History loves to repeat itself in the oddest ways.
Here we are, some 5 years after the release of the original Hades and I find myself in a very similar mindset. It’s been a fantastic year for games with multiple titles from previous GOTY winners and Supergiant comes in hard with Hades II. Of course I’d seen much of the chatter about it due to its time in Early Access and the release of 1.0 was more a milestone for those who wanted to complete the narrative more than any major changes to the game itself. Like it’s predecessor Hades II seems to have made that time in Early Access count, refining and balancing the game to the point where it can be replayed for literally hundreds of hours and still have people coming back to it. Whilst I don’t envisage ever putting in such dizzying amounts of time into it suffice to say Hades II, in true Supergiant fashion, manages to accomplish what many fail to do well: a sequel that pays respect to and improves upon its progenitor.
Chronos, the Titan of Time, has reformed himself after his defeat by the gods and scattering throughout Tartarus. Seeking revenge against his progeny he captures the underworld, imprisoning many of the gods and turning its denizens to his task of wreaking havoc on those that betrayed him. However in his haste he passes over a lowly handmaiden and a young girl when they were in fact Hecate, Witch of the Crossorads, and Melinoe: daughter of Hades. Hecate then vows to train Melinoe in the ways of the night so that one day she will rise up against Chronos and defeat him for good. Today is the first day where you will put your training to the test as you seek to dive deep back into Tartarus and attempt to slay Chronos once and for all.
Each new Supergiant game comes with the an increase in their craftsmanship and this is no more apparent than in its visuals. To be sure the style is what we’ve come to know and expect from them, but there’s all these little details included now that just show how dedicated they are realising the visual language that they’ve spent so long perfecting. The sprites, models and environments are just all that much more detailed with little flourishes sprinkled around to make everything feel more vibrant. The colour palette feels a lot wider too as looking back at some of my screenshots from the original everything just seems a lot more dynamic by comparison. It’s just such a joy to see Supergiant flex their craft here and I’ll never get tired of heaping praise on them.
Hades II follows the original’s core game loop closely although a lot of the systems outside of that have been changed to make the game deeper and more dynamic. You’ll still be doing runs through a bunch of different environments, trying to avoid being hit whilst dishing out ludicrous amounts of damage. Whilst things like the keepsakes, prophecies and heat (now called nightmare) levels are still around the other means of progression are radically different. Now you’ll be collecting and growing seeds for materials, unlocking and upgrading arcana cards to bolster your abilities and casting incantations to permanently change how your runs play out. When I first started out I was honestly a bit overwhelmed with the depth the game was putting before me but, as it is with most things, once you get a feel for your playstyle the options start to narrow and you can focus on a build that works for you.
Those first few hours with the game can be a bit brutal though as your options and knowledge of what works is limited. I think I ended up doing much the same as I did in the original with my first run ending in failure at the first boss before the second and subsequent runs went off without a hitch. To be sure each new area was met with similar levels of low performance but once you’re routinely getting to the final destination progress starts to feel a bit more regular and you’ll know where to spend your various materials to make up for whatever deficiency is plaguing you.
For me that was the lack of Athena as a regular god, removing the deflect on dodge crutch that I had so ingrained in my psyche that I felt something like physical pain when I found out it wasn’t an option. To be frank that’s probably a good thing as that boon was widely seen as being the most potent in the game for survivability but it still meant shaking off some old muscle memory before I could forge new ones. So instead a lot of my early investments were in survivability, bolstering my abilities to recover and additional death defiances so I had a larger effective health pool to get me through the game. That was great until I started hitting damage walls when I’d be saddled with a less than stellar seed for the boons I preferred.
Which led pretty directly onto me reading guides as to how to maximise my damage output and getting the inside scoop on what I should be focusing on. For me I ended up standardising on the torches, Zeus keepsake to get blitz on my attack/special and then switching to Selene’s keepsake to bolster whatever hex I got for that night. I will say that the healing hex was a crutch for me for a long time until I realised that the others can be just as effective in prolonging your life should you understand how to use them to your advantage. Couple that with my preferred mana generation boons (Aphrodite, Zeus and Hestia were my usual go-tos) and Aspect of Eos I could usually just hold down the attack button whilst keeping most enemies at range.
I will admit that standardising on one weapon was mostly just me trying to lift the cognitive burden a little bit given just how different all of the weapons play in Hades II. That’s not to say I couldn’t make any of the others work, I certainly could, but some of them only felt right for me with a specific set of upgrades or boons. It’d probably be a different thing now, given all the upgrades/buffs I’ve unlocked and how I can control the base part of my build, but I will say that learning all the other parts of the game is a lot bigger ask than it was in the original Hades. So where before changing the weapon wasn’t as big of a deal with Hades II it definitely feels a lot bigger given how much bigger and deeper the game is overall.
MINOR MECHANICS SPOILERS BELOW
Which I’ll lay mostly at the feet of having 2 completely different runs. Whilst it didn’t take me particularly long to master both of them (14 runs for first Chronos defeat, another 16 for first Typhon) I was certainly struggling with bouncing between both of them and using different weapons at the same time. Part of me wants to say this is because the surface run is fundamentally a lot harder than the underground one but upon reflection I don’t think it is. The differences are enough that some strategies don’t work as well between worlds (any close up builds on the surface seemed to get me killed sooooooo much more quickly for instance) but once you’ve got your first run completed you’ll have a good sense for what you need to do to improve your run consistency.
I again found myself in much the same position with Hades II as I did the original. Once I had a build that I liked enough that it seemed to work in general to get me clears the repetition did start to sink in a bit. Now I take part of the blame for that, given my single build focus, but even when I started chasing some of the game’s more interesting things the RNG gods just didn’t seem to be with me. I had, for instance, met the requirements to unlock a hidden weapon aspect but couldn’t get the dialogue to trigger for it in over 6 runs. Frustrating, to be sure, but when the game is designed to have a half life for players in the 100s of hours I can understand why that stuff isn’t served up on plate the second you can unlock it.
The narrative is, as it always is, fantastically crafted and delivered. Major credits go to the voice actors and sound artists again for bringing the whole thing to life as it’s in no small part to them that the story is as engaging as it is. Now I have the somewhat of a privilege of not having finished the game until after the most recent patch which changed the ending somewhat and, by my accounts, I was very much satisfied with it. That also seems to be the consensus amongst most of the players on Reddit too which just shows how committed Supergiant is to delivering the right experience for the players. I’m shying away from saying much here as really it’s just worth playing and if you can’t take mine or Supergiants word on that given their track record then there’s not much else I could say to convince you.
Hades II is everything you expect of it and so much more. Opening up the game you’ll instantly be transported back to the world the original set up and your muscle memory will flare in anticipation. But that will last for the briefest of moments until you discover the incredible depth and breadth that Supergiant has been able to build into their very first sequel. Is it better? No, but it’s more and so much more of what Hades was at that. For some that will make it better but for me it was exactly what I’d expect from a sequel: bringing the core of what made the original good along for the ride whilst going in its own direction. Hades II does that, reaching the impossibly high bar that I’ve set for a Supergiant game.
Rating: 9.5/10
Hades II is available on PC, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 right now for $43.95. Game was played on the PC with 36.2 hours of playtime and 32% of the achievements unlocked.
