Kathryn: Hello, hello, and thank you for voluntarily joining me for some Hades II discussion, absolutely zero peer pressure involved. The game has been out for nearly a month, and in that timespan we’ve all developed very different relationships to it, so shall we elaborate on our approaches first?
Barry: I am actively choosing not to check how many hours I’ve put into this game, out of a certainty that the answer would make me respect myself less as a person. Needless to say, my obsession burned brightly and quickly—this is that rare game that wormed itself so deeply into my brain that I think about it when I’m not playing it. Unsurprisingly, I’m the only one of the three of us who has rolled credits (if not exactly “beaten” it, because the definition of beating Hades is kind of loose; there is always more to unlock).
Luis: I hate it. OK, I don’t hate it, but I am so freaking bad at it still, a problem I had with Hades the original, and unfortunately I am too much of a gaming sicko to truly enjoy a game I stink at. That being said, I do think Hades as a mini-genre in and of itself works very well as a game type for me. I love games where you can pick up and play for 30 minutes, an hour, whatever, and this does scratch that itch for me. The variability of builds from run to run helps with that, except that drawing some bad god boons really sours the whole game for me for at least a day. Because of that, and my general inaptitude, I have not actually played it all that much; Steam says I’m at 9.7 hours so far since official release. (Tack on an extra five or so from Early Access.)
I have not beaten the “final” boss of the game, having seen him just once and promptly getting obliterated by his second phase. As for the other progression ladder in the game, the dreaded “Surface,” I have not explored it at all. I think it’s safe to say that I am the least Hades-pilled member of this chat, even if I find the game to be quite excellent in the moment-to-moment gameplay.
Kathryn: I am probably the biggest Hades sicko out of all of us. My hour count in the original Hades is a surprisingly reasonable 80, and across that time I managed to beat the game up to heat 15 (the self-scaling difficulty modifier that the game gives you), before I kept dying to a jacked-up final boss on heat 16 and refusing to nerf him back down to normal. Because I was out of the country and thus separated from my beautiful PC when Hades II dropped, I haven’t gotten my hour count up yet, but I am now at 18 hours, and I’ve beaten the underworld boss four times.
Barry: This feels like the great divide in the room. Kathryn, you love dying. Can’t get enough of it. I’ve seen your Celeste playthroughs. You die thousands of times and get back up and beg for more. Please, sir, may I have some more deaths. Me, I hate dying. I want to have fun and I generally do not find it fun to lose.
But the fab thing about Hades is that dying is really the only way to get better at it. And not just via lame things like “experience.” Each time you die, you unlock more perks and powers and plants and such that make you stronger on the next run. It’s a finely tuned feedback loop here, that I think adds to the addictive potential—your next run should be better than the one you just died on, so why not play one more time before bed?
Luis: There are two types of deaths, I think, in Hades II, and one is significantly more infuriating than the other. The better death, so to speak, is when you have a build rolling that you like, and you progress further in the game than ever before, only to die to some unknown mechanic. I love these deaths; they remind me a lot of progressing a difficult World of Warcraft boss, which is among my favorite thrills in gaming.
The second death, though, is where I get steamed. Your build sucks, you already know that you’re fucked for going all the way, and yet you keep going while losing focus here and there because you just know this is a doomed endeavor. Then you die to some mechanic you had cleared many times in the past. I hate it! This is how I die all the freaking time to the Sirens in the second act. I love the stupid Sirens’ song, but their mechanics force you to actually pay attention, and if I’m not fully locked in, it’s usually good night.
Kathryn: I get what you mean about the different deaths, Luis, especially once you start getting good enough at the game to get mad at when you mess up. (A similar thing happened to me with Celeste.) A friend of mine really struggled with the psychological element of dying to an area boss multiple times in the first Hades, and I never ran into that problem with the original. Weirdly enough, I’ve been running into this with Hades II, because my expectations are just higher for myself. I was progressing really rapidly through the start—I managed to beat the final boss in 13 nights, which was absurd by my own standards because a fresh save on the original would always take me 20-plus—and then I had to negotiate my disappointment when I hit a bit of a wall after that initial victory.
Luis: Now that we know roughly what approach we each bring to the game, I’m curious to find out how you actually play the game. By that I mean: What weapons do you prefer, what gods’ boons do you gravitate towards, hell, what attacks do you use? I know some people prefer to just smash that X button for basic attacks, while others do specials or the new casts.
I’ll start by saying I need speed in my Hades, so the axe is completely out. I, perhaps logically, have gravitated to the twin blades the most, which allow me to stack up damage either through Zeus’ lightning abilities (this makes me feel like this video) or, my favorite even if it’s maybe not great, Hestia’s fire damage-over-time effects. Other than that, Hephaestus’s forge stuff is cool at doing a lot of damage to a lot of enemies at once, and it’s fun to knock everyone around with Poseidon.
Barry: Axe go smash. I think my general gaming preferences and strategies are similar to if you taught a chimpanzee to play. Give me the thing which does the most damage, which is the big, slow axe, and give me the boons which increase my damage—assorted lightnings and scorches and big hammers from the sky, things of that nature. I do not wish to play with “speed” or “defense.” If I have to learn how to parry or dodge to beat a boss, I will not do it. I will swing my axe harder.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself using cast fairly often, which slows down enemies. So I can hit them with my axe.
Kathryn: First of all, let it be known that I am a mouse-and-keyboard gamer, so I am not mashing that X button, but left-clicking.
Luis: Kathryn, what the fuck?
Kathryn: Normal behavior, find a new slant. This is a big departure in our approaches. Hades is different from a lot of roguelikes, because it gives you lots of ways to control RNG. Some keepsakes let you control your buff pool, and you eventually start getting rerolls. You’re still subject to some randomness with enemy encounters, but in terms of your own gameplay, you can really build toward a similar, and similarly powerful, experience every single time. So the game kinda incentivizes you to search up guides and visit forums and watch tier list videos to know, which is what I’ve unfortunately gotten into.
The flipside to this is that it can make runs play more similarly, for a genre that’s all about random variety, and extra research shouldn’t be a mandatory part of the gaming experience. I’ve been, weirdly enough, feeling the restrictions of following a build more in Hades II, I think because the game does have so many more base mechanics (namely charge-up Omega attacks, mana, and hexes) that limiting yourself to a certain gamestyle with a certain weapon aspect feels like cutting out 90 percent of the options available to you as opposed to, say, 50. Though obviously that doesn’t change the fact that you have more options, or that Hades could play that way too.
That said, here are my successful builds in all of their buzzwordy glory: The hugely overpowered Medea skull build (though I run into getting complacent with the extra movement and tanking unnecessary hits); Circe staff with a bunch of Zeus cast buffs; and Thanatos axe despite not actually being skilled enough at dodging to use it properly, and recently shelved because I suffered one of my most demoralizing losses yet while playing it. Builds I am planning on trying: Moros torches, Charon axe. ‘Nuff said.
Luis: I have looked at tier lists, but they all recommend some weird special attack build with that Medea skull, and I simply do not have time to introduce that into my life.
I do think there’s a lot of depth that you mention that I simply do not engage with, which is rare for me. I just throw on my healing keepsake, use the Strength arcana to make myself super strong at the cost of not having extra lives, and get to work. This is maybe why I run into frustration when I don’t get the gods I like early on in my runs. If I get Apollo one more time as my first boon, I am going to commit deicide.
Barry: I have never once thought about my “build,” or how my choice of boon may affect later choices. (You can luck into synergies anyway. My best run came with the skull gun plus upgrades that fire all your shells at once and automatically retrieve them. It was like having a shotgun with unlimited ammo. Made me wonder why Odysseus bothered with trickery to defeat the cyclops when he could have just shot him in the face.)
I am allergic to learning about the “meta” for basically any game. I don’t think it’s fun to bloodlessly optimize the way you play. Plus, there’s something about this game specifically that makes me want to not learn other people’s thoughts on it—I looked on the Hades subreddit to try to find tips for one specific boss and was aghast at how horny every post was. Nothing about the damn game at all on there.
Kathryn: I’m dyin’.
Luis: Everyone is so damn horny, and I barely even know why. I have to admit that I do not play Hades or Hades II for the “story” or the “characters.” They’re charming to look at, and sure, I can see why people get horny for them, but I treat every moment I’m not in a run like a speedrunner, just spamming A to get past all the bullshit dialog and get back to dying. This is not how I play most games; I love story games! But this is not what I play this for, and so all of the complaints people have about the story in the second game will wash over me like so many Poseidon waves. I just want to smack things with my little daggers.
Barry: Skipping through the dialogue is horrifying to me. Not that I care all that much about the story here (nor, having beaten it, could I even really tell you what happened), but the presentation in Hades is so good! The art is lovely, the voice acting is excellent, the music is great—and not just “for a game." I have dogged it during the Scylla fight just to hear the song for longer.
Kathryn: The music is so good. A really good detail about the Scylla fight is that when you kill the musicians, their tracks (drum and/or guitar) disappear from the song. I also had an insane song-stuck-in-head experience a week ago, which was “I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes Then Drown You To Death)” by Scylla and the Sirens on repeat, before eventually switching into “Au Pays du Cocaine” by Geese.
I am a story enjoyer, even if I wouldn’t say I play Hades II for the story. Both games run into the problem of trying to tell a touching family narrative using the Greek pantheon, but the series is clever in using the roguelike mechanics to progress the narrative. Each time you die, you get a little mechanics treat, but also a little narrative treat, too. The main character of Hades II, Melinoë is objectively more boring than Zagreus, and I would say overall I’ve had fewer moments where I was legitimately wowed by what was happening—the first time I heard Eurydice in the first game set a high bar. But a lot of goofier characters in the game shine. It cracked me up when I met Narcissus for the first time. The voice acting is just great. Even the menus look and feel incredible.
Luis: I feel like I’ve been shitting on this game for this whole blog, which is not my intention. It really is a gorgeous game in motion, and despite my troubles with it, I do enjoy about 90 percent of my runs because of the fluidity of combat and the visuals. I think it’s to this game’s credit that I can really enjoy it without knowing anything that’s going on, story-wise, or even who the characters are beyond what I already knew about them from mythology. I will say though that I enjoy Narcissus as well, he’s such a little shithead but I have noticed, while grabbing my buffs from him when he pops up, that he gets a bit less dickish with every instance of finding his room.
Barry: At least he gives you something. All Eris knows is BPD, litter, and lie.
Luis: One thing I want to call out is how good the boss fights are in this game. I didn’t love the ones in the original game nearly as much; Meg was kinda boring and annoying, the hydra was a snooze, and the idiot duo in act three was easy to cheese. But all four main boss fights in this one feel fantastic. Hecate is easy but will punish you if you aren’t paying attention and/or if you’re being greedy; the Sirens overload you with information but are actually pretty easy once you get into a rhythm; Cerberus is maybe the weakest one but he’s also quite deadly; and though I have not beaten Chronos … it’s a very cool multi-phase fight where everything hits like a damn truck. The clock motif later in the fight is my favorite part of the game, visually and thematically, even if it is also what immediately killed me.
Barry: Oh buddy, wait till you hit the surface. There’s nothing as purely fun as the Sirens, but Eris and Prometheus are gonna kick your ass.
Kathryn: I hinted at this before, but the most demoralized I’ve gotten playing the game is when I faced the final boss on the surface for the first time at full health [MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD], watched his HP bar disappear, and then made it through two of his phases, only to find out that there was more, and then promptly forgot how to dodge and died. I haven’t wanted to go back to the surface since.
The boss fights really are standouts, though. Something I’m excited about is getting good enough at the game to play the elevated boss fights, which were my favorite parts of the first game. I’ve only done Hecate+ so far, but harder bosses are the most rewarding way to scale the game’s difficulty compared to, like, having 10 percent more enemies on your regular encounters. You get to reset the learning process, and it also makes you feel less bad about dying again.
Barry: More spoilers but I’ve learned from a friend that the elevated Scylla fight features Charybdis, and also a new song with both on vocals. What a beautiful concept. I will never play it though, because it sounds hard.
Luis, if you’re getting your ass kicked … have you considered turning on God Mode? I’m not at all ashamed to say I turned it on after my first run and haven’t turned it off since.
Luis: I have not considered Baby Mode, and I will not. I respect its inclusion, but since I am not playing Hades for anything but the challenge, it would defeat the purpose for me personally. I am stuck in a prison of my own making, thanks to three decades of trying to game at the cutting edge only to find I kinda suck at most Difficult Games. (FromSoftware, you will pay for your sins against my ego.)
Barry: I will say to people reading this, Hades’s Baby Mode is better than most. It gives you some damage reduction and then amps that up very slowly with each death, so you still get the feeling of dying and progressing, and you’re never invincible. I’ve gotten it all the way up and I still die from time to time.
Kathryn: Yeah, the nice thing about Hades is there really isn’t a single correct way to play the game. The three of us have totally different approaches and resultantly different experiences. I legitimately envy Barry’s willingness to be left to the whims of the Fates, who, by the way, happen to be characters in the game.
Barry: I haven’t found them yet, but if I ever do I will hit them with my axe.
