Shadows are a miniboss enemy in DMC that cannot be damaged from physical attacks, instead damaging yourself if you swing at them. They can only be hit by gunfire, and when damaged enough from it, will expose its core, allowing itself to be damaged with your melee attacks.
Note that the gunfire to expose its core does not deal damage to its health bar, only the damage to the core will effect its health and get it closer to dying.

*The Shadow's Core

Once the core is damaged enough, the Shadow will become enraged and begin to try and grab Dante repeatedly. You can tell the Shadow is enraged due to its color changing from black to red. Once he is in this state, the Shadow will not take any more damage. Instead of taking damage, the Shadow activates a timer of about 9-10 seconds. Once the timer runs out, the shadow will self destruct.

*Shadow's Self Destruction

The best advice I've found for easily beating Shadows is from gamer "DYSFUNCTIONALDlLDO".

Originally posted by DYSFUNCTIONALDlLDO:

If you do nothing, the Shadow won't attack very often. It'll only do one of three attacks: long face spike, spin and drop from the air, or spikes poking from the ground. It'll start getting aggressive once you attack it or if you get too close to it's face.

When it gets aggressive, it'll run towards you and it can either roar and bite you, or it'll just bite you immediately after reaching you. Jump to dodge both possibilities the moment it reaches you.

Sometimes, it won't even run. It'll just become flat and glide really quickly towards you instead. It'll bite you the moment it reaches you.

It can also hop and then become flat and glide really slowly towards you. When this happens, it'll roar and then grab you instead of bite. If you're low on health this will guarantee your death so be sure to dodge it. Once you dodge the grab, it WILL try to bite (unless it gets scared) so always be prepared to dodge twice.

Now, if you don't want to deal with its aggressiveness, you can fight it very calmly as well. When you wait and it does the face spike attack, you can simply just jump straight up and you'll land right onto the spike. When you do that, the Shadow will be in shock for a while and lose all defense, meaning if you shoot it you can actually DIRECTLY damage its core. If you do enough damage you will turn the Shadow red immediately without even meleeing it. Even if you don't do enough damage to kill it in one go, it'll still lose a lot of defense so most likely the next bullet you fire will immediately reveal its core. I would do two DT Stingers to turn the Shadow red.

Another piece of information he gives to fight Shadows is with Devil Trigger. Once the Shadow is enraged and starts to try and grab you, if you are in Devil Trigger, you are invulnerable to its grab.

Thank you so much for reading my guide! If it has helped you, please like (and even favorite if you are feeling so kind)!

Resources that I used to research this guide:

• Shadows Wiki[devilmaycry.fandom.com]
  
• DYSFUNCTIONAL's Detailed Post
  
• Snaw's Linebreak Design

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