How To Beat The Corrupted Heroes In Immortals Fenyx Rising

While Immortals Fenyx Rising has several series of difficult boss battles thanks to Mythical Creatures, Tartaros Lieutenants, and more, some of the most intense battles you can find in the game surround the wraiths of the corrupted heroes. These heroes were summoned by the gods to battle the powerful titan Typhon prior to the events of the game, but he was able to corrupt them and force them to fight by his side. Until you defeat them in their Wraith Lairs, weaker versions of these legendary heroes can appear at random on the map while you’re trying to do other activities, so it’s a good idea to take them out once you feel competent and powerful enough to do so.

My tips below give you advice on how to topple these powerful heroes with a pretty baseline set of abilities, but through upgrades, you can make these showdowns much easier. My preferred loadout for these battles was to equip Phospor with the Tarnished skin, which replenishes your health every time his attack lands, and just relentlessly bomb on them with his attack. However, since his attacks use up your stamina, you have to get in and attack with your sword to replenish your stamina quickly while he’s lighting them up. The more upgraded Phosphor and your sword are, the better this tactic works, but once I got this down, I combined these skills with the tips listed below to make short work of most of the heroes.

Check out my hero-specific tips below, and let us know what tactics you employ in the comments section!

Achilles

Achilles is the first wraith you encounter during your adventure while on your quest to help Aphrodite, but that doesn’t mean he goes down without a fight. However, his pattern is fairly straightforward: He typically throws three parry-able attack sequences before loading up, glowing red, and unleashing an unblockable horizontal swing, followed by an overhead slash. Sometimes he’ll throw in an extra one-off unblockable attack, but it’s pretty obviously broadcasted, so just be cognizant of whether or not he’s glowing red.

The best path to victory for me was to not try to actively stun him, but rather to parry the attacks I could, which leaves a small opening for light-attack combos, then build his stun gauge up through well-timed parries. Of course, when he glows red, it’s time to put your thumb on the dodge button and try to time it well enough that you slow time for your go-to combo. When you get him down, just unload onto him, but don’t get greedy, because he’ll pick back up with his relentless attack shortly after standing back up. Keep up the rhythm of parries and dodges and before you know it, you’ll deal the final blow to this legendary warrior.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

The wraith of Atalanta as you encounter her in the world

Atalanta

The huntress of legend is perhaps the toughest of the corrupted hero battles, mainly thanks to her bear companion. If you’re anything like me, your first instinct is to take out the bear, but since the bear is such a tank, I realized that it might just be best to focus all of your attacks on Atalanta herself. She uses a series of different arrows, including a scattershot, a jumping shot, and an unblockable shot. If you get too close, she’s not above swinging her bow at you, dealing pretty solid damage.

While I mentioned focusing your attacks on Atalanta, you can’t completely ignore the bear, since he stays pretty close to her side. Keep swinging on Atalanta, but be mindful of the beefy predator who is never far away; when he comes lunging in, time your dodge or parry right and it’ll slow time, giving you extra hits on the primary target. As with other enemies, try to focus on which attacks can be parried to raise the stun meter, and which ones have to be dodged (as indicated by the enemy glowing red before throwing it). With such acrobatic moves and an extra enemy to worry about, Atalanta is difficult, but by learning her pattern and staying aware of her furry friend, she’s beatable.

Herakles

The muscle-bound hero is the most tank-like of the four legendary heroes, but I found him to be the easiest thanks to how often he metaphorically shoots himself in the foot. Not only does he sometimes get his weapon stuck in the ground thanks to his massive swings at you, but he’ll even stop to pose or do push-ups, giving you time to attack, potion-up, or apply buffs.

For Herakles, I didn’t even take the time to learn his pattern; I instead used my speed advantage and his arrogance against him. Get in with some light attacks and parry in the off-chance he throws a blockable attack, but chances are, he’ll wind up for something devastating. Once he begins glowing red, dodge your way out of range and begin the process again. As you feel more comfortable with his timing, you can experiment with staying in range longer or mixing in some heavy attacks or abilities that boost his stun meter, but keep at it and he will fall.

Odysseus

Odysseus is the most intelligent of the legendary heroes, and he shows that with some unique tricks up his sleeve. Most notably, he teleports around the battlefield, appearing all around you to mix in attacks both blockable and unblockable. He can also create clones of himself, but don’t worry too much about them; they don’t have much health, so they typically go down without a ton of trouble.

I kept up a pretty relentless assault on Odysseus once learning his patterns. As with every other hero on this list, be sure to dodge instead of parry when the enemy glows red before he attacks. When he goes into his portals and begins teleporting around you with attacks, the first two are unblockable, while the third is one you can parry. As I mentioned before, the clones don’t have much health, but if you let them surround you, it can become problematic, so it’s best to dispatch them as they spawn. Odysseus didn’t give me much trouble, but if you have difficulty anticipating where he’s going to pop up next, he could be a bit of a pain. Just do your best to track him when he goes on the move and remember to dodge the first two – and if you lose count, just dodge all of them. Better safe than sorry!

If you’re interested in learning more about the latest Ubisoft open-world adventure, be sure to check out our full review here

The Divine Comedy Of Immortals Fenyx Rising

Immortals Fenyx Rising

A powerful titan of legend has launched a massive assault on the Greek gods of mythology, severing them from their essence, smashing open cracks to the underworld, and infesting Earth with corrupted beings from the afterlife. A setup like this isn’t uncommon in the world of video games, but when it comes to comedy, a dark premise such as this isn’t the first thing you might think of. However, that’s exactly the direction Ubisoft Quebec went with Immortals Fenyx Rising.

While the inspiration drawn from games like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Studio Ghibli films like Howl’s Moving Castle is evident in the gameplay and visual style, it was a different genre of film that dictated the tone Ubisoft Quebec employs with Immortals Fenyx Rising. “I felt like a lot of video games are incredibly dark, and I had missed this feeling from childhood that movies like the Princess Bride or Naked Gun or Airplane had given me; I felt like, ‘Why can’t a video game have that kind of tone?'” says narrative director Jeffrey Yohalem. “It got tipped in that direction by the fact that Greek mythology is actually full of comedy. Unlike our religion today, which is seen as a moral compass where everything is very serious and is how you should act if you were a perfect person or a perfect deity. For the Greeks, their mythology was like their soap opera or their reality television, where you’re seeing people who are just like us making mistakes and you’re learning from the things in the stories that result in tragedy.”

Immortals Fenyx Rising

Immortals Fenyx Rising attempts to balance awesome action, epic stakes, and well-timed humor

According to cinematic team lead Michelle Plourde, the team’s desire to make a humorous game started during the development of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. “What we learned from Odyssey was that we really enjoyed making funny, lighthearted types of stories in games,” she says. “We took what we learned from Odyssey and where that kind of shined through and we transferred that into Fenyx Rising, but instead of making that where you see instances of the story being funny at some points, we tried to make it so it’s a comedy instead of this type of serious game.”

The entirety of Immortals Fenyx Rising is narrated by Zeus and Prometheus. To say these two have a complicated relationship would be an understatement: When the titans and gods clashed for the first time, Prometheus was one of the few titans who sided with the gods, so the two are basically old war buddies as well as cousins. However, the relationship soured when Prometheus fell in love with humanity and stole fire from Olympus to give to the humans. To punish Prometheus for this betrayal, Zeus chained him to the side of a mountain and has an eagle peck out his liver every day before it regenerates every night. However, the Typhon crisis made them realize they need each other, so Prometheus weaves a tale of Fenyx, a mortal who will save the gods from the doom they are facing.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

While Prometheus is the driving force of the narrative, Zeus chimes in with jokes. However, he can also serve as an unreliable narrator, sometimes going as far as hijacking the story because he’s bored by what Prometheus is saying. In one instance, when Fenyx dives into the first Vault of Tartaros, Zeus is certain it would be deadly for a mortal, so he cues a fake credits scroll where either he or Prometheus is listed in every role. A bit later, the first boss battle occurs because Zeus is bored and decides it’s a good time for Fenyx to fight a Cyclops.

The unreliable narrator mechanic was a way to shake up the storytelling of Immortals Fenyx Rising while also adding some humor into the mix. “We thought it added flare!” says Plourde. “We have these feuding family members, so why not make use of them and have what they’re saying come to life on screen since they are telling a story? Why not make use of it as a kind of gameplay/narrative tool? It’s a tool to have them bicker and be different. Obviously, Zeus can take over control of the story because he’s present with Prometheus, so why not?”

Immortals Fenyx Rising

The humor isn’t limited to just Zeus and Prometheus. In fact, as you rescue the defeated gods and reunite them, the Hall of the Gods starts to come to life, and you should expect some lively conversations once the gods see their old peers. “The Hall of the Gods becomes kind of like a beach house in a reality show,” game director Scott Phillips says. “As you free the gods, you’re adding voices to that cacophony and they’re all interacting with each other. They have this huge backstory and some of them love each other and some of them hate each other.”

Over the early moments of the game, players can expect references to airplane turbulence and a joke about shoes when Fenyx encounters Nike, the goddess of victory. The game may take place in ancient Greece, but Ubisoft Quebec didn’t shy away from some winks at the player in the 21st century. “The line was almost only drawn where a joke would age badly, as in people 30 years from now wouldn’t get the joke,” Yohalem says. “The turbulence joke, anyone who knows what an airplane is would understand that joke. That was the line: to create timeless, modern humor.”

Immortals Fenyx Rising launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia, and PC on December 3. Our coverage hub is nearly complete, so be sure to click the banner below to learn all about Immortals Fenyx Rising prior to its launch!