How to beat the Blade Twin in Rise of the Ronin
Here’s some tips on how to prevail over the first major confrontation in the game.
Each mission you complete in Rise of the Ronin leads to a new confrontation. The first challenging encounter is against your Blade Twin.
Combat is the soul of Rise of the Ronin and the game rewards you for practicing and understanding the weapon and combat style systems. Regardless of how difficult the boss is, you can totally beat them by simply applying the basic concepts introduced during the early missions of the game.
There are, however, fights where it is more difficult to effectively use the tools you have. This guide walks you through all you need to know to beat the Blade Twin boss in Rise of the Ronin.
Be mindful that this guide might contain small spoilers. When comes to preparing for this fight, you might want to level up your character and unlock the best skills available to you.
Rise of the Ronin Blade Twin boss fight explained
The fight against the Blade Twin is the final confrontation in The Plot to Assassinate Harris mission. In the initial menu screen, you can select two allies to accompany you. At this point of the game, you probably haven’t unlocked many. But, we suggest that you take Genzui Kusaka. He uses a Combat Style of the Chi type, which will help you. The second ally is up to your preferences.
The arena where you fight the boss is a small room, which forces you to deal with their blows constantly and doesn't give you lots of space to run from them to heal. Because of that, to make your life easier, you should always swap characters during the fight. This is an important strategy because allows you to take the aggro from one character, giving them time to heal.
When it comes to attacks, Blade Twin is ruthless. They have fast sequences of attacks and gap-closers that will test your reflexes. Among their basic moveset,they use a feint that can fool you when learning the fight. They start running toward you and, when they are really close, they go to your left. You can only deflect the attack after the feint, however the animation is pretty difficult to follow. So the safest bet is to block everything and get some distance from them.
They can also use an area-of-effect attack spinning their arm around them. This move is possible to deflect since timing the spins is a matter of practice. Blocking them is also a possibility.
Now, for their most dangerous attacks, at the initial part of the fight, there are two you must be careful about. They perform a aerial grappling hook attack that is deflectable but hard to time. The animation is long – they pull themselves toward the ceiling then, you can try to counterspark their attack only when they are falling over you. Wait for the red light to appear for you to try deflecting it.
The second attack also uses the grappling hook but now the Blade Twin stands still in one place and charges the attack for a brief period before they shoot their hand at you. The hand animation is too fast and if you are not blocking when it hits you, the boss pulls themselves and strikes you. Dodging this attack is not a good option, so just block it and, after the animation, run from them to heal in case you need it.
During the fight, the boss can change the type of weapon they are using. They tend to swap between a katana and a sabre. With the former, change to a character or combat style of the Chi type. Both the protagonist and Genzui Kusaka have this. But, when they are using the latter, Jin combat styles are your best option, which is the initial combat style that your character has.
As the fight goes on, a new attack is added to the Blade Twin moveset. When you're too close to them, they can try to grab you and use their arm cannon. Although there is the usual red light showing the moment of the attack, it’s difficult to dodge since you’re already near them. You can try to deflect it or prepare to heal once the animation is done.
Have fun facing other bosses in Rise of the Ronin!