Eigong's Difficulty Spike is unreasonable.

[Wewius]

The final fight against Eigong is unreasonably hard. I've read the other threads here about how players are giving up, quitting the game, or are otherwise banging their heads against the wall that is Eigong.

After countless tries and many hours getting used to her, I can now consistently reach phase two. Just now, I managed to barely make it to phase three, where I was promptly defeated by her full-screen slashes.

I've read many condescending replies here, all the usual BS: "Get gud," "Skill issue," and so on. To those I say: People have lives and other priorities. Sure, jerk yourselves off about how amazing you are. I hope you are happy and feel accomplished beating a boss like her "easily." I have a family and other ♥♥♥♥ to do and not the patience nor the time to spend so much time on one boss.

Eigong doesn't compare to the other bosses. I'm not saying she's too hard. I'm saying the difficulty spike compared to the other bosses is unreasonable, completely out of the blue, and way too much.

This is yet another example of devs thinking that a hard boss equals a good boss. I don't understand how you can alienate your players who paid good money for your game and spent many hours getting to the end just to ♥♥♥♥ them over and have the entire game leave a bad aftertaste even after finishing it.

This could have been a really good game. Unfortunately, Eigong is ruining it for many, many players.

[Vashetrockner]

I had a blast with this fight. One of the best video game bosses i ever fought. Took me around 2-3 hours and around 50 tries. But once you get consistently into phase 2, you should have the basics down, each phase adds 1 or 2 mechanics and some mixups to them.

Phase 2 tips: When you counter her Green crimson dash, she will most likely follow up with a new air combo, try to get the timing of the 2 slashes. if she did 2 -> prepare a unbounded counter on the ground. If you parried only 1 , because she prepares a crimson plungs attack -> evade and get ready to counter her Talisman "Genkidama" you know from phase 1. You can allways use 2 parries in the air - even if you don't know which variant she uses. You can always evade-cancel your second parry. The bow combo you have to learn for yourself ,but you can always use the unbound counter 2 times, even if she does her triple slash instead of her second crimson slash - just be ready to parry the slashes 2 more times after your unbound counter.

Phase 3: It seems really intimidating, but you only need to get the timing of the new mechanic and be prepared that she can weave it in at almost everything she did before. The timing is always the same and the crimson slash can be evaded downward if you equipped the jade for downward dashing. She only has around half the HP in P3 than in the phases before.

It is a battle you can only win with knowledge and muscle memory. But it is really fair.

[pawelex94]

Originally posted by Vashetrockner:

I had a blast with this fight. One of the best video game bosses i ever fought. Took me around 2-3 hours and around 50 tries. But once you get consistently into phase 2, you should have the basics down, each phase adds 1 or 2 mechanics and some mixups to them.

Phase 2 tips: When you counter her Green crimson dash, she will most likely follow up with a new air combo, try to get the timing of the 2 slashes. if she did 2 -> prepare a unbounded counter on the ground. If you parried only 1 , because she prepares a crimson plungs attack -> evade and get ready to counter her Talisman "Genkidama" you know from phase 1. You can allways use 2 parries in the air - even if you don't know which variant she uses. You can always evade-cancel your second parry. The bow combo you have to learn for yourself ,but you can always use the unbound counter 2 times, even if she does her triple slash instead of her second crimson slash - just be ready to parry the slashes 2 more times after your unbound counter.

Phase 3: It seems really intimidating, but you only need to get the timing of the new mechanic and be prepared that she can weave it in at almost everything she did before. The timing is always the same and the crimson slash can be evaded downward if you equipped the jade for downward dashing. She only has around half the HP in P3 than in the phases before.

It is a battle you can only win with knowledge and muscle memory. But it is really fair.

My 2 cents to this:
ye I also struggled for damn long, problem is going into 1st phase all the time over and over again is so time consuming /wasting + unskipable intro cutscene which also last quite a bit (same issue with final boss in Devil Within:Satgat)

Anyway managing her both 1st and 2nd phase reliably eventually is incredibly satisfing experience indeed

3rd phase is true bs hell because once she launched me in air she had 90% chance of stunlock me to death and I was annihilated

Timing her 1st assault strike to dash on ground and just wait out her next few air slashes by STANDING STILL then prepare for 4th horizontal strike to SPAM parry with direction where she go from and repeat it 2-3 times and she is done with this
could also parry non-red assault airstrike mid-air but that's 10% of chance of not being hit by red bs

after finally learning timing of her first airstrike attack and waiting it out on ground, assault airstrike attack wasnt rly a problem anymore
also there was 1 specific attack from phase 2 followed by this assault airstrike which I dont remember anymore but she repeats these air slashes only after 1 or 2 types of her other attacks

I wished 3rd phase was slightly more forgiving but damn it was speechless moment after finaly defeating her

[Smugy]

Don't play like you're playing Hollow Knight
play it like you're playing Nine Sols
I found most people struggle with this game because they prefer dodge the attack instead parry it, but this game will punish you for doing that.
you only need to clam down and parry her attack bravely.
Eigong's every attack are parryable (except tailsman attack and full screen red slash)

Best way to deal with Eigong
Determine which attack she's gonna use
because these two attack has same prepare animation. red ball or tailsman,
unbound counter the red ball attack will bring you a lot of time to attack.
Her dash triple slash attack also give you time to attack

Hedgehog Jade is the best, every parry give Eigong interal damage
Patience is the key to victory
focus on parry, wait your turn to attack, the less you use dash the better

[dobe0331]

I defeated her under story mode with 1000% attack bonus and 1% receiving damage. We crowd-funded this mode so should utilise it.

[thorin.hannahs]

Oh there is a phase 3.....Eigong is just a damn monster through and through.

[kellorkleft]

I think I understand where this went kinda wrong. Eigong was already intended be a very challenging 2-phase boss, just by itself a worthy final fight. When getting the Normal ending, you only need to beat her second phase to win the game. Then, her third phase was added to make pursuing the True ending a bigger challenge to top it off. Lots of games do stuff like that.

But, because getting on the path for the true ending is easy on your very first run, kind of encouraged by the game, and not very difficult to find as much as it is just a little more demanding of your exploration, I'd wager that the majority of gamers are running into Eigong's challenging "you gotta earn it" third phase on their very first playthrough. Thus, what would've been a smoother difficulty curve suddenly turned into a cliff.

I really don't know what the devs could do about this, because you can't really go back to make unlocking the true ending harder...and I'm not a big fan of the idea of making her easier to beat. Maybe just a little easier? Like 5% slower, so she's just a bit easier to read?

Either way, best I can suggest is to try mixing up some jade strategies and see which one you're most comfortable with. It took me a while longer so that I could memorize her moves, but it becomes second nature to beat the snot out of her first 2 phases after 40 tries.

[Exacuerer]

Looking at data from my social circle, the average clear time for TE Eigong appears to be around 4 hours. This might not reflect the broader player base. But just base on my data, she is fine.

[Kriya Takagi]

i think reaction time plays a big part in this as well. i think the only reason i could not beat her was because my reaction time hit a hard cap. because i was stuck on that boss for two days before i decided to adjust the settings. got to the point that the frustration wasn't worth it do to my own skill limitation

[Mumkey Jones]

Beat it in two sittings over the course of two days, not sure how long that was but was much longer than any other boss in the game. I think the reason people hate it is because the number of attempts that you are stuck in "dying in the first 10-30 seconds" skill level with the fight is much, much more than any other boss. That said, like the rest of them you reach a threshold where it clicks (memorizing her basic melee combos is a big priority to get to this point). Anybody who is raging, take a break and come back to it when you feel like it, but just accept that it will take longer to learn than the others.

[Auron]

yeah her difficulty is substantially higher than any other boss. Phase one is pretty easy. But phase two is where the difficulty is. (Phase 3 is insane, but thats optional thankfully)

It took me maybe ~2-3 hours of trying for me to beat Eigong for the first time.
You definitely need the jade that deals internal damage to the enemy when you do a perfect parry. You parry her so much in that fight that you can get good damage on her with it.

[leo_gear]

OP, did you beat her yet?

You're not alone in struggling with her. I think I did 3 sessions of about 1.5hrs of practice with her and just beat her after another 2hr session. I will say, she's tough to learn but once you start getting her patterns, it's like a dance. I think it was the 2nd session when I started thinking "I need to try and Unbound Counter more". If you would have told me I'd be Divine Hand 3-chained Unbound Countering stuff by the time I beat her, I'd say that's outside of my skill range.

By session 3, I was just fighting her for fun to see what I could get away with and what I could Unbound Counter and started playing around with my jades. By the middle of the last session I was actually trying to not precise parry so that I could Unbound Counter to heal back the internal damage while transferring it to her.

I only beat her once so far but I'm safe saying if I had to fight her again, I could probably beat her 1 out of 5 times now lol. I'd rather not count how many times I lost overall as a lot of those fights were kind of thow-away experimental fights lol You just have to take breaks and have fun with it.

[Nucléase]

problem is not the difficulty spike, it's the visual being all flashy. You don't understand what is happening. Because of this, understanding and adapting is impossible and all you are left with is 100% trial and error and that suck.

Once you figure it out, it's actualy not bad at all and a great feeling to beat her.

[Technoboop]

I disagree, personally. She is for sure the boss that took me the longest time to beat but it wasn't like a landslide difference, and I don't think she's too big of a departure from the difficulty of the previous bosses.

[ric]

Right now i just not understanding how to parry the teleport attacks in phase 3...
But thats life, sure if I put more effort I will beat this b****

[Baroque]

A masterpiece of a game ruined by a brutal and uncharacteristic difficulty spike at the very end. So disappointing. Fun for you minority twitch god gamers out there, but not good for the majority of players. Going to try a few hours of this and then switch to story mode. I’ll never spend an eight hour day on Nightmare King Grimm again.