Hades II

What’s The Game? Hades II

What’s It All About, JG? Well, it’s the sequel to Hades, isn’t it? You play as Melinoië, a princess of the Underworld and sister to the original game’s Zagreus. Chronos, the Titan of Time, has taken over the House of Hades and imprisoned Melinoë’s family, so she’s on a mission to kill Chronos and restore her family. She’s been mentored by Hecate, who’s kept her hidden at a secret location called the Crossroads, while Melinoë has spent her life training to defeat Chronos. The game is, as with the first Hades, a roguelike, so with each run, Melinoë gains knowledge, skills, and resources which help take her closer to her goal. Unlike the first game, however, there are two paths for Melinoë to follow – there’s the initial one back to the House of Hades, which takes her through three different biomes, but this time there’s also an “upstairs” run which takes her to the very peak of Mount Olympus itself to defeat Typhon, the worst of all monsters. Can Melinoë manage to defeat the Titan of Time and free her family from his imprisonment?

Death to Chronos!

Why Did You Give It A Go? As you may have gathered from my review of the first game, I absolutely adored Hades. I’d never played a roguelike before, and certainly not one with the plot, character, mythology, and sheer fun that Hades managed to encapsulate. There was a precisely zero percent chance that I wasn’t going to end up playing the sequel.

Is It Any Good? Sequels are always a tricky proposition, aren’t they? You want them to be able to capture the essence of what it was that made the first instalment so enjoyable, but without simply resorting to repetition, while at the same time allowing new elements to be added that allow the sequel to be distinctive enough to stand on its own. In this, Hades II has one clear thing that marks it out as different from its predecessor – its protagonist.

Rather than taking the route of a second story featuring Zagreus, Supergiant Games has instead given us the character of Melinoë to come to terms with. It’s a good choice, partly because Zagreus had pretty much completed his character arc by the end of the first game, and partly because it allows the gamer to invest in a whole new character. Giving us a female protagonist also allows a shift of focus away from the slightly macho stylings of the original game towards a more female-oriented approach, hence we have a lot of talk about the power of the moon, of sisterhood, and so on. It also allows magic to become a key element in the construction of the game, as opposed to just “godlike powers” or boons, which weren’t in Hades. That’s because Melinoë (and Hecate) are explicitly witches. This allows the opening up of whole new approaches to the combat in the game, as well as allowing the character to develop in different ways. So the question becomes: is Melionë good enough to carry her own game, and can she become as compelling as Zagreus?

The answer to the first part of that is unquestionably yes, but the answer to the second part isn’t. This needs some addressing. Because let’s be clear – Hades II is a fantastic game and an absolutely excellent expansion of the world of Hades. Melinoë is an easy enough character to like and changes to the combat system allow an expansion of what the original game did while remaining as compelling and compulsive. The addition of the binding circle to your cast – a magical circle that can be used to trap enemies within while you attack them or allow the cast to do damage to them – is an absolutely brilliant stroke, at once expanding the type of combat that can be undertaken and introducing whole new strategic elements to how you clear rooms.

In addition, you can also gain different Hex’s from the moon goddess Selene which grant Melionë additional powers – everything from being able to restore health to morphing your enemies into easy-to-defeat sheep (as a quick sidebar, the slightly daft looking cross-eyed sheep are never not a visual delight, even when you come across ones that can poison you or explode in your face). This also expands on the range of strategies you can use, deciding whether a run will require a more defensive or offensive approach and varying depending on what boons you get from the gods.

Because, of course, the gods are back too. Some are familiar from the first game, such as Zeus or Demeter, some are new to Hades II, such as Apollo or Hera, and some have been tweaked. Artemus, always a little overpowered in the original, has been somewhat toned down here to balance things out, and Dionysus no longer shows up as one of the gods you get when traversing a portal between rooms, but rather is to be found in his own never-ending party, which only sometimes shows up during a run. New boons have been introduced to keep things fresh, and some old favourites from the first game make a return too, keeping things familiar enough to enjoy and different enough to add plenty of variety.

All of this means the gameplay feels like a proper development from the original and is a lot less dependent on button-mashing and a lot more dependent on skill and strategy. Not that the original game was just button-mashing, you understand, but there were moments when that was the approach that needed to be taken. With Hades II, thought will get you a lot further than just stabbing away and hoping for the best. So what of Melinoë?

In truth, she’s just not as compelling a protagonist as Zagreus was. She’s still good, to be clear, but she’s a harder character to invest in than Zagreus was. That’s in part because at two key stages, her journey is undermined in a way that it never was for Zagreus. Firstly, about two-thirds of the way through the game, we get to meet Zagreus again – a Zagreus from the past, before Chronos took over the house of Hades. It seems, initially, that this was going to be a sweet little cameo – referencing the previous game while Melinoë gets on with resolving this one. But no – in fact, Zagreus ends up being critical to the defeat of Chronos in a way that feels like it really undermines Melinoë’s character. She’s not allowed to take centre stage in her own game, instead relying on her brother to come through at the end and provide a critical help moment in a way that Zagreus himself never had when trying to defeat Hades in the first game. All that time and effort put into giving us a female lead that really felt like it was going somewhere, and she needs a man to come in and save the day. It’s not good.

Secondly, the ending to the game was heavily revised after the original’s release to make Melinoë more central to the final resolution. This, too, is an indication of how Supergiant Games just didn’t get her journey right. The reaction to the original ending – where Zagreus shows Chronos a happy family life if Chronos had made better choices – left Melinoë entirely on the sidelines and made the conclusion revolve around someone else. This is, obviously, ghastly, but on a purely storytelling and gaming level, it means the victory felt unearned. Zagreus takes the final, critical action in cut-scenes, which sucks. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea to have a constructive ending, whereby Chronos comes to realise there were other, better choices he could have made. And by embracing them, we get a conclusion that isn’t just “kill the bad guy, job’s a good’un”. But that’s something that needs to be layered into the script, not just delivered as a sudden volte-face. And it completely undermines Melinoë’s place in her own story.

The fact that this was something that needed to be fixed with a patch at all speaks volumes. It suggests a fundamental lack of trust in Melinoë as a character. Requiring Zagreus to turn up and make things right isn’t a nice nod to the original game, it completely undercuts what’s going on in this one. The patch itself does indeed try to integrate Chronos’s change of heart into the story but it’s still too sudden and somewhat unconvincing, even without knowing about the post-release changes. Having a few additional scenes with Hecate and needing to do a few more runs before getting to the end helps a bit, but only a bit, in truth. It’s more satisfying, yes, but it’s not a patch (ha!) on the original Hades.

And there’s Melinoë’s back story, too. We’re repeatedly told she’s spent her whole life training for one thing and one thing only – death to Chronos. This also feels like it robs her of a degree of agency in a way that was never the case with Zagreus. He was a disaffected young, bored and idle, who took it upon himself to try and escape his realm and do something, gradually coming to realise who he was, his place in the world, and gain maturity through those insights. Melinoë exists to kill Chronos, and that’s pretty much her lot. It’s not quite a Hero’s Journey but the fact is, it robs her of agency. She’s always been doing this; it’s not a choice she’s ever had to make. Except…

Well, except when we find out who Hecate really is. Because she’s Melinoë from a different timeline who travelled back, ingratiated herself with Hades and Persephone, raised herself to become a Chronos-killing badass and… um. OK. It’s all a bit River Song in the end, except not done as well or (and it’t not often one gets to say this) with as much clarity. Melinoë tried to kill Chonos originally, messed it up, then went back to train herself in the hopes she’d get a do-over and manage it a second time. This ought to be a moment of real revelation, of the scales suddenly falling from the player’s eyes. But partly because this revelation occurs looooooong after it was due (and indeed, long after the actual narrative conclusion of the game) and partly because it’s not explained on screen very well, it lands with a dull thud. Again, Melinoë just doesn’t snap into focus.

And it’s a shame really because a lot of the narrative about her relationship with the Olympian gods is far more interesting that all that mucking about with Chronos and his fey attempts at being a bit of a bitch. Here there feels like there’s much more meat on the bone as Melinoë acts to bridge the gap between various different strands of her family and to resolve conflicts that have gone on since time immemorial. This is much more successful partly because it’s not just a kill-the-bad-guy storyline but also because it’s something Melinoë chooses to do – she wants to help heal the rifts in her family and she takes action to make this happening while battling her way to the summit of Mount Olympus. At last, she’s given agency, freedom, and choice in what she does, and the character comes alive in these moments much more than she does when plodding through the Crossroads story. It helps that the gameplay in upstairs runs is (highly irritating Rift of Thessaly aside) more engaging too, and that mix of better gameplay and better story helps lift everything.

But even though Melinoë is a flawed protagonist, she’s still perfectly easy to like and perfectly easy to engage with. Her various relationships with the characters of the game work well, whether it’s her default deference to her Headmistress, Hecate, or her romance with Icarus (if that’s the path you choose), or being unafraid to stand up to the likes of Nemesis and Eris. She’s well voice, well realised on screen, and works extremely well in combat. So if the story sometimes lets her down – and it definitely does – she’s still a great character in her own right and she earns her place in the pantheon. Just, sadly, not quite at the top of it.

Would You Recommend It? Oh Gods yes, of course I would. For all the criticisms above, there’s no denying that this is a fantastic game that’s well worth anyone’s time and money. The improved combat alone makes this worth taking the time for and it’s amazing how a change like the binding circle can seem so simple yet make such a profound difference to the way you strategise and play the game.

One way Hades II scores over the original game is the expanded amount of territory there is to fight in. Downstairs runs involve fighting your way through three biomes and a final stage, as with the original, to get back to the house of Hades and dethrone and defeat Chronos. These are, by and large, excellent, with each having a distinct, clear aesthetic. So you have the wooded area of Erebus, the dank Oceanus, the bleak Fields of Mourning, and finally the chambers of the house of Hades. Each area, of course, has a mini boss to defeat, none as arresting as the house band Scylia and the Sirens. Scylia is a slightly Marilyn Monroe-sounding singer who comes across as genuinely unhinged and floats around in a clamshell while singing and attacking you as her keytar player (!) and drummer also get stuck in, along with the usual collection of enemies. It is, simply, a fantastic conceit and the four songs the band plays will get stuck in your head from now until Mount Olympus has been worn down to a pebble, so earwormy and inescapable are they.

On an upstairs run, things are a little different. The city of Ephyra has an entirely different, non-linear approach where you get to choose a handful of different locations depending on what boons or Gods you want. This is incredibly refreshing and makes a real change from one-chamber-then-another linearity of the downstairs runs. This is followed by the Rift of Thessaly, by miles the least interesting part of the game, where Melinoë hacks here way through a handful of pretty much identical ships before reaching the end of level boss (Eris). Icarus, an unbelievably annoying emo boy who will inevitably turn up just in time to ruin an otherwise-going-well clear of a ship, also tends to show up here. The Rift of Thessaly is something that largely exists to be endured, sadly, and is easily the weakest part of the game.

Still, then you move to Mount Olympus properly and both it and The Summit, where you finally get to defeat (with any luck) Typhon, are a great improvement. Mount Olympus feels like a really distinct, clear location in exactly the way the Rift of Thessaly doesn’t, all clear ice columns, majestic statues, and blue-white tinges. It’s also where Dionisys and his leopard-skin budgie smuggler sometimes turn up, so at least there’s a chance for a pause, an extra boon, and a glass of wine. And the Summit is genuinely pulse-quickening, a series of short but often unbelievably lethal chambers usually featuring two mini bosses before the final confrontation. While the mini bosses can be infuriating, none more so than that sodding Typhon’s Tail, the confrontation with Typhon itself really feels earned and the difficulty level is pitched just about right. It’s a real challenge to gain a final victory as you would hope but it’s not so impossible that it seems unattainable. It’s also key to the final defeat of Chronos, so it’s plot relevant too and not just a way of extending the game a bit.

All of this adds up to a great expansion of the amount of stuff that needs to be done from the original game and it’s all more than welcome. Of course, not every bit of it is as good as every other bit, but that’s alright – no game is perfect. And with the City of Erebus, at least we get interesting variations on the formula that force the player to consider other approaches and not just hack and slash their way forward.

The gamplay is ultimately what’s going to matter the most from a game like this and there’s no denying how good that gameplay is in Hades II. It’s easy to get lost in run after run after run, gaining resources, experience, and knowledge as you bring Chronos’s defeat closer. And whenever you get past a particularly tough part of the game or whenever you learn a key piece of information, it really feels earned, rather than the game dutifully doling out another clue so that you can progress. This is really the greatest strength of Hades II, the feeling that progress is genuine and that you can invest in that process. It’s compulsive and addictive and exactly what you’d want from a good roguelike.

Where the game struggles is in investing in its lead character and its story. It tries really, really hard to get this right but it doesn’t quite come together in the way the original does. If you’re just in it for the gameplay, that doesn’t really matter of course. But it’s a shame too because the immersive plot of the original is one of the things that made it such a triumph and so easy to fall in love with. The attempt to have a constructive rather than a destructive ending is worthy of considerable praise and has much to commend it but it’s just not quite handled in the right way, even with the oopsie! patch. Melinoë is a great character but she doesn’t quite reach the highs of Zagreus and her relationships with the other characters in the game never seem to carry quite as much depth. But even with these flaws, this is still a fantastic game, and it’s a genuinely great way to spend an hour or a hundred (and then some).

Up among the gods? Maybe, but not quite at Olympus’s summit.

Scores on the Doors? 8.5/10