Chapter Four: Euryale’s Temple

Boss Fight: Barbarian King

Video Walk-through

The first two phases of the barbarian king fight are fairly lengthy.
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After saving your game, move up the path into the bog, slicing up the hanging bodies to find some orbs. After you move forward a bit, a barbarian warrior will capture you and drag you along behind his horse. You need to deal with him!

Begin by saving yourself from a lot of damage by playing a button-pressing minigame. After four or five successful button hits, you'll regain your health and mana and be shuttled into a little arena to fight the barbarian king.

Phase One: Horseback

Knock off the Barbarian's shielding to expose him to damage.

The barbarian rides into battle on his horse at the outset of the fight. He'll roam around the arena firing arrows at you, hitting you with his hammer when he gets close, and occasionally attempting to run you down with his horse. Dodge out of the path of the horse charge when that occasion arrives, and stay on the move to hopefully dodge the arrows. While doing so, unload your Typhon's Rage arrows into him; that will start knocking off the blue protective spirits that have gathered around him.

When you're out of mana (you'll gain some back each time you knock off a spirit), you'll have to finish off the remaining spirits with melee attacks. Get within range of attacks and start hitting your enemy, but try to avoid taking damage from the barbarian's hammer attacks. After knocking off the last couple of spirits, an O-prompt will appear above the horse. Getting close and nailing the O button will finish off the horse, making this a mano-a-mano fight. For the moment, anyway.

Phase Two: The Souls Of The Damned

There's really no reason to lose your he...oh, we already did that joke.

The barbarian will now attack you one-on-one, using his hammer to deal plenty of damage to you. He is, again, protected by the blue spirits that swirl around him. He can also stomp his hammer into the ground with his foot to cause a large jet of flames to ripple along the ground towards Kratos; you can jump over this attack if you anticipate it.

The key to his undoing here will be that he can materialize the spirits into bodies. He'll first summon up four helper spirits to deal with you. They'll attack you if they get close, but they can be eliminated by a simple O-button grapple. Focus on the spirits while avoiding the barbarian's attacks; after killing the first four, another four will appear. After they die, two final spirits will appear, including one that will drop some health for you. After all the spirits are destroyed, you'll move on to phase three.

Phase Three: Hammertime

Video Walk-through

Finishing off the King can also be difficult.
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After you knock off all of the spirits for the second time, the barbarian will absorb them and grow to three times his normal size. He has two basic attacks which he'll send your way here; a two-swing combo that results in a big windup before the hammer smashes into the ground, and a slightly quicker three-swing combo that has the same basic finisher. These attacks are all kind of slow, so do your best to roll to the side when they come out to avoid the ground slam. If you manage to avoid getting rammed by the slam, then you should be able to unload a combo into the barbarian's side before he recovers and attacks again. Feel free to pop some Rage at this point, if you like, to power through the fight more quickly, but if you have any to spare, you may want to save it for the last part of the fight.

Phase Four: Finish Him!

That's a mighty fine hammer. Mind if I borrow it?

After knocking the stuffing out of the barbarian, he'll shrink to normal size and start wailing on you. He'll use the same basic combos that he put out while he was supersized, but will now also summon his spirits together and throw them at you. Try to keep an eye out for this move and dodge away from it when it comes in.

At this point, it's difficult to dodge the barbarian's attacks, unless you stay back and use Typhon's rage or something. If you're running low on health, feel free to bust out your Cronos' Rage or Rage of the Titans or some such. You have to deal enough damage to him to cause an O-prompt to appear above his head. When you see it, get close to him and hit O, but be ready to mash on the O button with your index finger, because you'll have to do so immediately to grab the hammer out of his hands. When you have it, you have to hit four button presses in a row; missing any of them will force you to go back and damage the barbarian again and repeat the whole sequence.

You Got The Whole Hammer In Your Hands

Obviously enough, this whole boss fight will earn you a new weapon: the barbarian hammer. It's a slow and somewhat unwieldy thing, so we didn't use it very often, but you can feel free to do so if you want to vary things up a bit.

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