt, but he still came out on top in the end.
I was determined to take him down on my second attempt…but no such luck, I’m afraid. It wasn’t until my fifth attempt against this annoying tool that I finally managed to defeat him. He wasn’t as tough as Tachibana Muneshige, but he was no pushover either. However, I was certain that if I ended up fighting him again later in the game when I was more used to the combat and had acquired better abilities, that I’d be able to defeat him much more easily (and I was able to prove that to myself in one of the game’s final missions where I fight Ii Naomasa and many other enemies and bosses back to back in a tournament). Even though this dipshit didn’t kill me that many times, for some reason I felt strangely ashamed of myself for losing to him even just a handful of times, making it all the more satisfying when I defeated him.
Boss #12: White Tiger
And another tough boss that required multiple attempts for me to defeat (probably somewhere around 5 or 6). I just knew the White Tiger would be one tough customer the second I saw him. As big and strong as this sucker is, he’s also quite fast and surprisingly acrobatic. He has nasty slashing attacks, a spin attack, throws explosive shuriken, and even has freakin’ laser vision. What a pain in the ass. In the end, he was a pretty tough boss, but there are considerably tougher bosses than this one still ahead. Check out my first and final attempts against the White Tiger in the videos below.
Well, seems things are starting to pick up for me at this point. These last three bosses proved to be rather challenging, each of them requiring multiple attempts for me to defeat. Still, they were all mostly reasonable challenges and didn’t frustrate me too much (except Yuki-onna, she just reeeaaally rubbed me the wrong way). Join us next Friday to see how I fare against the next set of bosses.