Game review 20 May 2024, 02:20

author: Maciej Bogusz

Hades 2 Review - Best Game for Killing Time

Supergiant Games may have little experience developing sequels, but it knows how to make interesting and good games. Although Hades 2 is in Early Access, it already provides many hours of great fun.

The review is based on the PC version.

To be honest, when Hades 2 was announced at The Game Awards in 2022, I didn't all of a sudden start jumping with excitement. I watched the trailer and felt almost nothing. After the event, which took place in Los Angeles, I completely forgot about the Hades sequel. Fortunately, I quickly found one true path, because, after 20 hours spent with Hades 2, I have to wear sackcloth and ashes - I promise that from now on I will closely follow what Supergiant Games has to offer.

My romance with Hades was quite, for lack of a better word, "bumpy." On the one hand I was thrilled with the game, I liked the combat system, the difficulty level, and the story. But on the other hand, for reasons beyond my control, I had to forget about Hades for a while and focus on something else. And that was my mistake. Because after that it was difficult to return to this game - each death instead of encouraging me, irritated me. Nonetheless, I didn't give up and returned to Hades. Thanks to this, I can now take a fresh look at Hades 2.

She’s a witch!

In the first installment of the series, our main goal was to escape the Underworld. In the sequel, we have to descend to the lowest depths of Tartarus to find and defeat the Titan of Time - Chronos. Chronos was long ago "split" into parts, in order to keep him from defying Olympus. His "remains" were hidden in the realm of Hades. However, the Titan of Time managed to put himself back together and now seeks revenge and power. He begins his path of vendetta by capturing the residents of the house of Hades and imprisoning, among others, Zagreus, whom we can't meet in the current version of the game even after defeating Chronos. Melinoe, the daughter of Hades and Persephone managed to escape. She ended up in the care of Hecate, the Witch of the Crossroads. The princess of the underworld, who we take control of, trains for many years under the watchful eye of her Headmistress and prepares to take revenge on the Titan of Time while wishing to regain her lost family. Once she becomes a full-fledged witch, she grabs her staff and sets off after Chronos. This is a fairly general outline of the plot of the game by the Supergiant Games studio. Interestingly, Hades 2 doesn't give us this info directly, we have to draw it from conversations and the environment, I liked this very much because the game doesn't treat the player like an idiot and allows you to discover for yourself what happened between the two games.

If you played the first installment of the series, you certainly know that Hades very much stood for well-written characters who not only had their own personality but also seemed almost alive; they had their worries and concerns and in their own way were very much rooting for Zagreus (at least some of them). In the sequel, it's very much the same, we're once again dealing with the pantheon of Greek gods and the heroes of various myths. As I mentioned, Hades 2 is in Early Access, and perhaps for this reason I had the impression that there were sort of fewer gods (or that's Chronos' job!). Fortunately, they are all very well written and comment on our exploits all the time.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Hecate and Melinoe. How the Witch of the Crossroads struggles with letting go of her foster daughter from the nest is brilliantly captured here. She knows this is the inevitable turn of events and is very supportive of the princess, but still, we can sense a note of regret in her voice and words. Hecate is also the main boss of the game's first location. Her task is to test our skills and make sure her foster daughter gets as far as possible. The voice acting of some characters deserves praise. For instance, listening to Chronos, played by Logan Cunningham (who, by the way, plays several characters), can give you goosebumps. In general, I recommend getting into discussions with as many NPCs as possible; you can learn something interesting about them every time.

The main hub of Hades 2 is the Crossroads. This place is definitely bigger than Hades' home and in a more attractive way, because with the help of Incantations, which we have to "brew" ourselves in a cauldron, it allows us, among other things, to upgrade the various elements found in the locations we reached during the game. Thus making it easier and enabling us to get further during each new attempt. Now we don't have to look for a single currency to upgrade an item, because we can throw various ingredients into the cauldron that we find or extract in a given location using a tool that we also, by the way, have to create ourselves. This new system of upgrades encourages us to stop during the game and look for the things we need to perform a given incantation. Playing for 20 hours, I had the feeling that there are actually still many more incantations I can brew - I've probably only touched the tip of the iceberg.

Beyond the mists of Erebus

I've talked a bit about fairly general things, so now I'm going to get down to the more specific stuff; what fun looks like in Hades 2. When it comes to the basic outline of gameplay here, not much has changed compared to the first installment. We're still dealing with a roguelike game in which dying is a kind of progression, it's challenging, but fair every time, not even once have I had a situation where I died due to no fault of my own. A normal trial looks more or less like this: we start in Erebus, where we get some random boon at the start. We defeat the first enemies, choose the next chamber, and so on, until some wicked creature deprives us of all life points. When that happens we return to the Crossroads, where we upgrade Melinoe with the ingredients we have found. As we progress, we get more and more upgrade options at our disposal. An important aspect of gameplay are also Arcana Cards, which are tarot cards that allow us to assign a given bonus, providing us with an advantage in battle. The number of Arcana Cards we can equip is limited, but this limit can be increased. Arcana Cards also allow you to make builds. I encourage you to try different combinations, as this in itself is an interesting experience.

Weapons are another important element. I managed to test all of them, and unfortunately, here I have to complain a bit. My favorite weapon without a doubt is the Witch's Staff, which is the first weapon wielded by Melinoe. The Staff is multipurpose and allows you to fight at a distance, which sometimes, in my opinion, definitely made the fight easier. On top of that, there are also casts that we can perform with it. In a word, this is a solid weapon that doesn't stand out in any way. As for the other items in the Witch's arsenal, here I felt strongly disappointed, as they seemed severely underdeveloped. They lack any kind of balance, and some are even useless. Of course, this is Early Access, and Supergiant Games, surely, is aware of this situation, especially since they are in regular touch with players.

Bosses are yet another solid feature of Hades 2. They are well-designed, have unique moves, and most importantly after defeating a given boss you have the satisfaction and feeling of a job well done. Again, I have to single out the Titan of Time, who is the final boss of the game, and you can see it in his every move (he's hellishly tough!). I had a great time trying to slaughter him. In general, if I were to make a comparison of combat between the first installment and the second, I would say that Melinoe is slower in combat than Zagreus. Personally, I prefer the fast pace of the fight as it's just more challenging for me. I have read opinions that Hades 2 is more difficult than Hades, for me, it was the other way around. This is an interesting case because this issue is the cause of heated discussions among players.

Final words

Hades 2 is a game that delights in terms of audio-visual design. The locations and characters are beautifully crafted. You can see the mastery of graphic designers and illustrators everywhere. The situation is no different with the sounds, which perfectly convey the atmosphere of the game, or raise the pressure during a boss fight. Particularly outstanding here is the soundtrack from the second location, where nice, calm singing accompanies us all the time just to surprise us during the boss fight. The whole game is also kept to its specific theme, which is quite "witchy," but fits well with the overall story. The latest child of Supergiant Games is a really well-optimized game. During my adventure, not once did I experience a drop in frames or other problems resulting from the poor technical state of the game. Even though it is Early Access, most of the big AAA titles can already start envying Hades 2's excellent technical state.

Hades 2 from Supergiant Games is an excellent roguelike and a worthy successor to Hades. Despite the game being in Early Access, it's already capable of providing hours of great fun. Early Access is scheduled to last until the end of 2024, and I'm already looking forward to seeing what the final version of this game, which has already managed to win praise from fans of the first installment, will look like. I hope that in the future more gods will be added to Hades 2 and the weapons, which at the moment are the weakest link of the whole game, will be fixed. When I played Hades 2 I often caught myself in the "one more run syndrome." The game really appealed to me. Now I'm waiting for it to come out on some portable device so I can kill time on the train!