Welcome to Sekiro: Shadow Die Twice Walkthrough! As in every FromSoftware game you will go through a small tutorial section first, which this time around is the Ashina Reservoir. This guide will walk you through the Ashina Reservoir region.
Ashina Reservoir – Waking up from a nap
Once you wake up pick up the Ornamental Letter in front of you and follow the path straight ahead. There is nothing of interest on the path heading in the other direction. Make your way up the cliff by jumping and walljuming and you will be welcomed by the name of the location you are in: Ashina Reservoir.
Shimmy across the ledge and crouch to hide in the tall grass. Stealth your way through the grass to avoid all the enemies for now since you don’t have a weapon yet. Follow the path through the grass and under a small hut where you can eavesdrop on some soldiers. Leave the house on the other side and eavesdrop on the soldiers on the bridge.
By eavesdropping we find out that we can’t enter the tower through the door since it’s locked. We also learn about a hole in the wall from the cliff side of the building. The choice is obvious: we climb through the hole. Hang across the ledge on the left side of the bridge and climb up until you reach the hole for a cutscene to play.
Ashina Reservoir – Let’s get out of here
You will meet the Divine Heir for the first time and you will be granted your sword Kusabimaru. Now we can protect ourselves. Talk to the Divine Heir once again to receive some Healing Gourd and also go upstairs to find some Pellet. You will now have to find a hidden passage under the bridge to escape with the Divine Heir. After healing yourself use the door to get outside again and take care of the first enemies in the game. The first one you can take down with a stealth kill.
Follow the left path and kill all the enemies on your way. They can be easily defeated by deflecting their strikes (block when they are about to hit). At some point you will reach the first mini-boss – like enemy with 2 health bars. Fighting Leader Shigenori Yamauchi isn’t particularly challenging since you can make a quick work of him by counter-slashing him. Defeat him and you will receive some more Pellet. Healing is always a welcomed gift.
Ashina Reservoir – The bridge and a beatdown
After defeating the leader take the path to the right of the door he was standing in front of and follow the only path collecting some Handful of Ash on your way. You will see the bridge and 2 paths, one leading up the bridge and one leading down. Take the upper path to hang across the bridge. Eavesdrop on the enemies again, take care of the enemy under the bridge and drop down on the other side of the bridge.
Drop down multiple times collecting Pellet on your way and reach the door to the hidden passage. Whistle to call the Heir and go through the small cave to reach a field. You will meet a very powerful enemy there: Lord Genichiro. In oder to defeat him… well you don’t. He is supposed to defeat you and cut your arm, so don’t even bother fighting him. There is no secret ending or reward for defeating him. After the cutscene the intro section will be finished and you will be transported to the next area.
This concludes the “Ashina Reservoir” area and leads to the“Ashina Outskirts”.
Next up: Ashina Outskirts
For all other areas check out the full Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Walkthrough.
Are you sure you can’t defeat Genichiro Ashina? Maybe you can, and maybe there’s a special reward if you do – From Software are known to do this.
I am obviously not sure, you probably can but I suppose it is more of a new game+ stuff since he can kill you super fast and you have basically no healings. You can try if you want, but I didn’t feel like wasting my time on it since you only get one shot at it.
You can. Lobosjr did it. Bu no special reward 🙁
Defeating him in the prologue doesn’t give any reward or secret ending. Just the follow-up cutscene changes slightly I think, after that it’s the same.
Hey PP, if I follow the walkthrough, will I end up getting all the collectibles too? so I can be toe to toe with the roadmap and do it in 2 runs.
Thanks a lot in advance
The walkthrough focuses on the barebones story path only, as I think that’s what most people will be looking for to find out where to go.
The collectibles are covered in separate pages. Another reason for this is that many collectibles require backtracking and are not available on first visit and some are in areas tied to different game endings. It made more sense to me to cover those on their own.
Alright, thanks for the heads up PP!