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.

[SERGEANT]

Just stop doing 3 phase bosses. It's too much!

[11clock]

Originally posted by EldritchWaifu:

Protip: Just settle for getting imperfect parries and taking internal damage, especially on the poke attacks she does, it's not worth risking getting hit for a precise parry on those.

Also if you are not grounded, do not go for charge counter as she is too fast for you to land and charge. With the phase 2 quad-slash, you let go of charge when she sheathes her sword/opens eyes then parry twice and then reactive to whatever the fourth attack is.

In phase 3 also settle for imperfect parries, because then you can't get comboed to death

I found it much easier to dodge through the crimson parts of the quad-slashes than doing the charge counter on them. You still need to parry the white slashes though, because the dodge cooldown is too high.

If you are going to rely on imperfect parries, I highly recommend jades that make internal damage easier to recover. The jade that heals you every time you deal damage was a lifesaver for me, and I kept it on for pretty much the whole game.

[leo_gear]

Originally posted by 11clock:

Originally posted by leo_gear:

I love watching YTers play this game and I've watched a couple that have not used Unbound Counter to finally conquer Eigong. It can be done. Even her ranged crimson+white slashes, I've seen people just jump over them lol.

If anything, watching other players adapt to the different bosses just shows me how boxed in my tactics were in overcoming these bosses.

For the ranged combo I did dodge-parry-parry-dodge. Your dodges can phase through more than just lasers you know.

That's how I initially got the 2nd phase down but as I struggled through the 3rd phase, I eventually learned to Unbound Counter the red and parry the white. Eventually I did some jade swapping and I just Unbound Countered the entire 3-4 hit combo.

[Sha)Tellite]

It took me a couple of days by phase (three phases), with one or two hour a day. Just set your mind on learn and memorize mode, and step by step, you'll beat her for sure. She's hard as ♥♥♥♥ that's true, but not unfair, there is a counter for every move she does. be patient. Afterall, it's a really good boss, and the satisfaction to finally beat her is... unbounded

[Roan]

First two phases are fine.

It's definitely the third phase that is unreasonably difficult and unfun. It's incredibly frustrating to have such a difficult moveset that you can't even really "see" to counter so late in the fight, because it takes so long to get there.

I'm sure I'll get her eventually... I can do the first two phases without taking damage at this point, but I really am not enjoying the third at all.

[Seisachtheia]

Originally posted by EldritchWaifu:

Protip: Just settle for getting imperfect parries and taking internal damage, especially on the poke attacks she does, it's not worth risking getting hit for a precise parry on those.

For the poke attacks, you can actually fit exactly one slash in between the pokes (except for the triple poke ending obviously). You can do this to time your parries to get perfect parries. After she thrusts, you attack, then instantly parry. You'll get it every time after you get the rhythm down.

[EldritchErin]

Originally posted by Seisachtheia:

Originally posted by EldritchWaifu:

Protip: Just settle for getting imperfect parries and taking internal damage, especially on the poke attacks she does, it's not worth risking getting hit for a precise parry on those.

For the poke attacks, you can actually fit exactly one slash in between the pokes (except for the triple poke ending obviously). You can do this to time your parries to get perfect parries. After she thrusts, you attack, then instantly parry. You'll get it every time after you get the rhythm down.

Oh damn, didn't figure that out but that actually makes some sense, cause I know you can only animation cancel the end of a slash based on how it feels but didn't know there was enough time to do that.

[Roan]

Well, took about five to six hours... But finally beat her last night. Just felt like I was spamming parry and dash during her cross-screen attack but it apparently worked.

Though I also chunked her for half her health with arrows so 🤷‍♂️

[✪ Knorke]

It takes like 10 minutes to get through phase 1 & 2 and then she has opportunity to 1 hit you in phase 3 even with revive jade. So I agree with players getting frustrated

[TimeRat]

I think it's a pretty reasonable complaint about getting the third phase fight on a first play through. I wouldn't have bothered finishing the game if I was stuck with that fight. The fight with just two phases took me 4 hours over two day, really would have sucked if I finished the second phase and gotten the third.

Also anyone saying play story mode, that means starting over, kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ answer.

[Wondercrab]

Originally posted by therealdanhill:

If you have been able to beat all the previous bosses but are endlessly stuck on the last boss, it is absolutely fair to say the developers did not design a good difficulty spike. It means you have not actually been taught to have mastered the game at that point, and you should not be able to get that far without mastering all the systems of the game,

I completely agree with this. I'm working on Eigong's phase 3, and I'll get it in another hour or two, but hot damn is she terribly balanced on the difficulty curve. No boss in the game took me longer than an hour to beat, and the previous two were way quicker than that. It'll probably end up taking me about four hours to get her down in total, and that's absurd in the context of the game as a whole. The Fengs and Ji should've been about twice as hard as Lady Ethereal to make Eigong feel like a natural escalation. There are tons of fun parts to her boss fight, but they really dropped the ball with the pacing at the end of the game.

I'm also not a fan of having to slog through phases you can already beat consistently before getting to practice the part that's giving you trouble. It always feels like such padding in these types of games.

[RRedux]

The main thing that made that boss fight so tiresome, is that even if you have a reasonably good grasp of phase 1 and 2, it still takes a really long time to get to phase 3

So like, for every time you reach phase 3 so you can practice how to deal with everything there, you have to slog through phase 1 and 2 again, it becomes kind of tedious.

Lady Ethereal also had 3 phases, but she had a smaller healthpool, so once you got the hang of phase 1 and 2 you could get through them reasonably fast, and then focus on phase 3.

If anything, I would have wished that the "true ending" bossfight had a slightly smaller healthpool , as it wouldn't make the fight any easier, just a lot less time consuming

[MontuSan]

Hard disagree. The difficulty is as expected for a final boss. Part reason why Eigong is one of the best bosses in this game is because she is hard. She is hard because missing her attacks punishes you harshly. It forces you to up your parry game if it hasn't been good so far.
You have to learn how to parry her attacks and properly counter attack.

And lol, I too have a full time job and still managed to beat her. See, I have a life and can still finish the game. If you are facing difficulty, are unwilling to adapt to her moves and just want to get done with the game, switch to story mode with reduced difficulty.

[Ruchunteur]

I'm currently at the third phase. This is my first playthrough of the game and the third phase isn't optional.
I agrree that the difficulty spike is insane compare to the rest of the game. I'm not talented at those games but I get there eventually (beaten all the dark souls, bloodborn, sekiro and elden ring. I even made a SL1 in dark soul 3 winning against all the bosses, dlc included.). So far I think I do not exagérate if I say I spend more than double or triple the time on that boss that any other of that game (and I didn't manage to kill it yet).
Like some other, my main concerne is how long it takes to get to phase 3. The first two phase I can handle but when I get to phase 3 I don't really have the time to really learn what is going on before getting killed and have to redo the 2 first phase again.
I just timed myself.
first phase 1m37seconde.
second phase 2m22seconds.
third phase before dying. 18 seconds. 18 second of everything going all over the place. Not really great to learn anything. (I started the phase at full health by the way)

For a total of 4m and 18 second basically. And now I get to try again and it will take 4 minutes to get to third phase a gain and hopefully I will understand how to deal with her a little more.

It's a good fight but it's badly design within that game. It took way too much time to get to phase 3 and you can get killed before having trully learn anything.
It's like night and day compare to the other bosses. Some people doesn't seem to have experience a difference (maybe they are really good at those types of games) but average people like myself see it really well. The jump in difficulty shouldn't be that high.

I wish there was a training mode were you could train on bosses outside of your save file and chose the phases you want to start at. (say, so unclock this phase in training only if you saw reached it first in real savefile). That way I wouldn't struggle that much just to see the third phase.
I do not want to go to story mode, I beat the rest of the game normaly.
I will win eventually though. I'm not like OP using life as an excuse, a game doesn't have to be finish right away, it's fine if it's take a while.

Update: 2 days after. I beat her. Using water flow style was key for me. To get more opportunity to touch her phase 3. But damn, it was still a mess. I still think the phase 3 difficulty is overtune. the first 2 phases are much better tuned.

[Tianhuo]

Hey there! Eigong is definitely tough and even as a long time Souls fan she took me around 20 tries on my first play through (non-true ending). On my subsequent true ending play through the addition of phase 3 took around 5 tries (bringing my total to 25 deaths to Eigong).

The truth is Nine Sols, just like the Souls games, is a game of pattern recognition. Some players will be quicker to pick up on the move set than others, and most of the time it is not a matter of intelligence.

Unfortunately there is no exact guide that can tell you step-by-step how to defeat her, watching a guide on "How to beat Eigong" could only give you advise on what to do for certain moves, only you can teach yourself the muscle memory. Of course your Jades load out and strategies will give you a better chance.

Ultimately for most players it will come down to banging your head against the wall until you get there. It could take you one try, ten tries, or even a hundred tries - no matter how long it takes you don't let anyone invalidate that achievement when it happens.

Of course this is all assuming the sentiment of completing the game at standard difficult matters to you. If not, just slap on story mode and adjust to your comfort.

Best of luck!