Trek To Yomi Kagerou Boss Fight Guide: How To Beat The Kagerou Demon

The Trek to Yomi Kagerou Demon boss fight comes at the end of the game, finally giving Hiroki a chance to take down the demon samurai who destroyed his village, killed his master, and sent him to Yomi. During Trek to Yomi, you'll encounter Kagerou a few times, but it's not until the game's final moments that you stand on equal footing with him and have the chance to end his reign for good. So if you need a breakdown for how to defeat the Trek to Yomi Kagerou Demon boss, read on. 

• If you didn't manage to get the achievement for defeating Sanjuro without taking a hit, make sure to check out our Trek to Yomi Sanjuro boss guide. 

How To Beat Kagerou In Trek To Yomi - Phase One

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You'll get to fight Kagerou at the very end of the game's final chapter, which takes place in the same dojo where your sensei trained you during the tutorial. It's the hardest of the game's bosses, and the only one which comes with two distinct phases, meaning you'll have to fully deplete his health bar twice during the encounter. 

This battle can be made a little easier with some specific moves that are optionally found earlier in the game. The main one you'll want access to, is the pass-by technique you can learn in chapter three, which allows you to parry and then swap places with the enemy while opening them up for further hits. Any of the heavy moves, such as the turning heavy attack and dodge roll into a heavy attack, are also fantastic choices as they deal a tonne of damage. 

The first phase of the Trek to Yomi Kagerou Demon boss is pretty straight forward, and he doesn't have access to any moves which are out of the ordinary. You'll want to focus on trying to parry his attacks to respond with heavy attacks or use the pass-by technique to open him up for successive strikes. Remember that he has full armour, so light attacks are mostly pointless due to how little damage they'll deal to him. 

Most of the attacks are fairly easy to parry as they have the same timings as the regular enemies' attacks. The thrust and quick slash moves are the best ones to try this with, but you should attempt to back off whenever Kagerou makes three vertical slashes. These deal a lot of damage and the attack is unique to him, making the timings hard to grasp. Once you have depleted his health bar, a cutscene will play before the second phase begins. 

• If you're looking to replay the game on a harder difficulty after beating Kagerou, check out our Trek to Yomi tips. 

How To Beat Kagerou In Trek To Yomi - Phase Two

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In the second phase of the Kagerou boss fight, he will gain some magical moves and also disappear for a bit once you knock him down to half HP. His physical moveset remains the same, and you can still parry most of the moves while getting some attacks in, but he deals more damage.

The new attacks Kagerou can perform are AoE explosions; he does two versions of this, one where he will point toward you and summon it on the spot you are standing, or if you are close to him, he will cause the explosion to burst from his body with a much larger AoE. The effect looks a little like a black hole, with it closing in on itself and exploding once it turns into a bright light. You can dodge away from this immediately, or roll through the explosion to avoid the damage. Kagerou will often come toward you straight after the smaller explosion occurs, but if he performs the bigger one, he will fall to his knees for a brief second, giving you a chance to quickly attack him. 

Once you get Kagerou down to half HP, a new part of the fight begins as he disappears and summons two spectral versions of himself - one younger and one current. The younger version has no armour, so light attacks can deal a lot of damage, but he blocks nearly all of your attacks. This means you'll need to parry him first to get in successive hits, but a few should drop him quickly. The current version dons armour and has the same attacks as from the first phase, so use the advice from the above section to deal with him.

You should also push whoever you fight first to the back of the arena so that the other version of Kagerou cannot enter onto the 2D track for combat, but also watch that he doesn't try and move behind you. Once both of these spectral forms have been killed, Kagerou will return to his corporeal form with half HP. He still has the same attacks to deal with, so continue dodging the AoE explosives and parrying his attacks when you can to return damage with heavy attacks. His health bar isn't huge, so it won't take long, and once he is dead, a cutscene will play, and you'll get the achievement for finishing the game. 

That's our walkthrough of the Trek to Yomi Kagerou Demon boss, and now you know how to deal with the final encounter of the game so you can finish the story. 

Don't forget to look at our primer on the Trek to Yomi artifacts if you want to get all the game's collectibles.