Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - How to Defeat Demon of Hatred (Boss Guide)

Other Sekiro Guides:

Demon of Hatred Boss Fight

All credit goes to Wendy!

After awhile, you’ll come to a burning Ashini Castle with tons of enemies fighting idly. Just like you grappled rooftops to reach Genichiro in the beginning, you’ll want to do that same thing on the rightmost side of Ashina Castle until you find a kite.

If you’re having trouble locating it, just get to the highest point of the Castle that you can and look around in the sky. Once you see the kite, it’s really not that difficult to get there. This will fling you to the opposite side of the map where you can backtrack to the Demon.

The Boss

You’ll be tempted to annoyingly groan when you see his three deathblows but the moveset is actually quite similar every time so you won’t have to deal with much after you learn his initial abilities when you first approach him. We also avoid a lot of his attacks because we’ll stick close to the boss.

But first, we’ll have to make sure we know what to look out for. Some abilities are not able to be dodged and some require some extra mechanics. Let’s go over those first.

Jumping: He’ll jump at a certain point. Before he hits the ground, jump and grapple him.
Sweep: When the red icon appears, jump over to the right to avoid.

Other than these moves, you can step-dodge or run away from any attack he has. Continue to stick to him and practice dodging things like his stomp, two-stomp, flame-arm attack, et cetera. When the move finishes, hit him a couple times and continue to whittle his health down.

Second Phase

After the second phase, he will have an extra ability that usually happens when you are either out of range of other attacks or he just gets finished with the Sweep ability from before. You’ll notice this because he’ll begin charging up his flaming arm.

Run in either direction and don’t hesitate to choose which one. You’ll need to jump very soon after and avoid a large spray of fire that appears on the ground underneath you. Timing is key here and will take some practice, but you can grapple to him easily afterwards.

Third Phase

Now he has the ability to make a flame ring around you. He’ll do so with two sweeping attacks. Jump once and he’ll take an extra second to swing around in the air. Then jump again. The symbols will pop up so you’ll know, don’t worry.

Past that, his Sweeping charge ability from earlier may now happen twice. Once like normal, but once again with a flame path underneath. Just jump the ability like normal and continue to wail on him. You shouldn’t have issues once you get the timing down.

As of now, there really isn’t a cheese for this boss. I spent awhile on him because I was getting greedy with my hits and still measuring what attacks he was doing. Just take some time on this boss and study him. You should get the achievement after the third deathblow.