The dragon’s lair

A balanced approach to Isshin, the Sword Saint

Few fights in Sekiro are more difficult than the combined Genichiro and Sword Saint Isshin. As a consequence, few deathblows feel more rewarding than the one that puts an end to this fight. Other guides either advocate an overly aggressive high risk-high reward strategy, which is very difficult to execute for players who are struggling with the fight to begin with, or else an overly cautious strategy, which tries to get around the actual fight. In contrast to both, this strategy is written with a balanced approach in mind. Instead of constantly sprinting around and waiting for openings, you will be close to your opponent. However, instead of constantly harassing them, you will be anticipating the moves that can be punished and maintaining a careful pressure for the rest of the fight.

Preliminaries

This strategy is not dependent on any specific prosthetics, combat arts, or consumables, and can be easily followed without any at all. However, some have situational utility that can make certain portions of the fight easier, and so are worth mentioning here:

With those preparations out of the way, let’s delve into the strategy for the fight itself. The text is divided into sections for each phase, with a summary of the key points at the end of each section.

Phase 1

The fight begins with a familiar foe—Genichiro Ashina in his Way of Tomoe form from the end of the battle on top of Ashina Castle. He now wields a black mortal blade, which gives him a special combat art that he will try to punish you with, but which is actually one of the main movesets that can be exploited to your benefit.

At the beginning of the fight, Genichiro will try to close the distance to you and start charging his mortal blade for a wide sweep. The sweep is avoidable in several ways—either by dodging to the side/back, jump-kicking Genichiro just before he releases the blade, or by simply sprinting away from its range. While dodging in particular may afford you a free hit or two, running away from the range of the sweep means that Genichiro will invariably follow up with a perilous attack, which is easily mikiri countered for a considerable amount of posture damage. Provided that you are at a medium or long distance away from Genichiro when he finishes his mortal draw combat art, he will lunge towards you with his sword. To counter, simply dash towards him at any point during his descent, dealing posture damage and leaving Genichiro staggered, allowing for an additional hit for extra posture and vitality damage.

Aside from his new combat art, Genichiro’s moveset is the same as the final phase of your previous fight with him, affording the same opportunities on which to capitalize. In particular, his perilous thrust should be mikiri countered, while the perilous sweep should be either jump-kicked or high monked, depending on whether you have high monk available. Both of those deal great posture damage to him, owing to mikiri counter’s effectiveness.

Countering his perilous attacks and maintaining careful pressure should be enough to comfortably deplete his posture meter while not risking any damage to yourself. Optionally, his long five-hit combo can be parried instead of dodged for additional posture damage and a faster end to this phase, although imperfectly parrying some of the hits may result in your own posture meter running dangerously close to depletion, so only attempt this if you are comfortable with the attack sequence.

Either way, upon dealing a deathblow to Genichiro, a cutscene reveals your reward in the form of Isshin Ashina, brought back to life in his prime and compelled to make short work of yours.

The strategy for this phase can be summarized in the following way:

Phase 2

Taking on Isshin is a much more difficult challenge than Genichiro, but one that can be overcome using the same strategy of maintaining careful pressure while waiting for attacks that can be punished. The first Isshin phase is a pure swords duel, and it really highlights Isshin’s strength, as he will constantly harass you with quick sweeps from near and far. In anticipation of this, the beginning of this phase is the perfect opportunity to create some distance and eat a Gokun sugar, as this will help you keep your posture under Isshin’s onslaught.

The key, again, is parrying most of his moves, while waiting for those that provide you with good openings to start chipping away at his own posutre. Even though now you will be playing more defensively than against Genichiro, it is still a good idea to keep a close distance to Isshin, as he has excellent ways of closing the gap to you anyway, meaning that staying far only gives you a false sense of security.

The other reason for keeping a short distance is that his Ashina Cross ability plays out differently depending on where you are in relation to him. In medium to high distances, he unsheathes his sword and flashes in front of you with two incredibly fast sword swings that are difficult to parry. In contrast, if you are close to him when he sheathes his blade for the Ashina Cross, he goes for a single sword strike which is then followed by a sweeping perilous attack. It is this perilous attack that provides you with one of the great opportunities for punIsshing Isshin in this phase. When he sheathes his blade for Ashina Cross, simply approach, block the single sword attack, and then immediately either jump-kick or high monk over him for a satisfying chunk of his posture bar.

The other attack that you will be looking out for is a short perilous thrust, which is easily mikiri countered as well, leaving Isshin staggered for an additional free hit.

Unfortunately, the rest of his moveset is fairly brutal and the best thing to do is to parry it and wait for the mikiri counter openings. He performs a combat art that charges for a few seconds and releases two shockwaves in your direction. Be prepared to pull out the umbrella during the charge or get ready to sidestep the shockwaves, as they can easily cut through your vitality bar.

Given that both exploitable opportunities in this phase are mikiri counters, which deal considerable posture damage, you will find that the next deathblow comes fairly quick.

The strategy for this phase can be summarized in the following way:

Phase 3

After your deathblow, Isshin kneels to the ground for a few seconds, before bursting upwards with a spear and knocking you back in the process. This is where the fight becomes daunting, and it is generally considered to be the most difficult phase of the encounter.

Luckily, this is also the phase in which a balanced approach between aggression and caution really pays off, as Isshin is now incredibly well equipped to deal with overaggression by annoying backward sweeps and pistol shots and can also punish overcaution by long-range spear attacks.

While the pace of this phase is slightly slower, seeing that Isshin now commands a spear instead of his favorite sword, a Gokun sugar at the beginning of this phase still goes a long way in giving you a relative peace of mind regarding your posture meter. His moveset has now changed completely, but most of his spear attacks remain comfortably prone to parries and blocks, which is what you will be doing most of the time.

The first move that you can take advantage of in this phase is a perilous thrust that closely resembles the one of Genichiro in Phase 1. In this, Isshin will lunge at you with his spear, a move which you can mikiri counter while he is still in the air.

The other exploitable attack sees Isshin in the air as well, but this time coming at you with an overhead slam with his spear. This time, parry just before the attack connects for decent posture damage on Isshin and a free hit afterwards.

Due to the slighly slower pace of the fight, you will have more opportunities to throw attacks at Isshin yourself, which will help build up his posture. However, the real key to this phase is patience. You will notice that his posture bar fills up more slowly compared to the previous phases, and you will be tempted to overcommit, leaving yourself exposed to his moveset. Additionally, there will be points in the fight where your own posture meter will be close to full, and you will be tempted to stay just a little bit longer in order to not allow him to recover. You need to resist both of these temptations, as even a single combo from Isshin’s spear means a certain death for you.

The final thing to keep in mind in this phase is that Isshin acquires a new charged combat art, which however is dealt with in exactly the same way as the one in the previous phase—by either blocking it completely with the umbrella or dodging or just sprinting out of range. Your patience in this phase will eventually be awarded with a deathblow and the commencement of the final phase.

The strategy for this phase can be summarized in the following way:

Phase 4

If you have reached this phase, it means that you can deal comfortably well with spear-wielding Isshin. From now on, the only thing that can stop you from winning the fight is your own mind in the form of anxiety mistakes. There is no transition from the previous phase to this one, and the only change is that Isshin now has the lightning of Tomoe ability, which can and should be reflected back to him every time he casts it, allowing you to cut him down quickly.

As with the Ashina Castle Genichiro fight, reflecting the lightning back will leave Isshin stunned for several seconds, easily allowing for a few free hits while he recovers. There is no point in getting greedy with the hits, however, as all that you need in this phase are a few successful lightning reversals to bring Isshin to his knees and finally kill the Sword Saint.