(Suggestion)Helping players beat Chronos for the first time.

[FireWalkWithMe]

When you compare the early access version of Hades II with it's predecessor during its early access period, it feels extremely polished and refined. However, when I compare the final fight of Hades II to the other rogue likes I have played (Hades 1, Dead Cells, Oblivion Override, Skul), it strikes me as strange to have the vast majority of the difficulty of a run tied into the final fight.

In the first Hades game, if I entered the final merchant room with a synergistic build, three death defiance and the lucky tooth, Hades was very likely to go down, unless I was doing a crazy heat run. Before I cleared Chronos for the first time, I probably had five runs where I completely obliterated every room and fight beforehand losing no death defiance and having more than half of my 140+ hp bar. I learned his patterns, and mostly had his early stages well memorized. However, I definitely favored melee builds, and there were always two points where the train would leave the tracks, as it were:
The first point is when he starts doing his long combo chains at the end of his first health bar. His moves were moves he did in his earlier phases, but they were chained together extremely quickly. Even if I perfectly timed and dodge his initial strike, strike two would probably hit, followed by strike three and four. Now I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm a perfect player and his timing is impossible to deal with- obviously we can all watch YouTube and see streamers clearing him left and right without too much issues (though even they seem to struggle at times), but it feels like your only option as a melee build is to run away when he starts to wind up his big combos and wait for him to finish. However, he can also summon a speedy cyclone move and drop it right on top of you. You can get hit three times easy and that's when you move in the right direction to partially escape. If you dash in the wrong direction you can take a lot more than two or three hits. Any of these hit chains are more than capable of taking one death defiance from you right away, and if you lose one at the front of these combos, you can easily lose a second before five seconds pass. Other concerns during the throne room portion are off-screen projectiles. If you are at the back of the throne room and Chronos is off-screen, you better be near the bottom of your screen or you can eat a golden disc throw quicker than Charon can turn a profit. Not to mention the post cyclone crescent is almost always coming from off-screen, even though it is predictable. Off-screen projectiles can be learned about and avoided with practice, but they always strike me as cheap when the character you're playing should be able to see them coming, but the player can't because of the viewing angle.
So let's assume you get through the first phase and move onto the giant clock. I think it's fair to say that almost everyone who doesn't already know about tick-tock-one-shot will probably get hit by it the first time they see it. Very likely they won't understand what happened (at first I suspected it was an early access run ender, then I thought it was just one automatic hit, then I finally realized that there was a spot to stand in). Personally, I think the surprise inherent in the move doesn't feel like a good reward for making into phase two. Perhaps Hades can yell out a warning so players can immediately understand what's going. All that said, it's not the first use of tick-tock-one-shot that drives Chronos phase two off the rails, its when he busts it out in the middle of the hourglass adds and bullet spam bs. As far as I can tell, he doesn't always do this every time you fight him, but sometimes he decides to spam it extremely often. an unlucky dodge into an hour glass freeze feels horrible at this stage of the fight. As melee you're often just sitting there waiting for an opening that never seems to come between the bullets, the lasers, the hour glass freeze zones, and the tick-tock-one-shot. It feels like once he hits 1/4 of his life that little clock face is just filling up with damage. Consequently, if you lose one of your remaining death defiance, you're very likely to lose a second one in quick succession.

I've cleared Chronos four-times now, and the leveled up weapon aspects do open up builds that are way better against him- but he does currently feel like a distinct challenge all by himself almost separate and removed from the rest of the run.

However, I see the assistance boons from Hades as an elegant method of helping new players beat Chronos, especially helping them to clear him for the first time. Have Hades offer defensive boons, off the top of my head- something that helps to break his combos up, impervious for 2-3 secs after damage, with a timer (10-12 seconds, maybe??) a boon that lets you keep your channel slowdown (I understand he is the titan of time, but that feels like an essential part of many builds- maybe you need an incantation like the pause incantation, but it can be done before clearing Chronos). Another boon might be Hades protecting players from tick-tock-one-shot either completely once or partially every-time.

I do see the Hades boon room as a great game design idea which could be leaned into and really help players kill chronos, at least for the first time. All that said, beating Chronos does feel like a big accomplishment on top of an excellent sequel.