[first impressions, 4.5h playtime~]
Hades 2 welcomes you back into its familiar world, now all a little brighter with a beautiful mix of yellow, blue & green hues. Melinoë's presence is immediately charming, both softspoken, and determined. The world you walk through is one where the past events haunt the walls and weighs heavy on the hearts of its inhabitants characters. It’s a compelling intro - the hub’s witchy aesthetics with its big cauldron and Headmistress Hecate - and all the new prominent female presences - really make it stand apart from its predecessor. Aesthetically and sonically, this was even more my jam than the first.
The biggest combat change was going from multidash to dash + sprinting as the movement tools. Ideally this moves the game away from the dash bonanza the former game was, but the arenas are as tight before, filled with obstacles. This makes sprinting awkward and not a reliable tool outside of more spacious boss arenas. On top of that, they removed the ability to destroy projectiles with attacks (save for when you use the staff), making the projectile-breaking boon for the sprint feel mandatory to avoid chip damage during trash mob rooms. Additionally, they tried to make resource management a bigger question by adding the magick/mana system. These are all good changes on paper, as it makes controlling Melinoë feel distinct from Zagreus, and ideally would allow for more combat approaches to be viable if balanced properly. However, the issues with the combat don't stop there and are compounded by the boon system, which is still largely the same as it was before. This suggests it doesn’t make for very memorable, outlier runs due to how unimpactful and homogenized the choices are, even when stacked. (The addition of magick consumption/regeneration boons does not change that either) The combat encounters outside of miniboss and boss rooms are still groups of trash mobs that spawn in waves - fighting them feels like going through the motions. And when you do reach a boss fight, the damage you can dish out can feel rather laughable - until you’ve got a decent amount of upgrades, and a decent boon set - making for drawn out fights where you’ve already dodging, hitting and waiting to deal with the damage sponge. In the IGN review, it is said that “many roguelites suffer from this feeling of having “doomed runs” where you just don’t get the kind of scaling or key upgrades that you need to survive in later levels, but that was never my experience with Hades 2”. My experience with not only Hades II, but the first one, stands against this. In both games, you will run into encounters that while they might not feel out of your skill level given their attack patterns, will be damage sponges. To alleviate this, you will spend a lot of currency to get you powered up to a level where monsters in the new area will not feel like a chore to kill. Hades II is not the kind of roguelite game where the tools to beat the game are given to you from the get go and the meta-progression mostly unlocks new gameplay elements. A significant part of your power budget is in the meta progression, which a quick glance at the possible unlocks will make clear. Therefore corpse, or rather currency runs, where you’re gonna be aiming to get as much currency as possible to unlock the next thing become more or less naturalized in the gameplay loop. It’s not a game where you can solely focus on engaging with the combat itself to make it deeper into the run. Doomed runs do in fact exist, and I’d argue the game necessitates those as part of its gameplay loop. Currency will always be on your mind, and in Hades II even moreso, as they’ve added extra non-combat interactions which will yield currency: most notably, mining ore and gathering herbs. These are not optional as they are part of meta-progression and do disrupt the combat loop further as now you’re not only killing trash mobs, you’re ever so often doing a menial game of clicks to earn 3 ores. In Hades I, the weapons were merely locked behind boss currency, but here they’ve added more currency bloat and requirements. The herbs and the gardening fill the same niche, though part of it happens in the hub area. I don’t see these as meaningful additions to the game and find they distract from the core aspects of the game. Something the first Hades got right whilst adding fishing, as it did not present a necessary aspect for progression, but a little side activity. If we’re adding minigames to a death run game, why make them take the wind out of your sails?
Now we’ll come to the biggest gripe I had with the predecessor, and that seems to be replicated here from what I can tell: the balance between gameplay and narrative. The first Hades suffered from a combat experience that didn’t measure up in depth to the magnitude of story interactions & plot development - the ones you have to grind to unlock and will be provided to you in fragments. It functions through a sort of dripfeed system where, once you feel you’ve exhausted the options of making a run through the same old dungeon more interesting, you’re still left with a lot of relationships and story you wanna pursue. In my limited time with Hades 2, I’ve already felt an inkling of this as the 4.5h yielded not much in the way of story engagement despite having done a decent number of runs. It becomes the game’s own carrot on a stick, throwing yourself into the pits to gain some currency, a gift or two and hopefully a new story tidbit that feels interesting and meaningful - and not just characters doing a variation on talking about the tropes they’re assigned. In the original Hades I’ve had my fill and put the game down after racking up 50h, which isn’t a shabby number to put on a game, but the main reason I put it down was because I didn’t feel the game rewarded my combat investment through story in a worthwhile manner anymore. It almost becomes the game’s own skinnerbox, where dripfed interactions are the reward for engaging with the combat, as the combat’s fun and merit dissipates due to the low variance of the runs, even if you do try to spice it up and make it more interesting. There’s a fine line between frustrating and doing something for the sake of something else, and the game has crossed those lines too often at that point where the deaths become a means to an end. It makes me beg the question why it was conceived as a roguelite in the first place, as SG’s previous games and the experience with both of these games, make me feel like they could’ve created a very compelling experience that isn’t padded out by currency grind and dripfeeding story as you rack up deaths.
The game doesn’t need me to shower it with praise. I wrote this mainly to formulate my gripes and to share them in an effort to illuminate what I identified as the series’ previous pitfalls and missed potential with this iteration during the few hours I spent with it. I’ll do more runs here and there throughout the year, and reassess it once it’s fully released. I'm not holding my breath for significant changes. As it stands, the road they’re taking for Hades 2 seems to be: more of what was already widely beloved with slight additions/variations.
[*Update after 10h+ playtime*]
- The 3rd area addresses the tight space concerns. its a bigger area and the upgrades are spread throughout it, making the game feel much better as you can really make use of the movement options here.
- However, despite unlocking more things, damage numbers feel low across the board vs. the shield and bullet sponge enemies. It seems to stem from both base damage being rather low and boons not feeling impactful. As it stands, the game's combat and damage don't seem properly balanced, making the game feel like a slog more often than not.
- Sadly, getting further into the game only made the slog that is the currency grind that much more apparent. They've really expanded on the amount of currencies compared to Hades 1.Ssome are area dependent e.g. you can only get this currency in x area with y tool (and you can only pick one tool per run?!). Another big one called F. Fate that is needed for plenty unlocks but you can only get from the exchange broker or certain NPCs when they give you the option during your run. This all exacerbates the issue of currency runs, because you wanna get all this specific currency, but at the same time, you wanna have a good run. It creates this tension between currency and boons that I feel is contradictory to making the game feel rewarding to play, because you're either gonna make yourself stronger during your run, or you'll get currency you need - and this choice shouldn't need to exist in a game that is this grindy in the first place. Having good runs should translate into getting plenty resources you need. This deviation screams bloat through currencies and doesn't make the game feel rewarding to play.
TL;DR game has currency/grind bloat and the damage numbers seem off. Lots of bullet sponge/shield enemies - combat (and boons) don't feel satisfying, rewarding nor interestingly challenging
My recommendation: play Hades 1, wait for this game to get balanced
Hades 2 welcomes you back into its familiar world, now all a little brighter with a beautiful mix of yellow, blue & green hues. Melinoë's presence is immediately charming, both softspoken, and determined. The world you walk through is one where the past events haunt the walls and weighs heavy on the hearts of its inhabitants characters. It’s a compelling intro - the hub’s witchy aesthetics with its big cauldron and Headmistress Hecate - and all the new prominent female presences - really make it stand apart from its predecessor. Aesthetically and sonically, this was even more my jam than the first.
The biggest combat change was going from multidash to dash + sprinting as the movement tools. Ideally this moves the game away from the dash bonanza the former game was, but the arenas are as tight before, filled with obstacles. This makes sprinting awkward and not a reliable tool outside of more spacious boss arenas. On top of that, they removed the ability to destroy projectiles with attacks (save for when you use the staff), making the projectile-breaking boon for the sprint feel mandatory to avoid chip damage during trash mob rooms. Additionally, they tried to make resource management a bigger question by adding the magick/mana system. These are all good changes on paper, as it makes controlling Melinoë feel distinct from Zagreus, and ideally would allow for more combat approaches to be viable if balanced properly. However, the issues with the combat don't stop there and are compounded by the boon system, which is still largely the same as it was before. This suggests it doesn’t make for very memorable, outlier runs due to how unimpactful and homogenized the choices are, even when stacked. (The addition of magick consumption/regeneration boons does not change that either) The combat encounters outside of miniboss and boss rooms are still groups of trash mobs that spawn in waves - fighting them feels like going through the motions. And when you do reach a boss fight, the damage you can dish out can feel rather laughable - until you’ve got a decent amount of upgrades, and a decent boon set - making for drawn out fights where you’ve already dodging, hitting and waiting to deal with the damage sponge. In the IGN review, it is said that “many roguelites suffer from this feeling of having “doomed runs” where you just don’t get the kind of scaling or key upgrades that you need to survive in later levels, but that was never my experience with Hades 2”. My experience with not only Hades II, but the first one, stands against this. In both games, you will run into encounters that while they might not feel out of your skill level given their attack patterns, will be damage sponges. To alleviate this, you will spend a lot of currency to get you powered up to a level where monsters in the new area will not feel like a chore to kill. Hades II is not the kind of roguelite game where the tools to beat the game are given to you from the get go and the meta-progression mostly unlocks new gameplay elements. A significant part of your power budget is in the meta progression, which a quick glance at the possible unlocks will make clear. Therefore corpse, or rather currency runs, where you’re gonna be aiming to get as much currency as possible to unlock the next thing become more or less naturalized in the gameplay loop. It’s not a game where you can solely focus on engaging with the combat itself to make it deeper into the run. Doomed runs do in fact exist, and I’d argue the game necessitates those as part of its gameplay loop. Currency will always be on your mind, and in Hades II even moreso, as they’ve added extra non-combat interactions which will yield currency: most notably, mining ore and gathering herbs. These are not optional as they are part of meta-progression and do disrupt the combat loop further as now you’re not only killing trash mobs, you’re ever so often doing a menial game of clicks to earn 3 ores. In Hades I, the weapons were merely locked behind boss currency, but here they’ve added more currency bloat and requirements. The herbs and the gardening fill the same niche, though part of it happens in the hub area. I don’t see these as meaningful additions to the game and find they distract from the core aspects of the game. Something the first Hades got right whilst adding fishing, as it did not present a necessary aspect for progression, but a little side activity. If we’re adding minigames to a death run game, why make them take the wind out of your sails?
Now we’ll come to the biggest gripe I had with the predecessor, and that seems to be replicated here from what I can tell: the balance between gameplay and narrative. The first Hades suffered from a combat experience that didn’t measure up in depth to the magnitude of story interactions & plot development - the ones you have to grind to unlock and will be provided to you in fragments. It functions through a sort of dripfeed system where, once you feel you’ve exhausted the options of making a run through the same old dungeon more interesting, you’re still left with a lot of relationships and story you wanna pursue. In my limited time with Hades 2, I’ve already felt an inkling of this as the 4.5h yielded not much in the way of story engagement despite having done a decent number of runs. It becomes the game’s own carrot on a stick, throwing yourself into the pits to gain some currency, a gift or two and hopefully a new story tidbit that feels interesting and meaningful - and not just characters doing a variation on talking about the tropes they’re assigned. In the original Hades I’ve had my fill and put the game down after racking up 50h, which isn’t a shabby number to put on a game, but the main reason I put it down was because I didn’t feel the game rewarded my combat investment through story in a worthwhile manner anymore. It almost becomes the game’s own skinnerbox, where dripfed interactions are the reward for engaging with the combat, as the combat’s fun and merit dissipates due to the low variance of the runs, even if you do try to spice it up and make it more interesting. There’s a fine line between frustrating and doing something for the sake of something else, and the game has crossed those lines too often at that point where the deaths become a means to an end. It makes me beg the question why it was conceived as a roguelite in the first place, as SG’s previous games and the experience with both of these games, make me feel like they could’ve created a very compelling experience that isn’t padded out by currency grind and dripfeeding story as you rack up deaths.
The game doesn’t need me to shower it with praise. I wrote this mainly to formulate my gripes and to share them in an effort to illuminate what I identified as the series’ previous pitfalls and missed potential with this iteration during the few hours I spent with it. I’ll do more runs here and there throughout the year, and reassess it once it’s fully released. I'm not holding my breath for significant changes. As it stands, the road they’re taking for Hades 2 seems to be: more of what was already widely beloved with slight additions/variations.
[*Update after 10h+ playtime*]
- The 3rd area addresses the tight space concerns. its a bigger area and the upgrades are spread throughout it, making the game feel much better as you can really make use of the movement options here.
- However, despite unlocking more things, damage numbers feel low across the board vs. the shield and bullet sponge enemies. It seems to stem from both base damage being rather low and boons not feeling impactful. As it stands, the game's combat and damage don't seem properly balanced, making the game feel like a slog more often than not.
- Sadly, getting further into the game only made the slog that is the currency grind that much more apparent. They've really expanded on the amount of currencies compared to Hades 1.Ssome are area dependent e.g. you can only get this currency in x area with y tool (and you can only pick one tool per run?!). Another big one called F. Fate that is needed for plenty unlocks but you can only get from the exchange broker or certain NPCs when they give you the option during your run. This all exacerbates the issue of currency runs, because you wanna get all this specific currency, but at the same time, you wanna have a good run. It creates this tension between currency and boons that I feel is contradictory to making the game feel rewarding to play, because you're either gonna make yourself stronger during your run, or you'll get currency you need - and this choice shouldn't need to exist in a game that is this grindy in the first place. Having good runs should translate into getting plenty resources you need. This deviation screams bloat through currencies and doesn't make the game feel rewarding to play.
TL;DR game has currency/grind bloat and the damage numbers seem off. Lots of bullet sponge/shield enemies - combat (and boons) don't feel satisfying, rewarding nor interestingly challenging
My recommendation: play Hades 1, wait for this game to get balanced