Inner Genichiro is the more aggressive form of Genichiro you’ll fight in Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. You can only fight him in Gauntlet of Strength: Divine Heir or Gauntlet of Strength: Mortal Journey. Let’s figure out all of his moves and their counters.
Inner Genichiro fights similarly to his previous rendition, but the whole engagement is much more tense. We are here to guide you through this battle and emerge victorious.
Fighting Inner Genichiro in Sekiro
Inner Genichiro is the same as the normal Genichiro you faced multiple times during your progression. However, this time around his aggressiveness is turned up a notch. On top of the bump in attacking ferocity, he will try to stop you from healing by firing an arrow at you if you distance yourself from him.
Furthermore, his overall health and posture pool is boosted to prolong this fight. He even gets a couple of new attacks like the Sakura Dance, a 3-in-air round swipes that deal damage even if you deflect it, a Chasing Slice attack where he fires an arrow and follows it up with a dashing slash, and in the third phase, he has a Lighting Reversal that sends the lighting back to you after you countered it back to him.
Everything else remains the same as before. For a full list of his moveset, please refer to the Genichiro Ashina guide.
Here are some tips to consider during this fight:
- Ako’s Sugar will help in dealing more posture and physical damage. Helpful against his larger HP.
- Shinobi Firecrackers and Fistful of Ash can come in handy for interrupting his attacks and even giving you an opening to heal up safely.
- Eel Liver lowers the damage from lightning attacks. Since you receive some chip damage even while countering lightning, this item will lower the damage.
- Healing Pellets can counter the chip damage from the lightning attacks in the third phase by slowly healing you over some time.
Phase 1 & 2 Boss Strategy
Inner Genichiro always opens the fight with his new move, the Sakura Dance. For this triple spin-to-win attack, you want to deflect deflect and then dodge forward. After you’ve dodged forward, you can take whatever action you want to so heal yourself up or you can attack him.
For the most part, this fight is a clash of swords. There’s a lot of back and forth with the attacks between you and Inner Genichiro. Ideally in this fight, you want to keep the pressure on him by being just as aggressive with your attacks. A lot of the time being this aggressive can knock him out of using certain attacks.
For example, he tries to jump up and shoot arrows down at you, if you hit him with an attack it knocks him down to the floor and completely cancels the attack. So just keep on putting in your attacks.
If he deflects one of your attacks then you want to be ready to deflect one of his attacks. Be on the lookout for those bright orange-ish deflect sparks.
Since there is a lot of intense sword clashing in this fight, you might find it easier to remove any Combat Arts so you can quickly bounce between blocking and attacking. Sometimes, what happens is if you press block and attack together at the same time, then it will activate combat arts and put you in a bad place.
There are a few Shinobi tactics that you can use such as Fistful of Ash and Firecrackers. If you can hit him with some ash or some firecrackers it stops whatever he is doing and then gives you about one or two seconds to do whatever you want.
Especially when you see him winding up to do Sakura Dance, you can cancel it by just backing up a little bit and throwing some ash or firecrackers into his face.
If he jumps up in the air and then jabs down with his sword then slide to your left or right to avoid the attack. You can also use this chance to take any action (heal or attack) just make sure that as you slide away. If you stay in front of him, he goes on to perform a thrust attack which can be Mikiri countered.
Just keep the pressure up and you will end his first two phases. There is nothing new in these two phases and thus should be treated the same.
Phase 3 Boss Strategy
At the start of the third phase, Inner Genichiro always opens with a jumping perilous thrust attack so be ready to Mikiri Counter it. This phase is very similar to the previous phases apart from the visual change, he now gets access to lightning powers. All of the things that were mentioned in the previous phase still apply.
However, you now need to look out for the Lightning attack. To help with this I’d massively recommend using Eel liver and using the Healing Pellets.
For the perilous lightning attacks, you want to jump and receive the lightning attack at the height of your jump. After you’ve received the lightning, you want to spam your attack button as you fall back down. You’ll then reverse the lightning back to Inner Genichiro.
At that point, he will reverse the lightning back to you again, and once again, you’ll need to use the same tactics as before. Jump up, receive the lightning, then spam your attack button as you fall back down again, and you’ll reverse the lightning attack.
This time it will shock him, dealing a good amount of damage and stunning him for a while. Use this time to heal up if you like or deal damage if your HP is good.
You will take some damage when you do the lighting reversal so make sure that your health is not too low in this phase. For this reason, you want to use healing pellets in this phase of the fight as the healing pellets will regenerate your health over time.
Once again don’t forget to use ash and firecrackers to buy yourself a second or two. Similar to the previous phases, the clash of swords still applies here so keep the pressure up with your normal attacks. Look out for him deflecting your attacks. If he does deflect your attack, then be ready to deflect his attack, and before you know it, you’ll have this fight in the bag.
Rewards for Defeating Inner Genichiro in Sekiro
These are all the things you get for beating Inner Genichiro in Sekiro Shadows Die Twice:
- Sakura Dance. Combat Art.
- Memory: Inner Genichiro