Ahhh ok I gotcha. Makes sense. Man I really hope I beat him soon. Would you recommend playing through normal to get a lot of good items and hopefully some killer guardians ( already have 1 killer ram and a few epic guardians) easier, then going to challenging. Idk if that would be good or not because I know you get better items on challenging and godlike than you do on normal, so I’m not sure if that would even make sense to do.
I would play him a few times on normal until you get a feel for how his new moves work and know what their tells are and how to react to them. It seems to have really helped me out when I went in to re-unlock the Astral Plane. I’ve been trying to unlock all the mimic skins that have the “beat Gargos X times” requirements. It made a huge difference when I switched up to Challenging.
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Try and get some fractured wards, epic level will be good enough, and your hal way there mate.
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Yeah, wards are really good against Gargos…they let you just power through a lot of his BS.
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There’s two separate discussions happening here. The first is “is Gargos too hard?” That’s subjective, but I think there’s a good case that he is exactly as hard as he was meant to be.
The second discussion is “are cheating boss characters fun.” This is also subjective, but I lean more toward “no.” I have played SL 4 times so far. The first two in challenging and I didn’t make it to Gargos. I realized I was doing it wrong (“bruh, do you even SL?”) so I jumped back to beginner and played a very long playthrough defeating Gargos. Then I took my spoils and went back to Challenging with a better idea of how to manage resources. Made it to Gargos and got hammered without even taking a life bar. Not a super fun experience from my point of view. Not because I’m too scrubby to get good, but because you don’t actually need to get good. You need to grind for hours to get RNG buffs. Then you get one shot to beat the cheating AI.
If you enjoy that, that’s great. But it isn’t some sort of “true gamer test.”
You got to have a strategy and stay on Gargos ■■■, literally! I used Maya with snake guardian. kept doing back heavy punch to get that dagger slash move and immediately low kick and into short combo. This strategy has worked for me until a random button input fuck3d me up, then he wrecked the hell out of me. Try to keep him from summoning those ba5tard minions too. Those m0f0s are a pain in the a55…
I wonder if people wouldn’t mind the difficulty as much if the 10% resurrection were a good deal easier to come by, especially at the beginning. I think that’s where a lot of my frustration came in. Wondering if I was missing out on any story because a character was dead and then having to spend 900 just to unlock two 100% resurrection items… I feel like this part can be a tad punitive on the player.
Maybe start players out with 3 10% resurrections when they first boot up the mode so they can lose a few times without having to immediately run to spend anything they’ve earned on more health stuff instead of getting things they actually want like guardians and consumables that can help them in fights.
I’d also reduce the health pack from 900 down to 600. It doesn’t have to be a permanent change though. Maybe the prices can adjust up or down at various times during the play through. Same goes for all of the packs. Might be nice to catch a few sales here and there 
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Is not that hard to get astral gems on normal to grind stuff to be honest… but the sales can be a pretty nice touch of people who doesn’t want to take a LOT of time getting the Gems to buy the packs for guardians and items or just to save gems because sometimes you need them for the missions, by the way if you’re playing on normal, the “Fulgore unit test” mission do wonders for the Astral Gems (it always asks you about how many Fulgores you want to fight, each desicion have a mark of how many Astral Gems you’ll get if you complete the mission, but you have to add those gems with the ones you get for the fights, for example: by completing the mission you get 130 Gems, but if you fought 3 Fulgores you get another 250 Gems, in total that would be 380 Gems).
Sorry to quote myself (which is a little odd lol), rather than rephrase this through editing, I kinda wanted to clarify it a bit. I know that death is to be expected in this mode. You’re going to lose and lose often as you grind through to unlock consumables and guardians, especially in the beginning.
But I think there’s a potential issue here. Many gamers tend to view dying as a bad thing or even as an indictment of their skill level. So you take that and you mix it with a rather unique situation this mode presents where death is expected, especially in the first few run throughs when you don’t have as many resources and especially against Gargos and some of the more difficult opponents, coupled with seeing corruption increase and the cost of bringing a dead character back to life and yeah, I think you’ll see a good deal of casual players recoiling a bit at the difficulty.
I mean, imagine making it through to Gargos and getting destroyed by him with no chance to beat him and you have no idea how this mode works or why it’s so hard at the beginning and without items.
Of course, the difficulty HAS to be there, otherwise why would you need consumables and guardians at all other than to go from beating your opponents to dominating them in ridiculous fashion? That might be fun for some people, but that’s not really the mode’s intent
I still think that the difficulty on Challenging could be tuned a little. Slightly easier and maybe more accurate in terms of difficulty description (from an AI standpoint), and toned down a bit more on Normal for those that are more concerned with having a good time, getting the story bits, etc and maybe aren’t looking for a big, grindy, long term experience from this mode.
But I think that making death less punitive in the form of making 10% resurrections easier to come by might stem some of that frustration as well. Casual players and lower level players will want to play through this, and I don’t think that many of us are afraid of a challenge, but if we’re having to spend so much on health packs and we’re still dying constantly well…
I worry that some people will throw their hands up in disgust after their first Gargos walloping, assume it’s impossible for them, and quit before they’re able to win those matches with larger payouts (like the one @Pikangs talking about), unlock the items that balance out the difficulty and really get a full handle on how the mode works, why it’s difficult at first and how it gets easier, etc.
I think it’d also help if there were some sort of messaging in the game telling players, especially on Challenging and Normal, that you’re making runs at Gargos and that defeat doesn’t mean the end. You’re meant to play through SEVERAL times and build up your collection and that through doing this, you’ll eventually be strong enough to take him down.
Just my 2 cents.
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I wonder something. If the Astral Plane didn’t exist, would people complain that challenging is too hard?
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I’m sure that’s part of it for some people. I’m sure that there are those that simply want the arena and that’s it. Those same people were likely complaining about how hard Shago was when it came to unlocking Shadow Tiger’s Lair.
Still, I think that there are many people, and I’d even assume it’s the majority of those complaining, that simply don’t enjoy the difficulty of the mode where it’s at right now.
I’ve heard people say “challenging is supposed to be a challenge” or something along those lines. Well, okay, but what’s challenging for me might be too much for you, or what’s easier for you might be challenging for me. So that’s all relative.
I think that as a mode designed with a more casual audience in mind, it’s going to be difficult for them to keep these people happy with a mode that’s designed to kick your teeth in at first until you gain enough stuff to even the playing field and even tilt it a bit in your favor. I think it’d help to be a bit more up front about that in the actual mode to make it feel a bit less like an indictment of your skill level.
Hopefully once the mode’s out for a while and perhaps tuned a little bit so you’re not dying so much at the beginning without any way to resurrect without it costing what feels like an arm and a leg, we’ll see less complaining and more people simply enjoying it for what it is, because from a conceptual standpoint, I think it’s the most brilliant single player mode I’ve seen in a fighting game.
I think it’ll be even better when they add more fighting scenarios, more rewards, more story bits, more items, guardians, etc. The fact that it’s intended to be a living mode with more content on the way (hopefully more accessories, colors and perhaps even stages!) makes it all the more ingenious.
I want to clarify something about my previous post.
I didn’t post that to belittle the crowd of people who are struggling to beat Gargos. I know I’m good at the game. I know I’ve beaten Gargos like 20 times already. I’ve even beaten him on Godlike all buffs. I understand that, for players who don’t study the AI’s habits or understand the properties of Gargos’ moves, this fight may take quite a few tries to get through. There’s nothing wrong with struggling against a boss that is designed to be a cheap, unfair struggle.
The point I was trying to get across with my video is that anybody…ANYBODY… can beat Gargos with enough practice and patience. I beat him by doing the same simple combo repeatedly, a combo that 9 characters which span all three different seasons are capable of performing with slight variation (Jago, Wulf, Thunder, Sadira, TJ, Kan-Ra, Omen, Aria, Arbiter). I also added the extra bonus of showing how worthless his resurrection actually is. In addition, I had no buffs on myself when I went into the fight. This method becomes even more reliable and easy if you have guardians, consumables or artifacts on you.
The rest of my post was trying to get across to people that this mode is not designed for you to win. Have you guys ever played Binding of Isaac? That game is super tough and RNG focused, and if you die once you gotta start all over, and NONE of your stuff carries over. That’s even more punishing than losing to Gargos, because there’s no way to prepare for each run. Yet that game is super popular. Why? Because in the world of games nowadays, people are looking for a challenge. They want to feel a sense of satisfaction when they finally finish a successful run. There are other reasons too, but that’s one of the main ones IMO.
This game actually takes your hand and says “Yeah, that fight sucked, but you’ll have an even better chance of winning next time!” It gives you these amazing buffs in the forms of guardians and consumables that you can buy with currency you earn in game to make most of the AI your b****. It’s designed so that, no matter what, you will eventually be able to defeat Gargos. You will, trust me.
If they make Gargos easier, it will almost completely destroy the RNG and replayability factor of the mode. Why would I keep going back to a mode just to kill a boss that I can flipout to death, unless I was going for unlockables? If anything, I actually think they should adjust Gargos’ AI more so that combo loop doesn’t work as well, because killing him just isn’t satisfaction for me now: it’s routine.
I personally think that having Astral Plane behind a somewhat challenging skill wall is a good thing. It makes the reward actually feel special and not like all the mimic skins people are just going ahead and buying without even trying the mode in the first place. It’s a sign of both skill and dedication to the mode, but you mostly need only one of those two things to get it. I find that it’s a fair middle ground. Oh what’s that? You don’t want to spend any time playing the mode for whatever reason? Tough luck, deal with it. Also, if you seriously think they’re milking microtransactions just because it takes more than one run to beat Gargos, you need to chill and re-evaluate your views.
So in summary: You failed against Gargos again? Get better items, practice new strategies, and be patient. You’ll get the Astral Plane in time. I promise.
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This is exaclty how my story was the first time I beated Gargos with his new stuff, I played on normal (almost beated him) but I got more than enough knowledge to plan a strategy no matter what character I use (after all is one thing I like Shadow Lords, if I want to get the stuff I have to use every single character and that leads me to have to know what can I do with them), I had the stuff but not the strategy on my first tries, but after 4 failures (with close fights overall) I found my way to beat him and reclaim the Astral Plane, I can say as a seasoned player since the 90’s, having to do a challenge like that can add some replay value to the game because you aim to get better and you’ll be happy once you complete the task. Your video can help a buddy of mine to see how you must NOT FEAR Shadow Lord Gargos. Plus I finally bested Gargos on Godlike as well and man, I felt very happy that I managed to pull it off after getting enough Items and Guardians.
Unlocking stuff is a chore but I’m enjoying it because like I said before, trying every single character is fun and you can figure out what they can do for future times you fight as/against them.
Trust what @SonicDolphin117 says, is 105% true (The percent number is a reference to the true complete rate on DKC3 on SNES). 
First time i tried The fulgore test mission it appeared with " impossible" status. LOL.
Don’t play Ki the way it normally plays and you will beat Gargos. Shadow Jago boss is the same. Breaks everything, has ridiculous moves, and always has immediate reaction time. I beat challenging on my first try. I used snake and odorous hearts with the goal of 1 character per life bar and I beat it. You have to play normal to stock up for challenging. And challenging for godlike. It is hard, and it is supposed to be. If everyone could beat shadow lords the day it came out, it wouldn’t have longevity would it? I cleared normal 4 times before I did challenging. That way I know what Gargos can do.
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In my case my tries (3 times on normal and once on Godlike as a “joke” try because I wanted to see how quick can Gargos wipe my party with all of his buffs, I didn’t use items because it would be a waste) ended in failure but those tries was for the knowledge, after that (because I felt Gargos kinda easy overall on normal) I jumped straight to challenging and on my first try I bested Gargos. Against the AI you can’t fight like you usually do for the most part, but that’s the nature of how to create a strategy to beat Gargos.
Exactly, I have a method with Fulgore vs boss Shadow Jago that once started results in a perfect round. He is programmed to use shadow when he has it, and attack after a brief time. Fulgore’s roundhouse startup just happens to be active right after that trigger so I can literally hold forward and roundhouse into heavy dp spam until he dies. But I played until I figured that out. Gargos has some tricks like that too, but unblockable and infinite shadow do wonders. 1 chance break projectile juggles, or just opener into shadow spam until you have poison triggered, plenty of tricks to use. Gargos is cheap, be cheap back!
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Use rash. GGs, gargos.
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After that i think there’s no more reasons to complain about “how hard” omen and gargos are.
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I beat Shago and got Shadow Tiger’s lair in season one and I still think the Shadow Lords AI is bogus. :\