Hades

Start making your way across the wall-crawling here, then hit R to drop down near the two statues. Jump across the gap, then walk up the ramp a bit. You might’ve seen that Red Orb Chest in the distance; to reach it, you’ll need to double jump straight up into the ceiling to grab onto a wall-crawl path there and scootch over to the chest. You’ll also find a Gorgon Eye nearby. With that done, return to the path you were on before and jump across to the far side. The enemies that appear here are dangerous if they grapple you, but not very aggressive; use your triangle button attack to finish them off.

At the top of the cliff, you’ll meet Gorgons, which will attempt to zap you with their stone vision. Roll around to avoid it, or hit them with Efreet to disrupt this attack. If they hit you while you’re turned to stone, it’s game over, so avoid it! Kill all of the Gorgons to move on.

After the Gorgons are dead, you’ll head through a small stone doorway. On the far side of this doorway is a statue to your south. Destroy it, then move down to the cliff’s edge there to find a secret path that you can follow to reach a hidden Phoenix Feather.

Return to the stairs and proceed up them to reach another tough fight. Two cyclops will attack you here, with soldiers popping up from time to time to annoy you. Wear down the cyclopes with Efreet (making sure to hit both of them with it), dodge away from their attacks, and use the 3x triangle combo on them to deal heavy damage. The 3x triangle combo (called Spirit of Hercules) also works well on the soldiers, since it knocks them up into the air and prevents them from hitting you. After the two cyclopes die, another one will appear a few moments later, so be sure to nab the health from the chest if you need it! There’s a semi-hidden Red Orb Chest on the small dias in this area, behind a ruined pillar.

After killing all the enemies, jump up across the gap that becomes accessible and fight off the birds. The shaky-looking wall to the north can be destroyed to reveal a Gorgon Eye and a Red Orb Chest. Head off to the east a bit to find an impassible river of blood. In order to get across, head towards the wall to the north. You see that little platform in the middle of this area? You can reach it by destroying the wall to its right. The screen doesn’t shake when you attack the wall, but after enough Cyclones of Chaos it will fall, allowing you to pull the platform out, place it near the green chest, and jump up to it. Climb up to the handholds behind the waterfall and move on over to the east, then drop down.

Ruins of Asphodel

After killing the soldiers, attack the pillar here and push it over with the O button to crush a passageway nearby. Save your game, and don’t miss the Red Orb Chest near the save point. Climb up onto the handholds nearby and work your way over them to reach the next big fight.

Two shielded enemies and a flock of birds will be going up against you at this point. Unfortunately for you, it’s difficult to take on both enemies at the same time. The birds are easy enough to kill with Cyclone of Chaos, but if that attack hits the shieldbearers too often, they’ll counterattack for a large amount of damage. Your best bet is to dodge or run away from the shieldbearers and quickly strike at the birds until they stop respawning, then go to town on the two shieldbearers.

The shieldbearers are tough to take down, thanks to their ability to block your attacks, but you can now use square, square, triangle as well as triangle, triangle, triangle to knock their shields off. TTT will probably cause them to counterattack if all of the blows hit, however, so you may want to aim the first two attacks in the combo away from your enemies, then hit them with the final blow to knock away their shields. After that, aerial Cyclones of Chaos, or repeated TTT’s, will be good at knocking away their health. If you run low on health of your own (and you likely will), try to lure them off to a far corner of the battlefield, then rush back to the health chest to load up.

Killing both shieldbearers will open a door a bit backwards from your path. Head into it and follow the path leading onward. You’ll find a Gorgon Eye before the next fight, which is another birds-and-shieldbearers combo. What’s more annoying here are the spinning blades that coast along the floor. They appear fairly regularly, though, so they are avoidable if you time your movements in accordance with the sounds of the blades coming out.

The Dock of Charon

Head down the walkway leading onward and save your game after nabbing the Red Orb Chest. Ringing the bell here will summon Charon, the ferryman that will lead you on your journey across the river Styx. Unfortunately he balks at the task of escorting a living soul, being accustomed to dealing with the dead. A boss fight ensues.

Boss Fight: Charon

The beginning section of this boss fight is fairly typical. You may be worried about entering the fight, since you didn't have an opportunity to refill your health and mana before entering. At any rate, Charon has two major attacks here. One is a simple three-sweep scythe attack which finishes with him throwing his scythe at you (all of which can be blocked), while the other will see him throwing three small balls of energy in your direction, which you can dodge.

At any rate, you can attack Charon all you want, but at 50% health, he'll warp to an inaccessible part of the level and kill you instantly. Thus begins the next phase of this level.