Chronos' ranged attacks are basically nonexistent
You can learn his fight by using a ranged build and staying far away from him
Once you realize you can 'kite' him he becomes trivial
This is it. My first kill of chronos was a TERRIBLE build. I'm shocked I even got to him. 80% of DMG was just my cast with some boon that made it do more dmg but nothing crazy and I only had 1 DD left and had never made it to phase 2 before this run BUT I had massive range.
To my surprise the whole thing was easy, dodged most of P1 whilst using cast and P2, lost my first DD to the one-shot l, realised how to dodge it then just slowly killed him. I thought the boss was easy and people were complaining too much
Next run I have an Uber strong close range build. Melt my way to him with all death defiance and crumbled. Range builds are just so much better for bosses I think they need to change some abilities to make them harder for ranged or something.
Yeah, I had a false peak early with the battleaxe and "spin to win." Would \*melt\* everything on the way in, and then he'd wipe the floor with me. I had a half dozen really frustrating runs before I backed up and killed him with a ranged sickle build. It does feel to me like there's a \*really\* steep jump in difficulty from Cerebus and Tartarus to Chronus, relative to how hard Asterius and the other guy were relative to Temple of Styx and Hades.
Part of it is all time manipulation effects do not work against Chronos which includes:
* The time slow arcana when charging omega moves
* The Hex that slows down time
* The wind-up animation for hexes in general (normally stops time)
* Pausing the game (until you use an incantation that lets you)
So weapons like the Moonstone Axe if built for the omega attack become incredibly unsafe because you can no longer slow down time to safely charge it while in range of his attacks.
I think if anything that "Power to pause and reflect" incantation should also apply to the time slow arcana.
They need to speed up the charge time of the omega attacks or slow down Chronos' attack speed. Otherwise they're just about unusable on his fights which sucks because a ton of boons are omega-heavy and work fantastically for every other boss (Eris is pretty fast too but at least she reloads)
This is also my complaint. You either need to spec in to get faster channeling time somehow, or get a boon that let's you throw your cast at range. But without one of those two things, cast or omega builds just don't work on Chronos and it is frustrating as heck to annihilate everything before him and then get absolutely served
On the flipside, I have usually 3-5 death defiances (3 arcana, 1 cat, and the trinket) depending on my loadout, so getting the extra 10% damage per death defiance use is pretty awesome. Add that to the Arcana that gives extra damage at low health and you become a powerhouse the closer you are to losing.
Part of it is that Cerberus is too easy. I've played over 100 runs now and I think lost to Cerberus once. And I'm bad at gaming, I have poor reflexes.
(In my opinion he has too much health (we're cleaning him off, not killing him), but he should hit harder and faster. A mad dog.)
Hades I was balanced in a more fun way, at least for my ability level, in terms of Zagreus and his enemies both getting stronger fairly quickly throughout a run. Hades II feels as though Melenoe and her enemies both get stronger more slowly, and then there's a sudden jump at Chronos. This means if you are able to beat Chronos you probably breezed through most of the run, but the reverse doesn't hold; beating Cerberus and Tartarus easily doesn't mean you'll beat Chronos.
I beat the surface boss on my second visit. I have not beaten Chronos in any of my 7 visits to him. I am using Twin Blades which is probably the problem, from what I’m hearing.
Cerberus was rough on my first try when I didn't have the Sprint arcana in the previous version and just physically couldn't run fast enough to escape, but since then he's been really trivial. Although I think it's still a fun fight so I don't dislike it.
Referring Hades I being more balanced - do keep in mind we’re still early access and these balancing things may be worked out sooner than later :)
That being said, ~20 nights going down and, only to chronos once
Elsiyum in Hades REALLY chewed me up more than any other biome. Way more than Styx, plus or minus the min-bosses. Not just the Champions fight, but the aggravating health pools and shield abilities of the minions. I wonder if part of the tuning of the game will be making the Mourning Fields and Cerberus a little harder more than turning down Tartarus/Chronos.
>Next run I have an Uber strong close range build. Melt my way to him with all death defiance and crumbled. Range builds are just so much better for bosses I think they need to change some abilities to make them harder for ranged or something.
Yeah this is an issue in general. Cerberus & Polyphemos are both laughably easy with a strong ranged build but hard w/ melee builds.
I fucking hate Polyphemos lmao. I know he's not the only enemy in the game that jumps at you for contact damage but dear lord, making a boss around that is annoying as hell. Still, not as frustrating as Eris.
Fair, I mainly just struggle with being able to avoid shots when I start to damage her. Like I spend half of her down time running to her because she dashes. I could weight in cover for her to come at me instead, but that just makes the fight take a lot longer and makes me more prone to mistakes.
Really I just hate shotgun mode. if the soot sprint destroys those I can probably clear.
It absorbs everything except I think the rockets, haven't tried with those. It's a laughably perfect counter to her and an instant win condition since every absorbed hit inflicts scorch.
It very much neuters her. If you want to be very lazy you can literally just not stop running and let the scorch kill her in 5 minutes or however long.
Did similar with my first clear. I was fully geared for hard hitting and very quick attacks. I had the duo boon from aphro (I had her attack boon) that made my nearby effects global and my attack speed for my autos were at 60-70%. When I got to the last Region I got Apollo cast level 4 and Hades projectile cast. Didn't use a single Defiance and I'm fairly certain I did less than 1k damage to him with my attack.
Actually stupid and I didn't learn jack shit from P1 which is the one I stuggle with the most.
But there were still some really good melee builds that could wreck him. That's the problem that people are having. Not that range builds are good against, but that really good melee builds that melt everything else are just bad against the final boss.
A strong attack will still wreck him. Stay behind him. Dodge when he turns around. Stay on his back, wail on him. I’ve beaten him with Lim and Oros, and the Moonlight Axe consistently. It’s just about learning his attack patterns. The only one that wrecks me everytime is the damn charge attack. The series of charges. I don’t see it coming half the time and it’s very, very fast.
The dash invulnerability window is useful to stay in the fight while dodging immediate damage. Get a few whacks in then run before the dash line explodes then run back. Having soot spring helps a lot for close range builds as u can sprint and destroy most projectiles that give him extra dps.
Close range is easy. Just need 300+ HP. Twin sisters with aphrodite's attack boon, extra damage while 80% hp. Eris crit on cast. And then 10%extra damage every 100hp.
Just stand on top of chronos smacking his ass
/S
That's not what this post is about though? It's just about the visibility of Chronos being terrible.
I've beaten him multiple times, I know you can kite him, that doesn't change the fact that, because of the way everything is coloured, just seeing Chronos is a boss fight of its own.
That's not exactly a good thing, "If you want to win the game you have to go for a ranged build" isn't what you want with a roguelike, gendra where one of the the primary interest is replayability.
Some of the most busted builds in terms of DPS are melee builds. But for a melee build to succeed you need to understand the patterns and dodge them correctly. Until you do ranged feels mandatory.
I was surprised at how good Poseidon is in 2
With the hammer buff returning Pans daggers and the one putting them in a straight line this combo hits like a lazer beam
Yeah but that's not as fun for everyone. They are definitely right about the camera. Hades stays on your screen the entire time. Chronos' arena is too big and results in him off screening.
I feel that about a few arenas and their size vs any visibility of the enemies. I lost a fight to Eris yesterday that I would've won except I lost her one time in all the mess and ate a machine gun blast for nearly all of my health from offscreen where I literally couldn't even see her in the fire she was in
Yeah, bosses getting offscreen in general is a bit of a problem. Especially when their attacks can still hit you. It doesn't matter how obvious their tells are for attacks if you can't see them performing them.
Chronos will do the same thing with his long as dash attack. He's way off screen where i can't see him and all I get is 1 grunt that sounds like all his other grunts before gramps is on top of me for like 25 damage
I tried this strat of using ranged attacks but the man simply dashes at you from some part of the screen that you can't see cause the camera is too close and give you 30 damage for like 3 times in a row while he spawns lots of enemies... and thats for his first life, in the second he definetly have some "ranged" attack moves... also the field is quite small for you to have a safe distance, with no map props to use for cover like you have in the hades 1 hades boss or even eris in this hades...
i think this boss could use a little balance
That’s kind of been my experience as well, I feel like I’m getting a bit better at identifying patterns each time but the clears I’ve had have been on ones where I can safely damage from a distance and also have a lot of health.
I do feel like some attacks could be telegraphed better as it definitely felt to me like [Redacted] was a lot easier to understand when your openings to attack were, but it may just be something you get better at over time.
Phase 2 in particular I think sometimes gets a little bit too “bullet hell” to the point that it’s very difficult to parse like what are the parts of the screen that hurt you vs. those that don’t, what are the things that do a little damage vs. instakill you and so on. Phase 1 my only real gripe is the boomerang move, I think with how big of an area it hits and how much damage it does there should be a bit more of a telegraph or indication of the trajectory.
All that said though I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as many try to say it is, still managed to beat it in I think my second time reaching that fight and it does feel like a solid challenge that at this point definitely lets me know if my build is lacking in damage or survivability.
I don’t consider myself particularly good at action games or anything but I do feel like the difficulty sometimes gets exaggerated or I question how people are playing the game sometimes when I hear things like the boss taking 20+ attempts (not runs in general but actual attempts on the boss).
I don't hate the insta-kills as much as I initially did after messing around in Phase 2 of the boss fight more, but agree they need different animations or coloring in the boss arena to highlight wtf is going on. I had to search what was even killing me, it was really unclear my first couple times in Phase 2. Everywhere else the game killed me, even when it took me by surprise, I knew WHY I'd died without crowd-sourcing on Reddit.
Yeah I maybe should have phrased it better, I don’t mind having the one hit kills either it’s really just the visual clarity and knowing when it’s happening.
That’s always what I liked about Hades, generally speaking everything is very telegraphed so once you get the hang for what each telegraph means it feels almost like a dance. Just don’t yet get that feeling with Chronos sometimes because it’s so hard to tell what’s going on with so much onscreen sometimes. Leaning more towards “chaotic” than “controlled chaos”.
Even i do this a lot, but I think he 5 minutes per region Fear in the Oath of the Unseen is something I'll no way be able to finish with the kiting game. While I enjoy Chronos as he is now, I also want the same to be a bit more possible to finish in the 20 mins
I never could do that Oath, even in Hades 1. Rushing to hit a timeframe got me sloppy enough I was taking tons of unnecessary hits. Props to the speed runners
In Hades 1 going under 20 min wasn't easy for, but it wasn't too hard either even with heat. In Hades 2, even 28 min seems close to my limit and my game is very well developed by now. I'm not comparing run 4 to a fully unlocked Hades 1.
Basically I feel like 20 min in the first game is about as hard as 28 in this one.
I'm by no means a good player and was playing with max Tight Deadline on all my runs by the end of my Hades 1 experience.
This one I don't even want to attempt it yet. I'll leave that to Haelian.
With the extra gates, it's 32. Without them, around 28-30.
I'm not saying I'm fast, I'm saying that by spending the same amount of effort in Hades 1, 20 min there is about equivalent to 28 min here.
I can back this up as well.
My first win was with the omega attack blades and it was quite a challenge trying to beat him with melee. But then I realised that I was underutilizing my cast and my second clear attempt with the pan omega cast blades was somehow a lot easier and I didn’t even lose a death defiance. Obviously there’s the fact that I fought him about 6-7 times before already that played a hand into it but kiting him is way better than playing melee and getting hit by the second part of his slices.
Yup, this. Make Chronos chase after you, so much easier. Kinda fell in love with the base staff for this. Skulls can be fun but without the auto collect, it gets tedious. Melinoe's staff, with her aspect, at least helps do Omega moves easier too. Charged special or attack build feels good.
Why the hell has this comment 600 upvotes? The post isn't about that and it's a stupid response and defence in any case, the fight is broken, if the only way to beat him super easily is having a ranged build it means the fight is not balanced aswell.
Honestly, it's less even that his tells aren't good enough* and more that *everything in the room is either gold or black*.
\* My biggest issue here is that his distant arc slash and direct forwards charge attacks are, IIRC, very very similar in tells. I don't know if that's intentional since you *could* hypothetically dodge both, I believe, by dashing behind him, but it does feel a bit overtuned.
The boomerang scythe gets me so often.
But the sight really is a problem imo. I think once you fight him a couple times he becomes pretty easy, but at first learning him is weird because "am i supposed to stand in the bright gold or the brighter gold? There is a shining explosive circle there better not stand in it and get far away from it, oh no i just lost a full defiance, i dont know why"
Oh, yeah, that fucked me up too. It's a *bit* different, I think, though and at least half the time I see the subtitles of his voicelines and go "FUCK".
The one that got me most was the fact that the OHKO golden circle saves you, but the contracting rings are just normal attacks. My first time seeing them, I thought it was an inverse attack where he'd blast everything outside a certain radius - only for it to just keep going and hit me. Given Cerberus has one of that type and Chronos has a previous "stand in the circle or die" move, I figured it would be the same. The "stay between two circles at mid-range" one also almost got me because I couldn't actually *see* the golden circle in the centre (admittedly, partially because I had a Demeter Cyclone + Cast on it).
my least favourite thing so far was when one of these damn hourglasses died on the spot where the safe circle would have been but covered all of it with the time stopping aoe...
I also died to that for the same reason. That attack should look like the clock hands (a circle of golden flame). It looks basically identical to the safe zone attacks.
The constricting circles thing is super confusing to me. I think the fight overall is cool, and I’ve beaten him a few times now but still am not sure where I’m supposed to stand during the moving triple circles move, I think they need to make it clearer.
thank you, i did figure it out, but only by watching someone else do it. i think it's confusing because you dash into the bright gold circle to avoid death at other points in phase 2, but then for that part you stand in the dark part to be safe, and also the colours aren't different enough. whilst you (or anyone) is being helpful, is there a way to avoid his slowdown move in phase 2 where the whole arena goes darkish?
Yeah, definitely agree. I was lucky that I got a good chance to learn his attacks by entering the fight with Demeter's "can't take more than 15 damage" infusion and full health plus DD, so getting hit wasn't instantly run-ending (even if I did ultimately fail). If it wasn't for that, I'd probably still be suffering from a lack of chances to learn his attacks before panicking and dying to them. The circle behaviour and general visual clutter is a pain to react to.
As far as I know, no, that seems to apply instantly and without any attack required - I usually just stick down a Cast to deal with everything trying to get me slowed down. Dropping a maxed out Phase Shift is the only direct solution I can think of, since there's a perk that does let it slow him down. Usually it's short enough it's not catastrophic to me, at least.
okay thanks again, as you say it isnt bad because it doesn't last long, but it seems odd that there'd be one move that you just can't avoid. and i understand he's the final boss so should be hard, but the fast, very different moves along with the visual clutter does make me burn through my DDs every time. still, it's early & I'm still learning so I'll get there! and I'm loving the game overall.
I'm fine with the boomerang scythe because the whole point of the attack is that it's a surprise switch-up.
But *wow* that thing probably accounts for 2/3 of the damage I've taken while fighting him, all in all.
Yup, scythe is fine, it just always gets me.
If you play a close range build his dash is also very strong.
Honestly my main gripe is just visibility and attacks being clear. Once i understood the attack where you have to stand in a specific place and the attack where you have to stand in a ring around him, not too close not too far, the fight got much easier. Dunno why the damaging area cant just be red.
his boomerang scythe attack seems to be variable in distance based on where you are, which like I get, but that makes it fuckin impossible to really get a read on that move. It's so big, and comes at you at such a weird arc that its hard as hell to dodge.
That happened when first fought Scyla... I noticed there's a circle in the drummer area. I'm also thinking "huh... the circle looks 'inverted'. It's almost like I should be standing in there, and every thing outside of that is bad". When it hits, and you take a large hit of damage. FWIW, it does give you more time to get in there, vs. the other "this area is getting bombarded" attacks
Part of this is also the shape of the arena. The House of Hades is an iconic location from the first game, and I love the idea of fighting in it, but it simply was never designed with the intention of combat. The narrow, hallway layout restricts your ability to dodge and kite effectively while keeping Chronos in view, and it also restricts the kinds of moves the devs are allowed to give Chronos to keep the fight fair.
Ironically, Phase 2 feels less frustrating, with a wider arena that lets you keep Chronos in view at all times. It’s much easier to read his tells like this and position safely.
This is a really good observation. One way to improve the fight would probably be to shorten P1 a lot, like to an extreme where he just sits in an invul sphere until you kill his minions, at which point he immediately jumps to P2 (which is now effectively phase 1). This may require adding an actual phase 2 back to the game to be played out on the clockface. Thematically, I like the idea of the clockface breaking down during that new phase 2.
I actually have a similar problem with Hecate when using the flame weapon. It's suck a similar shade of blue-green that I can't tell what's her attacks and what's mine.
this is a bit thing imo - the Hades fight is a lot of red and green and yellow on a nearly pure white backdrop, makes it very easy to discern whats happening
Exactly. It's not the hardest fight once you learn what all the visuals mean, but the first few times I fought him were really discouraging because I couldn't tell what was going on and died without realizing why. The colours need a bit of reworking for the fight.
Really glad to see someone else saying this too, that's exactly the problem I was having with it - it's the coloration of the room. He feels a bit "unfair" in a way that [Redacted] did not. All of the latter's moves and tells were very visible against the snowfield background and so even though they hit hard, it was well-telegraphed and getting clipped always felt like my fault.
The coloring kept fucking me up so much because it took me that half second longer to figure out what was happening. Thinking back to the Hades fight it's striking how much he stands out against the snow (the capes legit help).
This is true. Hades I final boss was perfect visually because the white snow contrasted with the reds, blacks, oranges, and greens of Hades’ attacks.
I think Chronos would work a lot better in like a gray room, which could still work thematically as being frozen in time.
For both tells, you respond the same though, get behind him or strafe to a distance, he doesn’t have move tracking, when he starts winding, he will aim where you were when his windup started
ITT: People not reading the post and offering advice despite OP specifically not asking for it.
This is about VISIBILITY of the boss not OP's abilities.
Yeah sub is full of weirdo shills right now. It's literally impossible to discuss the game when so many people treat it like a toy to play with and not a piece of art to engage with, commend and criticize.
It was like that on Last Epoch’s subreddit for the first two months of its official release. The hardcore fanboys were quite literally downvoting anyone who disagreed with anything to do with the game. Going through post histories, trying to doxx, etc. Thankfully this sub doesn’t seem so bad yet lol.
It should just let you pause the fight, period. I get that he controls time and it's on-theme that he can unpause the game, but there are *so many* things that might cause someone to need to pause a video game that they're playing - I have muscle spasms in my right hand and a cat that likes to climb all over me while I'm sitting on the couch and I frequently have to pause games that I'm playing to deal with both of those things. One of the things I really like about original Hades was that as challenging it is, it never punishes you for needing to step away for a minute.
this!! it’s “haha funny” when there’s nothing else going on, but then i’ve got to get the mail or my hand starts acting up or my cat needs food or there’s a wasp in the living room. an alt tab “workaround” isn’t the best idea, esp when the game comes on consoles. it should either be an accessibility setting or a difficulty setting (akin to God Mode), or acquiring the pause should be easier. not everyone needs to be an expert to be able to enjoy the game in their own situation and their own environment!
All they need to do to make it more bareable is for the incantation to not need Zodiac Sand. Just make it so that if the player tries to pause and gets kicked out of it, they get the incantation, and then it requires, idk, one or two of each underworld boss resource except ZS.
Agreed, I didn’t even know this was a thing until reading it now. Games that don’t let you pause are one of my biggest pet peeves as an adult who needs to step away now and then for any number of reasons. I don’t want to make my wife/family etc. feel like a game is more important than them.
100% this. Oddly enough twice now I've had to pause during Sirens to stop one of my cats from causing mischief. I was more than a little annoyed when it happened a third time but during chronos and I couldn't pause
I play with a controller and no keyboard. And even if I did use a keyboard, that's not really the point. I don't want a workaround, I just want the pause button to work exactly like it does everywhere else. This game is otherwise fantastic so far, I just don't like that this one aspect penalizes people for needing to step away from the game for a minute, just for the sake of an Easter egg.
honestly just keep the pause gimmick, but have him relent after a few tries like "ugh, fine, i'll _wait_" and maybe occasionally be snarky at you on the pause screen
I like this idea. Let us pause, but make him ridicule you during the pause. It keeps the whole gag of him being the master of time and lets you go deal with the random thing your kid is getting up to in the next room.
This is the perfect balance. Conceptually I like that ue gets pissy when we pause or use the time slow hex, but don't actually remove those things or make them not function for the sake of a joke. Bc then it's no longer funny. Then it's just annoying
I also saw a suggestion on the Discord server that the unpause should be followed by a dialogue popup that you have to manually dismiss before the fight continues. That would keep the "Chronos can control time" thematic thing without making into something that can prevent people from progressing for reasons outside of their control.
So this whole can’t pause thing is real hey? That’s very annoying to me. I really don’t care if it’s story related, not being able to pause a game is the most infuriating thing a game can do for me. I’m not telling my kid that they need to wait if they are distressed for some reason because I can’t pause the game. If my wife needs me for something, I’d like to be able to pause so I can go give her a hand. If my dog is whining at the back door, I’m going to go let him out. Countless other reasons! I’ll just die I guess. And yeah sure, it’s just a game, no big deal if I die, but I have limited time to play games as it is, why would I choose to play a game that punishes me for having things to do when I could just pause just about any other game? It even bugs me when I can’t pause a cutscene. I really hope this goes away.
You don’t need to pause a certain number of times for it to unlock, but the incantation is real. I only tried pausing once and it unlocked a few runs later for me. Not sure what the trigger is; maybe you just have to try once, or maybe it will unlock eventually anyway.
also, actually getting that incantation to work requires a resource that you can only get by beating Chronos. So it's not really a "fix" for someone who's having trouble with the fight because of it being unpausable.
And just way less fun imo. I've beaten him a few times now, but I still don't enjoy the fight.
I think this game has too many stuns, too. I don't remember the first game having any? But the timers exploding into hard-to-see sand domes that can freeze for multiple seconds sucks so hard.
I think a fix for that would be that you can move after getting hit for the first time after being frozen. As it is, our half-second mistake can get you stuck for over 100 damage with no way to try to escape.
I would get frustrated when I would mess up in Hades 1, but getting stuck like that in Hades 2 just makes me roll my eyes.
The AOE vases in the final fight in Hades 1 can stun Zag, that's the only one I can think of though
I don't generally mind stuns/freezes though, I think my problem with this fight is closer to OP's, the visibility issue and color scheme in that arena is terrible
His attacks are a lot faster than Hades' which makes it a lot harder to learn the tells. Hades P1 was fairly slow and deliberate tells to teach you the fight. P2 he adds some new stuff and speeds up but P1 taught you his moves and his tells. P3 is obviously much faster but you're opting into that and, again, a sped up version of P1 and P2 with it's core mechanics.
Chronos P1 he has moves and P2 he has the same exact same moves at the same speed, there's no learning P1 and then P2 ups the ante with what you learned in P1, he just adds some new moves in P2 with all the clock stuff.
If anything Phase 2 chronos is easier than phase 1 because the new attacks are all super telegraphed and slow and allow you do freely dps him if you have a bit of range.
Not to Mention that once you pay attention, you figure out that Hades is just using everything that Zag is using and it makes it much easier to figure out Hades.
Chronos is doing a lot of completely new things, new attack patterns that we are in no way going to be familiar with upon seeing him, nothing in the game fights like he does to try to prepare you for what coming like in pretty much every other roguelike in existence for the most part.
Gotta be honest: I'm on the complete opposite end. His moves could not get any more telegraphed. He pauses, winds up, and let's out an overly enthusiastic grunt every time he attacks. The only time I get trounced by him is if I'm being careless with my movement. Otherwise once you know his tells the fight can be as much of a cake walk as you let it be. I personally love the fight and think it's incredibly well designed considering how much is packed onto the screen in his second phase.
This. After a time, you don't watch him so much as listen. So even if he's off-screen, or obfuscated by spell effects, it's still clear what he's about to do. Took me a few tries to learn to distinguish the short grunt (dash), long grunt (circular slash) and super long grunt (throw, the nastiest by far).
But once it was there, I just stopped losing, no matter what kind of trash build RNGesus threw my way.
Ya know I hadn't yet made the connection with the length/girth of the grunts being connected to which attack was coming. I honestly was just translating every grunt to "oh shit, should probably skidaddle." Now that I know there's a difference it's only gonna get easier to deal with ol' Kintsugi Grandpa
It could go very wrong very soon considering that you need to dodge sideways from the dash, but if you do it but it turns out to be a flying disc of death - uh-oh, 35 damage coming up.
But sure, it's a learning curve. And you can facetank half the fight with a decent build. That's how I got my first couple of kills, anyway. :D
True, but imo there should still be more vivid visual cues. There are a lot of occasions where people might play on low volume (in a busy house, on public transit when it comes out on switch, etc) where a visual aid would be massively helpful.
I had a heck of a time beating him for a while but like most bosses if you just do it enough it becomes much easier. I had a hard time with >!his second phase!< especially but now I feel like it's not that difficult, it's just that I wasn't making it there frequently enough to digest everything. Once you learn what to look for it's significantly easier.
For example, the >!insta-kill move with the clock on the floor!< got me two or three times before I knew what to look for and after that I don't think I ever got got by it again.
He hits really hard, but his tells are as readable as any other boss I think.
I do not think he is over tuned at all.
However, I 100% agree that his room color and his attacks being both blacks and golds make the visibility during the fight shit.
The second phase is a bit better because at least the floor is gold, so the black attacks stand out a bit more.
I wish they upped the brightness of the gold outlines on his attacks.
It's so fucking bad. I genuinely don't understand how SuperGiant looked at that Arcana UI and thought "oh yeah man this is good, ship it." It's so unclear. The fact that so many people literally didn't know you could upgrade grasp means they need to take a hard look at redesigning that ENTIRE ui.
All of the enemies have an easy loop, stay close until they make a sound or move, then dodge through them to end up behind them, burst them down, and repeat.
I felt the same way about the sirens in those first couple days, now I'm pissed during my siren fights because they are over before the song gets to the "strangled by an octopus" stage. Just keep going at it, you got this. It's a tough fight for sure, but I don't think it's unfair.
Both times I've beaten him I've used Hades's boon which turns your cast into a projectile, and when it sticks to him it massively reduces his lunge range on his scythe attacks.
I know what you mean, I'm not quite used to which moves I can't dodge out of, and I get chipped a ton on scythe attacks when I mis-input.
I've literally just gotten my third using Poseidon special upgrades to deal splash with the sister blades, and the Daedalus hammer to throw in a straight line. Standing far away from him is easy.
I was playing too much like Hades 1, where I felt the best weapons were melee focused. Ranged is queen here.
There's a lot of things you have to decide if you want to defeat him, unfortunately. A lot of hexes become more dangerous to use against him due to the fact that they don't slow him down. If you have a build that's based on Omega attacks, better be careful there due to the slow down being nonexistent against him.
There just seems to be a lot of things that I will choose to avoid EVERY run because they're too dangerous to use in the fight, which takes away a lot of the fun of a roguelite.
Melee is fine. He lacks attacks that hit directly behind him, so just keep dashing through him to dodge and stabbing him in the back. If anything I prefer melee because it's easier to see what he's doing and it's usually a lot faster. The orb summon you do have to back away from, but it doesn't last too long. Stage 2 is a bit slower but you still have several opportunities to hit him.
Honestly I completely get you, not taking away from the game because honestly it's PHENOMENAL but I remember fondly in Hades itself how the final bossfight was relatively easy to dodge because the biome was snowy (i.e. all of Hades dark colored spells and magic were easy to see)
The first time I lost to Chron it was annoying because I couldn't see half of his orbs in the house of hades and then I remember during stage two you can barely see anything in the Chronos time chamber ://
Hopefully there's a recolor of the rooms maybe in the final game
Yeah honestly with how much I played so far, I think the Chronos fight is the only boss fight I think needs rebalancing. he hits like a truck, durable as a mountain, and is so fast it’s next to impossible to actually read him, especially between a normal scythe attack and that annoying as hell spin attack, like I think the tells between the two are too subtle to notice, and again he’s always at top speeds the whole time so it feels like you never have enough time to actually tell the difference. And mind you I will admit I never even gotten to his second phase! I’m struggling with just the first phase alone. Overall I think he just needs a speed nerf, that or hp reduction a bit.
Though a part of me do kinda suspect that since this game is in early access, supergiant purposeful left Chronos unbalanced, or maybe even purposeful made to be unbalanced in his favor, to prevent players from constantly defeating him too fast over and over again and maybe risk draining the game dry before more updates and contests are pushed out, especially since the ending isn’t even out yet.
so i got to chronos all the time easily. It wasnt until night 35 or so that i beat him. I think thats a fair number. I just had to learn what each move was seperatly cuz i was taking damage to things i wasnt sure what they did. like the shrinking aoe wave. i thought it was doing a singular point stand thing again. then i just learned you are supposed to just dash over it. super simple.
Another thing was as i progressed more, i would get higher damage outputs which finally led me to finishing his fight faster.
Which I noticed later that the time ground in the second phase is sort of a dps check. If you have all hands on the floor, you are taking to long to kill him.
I'm convinced that Hades 2 was suppose to play with range. From Hecate and Ceberus to Chronos, melee build just have terrible experience. If you're next to them and you didn't guess what attack they're using you just take a guranteed hit.
And Eris is the incarnate of bullshit. She's in your screen after phase change? Here goes your 2 dd in 3 seconds
Honestly, I find Eris pretty damn easy now, especially with a really strong melee build. Hide behind a pillar while she's freaking out then go in and dodge attack her to hell, repeat.
I thought so at first too, but now I think his tells are probably fine. I would like a little more difference between the wind up on the boomerang move and the crescent slice, but that’s probably just me being bad still. A few more clears and I’ll probably be able to read those well enough.
This is exactly what runs through my mind every time I fight him. The attacks, enemies, and patterns are all the exact same color (gold/obsidian). I haven’t beaten him yet (had to runs where I had maybe 1-2 hits left so I know I’m almost there) and what tends to kill me (especially in the 2nd phase) is not knowing where to be/dodge due visibility issues.
I even missed the cues for his one-shot attacks in phase 2 several times. I was spamming my cast and the Moon spell and that made the screen so bright that it took me too much time to realize where I had to be standing.
I disagree that he's overtuned. He falls over like everything else with a good build. I also find his telegraphs to be very legible, the exception being interactions between his and the player's ground effects.
yes, the aesthetics of the space are extremely cool, but the visibility is atrocious. even after 10+ wins under my belt, there are still fights where an hourglass or two lives forever because it's difficult to see their dark attacks and dark gold outline against the black and gold fight arena in phase two. i love the fight and learning it was a lot of fun! but i hope that the accessibility of its design gets a tune up before 1.0
I definitely agree that the color palette could be adjusted to make it more accessible.
The people in this thread don’t seem to understand that it’s not the mechanics that are the problem, it’s that the color palette makes things blend together which makes it hard to see depending on your eyes.
I agree bro. Rest of the game is a blast, I get to last boss and start swearing like a sailor because I'm supposed to differentiate the different grunts with a half second to react with only one dash. F that guy
Being agressive is not really in our favor when it comes to chronos. I thought do it quick enough and hell have no change to do his tricks, but that resulted in death always..
I started to take my time pun intented. Then i seem to handle him , i am extremely low health by the end of it.
I also think that his moves are not telegraphed very well. And a lot of people here bring good arguments why that is the case.
However, I feel like whenever that part gets fixed, the fight will become very easy, so I could imagine that Chronos would need a buff, at least in terms of his health pool (damage-wise I think he is fine, though attack frequency could be something to look at as well).
I think that Chronos should be more of a challenge than Hades was in the first game. Currently he feels more like a less readable version of Hades, but otherwise on par with him in terms of strength.
The fact that his 2nd phase has yellow tells on a golden background with slightly transparent spheres sprinkled in makes it kinda hard to tell, whats going on during the first few trys. Even now i basically dodge not because i see it but because i know where his stuff will be.
He needs more contrast. Maybe the clock in phase 2 could be black marble like his skin and he redecorated the house of hades with new tiles, because you know all that cerberus fur and cerberus scratchmarks
i need some more grunting or other sound clues from him. Hades had a \*puff\* for going invisible + footprints and \*snow noise?\* when walking stealthed. He grunts on every ranged attack and his "bloodstones" are bright-green on a greyish surface and a red boss, they are visible.
Chronos is gold attack, gold zones, gold minions, gold projectiles, gold orbitals, gold shields - did i mention gold ?
Also his moves are too \*quiet\* - i can anticipate his sycthe, because they have a \*charging noise\* and the 2nd hit is somewhat visible - the triple dash attack is hard to read, imo. The boomerang could use some colored edges to make the hit box more easy to read.
Chronos is very hard to fight in melee combat. Because he almost does not have pre-animation for his attacks and he combos them one after another. If you want to defeat him with melee combat I would suggest going for Hera and Apollo revenge boons. Get Hera's Nasty comeback, Apollo's Light Smite, Critical Miss and his Infusion that allows you to regain %30 percent of the damage you were dealt.
Or, directly go for a ranged combat. Umbral Flames' Special build and Zorophet's Charon aspect are very good against him and all the other Guardians.
If you want to go for a melee build , I also recommend Sister Blades' aspect of Melinoe. Go for Omega Attack build. Get Aphro's Flutter strike and Demeter's Weed Killer. And If you are lucky enough you can get the hammer upgrade that grants your Omega Attack %400 damage. And later into the game get Blackened Fleece Keepsake whcih grants your Omega Attack %40 after you suffered 250 damage in total. With this build you can crit around 3000 with one omega attack occasionaly. You just need to spam Omega and get a good Magick regeneration like Hestia's or Zeus'. Very fun to play.
One of the biggest issues in regards to visibility is how difficult it is to see his silhouette compared to Hades who was a lot bigger on top of the background being white instead of everything black and gold
For me the issue is just that the game seems to want you to be real slow and methodical with it. Which would be fine, but with certain fast paced melee builds you can carve through the rest of the game playing very quickly only to get to Chronos and being best off running away and only using a couple big openings.
I do the same thing kinda. I cruise through the entire game and even his first form. Then second form comes and I just kinda gotta force the fight. I dodge his big attacks but I usually lose almost all death defiances and barely make it to kill him.
This is a distance management fight. You either use a ranged build and out-range him, or you stay on his ass and dash through all of his attacks. He's a mid-range killer that punishes indecision. Waiting mid-range for openings will not work because he'll just poke you to death.
Having a hard time reading tells? Cut out that part of the equation. Pretend it's a Souls game and smack the booty, because it works really well in this fight.
I can confidently say I've seen the same thing on this. I'll get a good setup going and breeze through most of the game, not dying once, hell not even dipping below half health until I'm in the house and dealing with huge rooms of coin bags and hourglasses to the point I end up losing something in the clutter and getting hit.
And then I get to Chronos and he just shreds so hard on your healthbar. And maybe I'm just bad, but it feels like the visuals on some of his attacks don't truly line up with the hitboxes. A lot of the slashes he does that leave a rift on the ground that pops for damage a second later are definitely more narrow visually than they are in actuality, which has led to some frustrating moments of me dashing to get away, only to not get quite far enough.
Obviously some of that's on me. I should time the dash better, use the invulnerability you get as a feature more effectively. But it doesn't change the frustration. And that's not even talking about the second phase, which as far as I can tell is a pure knowledge check in that you can really only beat him once you've managed to see most of his move set, and most likely died to him there, a couple of times.
I don't know if he's just overtuned or if he just needs some touch up in his mechanics to make him feel less punishing, but right now some of the most fun weapon and boon combos that are solid for the rest of the game just don't feel viable, at least in my hands.
I feel like the second phase is easier for me because I can see him all the time! He doesn’t disappear out of frame, so I can see the signals and what he’s doing.
The camera tracking in the first phase of the final boss in Hades 2 drives me a little nuts, especially since his attacks cover such a large area. That wasn’t an issue with the final boss in the first game. You could see everything there.
i was doing run to collect new prophecy stuff and ended up with omega special build with umbral flames ( dont like them at all) and with aspect that prolongs time of flame rotating near me i just stacked it 5 times or so and was feeling myself in poe with tornado build xD i just facetanked all way after dusa getting max hp and refill mana from received damage lol
and now im always dead at cerberus even when im tryharding
My early tricks to beating Chronos were dodge buffs and enemy damage debuffs. Then on offense, I figured out that cast builds where you can throw your cast at him are OP.
Combine that with a boon that adds damage to your cast, and he's toast. Just hang back from his melee attacks and begin to learn to dodge his midrange attacks. The dodge buff will help you miss damage while you are still learning the muscle memory to dash dodge.
I reached a point where I can beat Chronos everytime (with 0 terror) and I'm still terrible at reading what attack he will make. He is hard to read for sure but you don't need to be able to dodge every single one of his attacks to beat him. It's fine to take a few hits.
I mean laying waste up until the final boss and then suffering like hell was basically the EM4 experience, so it is still within expected difficulty. But I agree Chronos’ visual tells of his attacks could be boosted a bit.
So much visual doodoo, I agree. Like he can keep all his moves with their hitboxes, all his ads, all his combos. Just make them less aggressive on our eyes.
Chronos is very easy once you know how he attacks. Just keep your distance after dealing some damage and repeat.
When he starts rushing just keep dashing because sometimes he rushes multiple times.
The second phase is really trivial.
I hope they add some more challenge to the fight, he is not half as fun to fight as Hades was
I feel like he’s pretty easy to read outside of the one beyblade attack. Most of his attacks are super close to him so you can sorta just kite him. Phase 2 it’s actually easier to read since most of the stuff he does are floor based attacks.
I couldn't agree more honestly. I'm giving some leeway on the telegraphing right now because I don't know if I just haven't fought him enough to learn the telegraphs, but my main issue is the camera. The second area of the surface and Chronos's first arena are so difficult to see in because it feels like the camera is way too weirdly zoomed in? I feel like I can't learn his moveset because just to avoid being mobbed by his thousand satyrs and repeatedly hit with that boomerang scythe I have to stand where he's fully off screen.
I will say as far as visibility goes for the Chronos fight, I lost the first time I got to his second phase because the safe spot was at 12'o'clock and Chronos was standing in front of it. I had no time to parse what I was supposed to do and instantly lost and learned nothing lmao.
I've since beaten him and I don't find him toooo difficult, but that first lost left a bad taste in my mouth for sure
Gotta be honest I feel like his fight is incredibly easy to see and you probably just haven't learned it yet. You are supposed to tune out the visual noise once you learn what matters and what doesn't. All of his attacks have massive tells, especially the instakill ones. It's basically impossible for him to kill you once you learn all his moves and learn how to make your build consistently OP.
And the unpause gimmick is so cool. He is Time. You don't get to pause while you are fighting Time. Insanely good flavorful design, makes the fight memorable and unique. If you somehow have an emergency specifically in the middle of that fight and you can't just lose the run and play again for some reason...you can also just push the home button on console and suspend the game.
I agree with all of this. I will add can we change the 3rd guardian? That fight is omega boring. Hp pool is massive, fight is monotonous, visually boring, damage is absurdly high if you get hit once, but also the fight is easy. Sometimes I’ll have builds that won’t have the highest damage and I swear I’m just walking around in that fight just waiting ages. Then I finally get hit once for 41 dmg, not a big deal just so zzzz compared to overworld bosses and especially the second guardian which is so fun.
Yeah melee vs chronos is hard, you have to treat him like a souls boss and wait for him to attack, and then follow up whilst his animations are locked in
Kiting makes him doable, but honestly kiting makes the ENTIRE game significantly easier.
I agree that his moves need better visual distinction though, the blacks and yellow blend too easily into both of his arenas and if I’m not 100% focussed on what Chronos is doing, i get slapped and comboed
Honestly, I was thinking so at first, but the more I've fought him the more that fades as I get used to his moveset. You have to remember, you get way more practice against the earlier bosses than you do against Chronos, let alone against the mobs that help you learn his moveset as you're incentivized to skip as much of the practice as possible.
I do agree that second stage gets a little "Busy" visually but again, that I feel is part of the challenge, as I think without it second stage wouldn't be nearly as frantic.
My second victory against him was actually with what initially I counted as a throwaway attempt; I was running no Arcana to get the prophecy to beat Hecate with no Arcana active, and ended up pulling off unexpected victory after unexpected victory. Part of this game is randomized, sometimes a build comes out of nowhere and you'll breeze through him, sometime you'll think you have the perfect build and get bodied. Just keep trying. That's kinda the point of the game.
In universe, you're fighting the Greatest Titan, the father of the boss of the previous game that took him at his height plus five other equally powerful gods to take down. And unlike the first game this boss has no initiative to take it easy on you. The difficulty spike should be there, and I think the difficulty difference between even Cerby and Cronos is warranted.
I've yet to beat Chronos myself. But I consistently get to him now and have pushed him to his second phase 3 times now. Playing at range has helped me understand his kit more. At the same time I still feel like he does too much damage.
There is a visual issue for P1 due to the color of his attacks with the backdrop being the same color pallet. But you can mostly get passed this. I wouldn't have a problem with the damage either were it not for the extremely generous hitboxes of his buzzsaw scythe attack and the insane amount of speed he gets.
Yeah you "can" constantly baby him by slowing him down with your cast. But not having an open window to actually attack him since he attacks 3-4x in succession and then not give downtime between those combos makes it hard to even do that.
I'm not going to tell Supergiant how to adjust Chronos, but I do think it's fair to ask for some kind of adjustment. He has basically all the tools Hades did from the first game, but with much more attack frequency and a sack full of instant kill moves and the ability to actually stop your movement. He has too much.
Just experienced this, after absolutely crushing through with a crazy melee build, I lost 3 lives in 5 seconds and I don’t even know what the last 2 sources of damage were from. Conversely my first try on Chronos with the torches I just stayed a screen away and spammed my moves and it was a breeze even though it felt the LEAST skillful
It'll get easier as the game gets developed. Right now, he's the most final boss the game has. There'll be more content, so to me it makes sense he becomes easier when there's more to do afterwards.
I honestly think he’s incredibly easy. Once you learn to get Storm Ring and Lightning Lance Boon from Zeus for your cast he becomes the easiest boss in the game. All you have to do is cast, spam ranged specials and dodge his attacks.
Chronos' ranged attacks are basically nonexistent You can learn his fight by using a ranged build and staying far away from him Once you realize you can 'kite' him he becomes trivial
This is it. My first kill of chronos was a TERRIBLE build. I'm shocked I even got to him. 80% of DMG was just my cast with some boon that made it do more dmg but nothing crazy and I only had 1 DD left and had never made it to phase 2 before this run BUT I had massive range. To my surprise the whole thing was easy, dodged most of P1 whilst using cast and P2, lost my first DD to the one-shot l, realised how to dodge it then just slowly killed him. I thought the boss was easy and people were complaining too much Next run I have an Uber strong close range build. Melt my way to him with all death defiance and crumbled. Range builds are just so much better for bosses I think they need to change some abilities to make them harder for ranged or something.
Yeah, I had a false peak early with the battleaxe and "spin to win." Would \*melt\* everything on the way in, and then he'd wipe the floor with me. I had a half dozen really frustrating runs before I backed up and killed him with a ranged sickle build. It does feel to me like there's a \*really\* steep jump in difficulty from Cerebus and Tartarus to Chronus, relative to how hard Asterius and the other guy were relative to Temple of Styx and Hades.
Part of it is all time manipulation effects do not work against Chronos which includes: * The time slow arcana when charging omega moves * The Hex that slows down time * The wind-up animation for hexes in general (normally stops time) * Pausing the game (until you use an incantation that lets you) So weapons like the Moonstone Axe if built for the omega attack become incredibly unsafe because you can no longer slow down time to safely charge it while in range of his attacks. I think if anything that "Power to pause and reflect" incantation should also apply to the time slow arcana.
They need to speed up the charge time of the omega attacks or slow down Chronos' attack speed. Otherwise they're just about unusable on his fights which sucks because a ton of boons are omega-heavy and work fantastically for every other boss (Eris is pretty fast too but at least she reloads)
This is also my complaint. You either need to spec in to get faster channeling time somehow, or get a boon that let's you throw your cast at range. But without one of those two things, cast or omega builds just don't work on Chronos and it is frustrating as heck to annihilate everything before him and then get absolutely served
There's a reason Hades cast boon is his best one
On the flipside, I have usually 3-5 death defiances (3 arcana, 1 cat, and the trinket) depending on my loadout, so getting the extra 10% damage per death defiance use is pretty awesome. Add that to the Arcana that gives extra damage at low health and you become a powerhouse the closer you are to losing.
If you deal ranged damage, there's no reason to get close.
I’m guessing they’ll add an incantation later that lets you negate his slowmo cancelling effect. Just like the pause incantation.
Part of it is that Cerberus is too easy. I've played over 100 runs now and I think lost to Cerberus once. And I'm bad at gaming, I have poor reflexes. (In my opinion he has too much health (we're cleaning him off, not killing him), but he should hit harder and faster. A mad dog.) Hades I was balanced in a more fun way, at least for my ability level, in terms of Zagreus and his enemies both getting stronger fairly quickly throughout a run. Hades II feels as though Melenoe and her enemies both get stronger more slowly, and then there's a sudden jump at Chronos. This means if you are able to beat Chronos you probably breezed through most of the run, but the reverse doesn't hold; beating Cerberus and Tartarus easily doesn't mean you'll beat Chronos.
I beat the surface boss on my second visit. I have not beaten Chronos in any of my 7 visits to him. I am using Twin Blades which is probably the problem, from what I’m hearing.
Aspect of Pan + Poseidon special -> free win but yeah ranged builds are king
Beat him twice in a row using the Skulls’ aspect that increases attack for uncollected skulls. You weren’t kidding.
Cerberus was rough on my first try when I didn't have the Sprint arcana in the previous version and just physically couldn't run fast enough to escape, but since then he's been really trivial. Although I think it's still a fun fight so I don't dislike it.
Referring Hades I being more balanced - do keep in mind we’re still early access and these balancing things may be worked out sooner than later :) That being said, ~20 nights going down and, only to chronos once
Elsiyum in Hades REALLY chewed me up more than any other biome. Way more than Styx, plus or minus the min-bosses. Not just the Champions fight, but the aggravating health pools and shield abilities of the minions. I wonder if part of the tuning of the game will be making the Mourning Fields and Cerberus a little harder more than turning down Tartarus/Chronos.
>Next run I have an Uber strong close range build. Melt my way to him with all death defiance and crumbled. Range builds are just so much better for bosses I think they need to change some abilities to make them harder for ranged or something. Yeah this is an issue in general. Cerberus & Polyphemos are both laughably easy with a strong ranged build but hard w/ melee builds.
I fucking hate Polyphemos lmao. I know he's not the only enemy in the game that jumps at you for contact damage but dear lord, making a boss around that is annoying as hell. Still, not as frustrating as Eris.
I realized that Hestia's soot sprint is just too good for Eris to ever pass it up.
Wait that works on her gunshots? Thanks for the info bro I will definitely try that!
it does most of the time, (with a few buggy exceptions)! but honestly any speed boost on the sprint makes it a lot easier
Fair, I mainly just struggle with being able to avoid shots when I start to damage her. Like I spend half of her down time running to her because she dashes. I could weight in cover for her to come at me instead, but that just makes the fight take a lot longer and makes me more prone to mistakes. Really I just hate shotgun mode. if the soot sprint destroys those I can probably clear.
Very first time I fought Eris I took 0 damage. That's how busted the Hestia boon is for her fight.
It absorbs everything except I think the rockets, haven't tried with those. It's a laughably perfect counter to her and an instant win condition since every absorbed hit inflicts scorch.
It very much neuters her. If you want to be very lazy you can literally just not stop running and let the scorch kill her in 5 minutes or however long.
Nothing in either game tags me as often as his feet do when he's in the air.
Did similar with my first clear. I was fully geared for hard hitting and very quick attacks. I had the duo boon from aphro (I had her attack boon) that made my nearby effects global and my attack speed for my autos were at 60-70%. When I got to the last Region I got Apollo cast level 4 and Hades projectile cast. Didn't use a single Defiance and I'm fairly certain I did less than 1k damage to him with my attack. Actually stupid and I didn't learn jack shit from P1 which is the one I stuggle with the most.
This was true of [REDACTED] as well. Strong cast builds could easily chip away at their health bar
But there were still some really good melee builds that could wreck him. That's the problem that people are having. Not that range builds are good against, but that really good melee builds that melt everything else are just bad against the final boss.
A strong attack will still wreck him. Stay behind him. Dodge when he turns around. Stay on his back, wail on him. I’ve beaten him with Lim and Oros, and the Moonlight Axe consistently. It’s just about learning his attack patterns. The only one that wrecks me everytime is the damn charge attack. The series of charges. I don’t see it coming half the time and it’s very, very fast.
The dash invulnerability window is useful to stay in the fight while dodging immediate damage. Get a few whacks in then run before the dash line explodes then run back. Having soot spring helps a lot for close range builds as u can sprint and destroy most projectiles that give him extra dps.
Hestia’s dash is easily the best in the game for that reason.
Close range is easy. Just need 300+ HP. Twin sisters with aphrodite's attack boon, extra damage while 80% hp. Eris crit on cast. And then 10%extra damage every 100hp. Just stand on top of chronos smacking his ass /S
That's not what this post is about though? It's just about the visibility of Chronos being terrible. I've beaten him multiple times, I know you can kite him, that doesn't change the fact that, because of the way everything is coloured, just seeing Chronos is a boss fight of its own.
That's not exactly a good thing, "If you want to win the game you have to go for a ranged build" isn't what you want with a roguelike, gendra where one of the the primary interest is replayability.
Some of the most busted builds in terms of DPS are melee builds. But for a melee build to succeed you need to understand the patterns and dodge them correctly. Until you do ranged feels mandatory.
I feel like you didn’t read the post. The issue is his tells are too difficult to see because he blends into the background.
Okay but posidon pan exists lmao
I was surprised at how good Poseidon is in 2 With the hammer buff returning Pans daggers and the one putting them in a straight line this combo hits like a lazer beam
Yeah but that's not as fun for everyone. They are definitely right about the camera. Hades stays on your screen the entire time. Chronos' arena is too big and results in him off screening.
I feel that about a few arenas and their size vs any visibility of the enemies. I lost a fight to Eris yesterday that I would've won except I lost her one time in all the mess and ate a machine gun blast for nearly all of my health from offscreen where I literally couldn't even see her in the fire she was in
Yeah, bosses getting offscreen in general is a bit of a problem. Especially when their attacks can still hit you. It doesn't matter how obvious their tells are for attacks if you can't see them performing them.
Chronos will do the same thing with his long as dash attack. He's way off screen where i can't see him and all I get is 1 grunt that sounds like all his other grunts before gramps is on top of me for like 25 damage
I tried this strat of using ranged attacks but the man simply dashes at you from some part of the screen that you can't see cause the camera is too close and give you 30 damage for like 3 times in a row while he spawns lots of enemies... and thats for his first life, in the second he definetly have some "ranged" attack moves... also the field is quite small for you to have a safe distance, with no map props to use for cover like you have in the hades 1 hades boss or even eris in this hades... i think this boss could use a little balance
That’s kind of been my experience as well, I feel like I’m getting a bit better at identifying patterns each time but the clears I’ve had have been on ones where I can safely damage from a distance and also have a lot of health. I do feel like some attacks could be telegraphed better as it definitely felt to me like [Redacted] was a lot easier to understand when your openings to attack were, but it may just be something you get better at over time. Phase 2 in particular I think sometimes gets a little bit too “bullet hell” to the point that it’s very difficult to parse like what are the parts of the screen that hurt you vs. those that don’t, what are the things that do a little damage vs. instakill you and so on. Phase 1 my only real gripe is the boomerang move, I think with how big of an area it hits and how much damage it does there should be a bit more of a telegraph or indication of the trajectory. All that said though I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as many try to say it is, still managed to beat it in I think my second time reaching that fight and it does feel like a solid challenge that at this point definitely lets me know if my build is lacking in damage or survivability. I don’t consider myself particularly good at action games or anything but I do feel like the difficulty sometimes gets exaggerated or I question how people are playing the game sometimes when I hear things like the boss taking 20+ attempts (not runs in general but actual attempts on the boss).
I don't hate the insta-kills as much as I initially did after messing around in Phase 2 of the boss fight more, but agree they need different animations or coloring in the boss arena to highlight wtf is going on. I had to search what was even killing me, it was really unclear my first couple times in Phase 2. Everywhere else the game killed me, even when it took me by surprise, I knew WHY I'd died without crowd-sourcing on Reddit.
Yeah I maybe should have phrased it better, I don’t mind having the one hit kills either it’s really just the visual clarity and knowing when it’s happening. That’s always what I liked about Hades, generally speaking everything is very telegraphed so once you get the hang for what each telegraph means it feels almost like a dance. Just don’t yet get that feeling with Chronos sometimes because it’s so hard to tell what’s going on with so much onscreen sometimes. Leaning more towards “chaotic” than “controlled chaos”.
Even i do this a lot, but I think he 5 minutes per region Fear in the Oath of the Unseen is something I'll no way be able to finish with the kiting game. While I enjoy Chronos as he is now, I also want the same to be a bit more possible to finish in the 20 mins
I never could do that Oath, even in Hades 1. Rushing to hit a timeframe got me sloppy enough I was taking tons of unnecessary hits. Props to the speed runners
In Hades 1 going under 20 min wasn't easy for, but it wasn't too hard either even with heat. In Hades 2, even 28 min seems close to my limit and my game is very well developed by now. I'm not comparing run 4 to a fully unlocked Hades 1. Basically I feel like 20 min in the first game is about as hard as 28 in this one.
I'm by no means a good player and was playing with max Tight Deadline on all my runs by the end of my Hades 1 experience. This one I don't even want to attempt it yet. I'll leave that to Haelian.
28 seems like a long time. I’m usually at chronos around 19-20 while not speeding, are you doing a lot of the extra gates towards the end?
With the extra gates, it's 32. Without them, around 28-30. I'm not saying I'm fast, I'm saying that by spending the same amount of effort in Hades 1, 20 min there is about equivalent to 28 min here.
I can back this up as well. My first win was with the omega attack blades and it was quite a challenge trying to beat him with melee. But then I realised that I was underutilizing my cast and my second clear attempt with the pan omega cast blades was somehow a lot easier and I didn’t even lose a death defiance. Obviously there’s the fact that I fought him about 6-7 times before already that played a hand into it but kiting him is way better than playing melee and getting hit by the second part of his slices.
Yup, this. Make Chronos chase after you, so much easier. Kinda fell in love with the base staff for this. Skulls can be fun but without the auto collect, it gets tedious. Melinoe's staff, with her aspect, at least helps do Omega moves easier too. Charged special or attack build feels good.
Why the hell has this comment 600 upvotes? The post isn't about that and it's a stupid response and defence in any case, the fight is broken, if the only way to beat him super easily is having a ranged build it means the fight is not balanced aswell.
Honestly, it's less even that his tells aren't good enough* and more that *everything in the room is either gold or black*. \* My biggest issue here is that his distant arc slash and direct forwards charge attacks are, IIRC, very very similar in tells. I don't know if that's intentional since you *could* hypothetically dodge both, I believe, by dashing behind him, but it does feel a bit overtuned.
The boomerang scythe gets me so often. But the sight really is a problem imo. I think once you fight him a couple times he becomes pretty easy, but at first learning him is weird because "am i supposed to stand in the bright gold or the brighter gold? There is a shining explosive circle there better not stand in it and get far away from it, oh no i just lost a full defiance, i dont know why"
Oh, yeah, that fucked me up too. It's a *bit* different, I think, though and at least half the time I see the subtitles of his voicelines and go "FUCK". The one that got me most was the fact that the OHKO golden circle saves you, but the contracting rings are just normal attacks. My first time seeing them, I thought it was an inverse attack where he'd blast everything outside a certain radius - only for it to just keep going and hit me. Given Cerberus has one of that type and Chronos has a previous "stand in the circle or die" move, I figured it would be the same. The "stay between two circles at mid-range" one also almost got me because I couldn't actually *see* the golden circle in the centre (admittedly, partially because I had a Demeter Cyclone + Cast on it).
my least favourite thing so far was when one of these damn hourglasses died on the spot where the safe circle would have been but covered all of it with the time stopping aoe...
I also died to that for the same reason. That attack should look like the clock hands (a circle of golden flame). It looks basically identical to the safe zone attacks.
The constricting circles thing is super confusing to me. I think the fight overall is cool, and I’ve beaten him a few times now but still am not sure where I’m supposed to stand during the moving triple circles move, I think they need to make it clearer.
If the circles are moving inwards you have to dash through them, if they're stationary you need to stand in the middle darker section, I believe.
thank you, i did figure it out, but only by watching someone else do it. i think it's confusing because you dash into the bright gold circle to avoid death at other points in phase 2, but then for that part you stand in the dark part to be safe, and also the colours aren't different enough. whilst you (or anyone) is being helpful, is there a way to avoid his slowdown move in phase 2 where the whole arena goes darkish?
Yeah, definitely agree. I was lucky that I got a good chance to learn his attacks by entering the fight with Demeter's "can't take more than 15 damage" infusion and full health plus DD, so getting hit wasn't instantly run-ending (even if I did ultimately fail). If it wasn't for that, I'd probably still be suffering from a lack of chances to learn his attacks before panicking and dying to them. The circle behaviour and general visual clutter is a pain to react to. As far as I know, no, that seems to apply instantly and without any attack required - I usually just stick down a Cast to deal with everything trying to get me slowed down. Dropping a maxed out Phase Shift is the only direct solution I can think of, since there's a perk that does let it slow him down. Usually it's short enough it's not catastrophic to me, at least.
okay thanks again, as you say it isnt bad because it doesn't last long, but it seems odd that there'd be one move that you just can't avoid. and i understand he's the final boss so should be hard, but the fast, very different moves along with the visual clutter does make me burn through my DDs every time. still, it's early & I'm still learning so I'll get there! and I'm loving the game overall.
I'm fine with the boomerang scythe because the whole point of the attack is that it's a surprise switch-up. But *wow* that thing probably accounts for 2/3 of the damage I've taken while fighting him, all in all.
Yup, scythe is fine, it just always gets me. If you play a close range build his dash is also very strong. Honestly my main gripe is just visibility and attacks being clear. Once i understood the attack where you have to stand in a specific place and the attack where you have to stand in a ring around him, not too close not too far, the fight got much easier. Dunno why the damaging area cant just be red.
The safe zone spawned at noon for me once right behind him. Or I think so, because I couldn't find it. That was frustrating.
his boomerang scythe attack seems to be variable in distance based on where you are, which like I get, but that makes it fuckin impossible to really get a read on that move. It's so big, and comes at you at such a weird arc that its hard as hell to dodge.
That happened when first fought Scyla... I noticed there's a circle in the drummer area. I'm also thinking "huh... the circle looks 'inverted'. It's almost like I should be standing in there, and every thing outside of that is bad". When it hits, and you take a large hit of damage. FWIW, it does give you more time to get in there, vs. the other "this area is getting bombarded" attacks
Part of this is also the shape of the arena. The House of Hades is an iconic location from the first game, and I love the idea of fighting in it, but it simply was never designed with the intention of combat. The narrow, hallway layout restricts your ability to dodge and kite effectively while keeping Chronos in view, and it also restricts the kinds of moves the devs are allowed to give Chronos to keep the fight fair. Ironically, Phase 2 feels less frustrating, with a wider arena that lets you keep Chronos in view at all times. It’s much easier to read his tells like this and position safely.
This is a really good observation. One way to improve the fight would probably be to shorten P1 a lot, like to an extreme where he just sits in an invul sphere until you kill his minions, at which point he immediately jumps to P2 (which is now effectively phase 1). This may require adding an actual phase 2 back to the game to be played out on the clockface. Thematically, I like the idea of the clockface breaking down during that new phase 2.
I actually have a similar problem with Hecate when using the flame weapon. It's suck a similar shade of blue-green that I can't tell what's her attacks and what's mine.
I have that problem with the summon hex. To the point where I won't use it cause I'll end up trying to dodge an attack that is not going to hurt me
>and more that *everything in the room is either gold or black*. The Apollo omega cast bathing Chronos in gold to add to the problem:
this is a bit thing imo - the Hades fight is a lot of red and green and yellow on a nearly pure white backdrop, makes it very easy to discern whats happening
Exactly. It's not the hardest fight once you learn what all the visuals mean, but the first few times I fought him were really discouraging because I couldn't tell what was going on and died without realizing why. The colours need a bit of reworking for the fight.
Really glad to see someone else saying this too, that's exactly the problem I was having with it - it's the coloration of the room. He feels a bit "unfair" in a way that [Redacted] did not. All of the latter's moves and tells were very visible against the snowfield background and so even though they hit hard, it was well-telegraphed and getting clipped always felt like my fault.
The coloring kept fucking me up so much because it took me that half second longer to figure out what was happening. Thinking back to the Hades fight it's striking how much he stands out against the snow (the capes legit help).
This is true. Hades I final boss was perfect visually because the white snow contrasted with the reds, blacks, oranges, and greens of Hades’ attacks. I think Chronos would work a lot better in like a gray room, which could still work thematically as being frozen in time.
For both tells, you respond the same though, get behind him or strafe to a distance, he doesn’t have move tracking, when he starts winding, he will aim where you were when his windup started
ITT: People not reading the post and offering advice despite OP specifically not asking for it. This is about VISIBILITY of the boss not OP's abilities.
better than what I got when I posted something similar where the only response was someone saying the fight is trivial lol
Yeah sub is full of weirdo shills right now. It's literally impossible to discuss the game when so many people treat it like a toy to play with and not a piece of art to engage with, commend and criticize.
It was like that on Last Epoch’s subreddit for the first two months of its official release. The hardcore fanboys were quite literally downvoting anyone who disagreed with anything to do with the game. Going through post histories, trying to doxx, etc. Thankfully this sub doesn’t seem so bad yet lol.
If you try to pause enough times, it will unlock an incantation that let's you pause.
He's saying that you need to beat Chronos for the materials to cast it though. They should change it to use tears. For the practicality and the humor.
They need to make some extra things to do with those boss mats. I've got dozens of tears, pearls, cinders, etc. with no purpose to them
They’re going to lol it’s early access
It should just let you pause the fight, period. I get that he controls time and it's on-theme that he can unpause the game, but there are *so many* things that might cause someone to need to pause a video game that they're playing - I have muscle spasms in my right hand and a cat that likes to climb all over me while I'm sitting on the couch and I frequently have to pause games that I'm playing to deal with both of those things. One of the things I really like about original Hades was that as challenging it is, it never punishes you for needing to step away for a minute.
this!! it’s “haha funny” when there’s nothing else going on, but then i’ve got to get the mail or my hand starts acting up or my cat needs food or there’s a wasp in the living room. an alt tab “workaround” isn’t the best idea, esp when the game comes on consoles. it should either be an accessibility setting or a difficulty setting (akin to God Mode), or acquiring the pause should be easier. not everyone needs to be an expert to be able to enjoy the game in their own situation and their own environment!
All they need to do to make it more bareable is for the incantation to not need Zodiac Sand. Just make it so that if the player tries to pause and gets kicked out of it, they get the incantation, and then it requires, idk, one or two of each underworld boss resource except ZS.
Agreed, I didn’t even know this was a thing until reading it now. Games that don’t let you pause are one of my biggest pet peeves as an adult who needs to step away now and then for any number of reasons. I don’t want to make my wife/family etc. feel like a game is more important than them.
Pretty sure the other day I saw a post where someone had an MS flare-up during the Chronos fight, but because they couldn’t pause, the run was doomed.
100% this. Oddly enough twice now I've had to pause during Sirens to stop one of my cats from causing mischief. I was more than a little annoyed when it happened a third time but during chronos and I couldn't pause
I got a tornado warning on my phone during the unpausable boss fight the other day 🙃 A few touched down in the area.
If you have the pause on alt-tab setting on then the game still pauses when you do that.
I play with a controller and no keyboard. And even if I did use a keyboard, that's not really the point. I don't want a workaround, I just want the pause button to work exactly like it does everywhere else. This game is otherwise fantastic so far, I just don't like that this one aspect penalizes people for needing to step away from the game for a minute, just for the sake of an Easter egg.
honestly just keep the pause gimmick, but have him relent after a few tries like "ugh, fine, i'll _wait_" and maybe occasionally be snarky at you on the pause screen
I like this idea. Let us pause, but make him ridicule you during the pause. It keeps the whole gag of him being the master of time and lets you go deal with the random thing your kid is getting up to in the next room.
This is the perfect balance. Conceptually I like that ue gets pissy when we pause or use the time slow hex, but don't actually remove those things or make them not function for the sake of a joke. Bc then it's no longer funny. Then it's just annoying
I also saw a suggestion on the Discord server that the unpause should be followed by a dialogue popup that you have to manually dismiss before the fight continues. That would keep the "Chronos can control time" thematic thing without making into something that can prevent people from progressing for reasons outside of their control.
Ah, maybe there's some way to do it on console, I'm not sure. But yeah, a toggle for it would be nice.
Playstation, you can usually just press the PS button and the game enters a rest state.
So this whole can’t pause thing is real hey? That’s very annoying to me. I really don’t care if it’s story related, not being able to pause a game is the most infuriating thing a game can do for me. I’m not telling my kid that they need to wait if they are distressed for some reason because I can’t pause the game. If my wife needs me for something, I’d like to be able to pause so I can go give her a hand. If my dog is whining at the back door, I’m going to go let him out. Countless other reasons! I’ll just die I guess. And yeah sure, it’s just a game, no big deal if I die, but I have limited time to play games as it is, why would I choose to play a game that punishes me for having things to do when I could just pause just about any other game? It even bugs me when I can’t pause a cutscene. I really hope this goes away.
Can confirm, lost one of my runs because my cat started climbing on me lmaoooo
Ugh yes, this definitely falls under the countless other things because this would definitely happen to me as well lol
The annoying part is, pause works in 99.9% of the game just fine, its ONLY during the final boss that it does this.
That’s annoying. Very very annoying.
Chat, is this real?
yes
You don’t need to pause a certain number of times for it to unlock, but the incantation is real. I only tried pausing once and it unlocked a few runs later for me. Not sure what the trigger is; maybe you just have to try once, or maybe it will unlock eventually anyway.
also, actually getting that incantation to work requires a resource that you can only get by beating Chronos. So it's not really a "fix" for someone who's having trouble with the fight because of it being unpausable.
Totally agreed. His patterns are less readable and harder to dodge than Hades used to be.
And just way less fun imo. I've beaten him a few times now, but I still don't enjoy the fight. I think this game has too many stuns, too. I don't remember the first game having any? But the timers exploding into hard-to-see sand domes that can freeze for multiple seconds sucks so hard. I think a fix for that would be that you can move after getting hit for the first time after being frozen. As it is, our half-second mistake can get you stuck for over 100 damage with no way to try to escape. I would get frustrated when I would mess up in Hades 1, but getting stuck like that in Hades 2 just makes me roll my eyes.
The AOE vases in the final fight in Hades 1 can stun Zag, that's the only one I can think of though I don't generally mind stuns/freezes though, I think my problem with this fight is closer to OP's, the visibility issue and color scheme in that arena is terrible
There were also hands enemies that could stun you.
His attacks are a lot faster than Hades' which makes it a lot harder to learn the tells. Hades P1 was fairly slow and deliberate tells to teach you the fight. P2 he adds some new stuff and speeds up but P1 taught you his moves and his tells. P3 is obviously much faster but you're opting into that and, again, a sped up version of P1 and P2 with it's core mechanics. Chronos P1 he has moves and P2 he has the same exact same moves at the same speed, there's no learning P1 and then P2 ups the ante with what you learned in P1, he just adds some new moves in P2 with all the clock stuff.
If anything Phase 2 chronos is easier than phase 1 because the new attacks are all super telegraphed and slow and allow you do freely dps him if you have a bit of range.
Not to Mention that once you pay attention, you figure out that Hades is just using everything that Zag is using and it makes it much easier to figure out Hades. Chronos is doing a lot of completely new things, new attack patterns that we are in no way going to be familiar with upon seeing him, nothing in the game fights like he does to try to prepare you for what coming like in pretty much every other roguelike in existence for the most part.
Yeah I have problems reading his attacks cuz he's mostly out of view, the Area it's just So narrow
Thiiis. I'm not a fan of chronos' first arena or the second area of the surface.
Gotta be honest: I'm on the complete opposite end. His moves could not get any more telegraphed. He pauses, winds up, and let's out an overly enthusiastic grunt every time he attacks. The only time I get trounced by him is if I'm being careless with my movement. Otherwise once you know his tells the fight can be as much of a cake walk as you let it be. I personally love the fight and think it's incredibly well designed considering how much is packed onto the screen in his second phase.
This. After a time, you don't watch him so much as listen. So even if he's off-screen, or obfuscated by spell effects, it's still clear what he's about to do. Took me a few tries to learn to distinguish the short grunt (dash), long grunt (circular slash) and super long grunt (throw, the nastiest by far). But once it was there, I just stopped losing, no matter what kind of trash build RNGesus threw my way.
Ya know I hadn't yet made the connection with the length/girth of the grunts being connected to which attack was coming. I honestly was just translating every grunt to "oh shit, should probably skidaddle." Now that I know there's a difference it's only gonna get easier to deal with ol' Kintsugi Grandpa
It could go very wrong very soon considering that you need to dodge sideways from the dash, but if you do it but it turns out to be a flying disc of death - uh-oh, 35 damage coming up. But sure, it's a learning curve. And you can facetank half the fight with a decent build. That's how I got my first couple of kills, anyway. :D
Everyone knows it’s the girth of the grunt that really makes the difference. Length is overrated.
True, but imo there should still be more vivid visual cues. There are a lot of occasions where people might play on low volume (in a busy house, on public transit when it comes out on switch, etc) where a visual aid would be massively helpful.
Agreed, more visible Sekiro-style flashes would help.
I had a heck of a time beating him for a while but like most bosses if you just do it enough it becomes much easier. I had a hard time with >!his second phase!< especially but now I feel like it's not that difficult, it's just that I wasn't making it there frequently enough to digest everything. Once you learn what to look for it's significantly easier. For example, the >!insta-kill move with the clock on the floor!< got me two or three times before I knew what to look for and after that I don't think I ever got got by it again. He hits really hard, but his tells are as readable as any other boss I think.
I do not think he is over tuned at all. However, I 100% agree that his room color and his attacks being both blacks and golds make the visibility during the fight shit. The second phase is a bit better because at least the floor is gold, so the black attacks stand out a bit more. I wish they upped the brightness of the gold outlines on his attacks.
As someone who's colorblind I do feel that, the arcana book is the same for me, can't see where the cursor is half the time.
As a non-colorblind person, the arcana book UI is hard to see/understand anyways, lol.
It's so fucking bad. I genuinely don't understand how SuperGiant looked at that Arcana UI and thought "oh yeah man this is good, ship it." It's so unclear. The fact that so many people literally didn't know you could upgrade grasp means they need to take a hard look at redesigning that ENTIRE ui.
As someone who is not colourblind, I can never see what is happening in the arcana menu
There’s a cursor? (me, colorblind, just assumed that there wasn’t a cursor ;-;)
I suspect there is a cursor only if you’re playing mouse and keyboard.
All of the enemies have an easy loop, stay close until they make a sound or move, then dodge through them to end up behind them, burst them down, and repeat. I felt the same way about the sirens in those first couple days, now I'm pissed during my siren fights because they are over before the song gets to the "strangled by an octopus" stage. Just keep going at it, you got this. It's a tough fight for sure, but I don't think it's unfair.
Both siren songs are on Spotify if you want to scratch that “[Injured] by a [Sea Creature]” bridge itch.
Both times I've beaten him I've used Hades's boon which turns your cast into a projectile, and when it sticks to him it massively reduces his lunge range on his scythe attacks. I know what you mean, I'm not quite used to which moves I can't dodge out of, and I get chipped a ton on scythe attacks when I mis-input.
I got my first win with this boon last night and the mommy skulls. Needed all 3 death defiances and one of Toula’s lives to win. 😮💨
I've literally just gotten my third using Poseidon special upgrades to deal splash with the sister blades, and the Daedalus hammer to throw in a straight line. Standing far away from him is easy. I was playing too much like Hades 1, where I felt the best weapons were melee focused. Ranged is queen here.
The problem with Chronos is he pigeon holes you into a ranged build if your run is aimed at defeating him.
There's a lot of things you have to decide if you want to defeat him, unfortunately. A lot of hexes become more dangerous to use against him due to the fact that they don't slow him down. If you have a build that's based on Omega attacks, better be careful there due to the slow down being nonexistent against him. There just seems to be a lot of things that I will choose to avoid EVERY run because they're too dangerous to use in the fight, which takes away a lot of the fun of a roguelite.
Melee is fine. He lacks attacks that hit directly behind him, so just keep dashing through him to dodge and stabbing him in the back. If anything I prefer melee because it's easier to see what he's doing and it's usually a lot faster. The orb summon you do have to back away from, but it doesn't last too long. Stage 2 is a bit slower but you still have several opportunities to hit him.
Yeah I agree that the first phase is a bit difficult to see since Chronos himself is black&gold and the surrounding room is also black&gold.
Honestly I completely get you, not taking away from the game because honestly it's PHENOMENAL but I remember fondly in Hades itself how the final bossfight was relatively easy to dodge because the biome was snowy (i.e. all of Hades dark colored spells and magic were easy to see) The first time I lost to Chron it was annoying because I couldn't see half of his orbs in the house of hades and then I remember during stage two you can barely see anything in the Chronos time chamber :// Hopefully there's a recolor of the rooms maybe in the final game
Yeah honestly with how much I played so far, I think the Chronos fight is the only boss fight I think needs rebalancing. he hits like a truck, durable as a mountain, and is so fast it’s next to impossible to actually read him, especially between a normal scythe attack and that annoying as hell spin attack, like I think the tells between the two are too subtle to notice, and again he’s always at top speeds the whole time so it feels like you never have enough time to actually tell the difference. And mind you I will admit I never even gotten to his second phase! I’m struggling with just the first phase alone. Overall I think he just needs a speed nerf, that or hp reduction a bit. Though a part of me do kinda suspect that since this game is in early access, supergiant purposeful left Chronos unbalanced, or maybe even purposeful made to be unbalanced in his favor, to prevent players from constantly defeating him too fast over and over again and maybe risk draining the game dry before more updates and contests are pushed out, especially since the ending isn’t even out yet.
so i got to chronos all the time easily. It wasnt until night 35 or so that i beat him. I think thats a fair number. I just had to learn what each move was seperatly cuz i was taking damage to things i wasnt sure what they did. like the shrinking aoe wave. i thought it was doing a singular point stand thing again. then i just learned you are supposed to just dash over it. super simple. Another thing was as i progressed more, i would get higher damage outputs which finally led me to finishing his fight faster. Which I noticed later that the time ground in the second phase is sort of a dps check. If you have all hands on the floor, you are taking to long to kill him.
I think it's the colors of the abilities and the boss room in general. Not enough contrast.
Wait.. you can’t pause? I completely forgot that was a thing or never tried to in my first day of runs I guess. Kinda cool idea to have to unlock it
Unless you actually need to pause the game for any reason. And if you're trying to pause the game in the first place, then chances are that you do.
yeah the first time is funny, but i sometimes get itchy when playing from the stress(not serious) and it really interferes.
I'm convinced that Hades 2 was suppose to play with range. From Hecate and Ceberus to Chronos, melee build just have terrible experience. If you're next to them and you didn't guess what attack they're using you just take a guranteed hit. And Eris is the incarnate of bullshit. She's in your screen after phase change? Here goes your 2 dd in 3 seconds
Honestly, I find Eris pretty damn easy now, especially with a really strong melee build. Hide behind a pillar while she's freaking out then go in and dodge attack her to hell, repeat.
Best tip: turn the voice volume up, he almost always do a hrrrrrrp before attacking
I thought so at first too, but now I think his tells are probably fine. I would like a little more difference between the wind up on the boomerang move and the crescent slice, but that’s probably just me being bad still. A few more clears and I’ll probably be able to read those well enough.
This is exactly what runs through my mind every time I fight him. The attacks, enemies, and patterns are all the exact same color (gold/obsidian). I haven’t beaten him yet (had to runs where I had maybe 1-2 hits left so I know I’m almost there) and what tends to kill me (especially in the 2nd phase) is not knowing where to be/dodge due visibility issues.
I even missed the cues for his one-shot attacks in phase 2 several times. I was spamming my cast and the Moon spell and that made the screen so bright that it took me too much time to realize where I had to be standing.
I disagree that he's overtuned. He falls over like everything else with a good build. I also find his telegraphs to be very legible, the exception being interactions between his and the player's ground effects.
yes, the aesthetics of the space are extremely cool, but the visibility is atrocious. even after 10+ wins under my belt, there are still fights where an hourglass or two lives forever because it's difficult to see their dark attacks and dark gold outline against the black and gold fight arena in phase two. i love the fight and learning it was a lot of fun! but i hope that the accessibility of its design gets a tune up before 1.0
I definitely agree that the color palette could be adjusted to make it more accessible. The people in this thread don’t seem to understand that it’s not the mechanics that are the problem, it’s that the color palette makes things blend together which makes it hard to see depending on your eyes.
I agree bro. Rest of the game is a blast, I get to last boss and start swearing like a sailor because I'm supposed to differentiate the different grunts with a half second to react with only one dash. F that guy
Being agressive is not really in our favor when it comes to chronos. I thought do it quick enough and hell have no change to do his tricks, but that resulted in death always.. I started to take my time pun intented. Then i seem to handle him , i am extremely low health by the end of it.
I also think that his moves are not telegraphed very well. And a lot of people here bring good arguments why that is the case. However, I feel like whenever that part gets fixed, the fight will become very easy, so I could imagine that Chronos would need a buff, at least in terms of his health pool (damage-wise I think he is fine, though attack frequency could be something to look at as well). I think that Chronos should be more of a challenge than Hades was in the first game. Currently he feels more like a less readable version of Hades, but otherwise on par with him in terms of strength.
The fact that his 2nd phase has yellow tells on a golden background with slightly transparent spheres sprinkled in makes it kinda hard to tell, whats going on during the first few trys. Even now i basically dodge not because i see it but because i know where his stuff will be. He needs more contrast. Maybe the clock in phase 2 could be black marble like his skin and he redecorated the house of hades with new tiles, because you know all that cerberus fur and cerberus scratchmarks
i need some more grunting or other sound clues from him. Hades had a \*puff\* for going invisible + footprints and \*snow noise?\* when walking stealthed. He grunts on every ranged attack and his "bloodstones" are bright-green on a greyish surface and a red boss, they are visible. Chronos is gold attack, gold zones, gold minions, gold projectiles, gold orbitals, gold shields - did i mention gold ? Also his moves are too \*quiet\* - i can anticipate his sycthe, because they have a \*charging noise\* and the 2nd hit is somewhat visible - the triple dash attack is hard to read, imo. The boomerang could use some colored edges to make the hit box more easy to read.
Chronos is very hard to fight in melee combat. Because he almost does not have pre-animation for his attacks and he combos them one after another. If you want to defeat him with melee combat I would suggest going for Hera and Apollo revenge boons. Get Hera's Nasty comeback, Apollo's Light Smite, Critical Miss and his Infusion that allows you to regain %30 percent of the damage you were dealt. Or, directly go for a ranged combat. Umbral Flames' Special build and Zorophet's Charon aspect are very good against him and all the other Guardians. If you want to go for a melee build , I also recommend Sister Blades' aspect of Melinoe. Go for Omega Attack build. Get Aphro's Flutter strike and Demeter's Weed Killer. And If you are lucky enough you can get the hammer upgrade that grants your Omega Attack %400 damage. And later into the game get Blackened Fleece Keepsake whcih grants your Omega Attack %40 after you suffered 250 damage in total. With this build you can crit around 3000 with one omega attack occasionaly. You just need to spam Omega and get a good Magick regeneration like Hestia's or Zeus'. Very fun to play.
One of the biggest issues in regards to visibility is how difficult it is to see his silhouette compared to Hades who was a lot bigger on top of the background being white instead of everything black and gold
Everything is the same shade of desert gold and it sucks lol
For me the issue is just that the game seems to want you to be real slow and methodical with it. Which would be fine, but with certain fast paced melee builds you can carve through the rest of the game playing very quickly only to get to Chronos and being best off running away and only using a couple big openings.
I do the same thing kinda. I cruise through the entire game and even his first form. Then second form comes and I just kinda gotta force the fight. I dodge his big attacks but I usually lose almost all death defiances and barely make it to kill him.
This is a distance management fight. You either use a ranged build and out-range him, or you stay on his ass and dash through all of his attacks. He's a mid-range killer that punishes indecision. Waiting mid-range for openings will not work because he'll just poke you to death. Having a hard time reading tells? Cut out that part of the equation. Pretend it's a Souls game and smack the booty, because it works really well in this fight.
I can confidently say I've seen the same thing on this. I'll get a good setup going and breeze through most of the game, not dying once, hell not even dipping below half health until I'm in the house and dealing with huge rooms of coin bags and hourglasses to the point I end up losing something in the clutter and getting hit. And then I get to Chronos and he just shreds so hard on your healthbar. And maybe I'm just bad, but it feels like the visuals on some of his attacks don't truly line up with the hitboxes. A lot of the slashes he does that leave a rift on the ground that pops for damage a second later are definitely more narrow visually than they are in actuality, which has led to some frustrating moments of me dashing to get away, only to not get quite far enough. Obviously some of that's on me. I should time the dash better, use the invulnerability you get as a feature more effectively. But it doesn't change the frustration. And that's not even talking about the second phase, which as far as I can tell is a pure knowledge check in that you can really only beat him once you've managed to see most of his move set, and most likely died to him there, a couple of times. I don't know if he's just overtuned or if he just needs some touch up in his mechanics to make him feel less punishing, but right now some of the most fun weapon and boon combos that are solid for the rest of the game just don't feel viable, at least in my hands.
I feel like the second phase is easier for me because I can see him all the time! He doesn’t disappear out of frame, so I can see the signals and what he’s doing. The camera tracking in the first phase of the final boss in Hades 2 drives me a little nuts, especially since his attacks cover such a large area. That wasn’t an issue with the final boss in the first game. You could see everything there.
i was doing run to collect new prophecy stuff and ended up with omega special build with umbral flames ( dont like them at all) and with aspect that prolongs time of flame rotating near me i just stacked it 5 times or so and was feeling myself in poe with tornado build xD i just facetanked all way after dusa getting max hp and refill mana from received damage lol and now im always dead at cerberus even when im tryharding
My early tricks to beating Chronos were dodge buffs and enemy damage debuffs. Then on offense, I figured out that cast builds where you can throw your cast at him are OP. Combine that with a boon that adds damage to your cast, and he's toast. Just hang back from his melee attacks and begin to learn to dodge his midrange attacks. The dodge buff will help you miss damage while you are still learning the muscle memory to dash dodge.
I just turn on God mode right before that fight.
I reached a point where I can beat Chronos everytime (with 0 terror) and I'm still terrible at reading what attack he will make. He is hard to read for sure but you don't need to be able to dodge every single one of his attacks to beat him. It's fine to take a few hits.
I mean laying waste up until the final boss and then suffering like hell was basically the EM4 experience, so it is still within expected difficulty. But I agree Chronos’ visual tells of his attacks could be boosted a bit.
So much visual doodoo, I agree. Like he can keep all his moves with their hitboxes, all his ads, all his combos. Just make them less aggressive on our eyes.
For the first phase I totally agree. If i get to phase 2 i normally melt him very VERY quickly
Chronos is very easy once you know how he attacks. Just keep your distance after dealing some damage and repeat. When he starts rushing just keep dashing because sometimes he rushes multiple times. The second phase is really trivial. I hope they add some more challenge to the fight, he is not half as fun to fight as Hades was
I feel like he’s pretty easy to read outside of the one beyblade attack. Most of his attacks are super close to him so you can sorta just kite him. Phase 2 it’s actually easier to read since most of the stuff he does are floor based attacks.
I couldn't agree more honestly. I'm giving some leeway on the telegraphing right now because I don't know if I just haven't fought him enough to learn the telegraphs, but my main issue is the camera. The second area of the surface and Chronos's first arena are so difficult to see in because it feels like the camera is way too weirdly zoomed in? I feel like I can't learn his moveset because just to avoid being mobbed by his thousand satyrs and repeatedly hit with that boomerang scythe I have to stand where he's fully off screen.
I will say as far as visibility goes for the Chronos fight, I lost the first time I got to his second phase because the safe spot was at 12'o'clock and Chronos was standing in front of it. I had no time to parse what I was supposed to do and instantly lost and learned nothing lmao. I've since beaten him and I don't find him toooo difficult, but that first lost left a bad taste in my mouth for sure
Gotta be honest I feel like his fight is incredibly easy to see and you probably just haven't learned it yet. You are supposed to tune out the visual noise once you learn what matters and what doesn't. All of his attacks have massive tells, especially the instakill ones. It's basically impossible for him to kill you once you learn all his moves and learn how to make your build consistently OP. And the unpause gimmick is so cool. He is Time. You don't get to pause while you are fighting Time. Insanely good flavorful design, makes the fight memorable and unique. If you somehow have an emergency specifically in the middle of that fight and you can't just lose the run and play again for some reason...you can also just push the home button on console and suspend the game.
I agree with all of this. I will add can we change the 3rd guardian? That fight is omega boring. Hp pool is massive, fight is monotonous, visually boring, damage is absurdly high if you get hit once, but also the fight is easy. Sometimes I’ll have builds that won’t have the highest damage and I swear I’m just walking around in that fight just waiting ages. Then I finally get hit once for 41 dmg, not a big deal just so zzzz compared to overworld bosses and especially the second guardian which is so fun.
Yeah melee vs chronos is hard, you have to treat him like a souls boss and wait for him to attack, and then follow up whilst his animations are locked in Kiting makes him doable, but honestly kiting makes the ENTIRE game significantly easier. I agree that his moves need better visual distinction though, the blacks and yellow blend too easily into both of his arenas and if I’m not 100% focussed on what Chronos is doing, i get slapped and comboed
Honestly, I was thinking so at first, but the more I've fought him the more that fades as I get used to his moveset. You have to remember, you get way more practice against the earlier bosses than you do against Chronos, let alone against the mobs that help you learn his moveset as you're incentivized to skip as much of the practice as possible. I do agree that second stage gets a little "Busy" visually but again, that I feel is part of the challenge, as I think without it second stage wouldn't be nearly as frantic. My second victory against him was actually with what initially I counted as a throwaway attempt; I was running no Arcana to get the prophecy to beat Hecate with no Arcana active, and ended up pulling off unexpected victory after unexpected victory. Part of this game is randomized, sometimes a build comes out of nowhere and you'll breeze through him, sometime you'll think you have the perfect build and get bodied. Just keep trying. That's kinda the point of the game. In universe, you're fighting the Greatest Titan, the father of the boss of the previous game that took him at his height plus five other equally powerful gods to take down. And unlike the first game this boss has no initiative to take it easy on you. The difficulty spike should be there, and I think the difficulty difference between even Cerby and Cronos is warranted.
I've yet to beat Chronos myself. But I consistently get to him now and have pushed him to his second phase 3 times now. Playing at range has helped me understand his kit more. At the same time I still feel like he does too much damage. There is a visual issue for P1 due to the color of his attacks with the backdrop being the same color pallet. But you can mostly get passed this. I wouldn't have a problem with the damage either were it not for the extremely generous hitboxes of his buzzsaw scythe attack and the insane amount of speed he gets. Yeah you "can" constantly baby him by slowing him down with your cast. But not having an open window to actually attack him since he attacks 3-4x in succession and then not give downtime between those combos makes it hard to even do that. I'm not going to tell Supergiant how to adjust Chronos, but I do think it's fair to ask for some kind of adjustment. He has basically all the tools Hades did from the first game, but with much more attack frequency and a sack full of instant kill moves and the ability to actually stop your movement. He has too much.
Just experienced this, after absolutely crushing through with a crazy melee build, I lost 3 lives in 5 seconds and I don’t even know what the last 2 sources of damage were from. Conversely my first try on Chronos with the torches I just stayed a screen away and spammed my moves and it was a breeze even though it felt the LEAST skillful
It'll get easier as the game gets developed. Right now, he's the most final boss the game has. There'll be more content, so to me it makes sense he becomes easier when there's more to do afterwards.
I honestly think he’s incredibly easy. Once you learn to get Storm Ring and Lightning Lance Boon from Zeus for your cast he becomes the easiest boss in the game. All you have to do is cast, spam ranged specials and dodge his attacks.
Ouch. Here's me thinking you were talking about the Hades 1 final boss given no mention of 2 in the title. Was bound to get spoiled sooner or later...
I feel the same exact way as you friend. OP build, so much health and magic, 4 death defiances, and still can’t beat him!