Yamagata Masakage is the same boss you first encountered in this game, only now he is much stronger, because now he fights you on horseback. By the way, the horse has no head. Oh, what a strange imagination the people who created this enemy have. But this enemy must be defeated, and you will do it relatively easily. I will also leave a link to the first fight with Yamagata Masakage.

During the preparation stage, I will not give you any recommendations. I have the same skills and settings that I showed you in the battle with Baba Nobuharu. Therefore, everything is as simple as possible here. In this battle, I did not strike a single blow with my weapon. Not counting the moment when the ultimate ability was activated.

As in previous battles, I use the ninja and his ability to dodge quickly. Thanks to the Evade skill, each successful perfect dodge replenishes the ninjutsu reserves. The battle arena is large. The boss is also on horseback and often takes a long trajectory, so the conditions here are ideal for long-range combat.

Nioh 3 Ninja Build Gameplay

In order to easily dodge any attacks, you need to keep the total weight of your equipment at 30% of the maximum value or less. This will allow your ninja to react faster, dodge further, and make it very difficult for your opponent to hit you. Don’t spare your shuriken, kunai, Uncanny Bolt, or any other ninjutsu skill you have active. Use them as quickly as possible.

When I have no more throwing items left, I still fight as safely as possible. I tried several times, and if you try to attack the boss, you have to wait a moment, and the attack time is very short. At the same time, there is a high probability of taking damage. Even when all my throwing weapons are gone, I just try to stay as far away from Yamagata Masakage as possible without changing my playing style.

The boss will attack, and there will definitely be a chance for a perfect dodge, so there is no need to force this chance. Just run as far away from the boss as possible and dodge. During the fight, you will have many opportunities to get throwing items while dodging. Of course, you need to throw throwing items at the enemy wisely. Quite often, the enemy takes such a position that it is impossible to hit him, and kunai and shuriken fly past. This happens, but it’s okay, because the boss also knows how to dodge.

Nioh 3 How to Beat Yamagata Masakage

In this battle, I even decided not to use perfect parrying, switching to samurai mode. The enemy’s red attacks are easy to dodge and don’t cover a large area. Therefore, there is no point in focusing on this. Moreover, perfect parrying mainly affects the boss’s stamina, and in my play mode, this is not a key aspect of victory. I am slowly but surely destroying Yamagata Masakage’s health, annoying him with my constant dodging.

Sometimes it’s not as easy as it seems. The enemy manages to catch me either when I land or when I press the dodge button at the wrong time. At that moment, I have to take damage and recover from it. But such cases are extremely rare, because you are usually at a great distance from the boss, and your speed and mobility allow you to dodge long before the boss hits you.

Nioh 3 Dark Realm Yamagata Masakage

Separately, we need to talk about the dark mode of the fight. When the boss enters dark mode, he gains a little more power to attack you. You can see that his attacks are saturated with fire. His weapon has an additional fire attack, but this has almost no effect on your playing style. You still need to run around and dodge. Switching to dark mode does not change the difficulty of your movements at all. Sometimes the fire can hit you as it spreads across the arena, but the damage is minimal, and in most cases, you will be able to avoid it.

Sometimes the boss directs fire at you along the ground. This attack is visible from a distance, it travels in a straight line, and when it approaches you, you can easily dodge it, getting a few more items to throw. In general, it was even easier for me to play in dark mode because I got more charges from perfect dodging.

Nioh 3 Yamagata Masakage Strategy Guide

For me, the most unpleasant attack was when Yamagata Masakage pointed his weapon at me and jumped from a distance to spear me. I fell for this attack several times and took a lot of damage, so subconsciously I didn’t like it. Although it is clearly visible from a distance and with a few jumps to the side you can easily dodge this attack and avoid damage. Of course, it’s cool to see the damage caused by throwing objects that hit the enemy in the back, but getting behind him turned out to be more difficult. Therefore, I did not focus my attention on this. I chose the simplest tactic possible, which very quickly led to victory over the boss.

If you are having difficulty fighting this enemy, try using my movement tactics, and you will see that it is very easy and reliable. And although the fight, like the rest of the battles, can be a bit drawn out, in general, you will spend more time in a safe zone away from the boss’s attacks, so you will be able to easily pass this test.

I usually try to get through the first dark mode of the boss in normal mode and activate my ultimate ability in the second dark mode. Usually, during the ultimate ability, Yamagata Masakage takes a lot of damage from me, but in this attempt, he somehow decided to run away from direct combat, and I had to catch up with him, wasting precious time and taking a hit that significantly reduced my ultimate ability gauge.

Nevertheless, during this time, I still managed to significantly reduce the enemy’s health bar, and I just had to continue with my successful tactics to defeat the enemy. This is one of those fights where I didn’t feel nervous that I might do something wrong. Previous experience has shown that this tactic allows me to stay around the boss for a very long time, gradually reducing his health.

Therefore, I was confident that victory would be on my side in this particular battle. Despite all his ferocity, Yamagata Masakage was not a difficult opponent. Our first encounter was much more difficult for me because at that time I did not yet understand how to play this powerful and dangerous ninja.

At the end of the fight, the boss starts switching to dark mode more and more often. He probably feels that he can’t beat me and wants to strengthen himself to inflict more damage. But it’s not so easy to break a fast opponent like a ninja. Looking at the enemy’s health bar, I realized that it would be very offensive to lose when victory was so close, so I tried to play more safely and not get hit by the enemy.

My opinion is that it’s better for the fight to drag on for a long time than to make a mistake and then have to start all over again. And you also know that the path to the boss is not easy either. Before reaching the gate, you need to defeat several enemies, and it is desirable not to take damage and keep a full arsenal of throwing items and health replenishment cans.

Every time I get close to winning, it seems to me that it’s not as difficult as it seemed during my first attempt. Maybe I should deliberately not finish the fight after a few attempts, then I’ll train myself to compete in such a way that I don’t take any damage at all. I’ll think about it during my second playthrough. I’m sure I’ll do that, but I’m extremely interested in playing Nioh 3, even though I have no experience playing the previous two games in the series.

The enemies are moderately difficult, but so far, there hasn’t been one that would make me say that this game is impossible to complete. Let’s see what happens next. I’m sure I’ll encounter some extremely difficult opponents along the way who will force me to change my mind about this game.