Throughout the story of Onimusha: Way of the Sword, you'll face a good number of bosses that must be defeated in order to progress. In this section of our guide, we'll give you some tips for taking on Nue, Legendary Chimera. This boss appears as you make your way through Nijo Castle during What Lurks in the Shadows.
The main problem with this fight is that you can't consistently deplete Nue's Stamina Gauge the way you can with many other bosses. The reason is that Nue only uses unarmed melee attacks, so you'll mainly reduce its stamina by attacking it directly, or by using Reflex Combos after building up the Reflex Gauge.
Aside from that, you should try to shoot its tail throughout the entire fight. That snake head is extremely annoying: it has attacks of its own, can be used to block your strikes and moves with awkward timing. Whenever Nue backs away and starts moving sideways, you'll have a few seconds to charge the Oni Bow, fire at the tail and destroy it. It will regenerate after a while, but breaking it temporarily removes some of the boss's most troublesome attacks.
Without the tail, Nue's attacks are fairly simple: a two-swipe claw combo, a shove and a charging attack. Nothing particularly difficult.
Once you've dealt enough damage, Nue will become electrified. At this point, the tail starts firing electrical projectiles that you can Deflect back at the boss, finally giving you another way to deal significant Stamina damage. If you manage to shoot and destroy the tail, Nue will lose its electrical charge and some of its increased damage output... but you'll also lose the opportunity to reflect those projectiles back at it. The choice is yours. This fight is more tedious than genuinely difficult, to be honest.
Nue appears several more times, although unlike Byakue or Dohatsu-ten, it isn't an enemy you can repeatedly farm. You'll encounter it in the following situations:
