by cdennett
I think what you're describing is a "problem" with the 2-player game. By the time you've summoned the Elder One, your characters are often pretty high on the sanity track, and thus fairly powerful. At this point it's usually a race to kill off the Elder One before going insane. As such, it's not uncommon, depending on characters, discoveries, and other factors, to wipe the floor of the Elder one in a matter of a couple of turns. It's also quite common for one of the investigators to lose their mind in the process, leaving the final investigator to mop up the final stage(s). Those later stages usually make it so you have to finish the Elder One quick before everyone gets wiped out by end-of-round effects. There will always be outliers, and some games can be a cake-walk or absolutely punishing.I find the acceleration welcome, but I can understand thinking this is anti-climatic. I also win probably 85% of the time at 2 players, though I'll say I lose an investigator in about half of those wins.
My last game we actually got annihilated, barely making it to stage 3 before succumbing to sanity loss.
As to how to solve it? Clearly Unknown Monsters are intended to make the whole scenario harder, but not necessarily the Elder Ones themselves. Maybe draw a random Unknown monster card and apply all of it's bonuses and health (times the number of spawns) to the Elder One? That might make it too hard, but it might achieve what you're looking for.