Highlights

  • It turns out that it's possible to cancel the grapple swing animation in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
  • Doing so allows players to perform much more devastating actions than grapple attacks at the end of their swings, thus potentially shortening many boss fights.

One Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice player has recently discovered a clever way to speed up the Guardian Ape fight by strategically canceling the grapple swing animation in order to punish the boss more aggressively. They later shared their discovery on social media, noting that the trick also works against many other bosses in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

The grapple hook is one of the game's first shinobi tools that the player unlocks. And while grappling is an inherent part of Sekiro's traversal mechanics, the hook also has combat applications, most notably by allowing Wolf to quickly close distance between himself and enemies. As a rule of thumb, the larger the opponent, the easier it is to use the grapple hook against them. Pressing the attack button during the swinging motion makes Wolf finish the animation with a grapple attack.

Sekiro True Monk Fight
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Sekiro's Grapple Swing Attack Can Be Canceled In Favor of More Devastating Actions

Though grappling prompts are always prominently featured on the screen, what the game doesn't communicate is that the ensuing swinging animation can actually be canceled. This was recently pointed out by Reddit user Boogiewind, who found that pressing the interact button near the end of the swing essentially stops Wolf in his tracks. This provides the player with a window of opportunity to perform much more devastating actions than a grapple attack, like using other shinobi tools or the Mortal Blade. Boogiewind's video demonstration of this trick saw them use the grapple hook to essentially plunge into a deathblow while fighting Sekiro's Guardian Ape.

The game's interact action corresponds to the Square button on PlayStation, X on Xbox, and E (by default) on PC. Executing this technique will require some practice, with Boogiewind describing the timing of the required button press as somewhat tricky to nail down.

A closer inspection of the player's recently shared video suggests that the way the trick works is by overriding the grapple swing with a regular fall animation. Doing so can also be an effective way of speeding up fights against many other Sekiro bosses beyond the Guardian Ape, including Gyoubu Oniwa and Demon of Hatred. Although the exploit itself is doable in the vanilla version of the game, it would appear that Boogiewind's video demonstration of the trick relied on mods to add grappling points to some fights that don't normally have them.

Be that as it may, this discovery could still prove to be beneficial to the Sekiro speedrunning community. It also reinforces the popular fan sentiment that Sekiro has the most responsive combat system FromSoftware made to date.