Review of Hades 2 – Godlike Act of God – WGB

It took me a long time to finally play Hades 2, despite my love for the first game which easily ranks among my all-time favorites. The sequel has been around for two years if you count its early access site, yet I still haven’t touched it. That’s because as much as Hades blew my mind, I didn’t feel like it needed a sequel or that I needed more Hades. Now, however, with Hades 2 coming to consoles, it’s time to see what I’ve been missing. Turns out I missed a big game, sometimes a bad one.

Hades 2 takes place sometime after the events of the first game, following Melinoe, the sister of our last protagonist, Zagreus. Apparently, dear Zag’s parents had another child, but when he was a small child Godling, the evil timer, Chronos, came seeking revenge on the family for his past treatment. Melinoe was banished by the witch Hecate while the whole family was left to suffer the wrath of Chronos, who now sits on the throne. As for Melinoe, we continue with her in later years under the tutelage of Hecate, who raised Melinoe with one goal: to bring down the titan of time, Chronos.

Next is Hades in between. A lot, maybe even hundreds, of running against the main boss, all while slowly opening the story and Melinoe’s past by dealing with God’s family with a very complex family tree and it can be a family mandala. The script is still sharp, often funny and filled with enough soap opera drama to put Coronation Street to shame.

The actual gameplay loop is the same, at least in a big sense: grab a weapon and ride the kill gun towards Chronos, the time-controlling tit on the throne. Or go to the world. Each stage you clear offers a reward, usually a Boon from the gods themselves, and gives you a choice of where to head next. Ideally, by the time you reach the final fight, you’ve built up a collection of Boons and upgrades that suit your favorite weapon and combine into a whirlwind of ass-kicking.

Combat has changed, too. The basics are still the same: attack and dodge. But Melinoe likes to open up to people, and thus has a few tricks up her sleeves. He can cast a binding circle at the tap of a button, slowing down all enemies within it. Knowing this is the key to knowing his fighting style, especially as many Africans improve their performance or make the Melinoe more dangerous within it. He can also launch Omega versions of his attacks and magic by pressing the appropriate buttons, which chew up his mana meter but can deliver cool effects.

And, of course, he has a arsenal of weapons just like Zagreus does, each of which can be upgraded and modified in different ways by using their Aspects. My personal favorite? A slow, large two-handed ax that wreaks havoc like dishing out mac and cheese. Its special attack is a cool boom, but when the button is held it releases a series of explosions. If you manage to get the right boons, the attack speed can be improved significantly, making it a beast.

On top of that, there are Arcana cards that give different buffs depending on what you choose. Expanding Grasp means you can equip more Arcana, and some cards can even be used for free if you meet their requirements. These cards can be upgraded throughout the game using a special resource, layer upon layer upon layer upon layer.

Put it all together, and what you get is a smoother, more enjoyable fight. What really stands out, however, is that glorious feeling when you put together a contraption. It’s something I’ve been missing from other roguelikes I’ve played lately, where the upgrades you collect don’t add up to something big. But here – the Medals you choose, the weapons you choose, the Arcana cards you bring – can come together into really cool builds. It has a fair amount of luck, too, so those buildings that just click and allow you to slow down the run feel much more satisfying than watching a mime slowly discover that you have exploded in his invisible box.

As before, the genius of Hades 2 is how it makes death the best part of the game. Visiting a home during a run means another chance to talk to the characters, give gifts, invite them to hang out a bit, ask for old habits to make the next run easier, improve a few bits and a million other little things. Death isn’t a problem, it means you’ll come home to visit, meet family, maybe have a quick drink with Artemis in the vague hope that your disdain will wash away.

Just like the first game, there are frankly ungodly conversations to find and listen to, all fully voiced by the excellent cast. My favorite moments are when gods or other characters refer to something you’ve done – usually obscure decisions or combinations that make me stop and think, “mah, they thought of that.”

When you take all of this and combine it, you get a roguelike with a great and rewarding sense of progression. This is a genre where repetition is key, so gameplay needs to be solid, and feeling like you’re making progress is essential. Hades 2 kills it on both fronts, but going forward is where it delivers a godly experience. Whether you succeed or fail in your run, you almost always take a step forward somewhere, whether it’s gathering resources for a new development, developing a relationship, fulfilling a prophecy or something else. Sometimes that falters and you might find yourself banging your head off the wall for a few runs, but it’s rare.

Then there are about a million new gameplay mechanics and systems to mess with, too. There are a lot of endless upgrades and improvements to the home base of the craft by hunting for resources as you play, familiars that you can find and keep running, a new decoration system, a random region mode, a challenge system, a new Fear mechanic that adds difficulty to rare resources and a bunch more that I might forget. Supergiant threw everything at this game, similar to Melinoe throwing everything at Chronos. It’s amazing, even more so when it costs just £25, and everything feels well designed and built.

A good example of what MORE the developers have packed into Hades 2 is two paths you can take. The Underworld is almost as long as the first game’s run, but now there’s an Overworld, too, that opens up after a while. The trip to Olympus is about the same length as well, and features a few new ideas like large open spaces, a fun little town section and ships. These two routes alone double what the original game offered, but, more importantly, add something different to your run.

It’s also a bit everywhere. I argue because the wealth of material is deeply impressive, but it also makes this game a less structured game. I can’t say if Hades 2 is better or worse, just moooooooooore. Considering Hades is an amazing game, that’s not a bad thing.

Basically, Hades 2’s biggest problem isn’t even its fault, which is deeply unfair of me to use as a criticism, but the world isn’t fair, so here we are. You see, Hades was a revelation, a game that solved almost every problem I had with the genre and a few I didn’t even know I had. It was, to put it simply, fucking glorious. With Hades 2, it doesn’t have the benefit of surprise because going into it, I knew what I was getting, and that detracts a bit from the experience.

As a main character, I generally found Melinoe less kind than her older brother. While Zagreus approaches everything from a place of love and hope, Melinoe is a weapon, raised from a young age to fight and the pressure of many worlds on her shoulders. The game establishes his responsibility clearly enough, but rarely transcends that one-note concept of a job to reveal much beneath it. He’s likable enough, but I never had the same deep connection with him that I had with Zag and his quest to see his mother again.

Although I knew very little about how the story would play out going into Hades 2, I had heard that the actual ending of the game was divisive, to say the least. Now that I’ve seen it, I can see why. Hades 2 starts throwing some timeline shenanigans into the mix, it’s already a potentially dangerous place to go down. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about why the ending drops the ball without going into spoilers, so I’ll have to keep it vague and say that the characters lose agency, interesting plot threads fall apart and a lot of emotional work happens off-camera.

The ending is actually a prime example of everything good and bad in Hades 2. Expanding the scope and dimension beyond the first game, Hades 2 has improved in many ways, but it has also become a messier, scruffier game. It has lost some of this beautiful perfection, and it ends up being worse in other areas like its narrative.

And compared to the first game, Hades 2 doesn’t do a good job of justifying how to keep running after the end, either. That might be too much of a nitpick, but I appreciate how the first game managed to find a way to make it all work. It took the form of a trope and found a way to integrate it well into the story.

Supergiant has done it again. Seriously, is there anything wrong they can do? They continued to deliver banger after banger, as if they were in the greatest race in history.

But is it better than the first game? Is Melinoe usurping her brother as the new roguelike princess? No. He stands beside her as her equal. Because in the end, Hades 2 ramps up the scope all the way to Olympus, but it also sacrifices some of its polish and focus on the altar to get there. Its brilliance is marred by weak storytelling and an ending that didn’t reach, but in other areas such as combat, build and even presentation, it shines brighter than ever.

It may not match the focus of the first game, but even a slightly warped Hades is still up there.