All ten bosses, where they appear, how much health they carry, and exactly what changes when they hit Phase II. Every number on this page comes straight from the game's source code, not from guesswork.
Every tenth stage in Samurai Vengeance is a boss stage. There are 1000 stages, so there are 100 boss fights in a full run, shared between ten named bosses that each turn up ten times. A boss stage is just you, flat ground and one large enemy with a health bar across the top of the screen. There are no platforms to hide on, and no stage modifier ever lands on a boss stage, so the fight is always the same test: can you read one opponent and punish it.
This guide covers the roster first, then the fight itself, then the habits that make the difference between scraping through stage 10 and clearing stage 1000.
The ten bosses rotate in a fixed order. Stage 10 is always the Iron Oni, stage 20 the Shadow Twin, and so on up to Death Itself at stage 100. Then the cycle starts again at stage 110. The HP column shows each boss on its first appearance; every later appearance has more.
| Boss | Title | Stages | First HP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Oni | Warden of the First Gate | 10, 110, 210 … 910 | 1,150 |
| Shadow Twin | Slayer of Apprentices | 20, 120, 220 … 920 | 1,400 |
| Blood Shogun | Lord of the Crimson Keep | 30, 130, 230 … 930 | 1,650 |
| Jade Serpent | Coiled Death of the East | 40, 140, 240 … 940 | 1,900 |
| Storm Daimyo | Herald of Thunder Blades | 50, 150, 250 … 950 | 2,150 |
| Void Ronin | The Masterless Abyss | 60, 160, 260 … 960 | 2,400 |
| Ghost Emperor | Ruler of Dead Dynasties | 70, 170, 270 … 970 | 2,650 |
| Inferno Tengu | Wings of Scorched Heaven | 80, 180, 280 … 980 | 2,900 |
| Titan Samurai | The Last Undefeated | 90, 190, 290 … 990 | 3,150 |
| Death Itself | Beyond All Legend | 100, 200, 300 … 1000 | 3,400 |
Earlier builds of the game stopped the rotation at Death Itself, which meant every boss from stage 100 to 1000 was the same fight 91 times in a row. The rotation was added to fix that, so if you remember facing nothing but Death Itself late in a run, that is why.
Honestly, no, not yet. Each boss has its own name, title and artwork, but all ten share the same attack pattern and the same rules. What makes a later boss harder is its health pool and, in the last stretch of the game, its speed. That is actually good news for you: once you have learned one boss properly, you have learned all of them, and everything below applies to every fight.
Boss HP is 900 + 25 × the stage number. It goes up in a straight line, so a boss late in the game is a long fight rather than a different one.
| Stage | Boss HP | Phase II starts at |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 10 | 1,150 | 575 |
| Stage 50 | 2,150 | 1,075 |
| Stage 100 | 3,400 | 1,700 |
| Stage 250 | 7,150 | 3,575 |
| Stage 500 | 13,400 | 6,700 |
| Stage 750 | 19,650 | 9,825 |
| Stage 1000 | 25,900 | 12,950 |
For scale: at Damage level 1 your basic swing does 52 before combo bonuses, and at Damage level 5 it does 100. The stage 10 Iron Oni can be beaten by hand without any upgrades. The stage 500 boss, at 13,400 HP, really needs your combo multiplier built up and your Ki special saved for it.
A boss walks back and forth across the arena, turning around when it reaches either side. It does two things:
The contact damage has one big gap: it only counts when you and the boss are both standing on the ground at the same height. If you are in the air, the boss's body cannot hurt you. Jumping over a boss as it walks toward you is completely safe, and landing behind it gives you free hits on its back while it walks away.
When a boss drops below half its health, the screen shakes, the words PHASE II appear next to its name, and three things change at once:
The fan matters most. In Phase I a small step sideways or a jump is enough to dodge a shot. In Phase II the outer two shots cover the space you would normally dodge into, so moving away is less reliable than parrying or dashing through.
| Difficulty | Contact hit | Projectile hit | Projectile speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | ~9 | ~2 | Slow |
| Normal | ~26 | ~7 | Medium |
| Hard | 44 | 11 | Fast |
A projectile does about a quarter of what a body hit does. If you have to choose between eating a shot and touching the boss, take the shot.
The parry is the most important tool in a boss fight, because it is the only thing that both protects you and speeds the fight up.
Parry just as the boss walks into you and it bounces off and turns around. You take no damage, your combo counter jumps by 5, and you get a Punish.
Parrying a shot destroys it, adds 3 to your combo and also gives you a Punish. In Phase II you can parry the whole three-shot fan if they reach you together.
For a little under a second after a successful parry, your next swing skips straight to the Finisher, the third and heaviest hit of the combo, which does double damage. Normally you have to land two hits to reach it. Parry, then swing immediately: that rhythm is how you take big chunks off a late-game boss.
At Parry level 1 the parry window is about 0.17 seconds. Each Dojo upgrade adds about 0.05 seconds, so Parry level 5 gives you roughly 0.37 seconds, more than double. After a parry there is a cooldown of just under a second. If you have at least 30 Ki you can parry again during the cooldown; this is the Ki Parry, and it costs those 30 Ki.
A dash makes you briefly invincible: about a quarter of a second at Dash level 1, rising to 0.4 seconds at level 5, with a 0.7 second cooldown. Use it to go through a boss or a projectile fan rather than away from it. Dashing through a boss also leaves you behind it, the same as jumping over.
Each hit you land raises your combo counter, and your damage grows with it: +6% per combo point, up to a cap of 2.8× at a combo of 30. Parries add combo as well, so a fight with a lot of parrying ramps up faster than one with only swings. The combo resets if you go too long without landing something.
Your Ki bar fills as you land hits, and a Finisher that kills something adds an extra 15. When it is full, the Ki special hits every enemy on screen for 500 + 80 per Damage level, so 580 at level 1 and 900 at level 5, and briefly freezes time. Two things to know:
The best use is usually to save it for Phase II. The second half of the fight is where you take damage, so cutting it short is worth more than speeding up the safe first half. Early in the game it can also be used to skip most of Phase II outright. Your Ki also carries over between stages, so filling the bar on stage 9 and walking into stage 10 with it ready is a solid plan.
From stage 851 onward bosses start walking faster even in Phase I, and the increase keeps growing until stage 1000, where a boss moves two and a half times faster than the stage 10 Iron Oni. Phase II multiplies that speed again. At that pace, jumping over a boss gets harder to time and a parry is usually the more reliable answer. By this point you will want Parry and Health close to level 5.
Separate from the stage bosses, the main menu offers a Daily Boss once per day. It follows the same Phase I and Phase II rules but scales differently: its health is based on the highest stage you have reached and on your Damage level, and it is doubled on top of that, so it stays tough however far you have progressed. Beating it pays 500 coins plus 50 for every ten stages you have reached, far more than a normal stage. It uses your device's date, so it resets at local midnight.
| Achievement | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Boss Slayer | Defeat your first boss. 200 coins. |
| Dragon Hunter | Defeat 10 bosses. 500 coins. |
| Perfect Hunter | Defeat a boss without taking any damage. 500 coins. |
Perfect Hunter is easiest on the stage 10 Iron Oni. Open with a parry, jump over every approach and save the Ki special for the moment it enters Phase II; at Damage level 1 the special does 580 and the boss enters Phase II with at most 574 left, so one special ends the fight on the spot.
The Dojo has five upgrades, each up to level 5. For boss fights specifically:
Controls are covered in How to Play, and the regular enemies in the Enemy Guide. For how the game is built, including why it once ran at double speed on 120Hz phones, see the Dev Notes.
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