Hades II: A Pre-Release, Post-Purchase, Pre-Mortem. I Still Don't Like the Game.

Hades II, or Hades 2, as I will type it from now on; is the most disappointed I've been in a game for a while. That's a zinger of an opening line, I know. But it's true. It's definitely improved over the development time, don't get me wrong! It's improved a LOT. In fact, a number of complaints from my Early Access launch Steam Review have been fully addressed since. I can't stress this enough. In fact, I'm going to structure this entire post around the topics listed in my review from last year. Today, we're gonna talk about  about which parts of this review are still dead on, and which are wildly inaccurate.

5.3 hours was all I could stand at a certain point.

Is there still grinding? Yes. Plenty of it. Do I still hate it? Yes. Enough said.

They added a LOT of different currencies, and I was MAD!

As you can see, at launch you were only able to gather 1 type of material (seeds, minerals, etc) per run. This was excruciatingly annoying and I'm very glad you never had to deal with it. Equally, BOOM, BAYBEEE, I WAS RIGHT ON THE MONEY WITH THE SECOND HALF! They didn't change it until the first major update of 2025, but better late than never! Now all the materials appear on every run, and my Stockholm Syndrome from the previous glacial pace allows me to enjoy the modern day tortoise pace.

I was very proud of coining "Dust or Toilet Paper" at the time...

Dust or Toilet Paper fortunately doesn't exist anymore. They literally removed the thing I called "dust" from the door item pool, and the item formerly known as "Toilet Paper" has had a value increase, and doesn't seem to appear as much. Though, I think this ties into another aspect of the game's twisted progression system. I mention that tier 1 boons and centaur hearts are rare commodities, and when I play the game now, sometimes I don't get too many, but they're just not as rare.

But I don't actually think that's the game adjusting the way it handles rewards. I think the game slowly gives you better stuff the longer you've played on a file. In middle 2024, I watched a friend of mine, who we'll call Blake, play a LOT of Hades 2. Even back then, Blake seemed to get better door rewards than I was getting. He had about 15 extra hours over me. Nowadays, because I have much more time on my file, I feel like I get rewarded properly now. 

Do note this is not backed up by actual statistics but layman observation.

They also sped up the default dash startup, and character movement's in a pretty good spot. The game also has more aggressive weapons in the game than available at this point, and aspect upgrades which allow for better offensive play. Generally, the weapons in 2 are far more about ranged play, which was why the dash was weaker, and the cast is designed to hold rushdown enemies at bay.

I'd say the main caveat with designing the game this way is that careful ranged play isn't quite as gratifying as going all in. Because the player has access to so much range so consistently, enemies often have their own ranged moves, because they have to!

I often find the best way to clear a room is to spend a lot of time charging up your longest range attack, waiting for enemies to approach, dropping the cast to hold them in place, then going to the other side of the room and charging again. This is the fastest way to clear a room, but it also has the downside of being the one where you are likely to take the least amount of damage. Wait that's an upside. It's also the one that uses the resources the game gives you the most effectively. That's also an upside... Hmm... Omega moves are easiest to charge when you are as far away from enemies as possible.... Also an upside. 

You can't see it, but there are some projectile shooting guys off screen to the bottom left.

The downside is that the camera is more zoomed in than the first game, meaning you are often attacking enemies and being attacked by enemies that are offscreen. I cannot stress how bad of a choice it was to give the game with so many ranged attacks a SMALLER field of view! They clearly can tell it's suboptimal, because there's fights where they pull the camera back a bunch!

Is it too late to say "Full Spoilers for Hades 1 & (what's in) 2"? Because that's all I'll be spoiling today.

If you're having trouble seeing the difference, I have your back.

I hope Hades 2's HUD is a work in progress. It's so bulky and ugly in comparison!

It's a tad muddy due to the overlap, but look how much smaller Zag is than Mel on the screen. Yes, she's doing a standing up animation, and he's crouching a bit, but you can just see so much more of the game. Want that to be clearer?

FIXED Hades 1 for you, Supergiant. Hire me?

Here you go! On this one I zoomed the Hades 1 screenshot to match the viewport of 2, with the Hades 2 screenshot just SLIGHTLY faded in so you can see no foul play. Okay, yeah, the Hades 1 screenshot IS being taken during a boss fight. Let's have something more comparable in scale to Hades 2's boat. Like... another boat perhaps?

Hades 2 brings back GBA style screen crunch. A #y2k throwback we can all appreciate!

No matter how you slice it, it would be nice to have a wider view of the game about reading enemy tells and dodging projectiles from said enemies. The enemies all have exaggerated tells on purpose, this is so they're readable at any size. People comfortably played the first Hades portably on the original switch. Readability was clearly not an issue with the first game.

So, in short, I don't think the moment-to-moment gameplay is an improvement over the first, and changes are either sidegrades or downgrades, in my opinion. Back to the format!

This is something they've improved upon. Many of the game's boons have had changes to names and descriptions to make them clearer. I definitely feel more confident in what I'm picking, even when a new god shows up. I also wish to use this time to shoutout Hephaestus and the rework to make him more defense oriented. They managed to make a "Forge Metalworking" themed guy's upgrades feel substantially different from a "Fiery Hearth" themed lady's upgrades. That is worthy of praise! Speaking of them...

World 2 (Underworld, not surface) is still my favourite area in the game for the same reasons. Scylla and the Sirens is a superbly presented boss fight. I don't like all of the game's music anymore, though. Outside of the first world, I think the surface worlds have incredibly weak music. It's unfortunately too normal sounding but I know what they were thinking. The idea since Hades 1 was to give the Surface a very different and more traditional orchestral sound, compared to the bardic techno metal of the Underworld. This makes the 2 or 3 surface songs in the game hit incredibly hard in the context of Hades 1's ending.

This stark difference unfortunately stops working when very literally half of the game is on the surface. I'm not even gonna talk about how the surface being an area you can just go to now undercuts the first game's story... Yet.  None of it is actually bad music. It's not badly composed at all. It sounds great. Doesn't fit the game, nor do much for me personally. Am I a good enough music guy to articulate why I feel this way? I just used the phrase "good enough music guy". Do you really think I'm qualified to properly critique the Hades 2 OST? Let's consider this my biggest nitpick and move on.

I already mentioned I like the new characters. This is still true, basically. I don't really hate any of the new characters currently, and believe that most of the missteps come from the return of older characters. To put it frankly, I don't like the design direction they were taken in. Nor the general rendering on the portraits. Let's take Zeus as an example.

Taken on its own, the art at the bottom is wonderful. It shows an expert use of lighting, reflections, texturing, etc. It's all proficient. I like the top art so much more. It's far less busy, the pose is more dynamic, there are sharper lines, and quite frankly the personality conveyed by the first art is far more accurate to the type of guy Zeus is. Even though he's dealing with an all out war, he's still pretty peppy. The grumpy, aristocratic face of the sequel's art feels like a mismatch. Besides, the look of characters in game looks a hell of a lot more like the top art.

Some of the art added in during early access I really really liked. This one is one of them. I was watching Blake play the game at the time, and when we saw an assist door in the final world, we couldn't contain our excitement. I saw this art and was like "WOW! This is so cool!" What does it look like now?

It just isn't quite the same. There's a raw edge that's lost with the excessive lighting. Strong shapes hidden beneath the blur and the rim lighting. But I'll concede, the lighting around the torso on the final one looks great. I mainly wish they kept the coldness in the face. I loved how hollow and empty he looked. But okay, you definitely shouldn't mix art styles on the renders. One more.

Okay, I'll be real. I thought this one was finished when I first saw it. This is Echo! Contextually, this character is a wisp of some kind. Forever lamenting, the only things she's able to say are things that Melinoë has said to her. I think the way she twists the meanings of previous phrases to create responses is quite novel! She's an enjoyable character. I think this original artwork creates a really strong impression. It looks just the right amount sketchy to really sell Echo as a unique being, but without looking out of place amongst the fuller pieces of art.

I feel like I'm going crazy here. Does this look awful to anyone else? I know this is mean, and a cruel thing to say about a piece of artwork, but I'm pretty sure the person who drew this one also drew the work in progress. The subtle pink lighting to add a bit of volume has turned into a Barbie Blast, making part of the image hard to read. The general lack of colour contrast makes it harder to read at a small size, and hitting it with the ol "black and white" test paints it in an awful light.

"it's really fucked up man" - Blake

This was the positive section of the review, originally. How times change!

"Back to negativity!" Whew! Was starting to get worried.

This part's interesting. So, near the start of the game the game has a litany of annoying interruptions. Small things that exist to disrupt or outright end runs. In retrospect, these clearly exist as pieces of storytelling to demonstrate what our Heroine is up against. I'll call it a bad first impression, eh? Eris was especially frustrating, and her little interruptions are still in the game, for some reason. Hades 2 is clearly very concerned about having to actually write reactive story dialogue if the player gets to Chronos fast enough.

Yes, theoretically somebody good enough to do a hitless Tartarus/Chronos fight could beat them, but by that point they don't actually have to plan any dialogue around it. That's someone who's breaking the game's storyline. In general, the game is very determined that the player experiences stuff in a specific order. Even moreso than the first game. I think trying to insert a linear style of story progression into a game genre with random elements is a miss.

I think having random story events in a roguelike that doom your run that go away when you've played more is a lame fucking way to gatekeep your final boss from being seen too early and undermining your story. Unluckily for Hades 2, I beat the final boss pretty quickly, to the point where I got dialogue about Melinoë being unsure of her ability to win against Chronos. Which she fuckin shouldn't be! She's done it! A similar thing happened to me in the first game, where I managed to beat Hades so fast that the hub dialogue pool had to catch up, and I was still getting dialogue where the characters were acting like I hadn't succeeded yet.

But I suppose this is the sort of topic for the final section of the review.
 

Hades 2 is gonna need to pull some big tricks for 1.0 to nail the story.

For their 4 pre-Hades 2 titles, the story has been built around the gameplay. Potentially "Gamey" elements were always part of that game's world. The story is improved by the gameplay. A symbiotic relationship. In Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, a blunder where dialogue comes up that contradicts gameplay would be inexcusable. They keep it airtight 100% of the time.

But then Hades 1 isn't. However, I feel a tad merciful because it's their first try at a game this long, with this much dialogue. There's much more upkeep to deal with in a game with SO much dialogue and SO many characters and SO much player skill diversity. But it's the kind of thing you'd want expanded upon or fixed in a sequel. As of now? It's worse for it! I hope they do make dialogue and story more reactive to your choices.

Everything I said about the story back then, I still agree with. Melinoë's main personality trait is that she's Dutiful. When I was watching him play during a recent update, Blake mentioned that Nemesis would be a more interesting protagonist because she's more disorderly, she's a underdog compared to Mel, who's basically just doing what she's meant to be doing. I feel more compelled by every character outside of the main one, thus far.

Actually, might have to make an exception for Odysseus. All he's done the whole game is give me reports on shit I just saw. I thought he was hot at first, and yeah! He is. But alas, his actual story purpose currently seems to be a very handsome waste of time. 

yeah alright buddy how about me and you go "make some reports" if ya know what i mean

But no matter how I feel about it now, the narrative is the one that could change the most. Yes, currently it is the least interesting Supergiant game as a narrative to me. But these developers aren't stupid. Supergiant is a team full of greatly talented people; Even if I think they made a huge error making a sequel to Hades instead of something new. Despite my digressions, I have some trust in them!

The main part of the game's story missing at this point seems to be the endgame to the story, but there's a chance they pull some TRULY unbelievably cool stuff after you defeat Chronos/Typhon. They could turn this story around 180 degrees, completely re-contextualizing all the events leading up to now. 

Sticking point. How are they gonna let you keep replaying the game? It'd be cool if they had a definite, canon ending and a non-canon way to replay the runs if you found them fun. But that'd be lazy for Supergiant standards. They always make their mechanics tie into the story. A time loop, perhaps? You wrap around to the start of the game again? But with all your old unlocks? It'd be the same twist as the first game's THERE IS NO ESCAPE, where the game over text informs you the true nature of the world. Hades 2's game over says TIME CANNOT BE STOPPED. So if that's the case with this one? We might be in for a timeloop.

My friend Blake thinks it's going to be a similar flow to the first game's ending, saving one frozen character at a time, bringing them back to the Crossroads, and ending with saving Zagreus. Probably requiring you to defeat the final boss about 10 times, give-or-take, and ending with all the characters in the crossroads, and Chronos still mad about it. We both agree that if they went this direction it would be incredibly boring, but I cannot deny this is exactly how it is being set up as of now.

Allows you to replay the game, get more postgame conversations in with beloved characters, Chronos and Typhon can still be bosses, but nowhere near as much of a threat! With Mel's task now being to keep going around, defeating them to keep them weak. A bit like a less intelligent version of the first game's genius justification for postgame.

Speaking of THERE IS NO ESCAPE, I genuinely think one of my biggest issues with Hades 2 is how it kind of makes the first game's story worse in retrospect. Like, what do you fucking mean there was a way for Zagreus, hell, even Hades! To make long trips to the surface and nobody fucking told them. Their curse, binding them to the underworld made for some of the most emotional, heartwrenching parts of the first game's story, and now it's completely undercut because now there's a cure in a witch's cauldron that requires some flowers. 

It would be cool if the game's ending was evil, and locked the player out of playing the game again on their file. Personally, I'd be impressed and enthralled by an ending of such brash caliber. Because I genuinely DO NOT expect them to do it. Even as I write this down here. I think it's impossible. It would annoy too many people to be unable to play their game again. But when you kill time? When everyone is safe? They'd surely all be frozen in the crossroads! Perhaps it's something bittersweet that I'm not ready for.
 

The game that hands me dialogue like this? Do I really trust it to stick the landing? I suppose I did complain about Odysseus telling you things you'd already seen, but that was because I wanted him to do something more interesting! I don't want characters to actually spoil me!

It seems very unlikely. But I like to believe in Supergiant! It'd just be nice to have this out here as a bit of a time capsule.

In the end, all I want is Supergiant to make a new setting again. I loved their other settings. Hades 1 & 2 have my least favourite stories out of their games. I know that statistically their most played game of all time is Hades 1. I get the feeling a lot of people never went back to play their other games. This is why I have avoided talking too much about Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. If you have only played Hades 1 or Hades 2. Play Supergiant's other games. I cannot stress how important they are. Okay, Blake likes Hades 1's story more than some of their other ones. But the point is that I forced him to play all of Supergiant's games after he beat Hades and he loved them. You will probably love them, too!

This is the end of the article. But like all good games, you can keep going into the post-article, if you so wish. Sure, the writing isn't quite as good down here, and it's a lot more scattershot than tightly refined... But it's more content, right?

i just really, really hope they don't keep making metaprogression roguelikes based around different global mythologies. every time i see someone request it i feel confident they only played hades. why's hades 2 even called that. surely it should be called chronos? pull a "riven: the sequel to myst". it's not like they'd have trouble selling it. or anything at all for that matter! hades was such a huge success that them doing an immediate sequel is a bit of an innate dissapointment. i really wouldn't have minded if there was a 1 game gap between hades 1 and 2 because i feel like there would've been a nice break from the series and it would've been nice to see the characters again! As it stands, the original Hades is so damn long to actually complete that most people who are playing 2 don't have the "One For The Ages" achievement for completing the post game story. The people who have actually exhausted everything that can be seen in Hades 1 is pretty minuscule. I'm sure some people were still working on it (it takes a fucking LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME TO DO) before they dropped a sequel which naturally will take attention away from the postgame because it's a whole new game.

also this is petty as hell but does anyone else feel like melinoe's design is just not quite there? like it has just a few too many colours and shapes upon it to really feel cohesive in the same way that zagreus was. i have to ask because i'm into men and zagreus is like mega hot to me and i'm wondering if that's swaying my opinion. blake understands my dilemma. blake's a pseudonym for one of my friends and my favourite thing about it is that it's exceedingly obvious who it is provided that you know him. when he was playing hades 1 for the first time, i felt like that shrek 4 rumplestiltskin gif because he promised to play pyre next. is hades 2 going to have a moment as cinema as hades letting you past for free on your 10th victory? because that's probably my favourite moment in the game. i wonder if supergiant will ever make a short game again. a short game with an ending. for what it's worth, In The Blood is absolutely incredible, but the pyre credits theme Bound Together will forever make me weep. i literally can't keep myself together on a full listen. it's their least bought game, man! why? why must i live in a world where everyone's played hades but nobody played pyre!

i didn't want to make this a main point in the article because hades 2 gets really frequent patches. (good! they're bein true to their word!) but the chronos fight has forever had terrible visibility issues. it's a whole lot of gold and black upon gold and black. they did actually try to fix them, but that second arena being that huge ass clock is the most unhelpful thing i've ever seen for making it readable. it's so messy! the first game's final boss was genius because you were playing as red/black characters on a white snow background. at no point did i ever think "oh man i can't see what's going on!" because it was always clear. Phase 1 chronos can attack you from off screen sometimes which kinda feels like bullshit but i did enough camera complaining earlier. phase 2 also has that one attack where it's a few rings going inwards and it's unclear whether you should be on the rings or off because it's pasted over a clock background and possibly has other hourglasses and golden projectiles soaring over it. it's a gold ring, by the way. he also has an attack that 1 shots you if you're hit by it and you have to get to a circle in time. it's not usually that difficult but they recently changed the circle to red to make it easier to see but now it looks like you shouldn't go in there. Remember when you couldn't pause the fight? you used to be unable to pause the chronos fight. if you had a delivery or a family emergency of some kind you had to either let your baby crawl off the counter or forfeit the run. all for a mildly amusing joke. they've since kept the joke, but not the unpausing. good! i am shocked they ever thought that was a good idea. 

i hope the "post-article" joke carries my sentiments on the weird endless summer hades 1 has (and hades 2 will INEVITABLY have because the game feel allergic to a real formula mix-up). i have so many unorganized thoughts on both games that i really couldn't find the right place for. like, for instance, how annoying i find the keepsake level up to be. it takes SO long in both games! i could talk about how ugly and hard to read the arcana menu is, but the reason i didn't is because there's no way they're putting that shit in the final game. it looks terrible and makes choosing and upgrading cards hard to read. it was literally better back in the earlier beta, and it was bad there, too! i suppose it matches the ui in hades 2 which i'm eagerly awaiting a 2nd pass on as a whole. it's huge, chunky and made out of rounded corner squares. it's the most boring hud in a supergiant game! oh and how much i hate the chaos redesign in hades 2. it's so lame. you know what makes me think of chaos? expensive fitted suits. good one guys. where is my unknowable flesh pile? he's too knowable now.

i was thinking recently about what i'd want a hades 2 to be, and i came to the conclusion that i'd honestly want it to be a completely different genre to the first game. imagine that! it continues the story, but isn't just the same type of game as the first game. a bunch of this game's bosses would hit a lot harder in a game structure where you only fight them once a playthrough. I feel like the first game had better ideas for bosses that feel right fighting them over and over again. They're eventful but not overdramatic. They're trying to bring out a huge feeling of awe with Typhon, but i know that eventually i'm just gonna be back to back loop-killing that motherfucker and that really takes a lot out of the moment. the cerberus fight in the underworld feels stupid after a bit because you aren't having to "put him down" or something that might make the fight actually important, but basically just clearing fleas off of him. this is why scylla works so well for this game! she and her sirens are eventful and fun, and it feels like they'd have good reason to return and fight you again. does make me wonder if hecate is some sort of twist villain... why is she going out of her way to disrupt mel on every run? she gives her reasonings but they feel mega contrived for the roguelike format. like yeah no shit i can beat your test at this point! this is the type of boss that works really well in games with linear progression!

with all this said. i wish supergiant the best. i also wish them smooth development so that they can complete hades 2 and then make a game for me again. like, a 4-15 hour game? that'd be the dream! i don't want them to feel pressured to make longer and longer games forever. i just want them to try new things, take some risks... and consider using the scribbly art style from the beta portraits! i hope people dont hate me for this article