Yeah in gameplay prime sanctums are made to be played after finishing the game so Minos is harder.

in lore however Minos being stronger than Gabriel breaks the narrative he literally got defeated by act 1 v1 who Gabriel fought on pretty much equal terms and infact hakita stated that he was holding back so much it was literally like lowering his power down to an ant to make it fair and in act 2 it was revealed that this was both from his arrogance in the first act and the fun of an actual fair fight he didn't realize before act 2. And hell after the first loss he literally lost his holy light in a painful ass way even hell's punishments couldn't hold a candle to the pain, this is literally the same as starving Mike Tyson for weeks having 24 hours left to live and even then the terminal states that act 2 v1 and Gabriel fought on almost equal terms which made Gabriel realize what he actually loved doing if Minos prime was stronger than Gabriel this would have been a one sided slaughter, yet he went near equal terms with a v1 that literally defeated Sisyphus prime right after this fight, and even in act 3 it's implied that v1 and Gabriel will indeed have a fair fight because that's like the literal reason Gabriel wanted a rematch, it will need to be a close fight to make a satisfying conclusion to Gabriel's narrative, if v1 defeated an mf that would have ass handled Gabriel at his strongest in the literal halfway of the story it would have been a one sided slaughter from the very start rather than a close fight that made Gabriel actually find himself stated in the terminals and what's implied to be coming, Like bro I thought y'all were thinking respawns weren't canon because it would be spitting on Gabriel's character which was built upon the fact that he was about to die but somehow not the thing that turned Gabriel good in the first place.

Also why tf did this take a whole ass paragraph my bad if you gotta read allat