Sekiro: Perfect No Hit: Isshin Ashina (Shura)

This is probably the boss that frustrates me the most in any given run. It's especially bad when you're doing it in the game proper and have to fight Emma every attempt. Phase 1 is mostly the same as Sword Saint's phase 1, with the addition of his sidestep-into-cut-or-grab. I don't think it's visually communicated very well that he has dodged rather than your sword just phasing through him for no reason. In addition, if you stomp on him after a sweep attack, he can enter sidestep stance while you can't really observe that he has done so, meaning I have to be careful to swing my sword instead of stomping. Phase 2 is where the issues come in. He has many attacks that spread large fire AoEs that seem to have deceptive and frustrating hitboxes. We don't see many of those, because Ichimonji knocks him out of them, but if you don't know that this fight can be incredibly frustrating. I think the idea of a super-hard boss gauntlet for the bad ending path is cool, but I dislike the execution. Individually, he's C Tier, but together, both Emma and him are D or maybe even F Tier. This run is Base Vitality (which doesn't really matter since I'm not taking damage anyways), Charmless (meaning blocks will deal chip damage and the only way to avoid damage is a perfect deflect) and Demon Bell (meaning enemy health and posture are beefed up). I'm doing these in Reflections, so that a) I don't have to deal with any minibosses b) I can fight all bosses on the same ng scaling and c) I can fight the Inner bosses.