The only difference between Honda Tadakatsu here and in the Possessed fight is I don’t think he uses his Guardian Spirit while possessed, which is good since it gives him a defense boost and a hefty heal over time effect. If you take the duel early on you might find yourself unable to out damage that self healing, so you need to deal with him quickly. I also love the continuing show where Kelley maintains a Western name structure for everyone.
Boss Chat
The big cheese himself, Oda Nobunaga. Despite the intro cinematic showing Kelley transforming into Nobunaga we instead fight his corpse raised by the power of ALL the Amrita. Wonder if Kelley’s shape changing powers were more of a front and center plot thing in earlier versions of the story. Either way I’ve mentioned in a few places one boss being an exception to a few rules, notably in regards to enemy Living weapons, and Nobunaga is that Boss. The big example is Nobunaga is the only enemy that can end their Living Weapon without their Ki hitting zero, as using the unique attack for each of the five elements ends his Living Weapon regardless of his Ki. His resistances are a bit weird, being they actually drop while he’s in Living Weapon except for the Element he’s using, which spikes even higher. On paper Nobunaga is complex and has a lot going on. In execution, if you know what his finisher is for each element and adjust to it and are remotely aggressive he’s no big deal in the Main Mission. For one of the uniters of Japan he’s eminently cheese-able.
As for Kelley, he’s a nerd wizard. Outside of his weird tricks like teleporting behind you he’s easy. With any kind of guard break skills (Spear Shove) you can heavily punish how block happy he is by ripping out damn near a third of his Ki bar each time he blocks. Kelley by himself is a weak nerd, stuff him in a locker.
And the important detail about Yamata-no-Orochi is the heads take back attack damage while stunned from the Spirit Stone Clusters overload effect, which as a hearty boss is a notable boost to damage, but on top of not getting knocked out in the last phase by them, it even gets a buff. Still, final head is one of the easier parts of the fight just because you don’t have five jerks launching crap at you while trying to dodge the sixth’s attacks and hit him.
Shin-roku, or as they were named before the 1.06 patch, Shinka brings Strong Attack Life Drain 10, Life +100, Kodama Sense, Earth Damage +15%, and Ki Recovery & Defense (Finished Using A Living Weapon)
Shin-roku
Life Drain is deceptively useful since it’s based on damage dealt, and since Strong Attacks hit harder and you can make them hit harder in a variety of ways this can keep up pretty well. Life +100 at this point is mediocre but still potentially useful. Kodama Sense puts Kodama on the compass as it do. Earth Damage, syncs with the Spirit’s element, the only weakness is not much is weak to Earth in the game but also not too much resists it. KI & Defense (Finished) gives you increased Ki Regen and Reduces damage taken after a Living Weapon. The buffs last about 20 seconds and is comparable to the Onmyo talismans that do similar effects.
As a Living Weapon Shin-roku packs 14% damage and 42 Earth, nearly 2000 Might and B+ Action and best Recovery, with average Gauge Rate. The damage boost is lower than the big pitch hitter Living Weapon spirits but it’s overall solid, which is what Shin-roku generally is, overall okay. The summon attack has the spirit appear and then rear back, causing an explosion of earth in front of it, dealing moderate damage in a sizable area immediately in front of you. It also gives you a thirty second buff that gives you Super Armor, the only way you can get staggered by attacks is if they put you into an animation (like having your Ki broken, getting hit by a grab attack, Body Flip from a spear user, etc) Pairs well with getting more Defense at the end of your Living Weapon. Overall solid Earth Spirit. 12/10
Genbu! The only Guardian Spirit with a 100% no bones about it drawback passive attached. Genbu packs better spirit protection than every other spirit, its baseline is 30% instead of 20% like literally every other Spirit in the entire game DLC included. It’s other passives are Dash Speed Reduction 30%, No Guard Break (During Onmyo Magic), Change to Defense (Magic) B+, Received Elemental Attack Damage 7.5%, Onmyo Magic Power +75.
Genbu
Dash Speed Reduction is what it sounds like, you sprint 30% slower while Genbu’s your Guardian in exchange for 10% more spirit protection. It basically makes your sprint not any faster than just walking. No Guard Break is an ability that comes up from time to time and what it really means is you have Super Armor during the described action, here it’s while casting Onmyo Magic. Good against packs if you’re trying to get an AoE effect out. Change to Defense (Magic) gives you additional Defense based on your Magic stat. By itself, eh, but Onmyo Mage gear has this stat on it already and guess what, they stack. Received Elemental Attack Damage is less damage from elemental attacks. 7.5% isn’t much but elemental damage tends to be a bit lower anyway. Onmyo Magic Power is there to make your magic attacks stronger.
Genbu’s summon isn’t spectacular, 5% damage and 42 Water, with it’s good stats being 3000 Might baseline (highest in the game) and Good Action and Recovery. Worst Gauge rate however. Genbu’s summon attack has the snake turtle crash in front of you dealing moderate contact damage, and then calls forth three geysers of water in a triangle pattern in front of it, one point starting roughly where it landed. The geysers do okay damage and physically knock most enemies hit by it into the air. Yokai take big Ki damage, while Humans land face first ripe for a Final Blow. They geysers hitbox is a bit small so Mizuchi’s more reliable summon for knocking down humans but better against Yokai, if you can get them hit by one of the geysers. Just alone in the world it’s a little SnakeTurtle. 12/10
And the star of the show, the final spirit in the running for “Best Offensive Elemental Spirit”, Tengen Kujaku! Bringing Bonus From Amrita Absorption (Stance Based), Yokai Damage Reduction 13%, Extend Elemental Effect +50%, Elemental Attack Damage +10%, and Enemy/Treasure/Amrita/Kodama Sense.
Tengen Kujaku
Bonus From Amrita Absorption gives you a buff based on what stance you’re in when you gain Amrita for any reason. High Stance gives a damage buff on par with Kara-jishi’s, Mid Stance gives a defense buff, and Low Stance give a Ki Regen Speed buff. In conjunction with an Extraction Talisman, an Onmyo buff that makes you gain Amrita when you hit an enemy, you can pretty easily get each buff rolling but the star is naturally the damage buff. Don’t need Ki and can’t get hit if your enemy is dead after all. Taking 13% less damage from the less cheese-able enemy type in the game is Good. Extend Elemental Effect increases the duration of any Elemental Weapon buff you bring. Poison/Paralysis no, Five Elements yes. From your own items or killing an Oni-bi (elemental heads). To pair with that, Elemental Attack damage boost. And because you needed more reasons to pack the peacock, why not every Sense skill in the game to cap it off.
Statistically Tengen Kujaku’s Living Weapon is fairly average, 10% damage and 30 Wind (it’s affected by the elemental attack boost) Good Action, Best Recovery, Good Tenacity, just one step above Worst Gauge Rate. Ho-hum? Nah actually Tengen Kujaku keeps its gimmick from the Nobunaga fight. When you activate the Living Weapon you get a random Element and that’s the element of the living weapon. You can change to one of the other four elements by activating the Summon attack during the living weapon, either by summoning it or by using a Talisman. This makes it hilariously easy to Discord enemies, which pairs well with the Oda clan’s passive benefits, a 10% chance to negate damage received in Living Weapon and increased duration on Discord. To balance this, outside of Living Weapon Tengen Kujaku’s summon does practically nothing, the only thing it does is the peacock does incredibly minor contact damage while summoned. Don’t bother summoning it outside of Living Weapon. It takes some micromanagement but Tengen Kujaku’s incredibly potent if you know what you’re doing. Falls off in later difficulties as a Living Weapon Spirit just due to how high enemy resistance gets but that Damage Buff is still a threat. 13/10
Also the last base game Spirit Saoirse is here! Bringing Amrita Sense, Sense Enemies, Amrita Earned +12.5%, Special Effects (Critical) +20%, Retrieve Lost Amrita 75%
Last Base Game Spirit
Let’s start with talking about Saoirse’s actual primary ability real quick before explaining her passives. She’s why William can’t die. Honda Tadakatsu mentions it and it’s hinted at in the game early and outright stated at the end. As long as William believes in Saoirse he will be returned to life after dying. This is played with in fluff text for The Abyss, a randomly generated “dungeon” of sorts released with DLC where the conceit is you can’t recall your spirit after dying and if you die while your spirit is guarding your grave you’re kicked out of the dungeon, which costs an item to enter at all. So keep that in mind, she’s the reason you can get knocked down and get up again. Fun facts is that she speaks entirely in Irish gaelic, and Team Ninja went out of their way not only to hire voice actors from Ireland to get the accents for William and Saoirse right they even went all in on making sure Saoirse’s gaelic was spot on.
Anyway her passives are mediocre. Amrita and Enemy Sense have shown up before, Amrita Earned is spot on with Mizuchi. Special Effects (Critical) boosts the effects of all of your (Critical) abilities so there’s that. Finishing out her passives is better Retrieve Lost Amrita. As for her Living Weapon stats, it’s basically Aya-komori, water edition. While the Amrita Earned means it charges even faster, it’s 5% damage and 30 Water, with a 10 second duration and 500 Might culminates in just a mediocre Living Weapon. It’s there’s often and has best Recovery and that’s about it. For her summon attack, she drifts forward a ways, turns to face you, then drops a big water explosion below her. It does big water damage but is slow to come out. There’s worse Summons.
The saving grace to Saoirse is DLC added the ability to equip a secondary spirit. You can swap between your secondary and primary with L2 while holding R1, swapping puts the spirit on Cooldown like you’ve come out of a Living Weapon (meaning you don’t get their passive benefits and can’t activate Living Weapon) and you can swap during living weapon at the cost of half the gauge. While the secondary spirit you get half the effect of one of that spirit’s passives, based entirely on what that Spirit is. (E.G. Kato gives Ki as a secondary, Saoirse gives Amrita Earned) and further based on what spirits are equipped you get a small passive bonus. There’s generic bonuses, like Fire and Wind paired together give Ki Recovery Speed (to the tune of 1.5% baseline) but some spirit combos have unique bonuses, like Tengen Kujaku paired with Usura-hicho has a unique passive. Saoirse does something unique for each Spirit she’s paired with, giving more of one of the passives that Spirit has. Basically the Secondary Spirit system goes to great lengths to make Saoirse usable, since she can build and activate Living Weapon incredibly quickly, then you swap over to something like Kato and leverage the good damage boost and Recovery to recoup the lost gauge.
