Sekiro Guide: How To Easily Beat Jinsuke Saze

Deflect this, butthead.

Jinsuke Saze 3

Sekiro is a hard game, which should be an almost pointless thing to admit to anyone who’s played it for more than a couple of hours. You have to constantly learn and then unlearn strategies to make progress — that is until you find yourself halted by one of the game’s many bosses and mini-bosses. Jinsuke Saze is one such roadblock, a mini-boss so cheap that unless you have the precision and timing of a fly, you may end up headbutting a wall.

Luckily, after plenty of cheesing and broken controllers, we found a way to eliminate a lot of the fiddliness and relative frustration of the fight. You will still need timed deflections, but nowhere near the level you would if you were just trying to fight him head-to-head like normal. Read on to find out how you can beat Jinsuke Saze in Sekiro.

First off, you should be familiar with how he works. His main method of attack is a double slice that is very difficult to defend against without some trial and error. Getting fully hit by it once will almost totally deplete your health and blocking still sees you taking some damage. Therefore, the best bet is to try and deflect (L1/LB) twice the moment you see his sword flash at its hilt — this means an attack is imminent. For an idea of just how quick this attack is, we had to slow our footage down to 0.25 speed to get a screenshot.

Jinsuke Saze

It doesn’t help matters that it can be quite difficult to read when exactly to deflect, either. If he’s close, he will certainly go for the attack, but overeagerness on your part may not create the best deflection and end up costing you posture. Likewise, it’s very hard to get away from him to heal up, so be sure to sprint the second he gives you a single hit. The aim of the game here is to increase his posture, which does so dramatically each time you manage successive deflections. Something to look out for is his unavoidable attack, which will show as red Japanese scripture when Jinsuke is about to unleash it. He doesn’t use it often, but remember to jump when he does.

If you’re finding yourself unable to get the timing right and are spreading Dragonrot across the land, there is a far easier and cheesier route you can take.

Just before you enter the room, use a Gachiin’s Sugar, which will make you harder to detect; it may also be of extra help if you have been investing in your stealth skills at a Sculptor’s Idol. Once you have used the Sugar, enter the room and approach from the right, constantly hugging the wall and really taking your time.

Gachiin's Sugar

Jinsuke Saze 1

Using this method, you should be able to creep up behind Jinsuke and then use a Stealth Deathblow to eliminate one of his markers, effectively halving the battle in your favour.

That’s not all: we would highly recommend that you track down the Sabimaru poison sword if you haven’t already. Once you have him down after the Stealth Deathblow, spam the Sabimaru attack to inflict regular and also poison damage. The damage will eat away at him over time, which will then also hamper his Posture. This means that you will need even fewer deflections before you will be able to finish him off with a Deathblow.

Jinsuke Saze 2

From here, the fight should be fairly simple and only require three deflections in total before you can land a conclusive Deathblow and get yourself a Prayer bead for your hard work. Don’t forget that you have a Resurrection to play around with and you will only need a few deflections and you will be able to beat this guy no sweat.

Unfortunately, next up is a three-stage boss fight with Genichiro. Sorry!

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