Like a Dragon: Ishin! Amon Location & Boss Guide

Like a Dragon: Ishin! includes a traditional hidden boss fight against an Amon family member, just like other Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. Unlike most other games though they aren’t included as a substory, and you are actually required to fight them in two locations to get the reward required for other completion requirements.

How to Fight Amon

For the first Amon fight, there are two things you need to do:

• Complete all 40 Battle Dungeon Missions
• Complete all 72 substories – Like a Dragon: Ishin! Substory Guide

Once you have done both of these, return to the Battle Dungeon Mission Receptionist and he says that Sanada Nobuyasu (the boss from the final mission) wants to fight you again. Make sure to save before and get set up with a full inventory of healing items before selecting this mission. It would also be recommended you get set up with at least some basic decent equipment before going in, though you don’t need to do anything crazy with crafting.

In the above setup, the only item from smithing is Okanehira, which you should make as soon as possible anyway as it is one of the fire effect swords and trivializes any content where enemies are susceptible to the burn effect, which Amon is in the second fight. The other easy-to-get items that you can use are:

• Golden Gun – Purchased using tags at the Gambling Den after grinding chicken races. Also highly recommended at all times as it’s basically the best gun in the game outside of the very last smithing ones you have to purposely grind for.
• Furinkanzan (Breastplate) – Picked up from Bakumatsu Bob at Teradaya after you have finished the Meals section of the Completion List (ate all items at all restaurants)
• Unbridled Fury Gauntlets (Gauntlet) – Also picked up from Bob after you have finished the Arena section of the Completion List (beat all arena opponents)

Level wise assuming you are on Easy difficulty you don’t really need to grind specifically for level. The level you are at after completing all Substories, Battle Dungeons, Arena, and Wanted Men requirements should be fine, assuming you have also maxed out Wild Dancer style to level 25, though even better if you also limit broke it and have some of the further damage upgrades.

Trooper Card wise you want to focus on the ones that give high damage output. Kasuga Ichinojo is highly recommended for all the dungeon grinding and these fights, so if you’ve already gotten one or more make sure to use them (you can use multiple of the card on one loadout, and the effect stacks if activated at the same time, same with other damage increase cards). If you haven’t received any you can take a few rolls at the 10 Ryo enlistment option and hopefully get one. If you’ve received it, DO NOT use Shinada Tatsunosuke. Likely as some attempt at balance when this is used against Amon in the second fight he speeds up faster than normal for the duration of the effect, making it actively detrimental to you.

Battle Dungeon Amon

When you arrive, a mysterious man attacks Sanada, then attacks you. In this fight, Amon doesn’t do a whole lot directly, but the fight as a whole is more annoying overall than the second fight due to the mechanic centered around the other three enemies that appear along with him.

The main gimmick of this fight is basically that the 3 nameless colored enemies buff Amon, preventing you from doing a lot of damage to him. They are also only weak to a specific type of damage, and if you damage them with the wrong type it acts like they still have armor and you’re doing a small amount of chip damage. Green is weak to guns, Purple is weak to swords, and Red is weak to fists. Due to how little damage Brawler does to begin with though you may still be better off just attacking with Wild Dancer if you don’t like playing Bralwer, because the chip damage is only slightly lower than normal Bralwer damage, and it’s really hard to Tiger Drop the red enemy.

Once the colored enemies are all dealt with they won’t be buffing Amon anymore and you can deal a normal amount of damage to him. You can mostly just focus on him with the normal Wild Dancer  combo, as he is nearly stunlocked by this, even though you can’t inflict burn on him in this fight. The attacks he does are either a basic set of 3 thrusts, or 1 thrust then a swing, so you can basically avoid damage by dodging to the side if he breaks out of stun. Just watch your health and use heat actions and this fight should be finished fairly easily.

After defeating Amon in the dungeon, you need to leave the Shiningumi Barracks and then reenter and speak to the Mission Receptionist again. He says that Amon has now sent a direct challenge to you. You then need to head to Kiyomizu Temple to meet him. This is at the end of the forest path over the bridge out the east side of Rakugai where you go during the story.

Temple Amon

In this fight you are only facing Amon, so he has a lot more moves he can do. Funnily though, because he is by himself and you can inflict burn on him he’s basically a pushover as long as you don’t really screw up by eating damage off obvious attacks.

At the start of the fight, he is in the same Swordsman stance as the Dungeon fight. He has similar moves, so they’re mostly easy to avoid just by dodging to the side, but has a couple of new ones to watch out for. One of the main ones is when he does an equivalent of your Swordsman attack, where he sheathes his sword, turns pink, then charges towards you doing a combo. Either continually dodge or guard if you’re in Swordsman, don’t try to attack him during the animation as your attacks will bounce off. He will do this immediately at the start of the fight, then will potentially pull it out later so just watch for him to do the animation and start dodging, and heal immediately after if you take a bunch of damage.

At about half health he switches to mirroring your Wild Dancer stance, and somewhat mirrors your attacks with basic sword combos or shooting in a circle. Like Wild Dancer though he seems to be stunlocked even easier and burn more frequently, so if you keep banging on him with the normal combo and mixing in heat actions he should go down easy.

After the fight, you’ll receive a big chunk of XP, along with the Worn Magical Sword, which is a unique weapon required for smithing one of the top tier items.

Related Like a Dragon: Ishin Guides:

• Substories Guide
• Diligence Records
• Memoirs Locations
• Wanted Men Missions
• Amon Location & Boss Guide
• Fishing Guide
• Completion List Guide
• Smithing Guide