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 #40: Date Shigezane and Katakura Shigenaga
Oh goodie, another two-on-one boss battle. I can never get enough of these. If I had said those last two sentences out loud, there’d be no mistaking the obvious tone of sarcasm in my voice. This battle has me fighting Katakura Shigenaga again alongside….Date Shigezane. But not to worry, Date Shigezane is now in his human form, and as such, he’s not the enormously cheap pain in the ass he used to be when he was a demon. I figured this two-on-one battle would be one of the easier ones since I had already proven I was capable of defeating Katakura Shigenaga without too much trouble, so my main cause for concern was Date Shigezane since I had never battled him in his human form until now. Turns out he’s mostly just a big dude wielding an odachi and has a few slick moves he can perform with it. Unlike Katakura though, Date Shigezane does have a Guardian Spirit and can use the Living Weapon ability, but even so, he’s still not on the same level as Date Masamune or even Maria. I actually did pretty well in my first attempt against these two guys, but they ended up being tougher than I expected.
As you may have noticed in the video above, Katakura Shigenaga and Date Shigezane make a deadly team. Individually, they’re not amongst the tougher bosses in the game, but together they are not easy to deal with. For one thing, separating one from the other is basically impossible since they both move at around the same speed; therefore, when they both come after me as I move away from them, they both reach me at pretty much the same time. And the second I attack one, the other one starts smacking me around from the side or from behind. Annoying dipshits. So, the same strategy I used to defeat Tachibana Muneshige and Honda Tadakatsu when I fought them together was not going to work here. Therefore, I decided to focus on taking out Katakura Shigenaga first with hit and run tactics since he can attack me from longer range with those damn bombs of his, then with him out of the way I’d be able to fight Date Shigezane mano-e-mano. Let’s see if that strategy works.
Hell yeah, it did work! It wasn’t easy, but I took these idiots out on just my second attempt. A good way to finish off the Dragon of the North DLC which had, for the most part, been quite difficult overall.
Boss #41: Date Masamune
Now begins Nioh’s second DLC, Defiant Honor. And the first challenge is yet another sub-mission rematch against a boss I had already defeated. And this boss was none other than Date Masamune. Fine. After I defeated him in the previous DLC, I had gone online and helped a number of other players defeat this guy, and by now I knew his moves inside and out, so I was confident I’d be able to beat him now without too much trouble. But nope…Team Ninja worked their “magic” and decided to move Date Masamune past the line that separates “challenging bosses” from “utterly cheap bosses”. How did they accomplish this? Check out my first attempt below, and let’s see if you all can figure it out yourselves.
In case you couldn’t spot it, this bastard simply WOULD NOT STOP using his damn Living Weapon ability. The second he finishes using the Living Weapon of one of his Guardian Spirits, he almost immediately starts using his next one. No longer was Date Masamune relying largely on his natural sword skills, he was just spamming his f@#king Guardians Spirits like a bitch! And before anyone else decides to mention this in the comments, I realize I can use spirit stones to fill up my Amrita gauge and activate my own Living Weapon, but I simply didn’t want to rely on the spirit stones too much for fear of running out of them. Anyway, I HATED this battle with a passion, it was just cheap bullshit. Not only did it take me somewhere around twelve attempts (possibly more) to beat this guy, but my final attempt, much like all my other attempts, was just a battle of attrition with VERY little room for error. Easily one of the least enjoyable battles in the entire game. Check out my final attempt against this cheap, cycloptic asshole in the video below.
Boss #42: Sarutobi Sasuke
Okay, so this is the boss of the first (extreme pain in the ass) main mission of Defiant Honor. When I first saw Sarutobi Sasuke in the final cutscene of the Dragon of the North DLC, I could just tell he was going to be one tough customer. Still, after defeating the likes of Date Masamune (both the “challenging” and “cheap” versions), Date Shigezane, and Maria, I figured this guy would probably kill me no more than four or five times. I mean, he’s a ninja enemy with no Guardian Spirit, so he couldn’t be THAT tough, right? Let’s find out in the video below.
Right, so we have another pain in the ass boss here. I mean, shit, this guy is easily amongst the top 5 most difficult bosses in Nioh, at least for me. He’s fast, has a crap-ton of Ninjutsu items at his disposal, and I can pretty much only get one or MAYBE two hits on him before he starts blocking every follow up attack I throw at him. And let’s not forget that RIDICULOUS attack he performs where he slides towards me (with practically no warning, might I add), kicks me up into the air, and then pops up above me and shoots me with his freakin’ gunstick tonfas at point blank range. Hell, even blocking his attacks drains my stamina like you wouldn’t believe. Like with Date Masamune, I had to be at the top of my game and not slip up for even a second if I was to defeat this guy, and I had to react extra quickly as well. Took me about nine or ten attempts before I was finally able to beat Sarutobi Sasuke, and you can check out my last attempt in the video below.
While the Dragon of the North DLC ended with a somewhat less frustrating boss battle than I expected, the Defiant Honor DLC was off to a ball busting start with two hugely pain in the ass bosses and one surprisingly tough and time-consuming main mission. I was rather apprehensive for the later battles in this DLC. How frustrating would they be compared to the battles in the previous DLC? Join us next week to see how my continued battles go.
