Hades II (2025)

The first Hades game was easily one of my favorites ever. I loved everything about it and could not wait until the sequel came out. I told myself it wouldn't be as good as the first, because that's always true with sequels. I was wrong. This game is even better than the original. From top to bottom, I loved everything this game had and absolutely could not put it down.

(This will include Hades I spoilers, but I'll hide any Hades II spoilers.)

Overall Thoughts

The beginning of this game tugs at the heartstrings immediately. Seeing the family you worked so hard to reunite in Hades I has been separated again, but this time with a new face left to fix it. They leave the situation very vague, just like they did in the first game. Melinoe reminds me a lot of Zagreus and I really like her character. I knew it'd be a new protagonist, but I'm really surprised at how few characters return to the sequel. They did a great job with all of the characters (again) so I couldn't complain too much - I just miss the old guys I fell in love with the first time around.

Lots of quality of life adds that I didn't know would be so helpful. The boons from the Gods are great and so are all the upgrades, but I loved the cauldron and how all the game unlockables included each item needed to get said unlockable.

Scylla and Cerberus are AMAZING bosses. I could not get over the music throughout the whole game, but I emphasize that with what you hear during these boss fights. Especially the first one I'm mentioning here, and how it changes as the game develops. (Cerberus is a boss... I could cry... it gets you emotional right before the final layer where you find him next to Hades. I was blown away.

This game has two stories going on at the same time. That sounds like it would be really confusing and tedious to deal with, at least to me it does, but it got me even more excited to keep playing. I suddenly had this extremely long to-do list: Explore path 1, explore path 2, work on the Fated List, unlock more weapons, talk to more characters, build relationships, and I could keep going. A completionist's dream. The best part is that you can work on all of these things in whatever order you want. Complete freedom.

Ending Thoughts

The ending was... a little strange. I didn't take this franchise for being one to forgive the enemy. Especially when Chronos quite literally ruined your life and was the reason Melinoe woke up every morning. But it's what happened. It was sweet and all but it was kind of a whatever feeling. I did think being able to see the House of Hades again was awesome, but that set up disappointment for when you got to the postgame and never went back to the house? What? Why can't I go explore the old grounds? Talk to old characters that I haven't seen this whole game? That felt like such a given to me. Same with reaching Mount Olympus. I really thought I was gonna be able to meet all the Gods, but when you get there, it's only Zeus, Hera, and Apollo. I was disappointed in that, too. Wasn't it implied I would see everybody once I finally overcome the boss? At least the postgame was fun. You still have a lot to do by the time the main story is over. I think I put just as much time into the postgame as the main game lol.

Smaller Notes

This was true in the first game too, but I realized even more so how much they actually dip into Greek mythology and they did it in such a nice way. It's not overwhelming - I barely noticed they were teaching me about it.

The Arcana cards were fine, but it wasn't as satisfying as the mirror of fates. The unlocks didn't feel the same to me and I can't really figure out why.

Man I feel bad for Persephone. She had two children and completely missed both of their entire lives... at separate times. They didn't touch on that much, though. It was more just "oh no Persephone is gone too!"

Conclusion

If you are a completionist, you will love this game. The story is fantastic, the characters are fantastic, the music is among the best I've ever heard in a video game, and every second is more addicting than the last. I can and will recommend this to anyone and everyone that will listen. 5 stars.

The story and characters are significantly weaker compared to Hades 1. I won't have any new insight to add to that conversation, but I too found myself disappointed with the ending. Hades 1 successfully justified the cyclical nature of the rogue-like by having the antagonist the father of the protagonist and over the course of the game, they develop and grow their relationship gradually over each run. Making the ending feel earned and impactful. You see Hades and Zagreus become closer. In contrast, Cronos is cartoonishly evil and spiteful, garnering no sympathy or interest from me. Then suddenly through time travel fuckery he suddenly has seen the light and is a sweet grandpa. This feels very contrived and unearned. Since a switch is basically flipped. I get they need a justification for eternal repetitions, this just doesn't work. There is a post credit reveal with Hecate, I won't spoil, but I didn't find that reveal to be that great either. More contrived.

That said, the gameplay is great here. Combat feels more varied, the boons have a better sense of balance and each weapon plays very differently. The balance of weapons certainly does feel off. The Skull of Medea and the Torches of Supay feel busted. Though both are also quite fun to use. It feels something needed to be tweaked with the staff, axe and daggers. They just feel weaker in comparison. That does make them feel more like challenge runs. The biggest flex is of course that you have two different routes to choose from, which significantly improves the games variety.

Like with Hades 1 it is very grindy with the resources you need to collect though. Which does wear out it's welcome especially as you want to maximize the bond you have with all characters. I did go through the epilogue, but like I mentioned above I felt disappointed. I don't regret my time with Hades 2, but I find myself more satisfied with the first game and it's clever plot and writing. That is sorely missed in the sequel. Still a great game, just a pity the story doesn't live up to my expectations.

I think overall it's a great game, perhaps better than the first one in therms of gameplay thanks to the added tools and variety in encounter design. Art, music, dialogue, voice acting and characters are all top-notch and worthy of the high bar set by Supergiant's previous games. It just stumbles a bit in terms of story and character growth.

There are so many small details that make the game shine. I love how the world reacts to you, like mentioning the boons you are using or the weapon you chose; I was particularly amused by the dialogues referencing Melinoë's height when taking Circe's blessings. Having two different paths with different encounter design does wonders for variety and to keep things fresh.

Supergiant has strived for gameplay variety since Bastion. Hades 2 includes myriad elements that encourage the players to go move away from their comfort zone. The new addition to the formula this time is crafting resources. I hate crafting so when I first saw this I was a bit weary, but then I understood how it worked. The dozens of different resources might seem daunting but really the only thing that needs paying attention to is whether the materials for an upgrade are found in the surface or in hell. The good thing about each upgrade requiring different materials then is that there's no need to choose between them because upgrading weapons don't use the same resource as unlocking more healing fountains.

But what the game innovates in gameplay variety it sacrifices in story. It tries to go for higher stakes than Hades 1, replacing the story of a teenager trying to go play outside with an epic confrontation between good an evil, but it mostly falls flat. Chronos' motives are murky and what he wants to do if he wins is left too vague for one to get invested in. Melinoë is too serious and single-minded, so she comes off as a one-dimensional. She's also plain less fun than Zagreous, who even had time to tangle the sheets with one antagonist.

I feel the worse thing about the characters is that no one really changes. In Hades 1 there were multiple little NPC stories with satisfying arcs and endings. Orpheus would reunite with Eurydice, and Achilles with Patroclus; Dusa gets over her crush with Zagrous; and even the relationship between Zagreous and Hades develops with time and the ending resolution feels the natural culmination of every father and son encounter. In Hades 2, everything is static until a final resolution that comes out of nowhere.

That's a shame because I do love all the new characters. Scylla and the Sirens are the absolute highlight for me. Scylla herself is so fun but I also love everything that surrounds the encounter. How their song gets louder as you go deeper into Oceanus, how they compose new songs that clearly refer to you and how the song loses each instrument as you take down each of them. It's also incredibly fun to use the Hex that raises a down enemy in that fight.

So Hades 2 feels like a refinement of Hades 1 in almost every regard. Now sorry, I need to go play it some more.

Finally got to the ending. It's honestly not a great ending. Everything was resolved rather abruptly and arguably off-screen. And then the contrivances to create a post-game stretched my suspension of disbelief to their limits and then some more.

I don't believe I'm going to engage with it though. From what I read, it's a lot of grinding for Nectar and I'm not sure the narrative will pay it off.

That Scylla song is thoroughly ingrained in my head.

Been enjoying this game a bit more than Hades I, though that was great too. The stakes are more interesting while still providing character development for Melinoe. There feels like there is more ways to enhance your runs and the weapons are more fun. The pace feels a bit slower on most areas allowing more careful engages.

I managed to beat Chronos once and get past Prometheus on Olympus and that felt very satisfying given my axe build that just devastated them.

On the flip side, I know I probably have a lot more grinding to do and I dislike having to hope I get random resource finds. If I need to beat a particular boss for an item that works well since I know what I have to do, but I am finding basic things like silver and seeds hard to come by.

I will probably keep going for a bit because there is no shortage of small character moments. I am impressed how many unique interactions there are and that does make a failed run still somewhat satisfying.

Oh, boy. Got one of those broken builds that make this kind of game so compelling. Gathered a bunch of mana, then a boom that added extra life proportional to mana, and a couple that added damage to my omegas but with increased mana cost (that I had plenty). So I was using mana a lot, so then came a Selene boom, which since I was using so much mana, I could trigger every 5 seconds or so. Add some ice powerups to my casting and I could freeze everyone in place while I charged a bunch of omegas on their asses.

Cut through the surface levels like a warm knife through butter on my first go without the curse. I got pretty far into Olympus until I fucked it up and got killed.

Samaa tuttua Hadesta, mutta joka paikasta hieman paranneltuna. Sisältöä pelissä on hurjasti ja perus roguelike kaava vaan toimii todella hyvin. Tarina on toimiva, jota ryyditetään tosi hyvällä ääninäyttelyllä ja käsikirjoituksella. Pelissä on enemmän tarinan edistämistä myös runien aikana, joka lisää kivasti tiettyä arvaamattomuutta peliin. Runien aikana upgreidien kerääminen vaatii tällä kertaa enemmän pohdintaa ja tietyillä komboilla voi saada aikaiseksi aika tehokkaankin tappokoneen. Jatko-osa hienolla tavalla kannustaa myös kokeilemaan erilaisia pelitapoja ja erilaisia kykyjä. Runien ulkopuolista tekemistä on mukavasti lisätty ja tykkään Hadeksen tavasta käsitellä roguelike kaavaa: jokainen runi ei lähde nollista, vaan hahmo, aseet ja kyvyt kehittyvät pikkuhiljaa joka yrityksen jälkeen. Vähän huonompikin pelaaja saa siis jossain vaiheessa runeja läpi, koska hahmon kyvyt ja toki omatkin kyvyt parantuvat matkan varrella. Pelaaminen on vaan tosi hauskaa ja tuota on kiva vääntää runin mittaisina annoksina vaikka handheldinä pelaten.

Kiitettävä 4/5

Finally reached am ending in Hades II which feels like a good time to reflect on it.

Jumping in it feels like just like Hades, but more, which already was pretty much all I could have wanted. Melinoë's moves and abilities are just different enough to take some getting used to, coupled with new enemies and bosses and boons and weapons, and all the other good stuff that made that gave the first game such a winning formula. I will say, I definitely progressed a lot faster than the first time around. Some tricks and mechanics are similar enough to carryover. But the sequel does a masterful job of continually trickling out new content and ways to increase the challenge and rewards all the same.

I also think there is greater depth to be had with our main character's kit this time around in terms of positioning and timing moves to greater success. Are there some elements that felt better executed in the first game? Possibly, but Hades II has enough going on to feel like a fully realized experience in it's own right, and I struggle to meaningfully separate the two experiences.

9/10 Le jeu est vraiment génial, encore mieux que le 1. La gestion du mana et des actions chargées est hyper bien amenée, les difficultées cauchemar sont progressives et poussent à la rejouabilité. Le deuxième parcours vers l'Olympe est également excellent, avec un combat de boss digne d'un film. L'histoire est également superbe, franchement c'est un super jeu.

PS : gros big up au boss fight des sirènes qui est génial !!!!!

Look, I've been on the record since this game was announced that I don't think it should exist, that it goes against the main thing that I love about Supergiant's games by being both based on pre-existing stories and a sequel, and that I was going to play it anyway because it's Supergiant and surely it would at least be fun.

Sometimes it's fun. It's bogged down by 2-dimensional characters I don't give a shit about, sub-par writing, bloated mechanics, weapons that are often not all that fun to start with (and "omega moves" that I will often go entire runs without using that also, except in one instance, negate the possibility of being able to hold down the button to keep doing the attack so there's no way for people who, say, have chronic hand pain to take a break from the button mashing), "Gain" boons that are basically useless in the late game once you've unlocked certain Arcana, a song that plays every single time you fight one of the bosses that will get stuck in your head and it's not even a bad song but Jesus I don't think they thought that one through, and a story that is kind of bafflingly bad—but sometimes it's fun.

Setting aside my issues with the weapons and combat mechanics, the run designs are good, with way more variation between regions than in the first game, and on the Surface runs you can really get a stacked build by the end if you play it right—I beat Typhon the first time I got to him because I had like 500 hp and 4 death defiances. And the new magic/Hex mechanic is fun, with almost all of the hexes being useful except one of them that takes 4 fucking seconds to do anything which is completely useless in a game where enemies only stay in one place for 2 seconds at the most. And for the most part when it get's hard it still doesn't feel unfair, and you can definitely get those victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat moments.

Ultimately, my main problem with it is that I just don't care. I don't find Melinoë a compelling protagonist (though I like the voice-acting better than Zagreus) and I'm even less interested in the family drama this time around than I was last time. After I rolled credits I figured I'd at least try to unlock all the weapon aspects so I could see if maybe there's a version of the Argent Skull that I don't hate, got through a couple runs, then I tried to pick it up again and simply couldn't be bothered. I heard there was Discourse around the "true" ending (presumably you get that once you find the Fates?) but I guess I'll never know what the deal with that is. There are too many games I want to play to spend any more time with this one. I just hope Supergiant finally goes back to making original games with original worlds that actually make me feel something besides annoyed. I used to think they would surely, one day, match or even top Transistor. Now I'm not so sure.

Roll Credits?: Yes!

Surprised/Let Down/As Expected: As Expected

Favorite Mechanic or Narrative Moment: The magic/omega/selene dynamic ends up making the game much more interesting than the first in a way that I don't think I could ever return to the original. Builds in the first were very samey in spamming attacks and dodging, whereas build diversity in this one keeps things feeling fresher. Finding myself pulling out some weird combinations even when doing higher difficulty runs. The card system also helps by making you forego or prioritize different things compared to the first game where you just always had the same benefits.

Least Favorite Thing: The story was noticeably worse than the first which made the initial playthroughs way less exciting from that standpoint. I was more interested in progressing to unlock things than to see what Melinoe had to say to basically any of the characters. The time travel/timelines story beats also felt way less inspired and made to fit the gameplay than the story did in the first game. The original's narrative structure was one of the most innovative things when comparing it to other roguelikes of the time and still continues to be in a league of it's own.

I never thought Supergiant would be able to outdo themselves. Hades 1 was my favorite Rougelike (or Rouge-lite) ever and I thought the formula was drained, but I was so, so wrong. Within a few hours of playing, I was not only completely hooked but convinced Hades 2 is even better than Hades and not by a small amount.

The usual Supergiant magic is all here - the UI, the aesthetic, the character portraits, the graphics, the atmosphere and music are so cohesive and nothing feels out of place. Every voice actor did a tremendous job, adding style and character to each God/Witch/Titan/Ghost so that they have a ton of personality in just a few lines of dialogue.

The boons, loop, exploration and gameplay are top notch. I was on the edge of my seat nearly every one of my 46 runs. The massive amount of upgrades, both big and small, are a constant force of motivation and no run feels like a waste. There are so many ways to augment or experiment with my run that I got decision paralysis more than a few times. The surprises, be it a new God showing up that I hadn't seen yet or even a new type of run to do, had me beaming.

It's a stunning game, there's no other way to put it. One of the best I've ever played.

Being a bigger and bolder rogue-like is this games greatest strength and weakness. I don't think this game is bad, I just do not recommend it, especially if you enjoyed any of the characters from the first game.

The writing lacks the charm and humor from the first game. There are so many characters and an insane amount of dialogue, but a majority of it is fluff. Most of the dialogue will be "I see you did a thing! Very cool!" This was in the first game, but because there are so many things to encounter in Hades 2, I dreaded running into someone after I made progress. Nothing interesting happens with side characters too, they make up their mind about you and the gods as soon as you meet them, and that's it. Melinoe is not impacted by them, and she doesn't do anything to challenge the system to better their lives (unlike Hades 1). Melinoe is surrounded by people suffering from the gods, but defends the system throughout the entire game.

The ending of the game has been controversial in the community, and I found it disappointing. Melinoe loses all agency in the story because the game is a rogue-like. It's a game that is meant to be played forever, and because of that, there can't be meaningful change. Hades 1 got away with the roguelike structure because the stakes were lower. However, Hades 2 is about a war against the titan of time, the father of all monsters, and the titan with the power of foresight. This bold story couldn't work with the roguelike structure, and I feel tricked for thinking that something would happen since I started playing Hades 2 in early access last year. My biggest problem with it is that Melinoe doesn't make the choice to spare Chronos. The story could have been about Melinoe slowly connecting with and understanding Chronos. I think it would have been great to see Melinoe ending the cycle of revenge in her family, despite her being raised to kill Chronos. Chronos comes off as a whiny baby because the gods want to punish his transgressions. Did SuperGiant want us to sympathize with him? The ending comes out of nowhere, it was terribly executed. After that, Melinoe decides to stay in the crossroads instead of living with her family. Every single character in the game has multiple lines of dialogue questioning Melinoe, and nobody understands what is going on with Chronos and the flow of time. It's not fun! It doesn't feel good when everyone in the game is confused and dissatisfied. Well, everyone except for Dionysus

I lost all motivation to get to the epilogue because of the ending and the start of the post-game. If the story magically gets better in the epilogue, I think that is bad pacing. I have played the game for almost 70 hours, something interesting with the main story and side characters should have happened by now. Hades is elevated by the story and the characters, and after I got disappointed with that, I realized I was playing a mediocre rogue-like.

This game has too many materials to keep track of. There is farming, mining, gathering, fishing, materials dropped from bosses, bones, ashes, shades, and kudos. Hades 1 had a handful of materials, but they all had a specific purpose. Hades 2 is already twice as big as the first, adding all of these resources and currencies fills the game with bloat. I understand why they are in the game to fit in with the witches and making incantations, but it just adds more grinding and looking at the journal to make sense of it all. It wasn't fun, just tedious work in a action rogue-like.

As I progressed through the game, I found the game to be way too easy or unfair. I would add a couple of vows to increase the challenge, and then the field became overloaded with visual information from my attacks and enemy attacks. The harder boss fights in particular are guilty of this, they spam huge AOE attacks that do insane damage. I have to get one or two hits in then run away to the other side of the field, or spam my long range attacks. It made fights drag. Even when I started learning new enemy attacks, I still had situations where I questioned what hit me because I couldn't see the field clearly. It got exhausting.

I'll get into positives for a little bit. The voice acting, artwork, and music are excellent. I think they did a great job improving the combat despite my issues with it. Most weapon aspects are fun, and combining them with Olympic boons and hammer boons can lead to unique builds. The best change to combat was nerfing the dash. You can't mindlessly dash anymore, so most fights have a good flow to them. I also appreciated the areas that changed up the pacing of the game, like the Mourning Fields and Erebus. Having two routes to go through is great.

That's pretty much it...Thanks for reading! Death to Chronos.

2020's Hades was a well-made and memorable game that nonetheless took a while for me to come to terms with as someone who has never been a huge roguelite (or -like) player. It smartly built its narrative and progression systems around moving forward even when you were losing, but I still found myself wishing its great ideas were in a different genre. I just didn't like the feeling that I was playing with the deck stacked against me until I "progressed". This sequel is not a major reinvention, but the changes it does make and my additional 5 years of experience in isometric ARPGs and run-based games made it easier to accept it for what it is and have a great time throughout.

Even ignoring upgrades within runs, there are enough build options here that I pretty quickly found a combination of weapon and Arcana Cards (the game's flexible perk system) that I really enjoyed. Progression comes quickly and in many forms and is designed so you often have something you can do to optimize it or reshape your playstyle. That card-based perk system in particular feels well thought-out, slowly expanding what's available and usable while presenting interesting synergies for you to build around or consider for next time. Even right up to the last few runs of the story, I was often unlocking new options and upgrades that felt like they could make a significant impact.

Runs here work like the first game, moving between small combat arenas based on your choice of reward. It flows in a quick and addictive way, with very few annoying speed bumps and mostly just fun challenge and exploration of the game’s huge build decision tree. This game notably introduces larger exploration zones with multiple normal encounters plus other enemies and resources, used rarely enough to be a nice change of pace without messing up the game's usual tight flow. My excursions that made it to the final boss of the night typically took 18-25 minutes, which I think is a perfect length to play over and over.

Combat encounters here retain the first game’s focused and highly legible small arena style, testing your positioning and movement, threat prioritization, and efficient use of your large combat toolkit. I rarely strayed from a ranged playstyle that I got comfortable with early on, but even forcing the same idea you’ll reach the end in a somewhat different way each time. Once I had a certain level of upgrades, clearing most of the game became very consistent, but some harder zones remained a healthy challenge. I don’t really like messing with the kind of custom modifier-based difficulty this offers but was still satisfied with the base-level experience.

You can infer early on that the game is bigger than the first, but it takes time to reveal just how much bigger. (Minor non-narrative structural spoilers:) The expected trek through four levels to defeat the big bad guy is complemented here by a whole above-ground area with four harder levels and bosses of its own. Where the first game asked you to clear the same levels and bosses ten times to truly finish it, the sequel uses both of its regions and some little quests along the way. It feels kind of like a $30 game that includes its own $20 expansion, making this sequel feel like a nice value that’s more than an incremental improvement.

There are some smaller weaknesses worth mentioning, including a bit of resource and system bloat, some kinda weak UI/UX for a few things on console, and a run-ending boss attack that was hard to visually interpret the first few times. The way the game holds you back in the above-ground area by constantly draining your health until you collect resources for a crafting objective feels like an annoyance that I’d want reworked somehow, but since you need some sort of roadblock at that point, it's at least thematically appropriate.

No complaints about the great visual side of the game, but I do feel like it underwhelms slightly in terms of writing and the vocal-driven music. This is not just about the game's controversial ending but more the characters and story beats along the way rarely leaving much of a memorable impression on me. Don't get me wrong, there are highlights, and a lot of detail was put in particularly around the dialogue’s great context awareness, but it's not enough to love when this no longer benefits from the freshness of the first game. That's not fatal—after all it's certainly better than the story in something like Diablo III—it's just that this game puts such heavy emphasis on that stuff and I usually didn’t care that much.

While it doesn't match the original's freshness and storytelling, I can safely say that this was more fun, which is a bigger deal for me. Don't expect a huge reinvention if you didn't like the first game, and if you skipped it you should likely just play that first. Otherwise I'd say this is a no-brainer purchase for anyone who enjoyed that game to any significant degree. I have struggled with a lot of sequels that feel like more of the same, but this one absolutely has enough going on to be worth another step into these core ideas.