• Ophion: Ophion is the leader of the opportunistic raiders that come to sack the hero's hometown of Dion once it's clear it no longer has the protection of the Gods. I think a lot of Ancient Greek fearmongering is sort of built around this idea that they're the sole beacon of civilization in their particular era, and were it not for the providence of the Gods (read: education and technology), the ever-present threat of barbarian invasions from every direction would become a terrifying reality. Ophion is a human opponent, so he fights like you do: a mixture of shield blocking, timing swings so they connect as the two of you get close and dodge-rolling to avoid blows his shield wouldn't stop. It's essentially training you how to fight for real, employing strategy and guile against a wily AI opponent, after a few weak underlings that you could feasibly mash through with minimal tactical consideration.

The next four bosses occur in any order, given Apotheon's branching structure. You need to recover gifts of the Gods from Apollo, Artemis and Demeter before the game moves onto its second act, and you're free to tackle them in any order.

• Ophion: Ophion reappears, perhaps not surprisingly, as the de facto "boss" of the Underworld area. He guards the throne room of the kingdom's namesake Hades and his wife Persephone, who actually don't give you any shit and just let you go on your way with the valuable artifact you need to claim Demeter's gift. Ophion fights similarly as before, but is far more weighted towards offense than defense. I guess the notion here is that, when you're already dead, what have you left to fear?
• Brontes: Brontes is a far more tactical fight than any of the others, even if it simply requires that you hit him in his cycloptic eye. He's also a lot taller than you are, reminding me a little of the Galamoth fight from Symphony of the Night and the Castlevania franchise's other similar battles against 15 foot titans, so you need to aim up with a ranged weapon to have any chance of hitting the only weak spot on his entire body. This is all while you're dodging the immense arc of his club weapon and finding a temporarily safe place to plant yourself before aiming and firing again. It boils down to a lot of precision under pressure and dodging like crazy when he gets close.
• Apollo: Apollo is even more churlish and haughty than most of the Gods you meet in Apotheon, and doesn't want to give up his enchanted lyre to the uncivilized monkey that has invaded his palace, despite the fact that he threw us into his own dungeon in the first place. His battle involves chasing him down as he flies around his stoa at great speed while firing arrows at you. It's an irksome battle, because he also turns the lights off and you're often only able to gauge his location from determining where the painful arrows are coming from. He also moves so fast that the trajectory of the most recent arrow is no reliable indicator to his present position, though he doesn't move so much if he already has a fair distance on you. I didn't think to try it, but it might be easier to just swap ranged damage with him in a battle of attrition weighted in the favor of the guy with health recovery items. Believe me, nothing would be too cheap for that conceited minstrel.
• Artemis: Artemis's fight has a bit more of a puzzle element to it. After impressing her enough in her hunting grounds, she turns the player into a stag so that she might finally bag a trophy worthy of her skills. She turns it into a fair sport, however: if the player can make it to several totems before dying to Artemis's arrows, she will then transform you back and herself into a doe and combat repeats with the roles reversed. By filling her rapidly-moving deer form with arrows and dodging the same when it's your turn as the ungrateful ungulate, it becomes a curiously metamorphic game of tag. It's a fascinating method of crafting a boss fight against the Goddess of the Hunt, and I commend its inventiveness. It makes me excited to see what follows, even if the game continues to grate in other ways.