• 08 Nov, 2025 *

I have been struggling for a while to get my thoughts in order about Hades 2 and I decided to just not. Fuck it. Here are my very disorganized thoughts about Hades 2.

I understand this amounts to just complaining it’s not like the first game, so I should say there are things I genuinely like. The idea that Melinoë doesn’t have an awful, confrontational relationship with a close loved one for most of her life is Good, Actually, we don’t need to see that again. The combat still feels good and I like the additions. For the first half, I liked pretty much all of the characters. Several times, I anticipated a character’s first appearance by a screen or two and was delighted to find I was right each time. It’s a game with a very good front half.

Just assume everything from this point forward is going to have spoilers. Similarly, if you’d like to comment I’d love to hear from you, but on the chance that there’s something good still waiting for me, try not to spoil any stuff I haven’t mentioned. Feel free to say “oh there’s a good thing, keep doing X” or what have you.

The Story

It’s... not as good as the first one. Until basically the credits, it seems like it’s going to be ok. I remember I was talking to my partner about it (she is not playing it) and describing how I was really curious how they were going to write their way out of the situation, given that they like happy endings. And the answer to my question was “they use a really half-assed alternate universe conceit.” I was immediately sick of “Let Time Flow Freely Forth.” It’s meaningless. What the fuck are you talking about?

The excuse is perfectly all right. They have to give you a reason to continue murdering the old bastard once he’s not the old bastard any longer. The way they talk about it is terrible.

The post-credits plot is just bad. Just front to back. The idea of finding the Three Fates is perfectly fine. I really had a strong response when one of the prophecies became a cry for help. That was a great touch. But talking to all the required people just made me bored, and the final meeting is extraordinarily disappointing.

I had also suspected they were going to pull some stupid fucking l’Engle bullshit the whole time and I was disappointed to find I was right.

For the normal people in the audience, let me translate: Madeleine l’Engle is a beloved children’s novel author, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time. Yes, that book’s overtly Christian. In her historical fiction scifi, she made use of a conceit that was prevalent in some Christian circles – there was a “time of miracles” and the need to intervene with miracles slowly receded. It’s an attempt to make Biblical literalism make sense – the Christian god is constantly interfering with things in the Bible, but not in the 20th century (at least, not in the same big, spectacular ways). I think l’Engle did personally believe that, but don’t take my word for it. She does use it in her books though.

From both a storytelling and a theological perspective, I find the conceit dull and unsatisfying. I want to try to limit my thoughts as a worshipper of the ancient Mediterranean gods, because that’s not relevant here. I am in no way mad about how they depict “my gods.” The first game is one of my favorite games. But suffice it to say, my personal experience of the world we live in now is that they’re still around, and it’s unnecessary to point your entire plot at the idea that they were forced to step back by the Fates so you can imply this game’s setting is the zero world. It’s the same move Tolkien was making early on in his Middle-Earth writing, where it’s the past of our world. A: he was better at it. B: he changed his mind for a reason.

Side quests

Apart from “make friends with everyone” the only significant side quests I can think of are upgrading the weapons and waking up Hypnos.

I maxed every weapon, including every hidden aspect, in Hades 1. I’m not sure I maxed one iteration of each weapon in 2, and I only discovered one aspect at all. I just didn’t care. The changes are interesting but not compelling. And in comparison to the first game, this one has weapon aspects that are just more “correct” than others. I am not sure I can be convinced that any version of the staff is going to just be better across the board than the one that makes your Omega moves fire from where you were standing three times. It works exactly as normal, but also you get free aoe damage. It ruins Typhon’s life. Typhon is kind of a joke using this staff, especially if you also get a boon that makes your cast go off remotely, rather than centered on your location. Several gods provide that effect, so if you want it you can usually get it with a few dice rolls.

The Hypnos thing encapsulates my entire response to the game. It’s intriguing and interesting, it grabbed my interest immediately. And once it’s done, to quote Melinoë herself, “that’s it?” Hypnos fucking off in an unfunny scene about how he’s late for work without even providing a keepsake or other permanent effect is just... fuck off. And the whole game feels that way by the end. “That’s it?”

Romance and friendship

Apart from combat that feels good to do, this is the other tentpole of the Hades games and... I dunno, shit, who cares?

I enjoyed the entirety of Odysseus’s story, even if I disagree with the moral underpinning of its conclusion. Dora’s story was all intriguing, though the character’s determined blasé attitude undermined it. There’s a lot of something I can only describe as “the interesting part happens offstage.” There’s a conversation, something is revealed, and then... the next conversation has the character explaining the decision they made when you weren’t around. A few times, this would add to the sensation that they have their own lives – which is not a thing no one feels like they’re doing anything but stuff related to your own story – but it seems like it’s every character.

And the romance, huh? You can romance more characters, but why? There are a few relationships I haven’t maxed out, and I think I may fuck around and try to do so; it’s a good game to play on the Steam Deck when I’m on the exercise bike. But if I never turn it on again I don’t think I’d mind too much. For the record, the characters I have fully romanced are Nemesis and Moros. The two I have inched towards the edges of are Icarus and Arachne – though I won’t be surprised if they have responses similar to Dusa’s in some way.

In the first game, I was genuinely surprised that there was romance at all, and that it was Megara and Thanatos. Here, a friend asked me watching some early runs if I’d figured out the polycule yet and yes, yes I had. And they are boring in comparison.

Persephone

She’s sure a standing lamp again huh?

Look, in the first game, given its plot, she is handled extremely well. It is compelling to fight through everything just for a brief conversation with her. It adds to Zagreus’s frustration, our feeling of that frustration, and the desire to do it all again.

But here we don’t even get that until the basic happy ending is achieved. We see Hades, but not Persephone. We see more of Zagreus. The first time, her rare presence added to the game, especially when she reveals she is both comfortable with and able to use the vast power of the House.

This time it just feels disappointing, again. I was looking forward, not to another combative relationship that changed over time, but a similarly constructed growing relationshp between Melinoë and the mother she has only just met. But instead she meets her dad, and Persphone is left to stand by his side. We can’t even talk to her individually.

FF14 Dodging

I think it’s pretty funny that the overall new attack mechanism is just “dodge aoe markers like it’s Final Fantasy 14”1. I liked it, particularly because Melinoë’s cast is also an aoe you have to plan in advance (usually).

Visibility

Compared to the first game, this one is awful at visibility. After 60 hours of play, I would still lose runs to hits that I literally did not see. And I don’t mean in that angry gamer “what was that?!” way, though sure, I get that feeling too. I mean genuinely, even after I died, I could not tell you what killed me.

The worst offender was the aoe fire effect Prometheus lays down on the ground that sticks around. It’s sort of translucent, as an attempt to make it look even more like waving fire, but what that meant is that I pretty consistently walked into it because I simply could not see it. I ended up needing to just only fight Prometheus from range. I would take time out of playing to figure out where the edge was and conclude I wasn’t actually sure.

The closest thing I have to a comment about what Supergiant needed to do in this game to make it better is that. I must, provided I’m physically looking at it, be 100% sure where damaging attacks are and where they aren’t. Enter the Gungeon cracked this code years ago with its attack placement and micro- versus macro-pixel distinctions. We have the technology.

A related but less dire issue is that, again after 70 hours (my total playtime is something like 78 hours now), I couldn’t tell what was ground and what was wall. I was getting stuck in corners. This is a thing I rarely did in Hades 1 at all, and certainly not this consistently this late.

I should probably say that while I am not going to claim I am “good” at Hades 1, given the shit you can find on youtube, I’m “pretty good” at it. When I had surgery in 2022 I started a fresh save on the switch and got to Hades on my first run. Then I defeated him on my second – with virtually no permanent upgrades. This game is just harder across the board, and for the most part I am ok with that. But there are things that read as accidentally difficult, like the visibility problems, that I don’t care for.

With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime. (it’s actually free through Stormblood now)↩

[#hades 2](https://www.calliope.prof/blog/?q=hades 2) [#supergiant games](https://www.calliope.prof/blog/?q=supergiant games) [#video games](https://www.calliope.prof/blog/?q=video games)