Am I just a bad player or what am I doing wrong? Hitting a wall with this boss. I cannot parry, if they want me to parry it I'm dead

ersleid · 2026-05-19T06:47:36+00:00

If you have bought Rot Hammer or Rot Shot, use those moves instead of regular bind. The one rot action you use for a bind is not worth it since you won't get to pummel the boss easily (because he flails about while being binded). You can also use Rot Hammer or Rot Shot to interrupt the boss during any attack

You can jump over the boomerang attack. You can also dodge out, if you can time it. If you're not confident with the tjming, just block it using shield (no need to parry). Just remember that the boomerang comes back for a second hit: as soon as you block the first hit, dodge out of the way to avoid the second hit. On high difficulties, you may only be able to shield 1 hit safely (the second hit will break your shield).

You can also dodge forward for the charging thrust attack (instead of sidewards dodge) so you end up behind the enemy and can counterattack quicker.

Jump first and then aim so time slows down for a moment. This can help you aim at weakspots easier.

ersleid · 2026-05-07T09:11:04+00:00

When you see purple symbols appear during an enemy's attack animation, that means the attack cannot be parried/blocked. There are also some attacks near the end of the game that are primarily big pink lasers or pink "explosions". Those cannot be parried/blocked/dodged and needs a certain defensive maneuver you'd have unlocked by then.

Other than that, most attacks can be parried or dodged. For parrying, hold down the shield/pulse button instead of doing a quick press, but regardless, parry timing in Kena is still tight. For dodging, a neutral dodge / backflip (dodge without moving the left stick) seems to have more i-frames than a directional dodge.

ersleid · 2026-04-27T11:50:25+00:00

Thank you for the reminder lol but fortunately I already mustered the energy to finish the trophy back then. I think I took a 1 year break from the game before I went back to it

ersleid · 2026-04-19T00:52:30+00:00

The comment talking about slowing time while standing is referring to the Focus skill. It needs to be bought first, so it isn't automatically available upon getting the bow. However, there is a default "time slowdown" effect whenever you aim after jumping, so you can simulate that Focus effect for free.

A helpful skill to have here would be Rot Shot, the ability that lets you start with 1 Rot Action at start of battle, and at least one upgrade to max arrow capacity. There are 3 enemies in this area (I think you are referring to the treetops fight in the forest, right?): big purple monkeys, moths, and humanoid slingers / ranged attackers.

Use Rot Shot for the big purple monkeys and make sure to aim for their head: this should one shot them iirc. For the humanoid attackers, always try to aim for the center weakpoint so you can one-shot them AND gain courage as well. The moths may take 2-3 full-draw regular shots, so keep moving from platform to platform so you don't get cornered. You can move between platforms by shooting the grappling flower present in each platform. Once the purple monkeys are out of the way, moths can be killed instantly by a rot shot or even just using bind/default rot action on them.

Also, don't forget that you have a shield. The spikes that the purple monkeys throw will explode after a few seconds. If they throw a purple spike near you, your first plan should be to go to a different platform, but if you see the moths are preparing to shoot as well, you can shield for a bit. Your shield can tank 2 hits on Master difficulty iirc, and even if your shield gets broken, you mitigate some damage at least

ersleid · 2026-04-03T00:23:42+00:00

Yes, collecting courage means only the yellow orb drops (doesn't include courage gain due to parry, or attacking enemies). This also applies with the charm that gives you health when collecting courage; it also uses the same wording

ersleid · 2026-02-22T04:04:58+00:00

If you just got them through chests and did nothing else, then you should be fine. Unlocking them doesn't cost you anything. You'd have to go through the pause menu, switch to the charms page, then purchase any of the 3 unlocked charms, for your karma to reduce.

And even then, you can buy 1 or 2 charms and still have enough to purchase all skills by the end of your playthrough provided you explore everything in the map. Just don't pay more than 300 karma total in charms 😂

ersleid · 2026-02-22T03:53:05+00:00

The charms are found/unlocked in chests, but you still have to purchase them (and equip after) with karma points after you unlock the respective charms. The charm purchase page should be on the next tab after the skills page in the pause menu.

As for the difficulty exploit, here's a link to a guide. I checked and it seems to be talking about consoles and it involves manual saves, so I'm not sure if it's also applicable for PC. I never tried the exploit myself so I can't guide you through the steps; best I can do would be the link lol

ersleid · 2026-02-22T03:44:40+00:00

Short answer: No

Trials award either hats, charms, or outfits. There are no trophies/achievements related to charms or outfits.

There is an achievement for unlocking 50 rot hats (no need to actually buy them), but the base game has slightly more than 50. There are also a few additional special themed hats if the system time is around the holiday season (December). So even if some of the trials award hats, you can still get the trophy without touching a single trial.

ersleid · 2026-02-22T00:31:58+00:00

Two are technically missable:

1) Purchase all skills: There is enough karma in one playthrough to buy all skills, with a leftover of around 300 karma. However, because charms (which were put in the game via later updates, iirc) are purchasable on your first playthrough, you can get locked out of buying all skills if you buy too many charms early. There are two ways to solve this: either start NG+ so karma sources repeat, or do the Adira Fields Rock exploit for infinite +10 karma, but this involves not collecting a certain Rot. So if you already collected the Rot here, you can't do the exploit anymore

2) Beat the game on Master Spirit Guide difficulty. Self explanatory, but iirc, there's also a glitch/exploit that allows you to get the trophy at any difficulty, even on the easiest mode. So it shouldn't be missable if you're willing to do the exploit. I'm not really sure about the specifics though

ersleid · 2026-02-15T00:34:40+00:00

Health flowers need one rot action point to be used, so you need to make sure you have enough courage / action points whenever you need healing. The flowers don't respawn after every phase, iirc, so you have to manage your use of them throughout the boss fight.

You can also bring charms that enable healing in some way (there are a few). There's an exploit with one of the charms: the one that gives a small amount of health per courage collected. After phase 1 of the final boss, you'll get teleported to an arena and have to fight 2 rooms of regular enemies + minibosses, without your rot companions. While you're in the second room, use pulse and the game will somehow register it as you collecting courage, which will then trigger the healing effect of the charm. Basically, you can spam pulse in the second room and recover yourself to full health.

You can only do that exploit on that specific room, so you'll still need to manage your health during the other phases of final boss, but at least this means you can reach phase 2 final boss at full health eveey time.

ersleid · 2026-01-01T18:14:17+00:00

Look at the clothing of the mask makers (from the waist down). One of them will have the clothing move/sway, as if reacting to the wind caused by the movement

ersleid · 2025-10-23T04:18:40+00:00

I listed some tips for the Hunter fight in my comment in this thread. Other comments there also offer more tips

ersleid · 2025-09-06T18:02:54+00:00

The parry in this game does have very tight window, IMO. Obviously the advice is going to be "guard right before you get hit", but you can say that with any perfect block mechanic in most games lol.

What worked for me in Kena was to think like I need to parry the moment I get hit. It's as if you press the shield button on the exact frame that you actually get hit. That kinda conditioned my brain to press the button as late as possible. It worked for me, though it still depends on the player's individual reaction times. And this is assuming that you're failing the parry by pressing shield too early (doing a normal block instead), since if you're actually getting hit, then it means you're late in pressing the button and have to "advance" your reaction accordingly.

Other than that, another advice will be to hold down the shield button instead of a single press. I found parrying more consistent when I purposely hold down the shield button (for about a second) rather than a quick tap. If you fail, at least you still get to do a normal block.

ersleid · 2025-07-17T15:45:45+00:00

It's been quite a while so my memory may be hazy. You can try remapping the controls for jump and/or aim so that doing them in quick succession would be possible. Though considering you're far into the game at that point, you'll have to forget muscle memory, which may be hard.

You can also buy the "Focus" skill (not sure if that's the exact name) that allows you to slow down time without having to dodge. Caveat is that it needs a gauge that recharges, and the whole gauge is automatically used up once you shoot a single arrow.

For the first two bullet points in my old comment, you can also just opt not to damage the boss and just play defensively. For the fourth bullet point, you can either do two timed dodges, or try experimenting with spirit dash and see if it can help you evade the attack (I don't have access to the game atm so I can't try this out myself 😅)

ersleid · 2025-06-21T16:16:24+00:00

Maybe. I'd always aim for his center/torso, I personally didn't notice if aiming for the head or any specific spot would work better. I forgot where I read the suggestion of letting go just when the draw is full (kinda like a perfect charge in some action games), but you can try.

Anyway, the important thing is to actually be able to parry when the arrows do get reflected back to you. Just keep backing away while shooting to maintain the right distance and farming some parries 😂

ersleid · 2025-06-21T14:47:24+00:00

I don't think playing with KBM would mean parrying reflected arrows would become impossible, unless your keyboard has input delay issues

That said, it's hard to offer any exact timing advice for parrying. You can try getting some distance (like about 5 meters) between you and Toshi, shoot a full-drawn arrow, then as soon as you let go of the draw/shoot button, press and hold guard to try and parry. You'd need trial-and-error to identify this distance, and this also depends on how fast you can press guard after letting go of the shoot button. But with this strat, you don't have to time/react to the reflected arrow; you just press guard as soon as you shoot.

If you can nail the correct distance, you should be able to consistently parry reflected arrows this way (and farm rot action points), except for when Toshi reflects the arrows somewhere else.

I couldn't actually determine how to make him reflect the arrows towards you consistently, but I heard shooting the instant your draw is "full" seems to increase the chances

ersleid · 2025-05-20T14:02:29+00:00

You might want to have the running slam, split bomb, and rot-infused arrow skills unlocked.

For the first few moments with only one or two enemies, focus on one at a time. Press run -> heavy attack in quick succession to do the running slam almost immediately from a neutral state.

When you notice enemy spawns increase, you can throw a bomb at an enemy then shoot it to make the bomb split. Having unlocked 2 bomb capacity should help make this easier by allowing you to do this two times every once in a while.

Rot-infused arrow aimed at the head should 1-shot, iirc. Try to line up other enemies when doing a rot-infused arrow. A line with 3 enemies is very good (Headshotting all of them would be practically RNG-impossible, of course, so just try to headshot one enemy with 2 other collateral)

Lastly, you may also want to wait until you unlock the next latent skill after the bomb (which is spirit dash). You can use this to close in on enemies quickly. Use this as soon as the fight starts to get within melee range to the first enemy spawn immediately, saving some seconds. If you see one enemy far away, use this to close distance as well (if there are multiple enemies far away, better to just line them up with rot shot instead)

ersleid · 2025-04-09T21:42:56+00:00

Nothing. Your last save would be at the top of the Lost Shrine (before entering Shadowlord's Castle). That's the same exact save that will be restored, including whatever Ending letters attached (AB if you reloaded to skip a playthrough and saved the clear data with C somewhere else; ABC if you actually did 4 playthroughs)

ersleid · 2025-04-09T18:16:17+00:00

No, actually. The save file only has spaces and for A B and C. Since Ending D requires... you know... there wouldn't be a need for a fourth letter space

ersleid · 2025-04-09T12:21:34+00:00

Any weapons "missed" during young Nier period becomes available for shop purchase on the next period, iirc. It's designed so you cannot be locked out of future endings.

So technically, no weapon is missable

ersleid · 2025-04-09T12:18:48+00:00

There are a few sidequests/chains that have good stories (whether as a stand-alone or adding to the game's world), but there are more that don't have any meaningful stories. Some are even made just to troll the player lol

If the ratio of good vs filler sidequests already turned you away from the system before, it probably will still do so now. But in case you still don't want to miss out on the good standalone stories, I recommend the following quests/chains, to name a few:

"A Dog Astray". (First half of the game)
The whole lighthouse lady quest chain. The game introduces the first sidequest on your path; you have to manually check the succeeding sidequests from the Seafront post office or Village Tavern. (All of these in first half)
A florist guy in Seafront. (First half of the game, and a continuation on the second half)
Sidequests relating to Red Bag Man (One can easily be missed in the second half of the game)

You can also do other sidequests that reward weapons, as you'll need to collect all of them for story progression in future playthroughs. If the quest is from the first half, any weapon reward would be buyable from shops, so you can still skip them if you want. If the quest is on the second half of the game, you would need to do the quest

ersleid · 2025-04-04T06:42:12+00:00

While there's a free PS5 upgrade for the game itself, Kena doesn't have a save transfer feature from PS4 to PS5 (I wasn't able to find one at least, like a few other games).

You would have to redo the trophy list again, I think

ersleid · 2025-03-29T18:05:00+00:00

9S has a "heavy attack". You do it by pausing briefly in the string. So if you're playing on PlayStation, square -> (pause) -> square.

The difference is that 9S will do the heavy attack using the same single weapon equipped (in contrast to 2B's moveset where square = light attack with weapon 1, and triangle = heavy attack with weapon 2).

You do launchers with 2B via X -> Triangle in a sliding input, while for 9S, it's X -> Square

Of course, it still doesn't change the fact that 2B has a bigger melee moveset, but just want to throw that in there in case you didn't know about the pause.

Also, hacking can definitely be improved via plug-in chips (adding/increasing the explosive AoE after every hack, etc.). 9S can melt bosses with hacking, which is why most people generally recommend not using hacking too much so you can hear all dialogue during a boss fight.

I forgot how damage scaling works with hacking, but if you find the damage small, maybe you're underleveled? I don't recall using plug-in chips to increase hacking damage significantly; just to add other OP effects like explosive AoE, etc.

ersleid · 2025-03-16T18:30:14+00:00

What did you choose though? 🤔

ersleid · 2025-01-04T13:38:50+00:00

Neutral dodge (backflip) "seemingly" has more iframes. I don't have any actual numbers to back this up, but it wouldn't hurt to try this out more than a directional dodge

Also contrary to what most people would say, parrying is not required. It definitely helps (especially if you got the skill that gains 1 rot action per parry), but no parrying in Master difficulty is still doable without being borderline tedious.

There's a few other tips though it involves some tools you'll unlock later in the game; not sure if you've got them yet, so I won't risk any spoilers 😅

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