Nioh 3 Boss Guide: Every Major Boss Strategy That Actually Works

Nioh 3 has 16 main story bosses spread across its four time periods, plus a handful of optional mythic quest bosses that are sometimes harder than the story ones. I'm going to walk through the bosses that gave me the most trouble, because honestly the early ones you can brute-force with enough Amrita levels. It's the mid-game wall where things get real.

Sengoku Era Bosses: Learning the Language

Daiyokai of the Burning Castle

The first real boss after the tutorial throws fire pools everywhere and has a charge attack that covers the entire arena. The trick nobody tells you: you can put out the fire pools by using a water-element Yokai ability on them. The first merchant sells a cheap water Soul Core. Buy it. Slot it. Use it to clear the arena whenever he covers more than half the floor. Without this, the fight is a DPS race you'll lose unless you're massively overleveled. With it, he's just a big enemy with telegraphed swings.

He has one grab attack that comes after he roars twice. The roar animation is long, maybe two seconds. Dodge left, not back, because the grab has forward tracking.

Corrupted Shogun

This fight made me quit for a day. He summons shadow soldiers, each one blocking a quarter of the arena. Kill them in the order they spawn, not the closest one first. His second phase adds lightning strikes that target your current position, but there's a half-second audio cue, a crackle sound, before each strike. Turn your SFX volume up and music down for this fight specifically.

His sword combo is three hits, pause, then a thrust. The thrust is the only one that can't be blocked. Dodge it, then punish during his recovery animation. He always does the thrust after the pause. Always. I counted.

Heian Era: Where the Difficulty Spikes

Court Noble of Shadows

This is the boss I mentioned in my builds guide. Shadow clones, cramped arena, damage through block. The clones all die in one hit from any fire attack. If you're playing Samurai style, equip a fire talisman before the fight and one swing kills each clone as it spawns. If you're Shinobi, the fire wheel Yokai ability clears all active clones at once.

The real boss has one attack window: right after he finishes a clone summoning animation, he stands still for about three seconds. Hit him then. Don't try to attack at any other time. The clones will punish you.

Giant Onryoki of the Heian Gate

This thing is huge. It fills half the screen. Your lock-on camera will fight you the entire time, which is the real boss of this fight. Turn off lock-on and free-aim your attacks at its legs. When both legs take enough damage, it collapses and you can wail on its head for massive damage. Repeat twice.

It has a sweeping arm attack that looks like it should be unblockable but isn't. Block it. The follow-up ground slam IS unblockable, so dodge after the sweep. It also spawns lesser Yokai at half health, which are more annoying than dangerous. Ignore them and focus the legs. They despawn when the boss dies.

Bakumatsu Era: Guns and Yokai

The Rifle Yokai Commander

Finally, a boss with a gun. He shoots, reloads slowly, and has no melee capability at close range. Close the distance and stay glued to him. His only close-range defense is a kick that does almost no damage. The entire fight is a comedy of watching him try to create distance while you bully him. One of the easiest story bosses if you just rush him. If you try to fight at range, he'll pick you apart.

Bakumatsu War Machine

A mechanical boss, which is a weird fit for 1860s Japan, but okay. It has turrets on each side that fire in sequence: left, right, left, right, pause, both. Destroy the turrets first. They don't respawn. Without turrets, it just slowly walks toward you and occasionally stomps. Any weapon with vertical attacks can hit the turrets. Fists are the worst choice here. Spear or Odachi make this trivial.

Edo Era: The Final Stretch

Kunimatsu, the Usurper Prince

The final boss. Takechiyo's brother, backed by Yokai forces. Three phases, no checkpoint between them. Bring at least eight elixirs and your best anti-Yokai gear.

Phase one is a standard sword duel. Parry his predictable three-hit combo and punish. He has no surprises here. Phase two, he transforms into a dragon-like Yokai with sweeping tail attacks and fire breath. Stay at mid-range, bait the fire breath (which has a long recovery), and punish the head. His tail sweeps cover the entire arena floor but you can jump over them in Shinobi style, or block them with heavy armor in Samurai style.

Phase three is where most people wipe. Kunimatsu reverts to human form but now has both his sword and a Guardian Spirit that mirrors his attacks, meaning every swing hits twice. The spirit's copy attacks are slightly delayed. The timing is: block the first hit, dodge the delayed copy. Master this rhythm and the fight is yours. Panic and you die.

One thing: the Bloodedge Demon summon point outside his boss door always spawns a high-level phantom. Use it. The fight is hard enough as designed. No point making it harder on yourself.

These are the bosses that actually test you. The rest of the 16 are fairly standard by comparison, once you understand the dodge-forward-not-backward rule and have a Guardian Spirit you're comfortable with.

A word on boss runbacks, since this is something Nioh 3 handles much better than Nioh 2. Almost every boss arena has a shrine within 30 seconds of walking, with no enemies in between. The War Machine is the exception, there's a rifle soldier on the approach path. Kill him once and he doesn't respawn. Team Ninja clearly got the message about frustrating runbacks, and thank god for that. Nothing makes a hard boss feel unfair like a two-minute walk through mobs between every attempt.

But if you clear these five, the rest of Nioh 3's boss roster won't surprise you.