How to Beat Jing Ye, The Outlaw in Phantom Blade Zero - Phantom Blade Zero Guide - IGN

In terms of story boss difficulty in Phantom Blade Zero, it was pretty smooth sailing for me until I ran into Jing Ye, the mounted jackass. Thankfully, once you know how to deal with his nonsense, he’s considerably easier to take down, even on Hellwalker difficulty, where I made sure to test these same strategies. Here’s your full guide to taking down Jing Ye, The Outlaw , in Phantom Blade Zero.

Before getting into the fight proper, let’s discuss what equipment you should be bringing into this battle, starting with accessories .

There’s certainly a bit of wiggle room here since most everything other than the Preservation Jar (since he doesn’t use poison) can be useful. I went with these three:

Medicine Case , which increases the amount you heal when using Medicine since he hits really hard.

Cavalrybane , which increases the damage you do to mounted enemies by 25%.

And the Shieldbreaker Talisman , since dealing with his spiked shield after knocking him off his stupid horse is a huge priority.

As far as weapons go, make sure the two you have equipped are upgraded as much as you can, and make one of those Jagged Steel , since most of the damage you inflict will be while he’s guard broken, and Jagged Steel’s level 5 ability does a ton of extra bleed buildup.

For the other, I went with Sanguine Twin since Chi-Infused Blade is nice for dealing some extra damage, and I was comfortable with the rhythm of its attacks at this point. But really anything paired with Jagged Steel will work; you just need an alternate weapon to switch to when your Sha-Chi runs low.

For Phantom Edges , the only one I really used was the Dread Axe for breaking his shield after knocking him off his horse. Make sure it’s at least level 5 so you can use the instant full power charge. It costs two remnant sparks, but it’s absolutely worth it. When your loadout is all set, go ahead and approach him.

I’m gonna break this fight down into two phases, one on his horse and one off, but just know that every time you die, the fight starts completely over, unlike some other bosses that let you continue from later phases on retries. It’s probably because you don’t have to take his health bar down all the way to start the second part.

To open this fight, unless you rush in close, he’ll most likely do one of two things– throw out a very fast projectile that you can’t even really see travel (it just looks like he’s gearing up for a slash), or he’ll leap at you. One leap is a blue flash that you can parry, and one is black that you’ll have to dodge. If you’re ready for them, they’re both pretty easy to react to.

For this phase of the fight, the ideal distance you’ll want to keep from him is just out of his sword’s reach. He has some well-telegraphed blue and red flashing melee attacks that you’ll want to be close enough to take advantage of to deal Sha-Chi damage, but he also has a very troublesome ranged attack you’ll want to be able to back away and deal with.

That troublesome attack I spoke of would be his blood knives , and there are three different animations for them.

For the first, the horse will whinny and rear back, and the knives will rush towards you and home in as soon as the horse’s front hooves hit the ground.

For the second one, he’ll toss something into the air, grab it, and crush it in his fist, summoning the knives. He can also keep crushing more to summon more groups of knives, so be on the lookout of more coming right behind.

For the third, he’ll toss a ball up into the air, and hit it with his sword.

Whichever way he summons them, the best way to deal with the knives is to dodge to the side , and I do want to emphasize to the side . This gives you the best chance to dodge all of them if you dodge with the right rhythm. You can keep going in one direction, or back and forth. You can block or even parry some of these knives if you run out of room to dodge, or you’re too close to avoid the knives, but it’s really not ideal. Since it’s hard to see exactly when they’re about to hit, the parry is hard to time. And because it’s not doing Sha-Chi damage to Jing Ye since it’s a projectile, there’s really no benefit as you’ll probably be losing some Sha-Chi yourself. And lastly, even while guarding, you’ll be taking bleed damage and you’ll lose a big chunk of health if the bleed meter fills up all the way. Better to avoid the knives altogether.

Another big reason to dodge is that Jing Ye will often launch one of three attacks while you’re dealing with the knives– either the projectile or his big leap attack, in both the blue and black flash variations. Dodging at a steady pace but not spamming it is the best way to be ready to parry the projectile and blue leap, and also be able to dodge the black leap as well. If Soul starts cartwheeling, you can get caught with one of these attacks mid animation. Better to keep the dodges not too fast and consistent to be ready for whatever he throws at you. The correct rhythm is more important than speed. Make sure to keep your eyes on him while dodging the knives to see what he’s planning.

Other than the knives, there’s only a few more attacks you need to look out for. The first is a three-hit slash that ends with a red attack, meaning you’ll need to dodge. This sequence starts with an underhand swing, and then a cut across his body, so it’s easy to spot. He also has several blue slashes that are easy to react to if you keep enough distance, and the two different leaps with the blue and black flashes.

And the last thing you’ll need to be ready for is when he kicks up dust with his sword. This is another good reason to keep a little bit of distance, as he’s much harder to block or dodge when your vision is obscured, so you’ll need to be ready to back up. The rest of his attacks are just standard swings, and they’re pretty easy to parry. The blood knives are the big thing to look out for.

The last tip for this phase is to just not get greedy; you’ll do plenty of Sha-Chi damage just from parrying his melee blows, and dealing with his red and blue attacks.

Keep in mind that even after a Ghoststep counter, he’ll start swinging pretty immediately if you close the distance. You may get a hit or two in, but be ready to parry his swings immediately. As long as you can deal with his blood knives, take your opportunities to parry his melee attacks and get your ghoststep counters in on red and blue attacks, you’ll guard break him pretty quickly. Once he’s stunned, use Jagged Steel’s Blood Blade ability to try and score some extra bleed buildup, and then use your Sha-Chi essence with L2 or the left trigger if you have it, keep spamming Sha-Chi attacks, and then switch weapons as the guard break ends to refill your meter and prepare for defense.

If you’re making the most of your damage phases, you’ll probably knock him off his horse during the second guard break, and I’ve even done it during the first a few times. Once he’s off his high horse, the second phase begins.

As I mentioned earlier, the immediate need is to take care of his shield. It causes a ton of bleed damage and is just a huge nuisance to deal with. Don’t wait– as soon as you see him get knocked off, unleash a fully charged Dread Axe attack by jamming on R2 or the Right Trigger. This is why we want the Dread Axe to at least be level 5. If that doesn’t break his shield all the way, one more uncharged hit should do it. This will leave him guard-broken as well, which means you get to unleash a full damage phase on him. This should take him down to about half health straight away.

After breaking his shield, you have some similar but slightly different attacks to deal with. The blood knives return, but in a smaller number this time– usually only one group you have to avoid. While that’s nice, he’ll usually pair it with another sequence where he runs to the side to kick dust into the air to obscure himself, before leaping out of it to catch you by surprise.

Even when I knew he was coming, this attack still hit me quite a few times. He leaps at you really fast, so you’ll probably need to dodge earlier than you’re expecting. After the leap attack, he’ll either turn his back to you and follow up with a blue slash (if you miss the parry he’ll throw dirt in your face afterward), or pommel strike you quickly and follow up with a red grab.

Do not get hit by this. He’ll saw into your shoulder for major damage and restore his own health at the same time.

Other than these flashy attacks, he has several segments of combos that he can do all together or in parts. These include a turn around slash followed by either flinging dirt at you, or two quick overhead smashes. A kick followed by a run into a delayed slash. A move where he kicks his sword straight up with an uppercut slash, into a second slash, and then a blue attack. And a move where he kicks his sword to the side, slashes once, and then does a red attack.

He also will sometimes do that black flash leap even when not behind his smokescreen.

That sounds like a lot, but these attacks aren’t hard to avoid if you know what’s coming, and parrying most of it will take his Sha-Chi meter almost all the way down.

As long as you avoid his grab, don’t overspend on your Sha-Chi meter, prepare yourself to dodge his leap out of the dirt cloud, and keep yourself healed up, you’ll break his guard in no time with a few parries. Then you just lay into him again with your most damaging sequence, and if he’s guard-broken with low health, the button prompt for an execution will pop up. Press it, you win the fight, and he’ll fall like all the same before him.

When you beat him, you’ll earn his weapon, the Outlaw Warblade, which has some pretty cool properties. You can spend your own HP and give yourself recoverable damage to unleash powerful attacks, and then heal it with your standard combo. You can also perform the hit-grab he used on you that allows you to recover quite a bit of health.

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