Easy "Early End" and "No, That's Not Possible..."

[BodyChipper]

Now that this is on PSPlus it might help others to know just how easy the Early End and No, That's not Possible trophies can be, even on your first run. Make a manual backup save at the shrine right before the Chapter 3 boss as stated in the trophy guide, assuming you are playing on Ronin difficulty.

Now for actually winning the fight without getting hit - simply put the game on easy and follow this pattern. Parry his first attack, pause for half a second then use a Square -> Triangle -> Triangle combo. Then hold block through his combo until he moves away from you as he won't attack you again until your stamina completely refills (also as stated in the guide). I put myself right under the Tori gate so I could see better with the lighter background. Rinse, repeat. It takes about 15 combos or iterations to kill him but it only took me 3 tries to pull it off. Definitely easier, faster, and more reliable than what is in the YouTube video in the trophy roadmap guide. Granted, that video is on Ronin difficulty I believe. If you do get hit, just pause and go to main menu and continue. This won't bar you from either trophy. You don't have to restart the game or reload your save if you do get hit.

Reload your back up save and continue on with the Ronin difficulty playthrough.

[dieselmanchild]

Hey thanks for sharing your tips. I hope you don’t mind if I share the strategy that I used too. This trophy can be a pain in the ass so i figure the more approaches the better. What I did:

 

Enter fight. Take a step forward then let the boss approach you

• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Walk to the end then turn around with X
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Walk to the end then turn around with X
• Your stamina bar is now full
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Walk to the end then turn around with X

The boss should now be at/or a little less than half health. This is where he gets more dangerous and is likely to do the flurry combo unexpectedly if you press the offence too much. To be safe it’s best to only attack once per cycle from here on out.

• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Walk to the end and turn around with X
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Blah blah blah repeat above sequence until he’s dead. It won’t take long at all.

 

A few other things I noted while struggling with this:

 

- Personally, I found that when sitting back and holding L1 and blocking his flurry of attacks, the boss would never move away from me when my stamina got low (like the guide says he would). He would always kill me, which is why I started using the swap places move to safely recover stamina.

- If you’re on PS4, be extra careful with the timing of the first parry after you enter the fight. I’m sure PS5 is fine, but on PS4 there’s a big lag spike right when the boss first attacks you literally 100% of the time and it can easily mess up your timing on that first parry if it throws you off.

 

- Dropping the difficulty down to Easy can definitely help here as sometimes after he gets a shot in you’ll be able to quickly pause and restart checkpoint, which saves a ton of time. But again you’re going to want to make a cloud save right before the fight, as more often than not he’ll hit you 2x or with a thrust before you can block, and this will instantly kill you before you can pause and restart checkpoint. Having a cloud save here is crucial.

 

- I can’t confirm this, but I read somewhere that the Kensei difficulty trophy will not pop at the end if you continue playing after getting the Early End trophy. To be safe it’s probably best to reload your cloud save after getting ‘Early End’/‘No, That’s Not Possible’ and die to the boss the way the game wants you to.

[Quink666]

This was one of the easier no hit trophies. Just parry/heavy/heavy, repeat until stamina is getting low then parry/counter to send boss back and that will also allow you to recover about 75% of your stamina then continue with parry/heavy/heavy until boss is dead or you need more stamina. Did this on ronin so i needed to recover stamina 3 times iirc.

[Ovatsug09]

I've found an even easier way to get both trophies (did on Easy) that I would like to share.

For some strange reason, the low stamina strategy never worked consistently for me, so I had to get a little bit creative.

 

Once you start the fight, parry and use the Triangle + Triangle combo.

Do it 2 more times, then parry and press Square. The boss will take a hit and will do one of two actions: take some steps back staggered or express no reaction at all and just back off on its own.

 

That strategy allows you to safely recover stamina since the boss will be forced away from you. If you need to recover more and the boss is coming, just throw a knife on him and his animation will reset. As he approaches and you have full stamina, just repeat the inputs above. Remember to not get greedy! Only the first time you can do 3 Triangles + Triangles. After that, do only 2 and hit him away!

 

Tried for 20+ minutes with the low stamina strategy... no success. Tried this method above, and did it in 5 minutes. Hope it helps

Edited September 5, 2023 by Ovatsug09

[RRDude_PBB]

This boss was a breeze using: 

• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry > Triangle > Triangle
• Parry + Forward to swap places. Walk to the end then turn around with X

This way your stamina recovers fully after every attack.