Admittedly, the first Hades, and extending past that, Supergiant Games, was never on my radar until the launch trailer came out. I had heard of ‘roguelikes’, but I had yet to play one at the time. My Nintendo Switch was also collecting dust. That trailer though, that changed things.
Seeing Zagreus being the coolest guy alive facing off against Lernie, the Bone Hydra, and seemingly winning before getting blasted to smithereens had me fully invested. When I bought the game and I played it for the first time, I felt like I ascended into a new plane of existence. I didn’t let go of my Switch for a long, long time. I loved Hades 1, I’ve got at least a hundred runs in that game, and I beat Hades himself over 10 times to get the true ending.
Afterwards, I ended up purchasing the rest of Supergiant’s catalogue on my PlayStation 5. I loved Bastion, Transistor and Pyre, with Transistor being my favourite of the three (Hades being my favourite overall), but after I beat those, I had moved on to other things for a while…
Until the Game Awards in 2022, where they showed off Hades II for the very first time. I was immediately enthralled – new characters, new locations, but most of all, just how damn cool Melinoë looked. I needed to play that game then and there, but by then Supergiant had already taken a spot as one of my favourite game developers, so I was willing to wait and give them to make the game the best as it could possibly be.
Fast forward a year and a half later my friend and one of the owners of Gatecrashers, Dan, gifted me Hades II. At the time, it was (and still is) in Early Access, and part of me wanted to wait until the full 1.0 release, but another part of me just couldn’t. It had been too long.
I needed to get back into the world of Hades.
And I’m glad I did.
Hades II is quite possibly the best, most polished “Early Access” game I’ve ever played. Sure, there’s some art and models missing, but wow, this game feels like a finished game already, and that is always a treat. We also got a new patch recently that balanced a lot of the combat and introduced new art into the fold, and it’s really interesting seeing it all come together before our very eyes.
In comparison to the first one, Hades II is a shift, both in terms of tone and difficulty. The first, even with its story, tended to be more lighthearted and fun, on top of Zagreus being a more joke-y protagonist, but this one is darker. Everyone you talk to knows what the stakes are, and so that’s the big thing that they keep focusing on. Trying to escape your shitty home life to go see your mom definitely has a big emotional core, but Hades II ups that in a big way by framing Mel as essentially an orphan (because her brother and mom are trapped in stasis while her father is in chains) who’s been trained all her life to stop Chronos, the god of time.
On a difficulty level, I found myself having a harder time with Hades II. This is primarily due to the changes in combat and the new systems taking some time to get used to. Even after I did, it took me a while to find my stride. Once I did though, I did not look back.
The first thing I noticed when I played this game is the new cast and the magic bar. Gone is the cast as a projectile, now it summons a circle around your position that traps any enemy caught inside, and does a variety of effects depending on the boon you’ve got equipped at the time. More importantly though is the Omega. Holding down the attack, special or cast buttons lets you use a stronger version of those skills known as the Omega versions, buffed via the magic bar you’ve got above your health bar. Your magic is limited, it gets refreshed after every location, but depending on your build you might be able to recover magic during battle through other means.
The new toolkit, at least for me, took a while to get used to. It wasn’t until my 40th run that I really started to make use of everything in my arsenal. Dashing and using my cast, making sure to use my omega abilities to deal as much damage as possible, and that’s not even mentioning the new permanent upgrades system. Goodbye Mirror of Night, hello Arcana. Now, you’ve got upgradable cards that use any number of slots from 0 – 5, and a limited number of slots, so it’s up to you to decide how you want to build out your kit. Furthermore, the 0 power cards can’t be activated normally, you need to fulfill specific card selection criteria.
There’s also the new gods introduced in the game. Some of the older ones aren’t available (RIP Athena, I miss you and your deflect dash) but they might be coming back in the full release. Until then though, we’ve got a range of new ones to get used to, who are Apollo, Hecate, Hephaestus, Hera and Hestia. The returning gods also get some reworked boons to fit the new toolkit.
Combine that to the new weapons, and you’ve got a vast number of differences that not only set Hades II apart from its predecessor, but also sets apart Melinoë from Zagreus. Out of all the new ones, my favourite has been the Sister Blades, especially with the Aspect of Artemis, that allows you to parry once every 15-ish seconds once you activate the omega attack. I’m someone that just has a preference for fast paced combat, and the blades tickle the part of my brain that needs that. The rest are fine, I had the least amount of fun with the Umbral Flames. It felt too slow, and in a game like this I’m not particularly into playing long range anyway (and compared to the Adamant Rail it isn’t as fun anyways). Even with the recent patch, I feel like some of the weapons need some reworking – or maybe they just aren’t for me, which is the beauty of letting you pick and choose your weapons anyway!
Progression wise it’s similar to the first, where as you go on runs you can obtain psyche (which you use to upgrade your card slots), ashes (which you use to unlock cards), bones (that you use on the shop in the Crossroads, your home base) and returning from the first game, Nectar. But that’s not all. Alongside your weapon, you carry tools every run. These tools include a pickaxe, a spade, a tablet and a fishing rod. Before every run, you can select one of these to increase the chances of the item that tool is used to collect spawning. These are used for upgrades, but also in the Cauldron, which is this game’s equivalent of the contractor from the first game. Right now in early access there isn’t much in terms of cosmetic upgrades, but there are upgrades for your runs – such as fountain rooms, as well as other upgrades for story progression that I don’t want to spoil.
Character relationship progression has also slightly changed too. It starts the same way – the first Nectar you give them will result in you getting a keepsake (which also gets upgraded the same way as the first game), and similarly, the last gift you give them (at least in early access) is a bottle of Ambrosia. Sprinkled between that however, at least for the people you interact with in the Crossroads, are fishing bait to catch fish with them and bath salt to take a bath with them. These increase your relationships further, but also lets ‘time’ advance, which would normally advance by the number of rooms you go through in a run. ‘Time’ is an important concept, because you can grow plants, which require time to blossom, some cauldron magic requires time to pass to work, and some special orders require time to pass. There’s a lot of interlocking mechanisms here, and it’s up to you to decide if you want to ‘optimize’ story progression or just go at your own pace regardless of whatever else is going on.
Hades II is phenomenal. Would I recommend you pick it up on early access? Absolutely, it rules so much. If you haven’t played the first Hades, I would recommend you go play that first. You don’t need it for this, but I bet you’ll be more emotionally invested in the narrative if you go and play the first one – and who knows, maybe by the time you master that game, this will have a lot more stuff to do (on top of what’s already there) or hit 1.0!
