After completing the main story, you will unlock Bakumatsu Premium Adventure (free roam after story) and Ultimate Challenge on the main menu. Ultimate Challenge is a series of challenges, across four categories, where you need to do a specific task presented before you. This page will focus on the Combat Challenges, where you have to fight a bunch of enemies, usually within a time limit.

Combat Challenge 1¶

• Defeat 15 enemies within the time limit

The first Combat Challenge is pretty easy, as you need to defeat a total of 15 enemies within 2 minutes. You can use any style you want here, but it’s important to note that you have a set of equipment assigned to you already. The Model 14 is your firearm, which has no Seals on it, and the Dragon Slayer is your katana, again with no Seals. Wild Dancer might be a good idea to use here, since it’s more ideal for multiple opponents, and the swift attacks mean you can rack up damage fairly quickly. It’s best to just spam attacks here, though, and focus on any enemies who have their sword sheathed, since their attacks can knock you down.

Combat Challenge 2¶

• Defeat 30 enemies within the time limit

The second Combat Challenge builds upon the first, with this one requiring you to defeat 30 enemies within 1 minute and 30 seconds. Thankfully, the enemies have less health here, when compared to the first challenge, and your equipment is also different. Your katana is the Ame-no-Murakumo and the firearm is the Vortex, either of which has no Seals, of course. The Vortex is the key here, as this weapon is quite powerful and has a fast fire rate. Due to there being a large number of enemies, it’s possible you might get swarmed a little bit, but this is nothing for this challenge.

Combat Challenge 3¶

• Use Brawler style to defeat all enemies within the time limit

This is definitely one of the more tougher challenges, with the main problems being the two Ninja and the armored enemy with the flaming sword. The Ninja are problems, since they move around quite a bit, so it’s hard to get good hits on them, plus they can throw projectiles at you that stun Ryoma for a few seconds. Of course, your attacks don’t do a lot of damage to the armored enemy, either, although you can just continually wail on it without it attacking or breaking the sequence. However, the biggest problem is that it will take a lot of attacks to whittle down the armored foe’s armor and health. There are also a few enemies with clubs, who have a little more health than the others.

The trick to winning this battle within the time limit is via a certain Heat Action. As soon as the battle begins, go after the normal enemies and try to build up your Heat gauge. You will want to try and lure the enemies over to the railing, since that will come into play in a little bit. Ideally, if you have a Ninja in range, do a heavy attack to try and knock them down, allowing you to get some good hits on them while they’re immobile. If the armored enemy is in your area, then the point of doing all this set up is to grab him, bring him to the railing and initiate the Heat Action to throw him over, into the pit area, instantly defeating him.

You can do this with other enemies, too, if needed, but the armored enemy is the first one that should go off the building, due to his immense health. The club enemies are another great candidate for tossing off the building, but the rest of the normal enemies, even the Ninja, can be combo’d to death. An alternate strategy is to use the Giant Swing Heat Action to damage more than a single enemy at a time. This is done by knocking an enemy down onto their back, then performing the Heat Action while standing at their feet.

Combat Challenge 4¶

• Use Swordsman style to defeat all enemies within the time limit

You are equipped with the Blade of the Shogun and must defeat 12 enemies within 40 seconds. Thankfully, all of the enemies here seem to be equipped with guns, so they will go down fairly quickly to your attacks (three to four normal hits should be fine). The only slight problem is that the enemies tend to scatter and move away from you during the battle, so you will do a lot of chasing. If you can get your Heat gauge up enough, there is a Heat Action that closes in on a ranged enemy quickly, so it might be good to use that. You could also do a quickstep towards an enemy, perform the Heat Action that appears, then rotate the left analog stick to toss the enemy when you see the buttons pop up during the initial Heat Action.

Combat Challenge 5¶

• Use Gunman style to defeat all enemies within the time limit

This is another slightly roadblock on the Combat Challenges list, for similar reasons to Combat Challenge 3. The Ninja here aren’t really a huge problem, but if they throw a projectile at you, Ryoma will be stunned for a few seconds, which will waste your precious time. The biggest issue is the armored enemy, of course, as your normal gun attacks will barely put a dent into the armor. Before doing anything else, though, your first course of action at the beginning will be to get rid of the two Ninja, as you can’t afford to be stunned by their projectiles.

Once you do that, you should just be firing on all normal enemies to build up your Heat Gauge. Upon doing that, then you should try to get a sight on the armored enemy and perform a Heat Action on him. Just make sure to hit the extra button that pops up to deal some extra damage. It should take two or three Heat Actions to remove the armor on him, exposing his spongy flesh to your normal bullets. If you do this quickly enough, then the rest of the challenge should be a simple aim, shoot and kill.

Combat Challenge 6¶

• Use Wild Dancer style to defeat all enemies within the time limit

You will have 1 minute and 30 seconds to defeat all 12 enemies, while using the Wild Dancer style. It should be noted that all of the enemies here are armored, so you will want to use your sword attacks to deplete that armor as quickly as possible. If you do this, then you make things easier on yourself, as you can just use the Phoenix (Circle/B) attack to deal some big damage to more than one enemy at a time. Just don’t forget to dodge after finishing that combo, since that makes it better to transition to your next set of attacks.

Note that there are two good Heat Actions you can do with the Wild Dancer style. One follows the simple evasion you can do, which hits multiple times and will likely instantly defeat any enemy without armor. The other one follows the second attack of the Phoenix combo, so keep an eye out for that. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any Heat Actions you can do that hits multiple enemies. Heat Actions do pause the timer, though, while the animation is playing out, so that helps a lot.

Combat Challenge 7¶

• Defeat all enemies within 15 seconds

If you didn’t do any other set of challenges yet, this will be the first one with the Weakest Ryoma designation. Note that you will be stuck with the Brawler style for this challenge, despite the game not outright telling you this in the description. This is because you are in the bathhouse for this battle, which is where you fought a boss with the same style. The challenge is a bit on the easier side, due to the enemies having really low health, meaning they will each go down in a few hits. There are seven enemies to defeat, and the most dangerous are the ones with the club and the one with the spear. That’s because they can knock you down easily, which wastes time and should this happen, you are likely not going to finish in time.

Combat Challenge 8¶

• Defeat all enemies within the time limit

This is another challenge, where you are weak, although you are free to use any style for it, unlike the previous challenge. You have one minute to defeat a total of 21 enemies and similar to the last one, the majority of the enemies here have little health. Since you aren’t restricted with your style, you can make short work of the enemies with the Gunman style, so use that to cut down most of the enemies here. Go from one end of the area, to the other end, gunning down the enemies, and you should have seven left at the end. These enemies have more health than the others, and will be found back at the beginning. You can stick to your gun here, still, as it’s probably the best weapon for the job.

Combat Challenge 9¶

• Escape from Kochi Castle within the time limit

You will find that this challenge is similar to the escape sequence during Chapter 1 of the main story. You will be escaping from Kochi Castle, although you will only have five minutes to do so for the actual challenge here. There will be plenty of battles along the way, so it’s important to remember that time might be a little tight, depending on how the battles actually go. You definitely want to focus on a single weapon type, and it might be Gunman here, since you have the Vortex weapon (despite no Seals on it).

After clearing out the first room, find the door to break open and continue to the next section, where you will have a miniboss. If you can, it’s probably best to try and use your Heat Action on him to quickly deplete his health, since you might be stuck on him longer than wanted. The next hallway will be filled with normal enemies, then you will have an enemy wielding an object, blocking the next hallway. Unfortunately, he has armor, so you will want to use your sword to break it, then you can sit back and use Gunman to get rid of him.

In the room just beyond him, there will be a cutscene, where you jump down an opening and have to hit a quick-time event. Upon making the landing, bust open the nearby door to enter a large, open area, with a bunch more enemies. If you want, this is another great spot for the Gunman style, since it allows you to avoid having to chase after enemies. Continue fighting through the following hallways, until you enter another room with an armored enemy. Do the same thing as before, where you use your katana to quickly remove the armor, then use whatever you want after to defeat him.

Clear out the rest of the enemies in the room, then pass through the door at the opposite end, where you go upstairs to meet with more enemies. There is one final armored enemy in the mix, so be wary of that. Once you defeat all of the enemies in this room, find the door and break it open, then you will find the exit just beyond that.

Combat Challenge 10¶

• Defeat all enemies within the time limit

The final test in the Combat Challenge set will have you defeating a bunch of enemies within a time limit. This sounds simple enough, but you cannot get hit at all during this, since you have almost no health left. One hit from an enemy will literally cause you to fail, so this makes everything but Gunman style a moot choice. Thankfully, the enemies are also in one-hit defeat mode, so the timer of 2 minutes is really not going to be a problem at all.

The best thing to do here is to simply hold the Stance button, then slowly move around while firing with your gun. You will want to keep an eye on the minimap in the lower right at all times, as someone sneaking up on you and hitting you from behind will make you fail. Specifically, the biggest culprits are the spear-wielding enemies, as they have a longer reach and their one-two stabbing combo is incredibly annoying. Keep on the move at all times and just keep firing, with the auto-aim hopefully taking out targets you can’t really see for you.