It’s going to be a while before Souls fans get their hands on Elden Ring, and while the Demon’s Souls remake has done a great job of satisfying fans, no one should forget Hidetaka Miyazaki’s latest work, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Much more than just Dark Souls in Japan, Sekiro came out as one of the hardest Souls-like games within recent memory. And while the actual bosses of the game are clearly very difficult, Sekiro‘s mini-bosses can never be underestimated.
Managing to challenge and frustrate the player about as much, if not even more so, than the actual boss fights, the mini-bosses act less like dramatic set pieces and more like opportunities to stretch one’s muscles and practice with and against different playstyles. While all of them are special in their own way, some Sekiro mini-bosses are just better than others.
10 Blazing Bull
This one’s difficulty kind of depends on one’s ability to parry. If a player actually manages to get a hand of the clashing art, they can actually parry each of the Blazing Bull’s attacks, quickly wearing down on its posture bear and eliminating its one and only health bar. This is subtly meant to get the player to take the role of a bullfighter as they bait the Blazing Bull to attack only to parry it at the last second.
However, if a player unfortunately hasn’t mastered parrying at this point in the game, then they have a rough road ahead. They’ll have to settle for a long game of endurance where they’re constantly dodging and chasing the bull to gradually deal damage.
9 Both Of The Snake Eyes
There’s a classic scene across various anime where a talented swordfighter uses their blade to cut a bullet in midair. It’s awesome in these scenes. It’s absolutely terrifying in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Being able to block and deflect gunfire is already hard enough with the game’s various artillery fighters, but things really take off when Sekiro is poised against some of the best snipers in the game: Snake Eyes Shirafuji who guards the Gun Fort in the Sunken Valley and Snake Eyes Shirahagi who guards the Ashina Depths.
Shirafuji is incredibly difficult given her small arena and the waves of gunfire coming from all around. Shirahagi is difficult because of her poisonous surroundings. With their aggressive combat style and explosive, long-ranged attacks on top of this, one wonders why Sekiro is only armed with a sword.
8 Armored Warrior
While many fans will never know who exactly Robert was, there’s no ambiguity surrounding the Armored Warrior’s skills. As the closest callback to the original Souls games that there is in Sekiro, the Armored Warrior is a giant knight with very few openings in his armor that is just meant to intimidate the player with his pure power.
He protects one of the tightest areas in the game and takes absolutely no damage to vitality. The player can only hope to survive long enough and chip away at his posture gauge fast enough to knock him off the bridge. However, if the player somehow misses with their last attack, then they’ll likely to start the posture damage process again.
7 Lone Shadow Masanaga The Spear-Bearer
“The Wolf” Sekiro may have been trained as a ninja, but he rarely has the same, physics defying feel of classic ninja flicks that the enemies of Sekiro do well to replicate. There’s no better example of this than with the Lone Shadow warriors, cloaked, mystifying mini-bosses whose entire job is to look better than the actual player. The Lone Shadows use flourishing martial arts to move across the map with ease and grapple against Sekiro’s sword skills.
Things only get more difficult when they get poison based weapons, with Lone Shadow Masanaga the Spear-Bearer being the toughest of the bunch. The player can actually face off against Masanaga twice, once at the Serpent Shrine during the late game and again in Hirata Estate within the Owl Memory.
6 Chained Ogre
One of Hidetaka Miyazki’s most infamous calling cards is including aggressive, powerful monsters as tutorial bosses. This has meant the Vanguard in Demon’s Souls, the Asylum Demon from Dark Souls, and the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne.
For Sekiro, this meant the Chained Ogre, a hungry beast that was both a resounding statement that Sekiro wouldn’t play like other Souls games and a frustrating nightmare that haunted Souls newbies and veterans alike. The point of the game here is to look and wait for openings in the ogre’s defenses, all while dodging his various attempts to wrestle Sekiro and toss him off the map.
5 O’Rin Of The Water
O’Rin of the Water is a mixed bag in terms of difficulty between players, but she certainly has left an impression as one of the most distinct mini-bosses in the game. For the most part, a lot of O’Rin’s difficulty revolves around how surprising and unpredictable she is. She’ll initiate combat in the middle of what appears to be a regular conversation and begin hunting down the player relentlessly.
Her move set revolves around a flurry of quick slashes, floating across the arena, turning invisible and essentially teleporting across the arena, and dashing across long distances if Sekiro tries to either heal or run away. Even for a few people who have mastered parrying at this point, O’Rin’s erratic fighting style has kept things difficult.
4 Headless
Sekiro‘s war-torn, disease-ridden world is already terrifying enough, but fans never really see the “face” of fear until they stumble upon a Headless for the first time. These recurring bosses are large apparitions whose large sword swings and ranged attacks are already difficult on their own.
However, for many first time players, the Headless will prove to be truly horrifying when they introduce people to Sekiro’s Terror mechanic, i.e. one of the worst elements of the game for people who doesn’t have any Pacifying Agents. To make matters worse, normal attacks without Divine Confetti will hardly work on them and they release a cursed mist that slows the player from running away.
3 Seven Ashina Spears – Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi
Few mini-bosses have ever been as humbling as Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi. Though the game leading up to Ashina Castle had been preparing the player for a variety of sword fighters and quick, spear fighters, Yamauchi arrives out of nowhere to literally knock the player down from the air with a large, heavy spear that he somehow swings around with ease.
For many, Yamauchi taught people how to parry. For others, Yamauchi taught them how even just parrying isn’t enough against bone crushing power delivered at both close- and mid-range. There really isn’t an easy way around Yamauchi. His only saving grace is that he’s optional.
2 Shichimen Warrior
The Shichimen Warriors are not necessarily difficult within their own right. They can fly around, turn invisible, and are armed with a variety of ranged attacks, including a straight up laser beam. However, what makes them such a trial for players is the fact that they dish out Terror damage as if it’s on a going away sale.
This includes its barrage of flying faces, its explosive, giant heads, and, of course, its laser beam. Even with a Mottled Purple Gourd, the Shichimen Warriors deliver some of the most unfairly difficult fights in the game.
1 Seven Ashina Spears – Shume Masaji Oniwa
The first of the Seven Ashina Spears was incredibly difficult within his own right. Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi is the perfect combination of power and skill that can intimidate players across any skill set. Things really breach into outright, controller-destroying territory when Miyazaki decided to do that exact fight again but with the added benefit of another fighter there.
On top of having to relive the same nightmare from a few hours earlier, players also had to juggle another swordsman whose speed and aggression constantly try to keep Sekiro occupied. In so many words, it’s the toughest, mini-boss fight in the game.
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