8 Shinobi Art of Vengeance Combat Tips and Tricks

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is a deep action game with plenty of room for flashy combos, varied enemies to execute, and tough bosses to slay. It starts easy, but the challenge ramps up as you take on elite squads and explore everything the game offers.

Here are eight combat tips for Shinobi: Art of Vengeance to make your journey smoother and your blade deadlier.

Don’t Hoard Kunai

It’s tempting to save your Kunai for special fights, but you’re better off using them whenever you can, especially if it helps you survive. They build up an enemy’s stagger bar, interrupt certain attacks, finish off tough foes, and can even fend off airborne enemies, who usually take fewer hits to kill.

Additionally, some enemies can be annoying to jump into, like the one who throws a diagonal axe. Instead, just use the Kunai to get a quick kill on them. You get plenty during each level, and you can slowly upgrade the max capacity to add more to your inventory.

The Kunai Burst skill is pretty handy here as it lets you throw multiple Kunai into a single enemy to quickly build up the stagger meter, or end them. This can be performed on the ground and in mid-air.

I would advise against equipping the piercing Kunai amulet early on, though, because you don’t have enough at hand, and wasting them that easily isn’t recommended. However, when you raise the capacity to around 20, it can be pretty useful.

Use the Environment

The environment can often be deadly for Joe, but he usually respawns by taking some damage. Drops, spikes, and electricity only take some of your health bar off and put you right back into the action. However, not everyone is trained in the ways of respawning, especially not your fragile enemies. Pushing them into the same environmental obstacles results in instant death.

Make good use of this when you’re up against multiple enemies and you’re presented with a challenge with plenty of spikes about, which are especially common in Elite Unit fights.

Again, this isn’t just limited to drops, but there are moments where the walls have some form of environmental hazard as well, and shoving them into them results in a kill as well.

Kill Enemies That Shoot Projectiles First

It doesn’t take long before your screen is full of enemies, both on the ground and in the air. If you aren’t careful, smaller, but deadlier enemies that shoot projectiles can quickly take your health down and kill you if they aren’t taken care of.

My advice? Always take out enemies that are shooting anything from a distance, whether it’s the grunts with pistols, ninjas throwing shurikens, snipers, or the drones shooting from above. Taking them out early in a fight means you’re free to take on the actual threats without any distractions.

Dash Cancelling Is The Core of Combat

Canceling a jump or attack is common in more advanced action games, but Shinobi: Art of Vengeance has a fairly lenient cancel mechanic that lets you extend combos and keep enemies in the air. This makes dealing with regular foes a breeze and can be useful against armored enemies as well, especially ones that don’t have an area of effect attack.

To perform this cancel in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, simply tap the dash (RB) button after an attack connects. For example, if you hit an enemy with two light attacks, you can hit RB to essentially interrupt the combo and go into another one. This lets you keep the combo going, and you can basically keep enemies in the air and finish them off before they touch the ground.

I recommend going into training mode and practicing it with the dummy. Try launching the enemy into the air, do a two-hit combo, hit dash, and then start a new combo string. With some practice, you’ll get the hang of it and perform really flashy and long combos.

One more thing: once an enemy dies, the hit counter (at the left) stops even if you keep attacking their corpse mid-air. While it may seem smart to end the combo there, you can actually redirect part of the combo toward another enemy as part of the finisher. For example, if an enemy falls mid-combo, you can continue the string and land the final blow on a different target.

Dealing With Armor

Regular enemies are usually pretty easy to deal with, but armored enemies can put up quite a fight. The obvious way to deal with them is to hold your heavy attack and do damage to their armor, but you’re not always in a favorable position to do that. Here are a few tips to take down the armor fast:

• Use the dive kick on armored enemies for plenty of damage, and safely get out of the way by dashing out.

• Use the Bomb Ninpo from the air to not only crush armor, but also force enemies into the air for you to finish them off. It’s one of the best Ninpo skills in the game and absolutely vital against armored enemies.

• Use the heavy attack strings instead of holding down the heavy attack button for faster damage. Yes, this means that you won’t instantly take out the armor, but it’s still better than getting hit in the face while you charge it.
• Purchase combat moves like the Super Kick and the Cannon Punch Finisher to do massive damage to armor during combat.

Learning how each armored foe attacks is vital to survival. All of them have one devastating attack that deals a lot of damage.

If you see them charging up for an attack while they have armor on, you need to get out of the way and direct your attention towards other enemies.

Don’t Be Afraid To Heal

Ask yourself an important question during a difficult combat encounter. Do I gain a higher survival chance by using the Karyu Ninjutsu to set everyone ablaze, or should I actually use the Shisui Ninjutsu to regain my entire health instead?

More often than not, you’ll find that Shisui is actually more useful, especially against bosses or armored enemies when they’ve brought you down to your last 25%. So assess your health, the type of enemies on screen, and what you hope to achieve with this valuable Ninjutsu resource. At times, I’ve used Karyu, and most of the enemies are armored, and fire does nothing to them.

Train and Experiment

After finishing the first level, you can access the Training Room in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. It’s not the best and doesn’t have a lot of adjustable parameters or enemies to spawn, but it gets the job done, especially if you want to try out combat moves and see how they fare against regular enemies.

I recommend going through the movelist as you expand it here and see what you find more fun to use and what properties are associated with it. I hope that the developers consider adding more options to this so players have more freedom when it comes to the target enemy, at least.

Purple/Blue Attacks Mean Death

If it isn’t obvious already, some enemies and bosses can perform certain purple/blue attacks that can’t be dashed through. Either dash above these or move out of the way to avoid direct contact.

Trust me, there’s no way to get around these by directly plunging face-first into them like many other attacks in the game. If you see the enemy charging this up, run (or dash) away because you will get hit.

There is even more the the combat of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, but these tips should help you maneuver through any encounter without much difficulty. If you have any tips that you think will help players, let me know in the comments below!