Razor-sharp art direction, buttery smooth animations, instantly readable visual language, it's all here. All refined and polished to an exceptional quality. Every environment feels dense with personality. Every character is designed with unique flair. Every animation feels handcrafted with love, care, and obsession. This game’s art direction oozes confidence. The subtle and quiet kind of confidence that comes from a studio who knows exactly who they are, and what they’re good at.

And if there’s anything Supergiant Games are good at, it’s combat. Fast, fluid, responsive, and endlessly satisfying. Attacks snap with weight. Dashes feel precise. Abilities are unique and flashy. You are constantly in motion, constantly adapting, constantly making micro-decisions, and it results in a cripplingly addictive gameplay loop that will constantly have you itching for more and more runs.

The new mechanics and weapons layer beautifully onto that foundation. They create a stronger emphasis on spacing, timing, and positioning. The introduction of magick adds onto that complexity a new layer of balance and build variety. It expands the player expression in meaningful ways, and when your build comes together, the game reaches satisfying dopamine heights you will never forget.

And just as unforgettable is the game’s story. A melancholic tale wrapped in mythology, family, destiny, and defiance. The writing is sharp, intimate, and surprisingly intelligent. Characters feel real, with each one bringing unique personality and emotion. The dialogue is natural, sometimes witty, but emotionally grounded. And with each completed run, you unlock new dialogues, new faces, new interactions. Every return to the main hub soon begins to feel like coming home. You begin to feel a sense of familiarity.


No matter how polished, how expanded, how refined the systems are, the core loop feels deeply recognizable. If you’ve poured dozens (or hundreds) of hours into the first Hades like I have, you will immediately understand Hades II.

That’s both its greatest strength and its quietest weakness. Because while everything here is better, smoother, and more ambitious, very little of it feels revolutionary. The structure, pacing, and rhythm of progression are largely unchanged. You’re chasing upgrades, unlocking weapons, deepening relationships, repeating runs, and slowly unraveling the story.

It’s excellent. It works. But it’s also incredibly safe.

At a certain point, that sense of discovery that defined the original begins to dull. Not because the game becomes bad, but because your brain already knows the language it’s speaking. You’ve spent countless hours studying it already. You’re already fluent in it. It makes the mystery thinner, the surprises smaller, the experience more predictable. The magic is still there. It just doesn’t hit quite as hard as the first Hades.

The balance is also lacking. Some builds feel wildly more powerful than others. Experimentation feels more punished than encouraged. Certain runs snowball into effortless dominance, while others feel like uphill slogs dictated more by RNG than skill. The bosses are well-designed and visually striking, and yet still begin to blur together mechanically over long play sessions. You learn their patterns. You solve their puzzles. And very quickly their sense of danger fades, and so does their novelty.

What was once exhilarating becomes procedural. And that’s the heart of Hades II’s biggest problem. It’s so damn good that you expect it to constantly amaze you. But perfection is not sustainable.


This is a phenomenal game. A beautifully crafted, expertly designed, lovingly written action roguelike that delivers moment-to-moment excellence with absurd consistency. It just doesn’t redefine the genre the way its predecessor did. And maybe that’s an unfair expectation. Because what Hades II ultimately is, is a masterclass in iteration. Not a revolution. Not a reinvention. Just a refinement of a formula that already worked. This is comfort food for people who love this style of game. Very high-quality comfort food.

Hades II is excellent. Not flawless. Not groundbreaking. But deeply, undeniably excellent. And sometimes, that’s enough. It's certainly enough for me.

That is why Hades II is the perfect sequel, and that is why I can't recommend it enough.

8.7/10

its like hades 1 but hades 2

hades 2 makes me feel that there is something that i fundamentally misunderstand about the game.

i bought it around when early access dropped, and i found it to be a pretty similar loop to hades 1, but i just wasnt as big of a fan of the weapons. as i unlocked more weapons, i realized that none of them were really for me. i find most of the options to be too limited or just plain uninteresting, and thats a personal preference gripe.

the obligatory debuff when reaching a new floor with high health is completely ridiculous to me honestly. i can understand attempting to put safeguards against zooming through the 'progression cycle' way too quickly because the combat is very similar to hades 1, but i dont see why i should be punished for doing well by making my run objectively unwinnable. why should i even keep playing instead of starting up a new run because i cant ever feasibly survive a stacking damage modifier that starts when i reach the second area. i know this dissipates and isnt a problem as you get more runs in, but thats exactly my point. im not here to do a dozen meaningless runs so that i can farm resources and get +15 max hp after 4 hours im here to play the video game and fight enemies so i can beat the really big boss. im not primarily playing hades as a story resource management game

why are you locked into one of four tools when you start a run? why is the overworld area accessible so early when its completely useless to go there before you can craft the macguffin that lets you survive the poison? why am i having to interact with multiple different systems that just make crafting more obfuscated? is the purpose of my runs to get to the end, or simply to farm materials so that i can further my meta-progression?

i feel like my somewhat limited time with the game has given me absolutely no answers to any of these questions that i have, and have lead to my feeling that there is genuinely something that i am fundamentally missing, or misunderstanding, about hades 2.

boons feel way less interesting and seemingly the design philosophy has shifted more towards opting into a certain debuff or status effect, or just getting a generic deal damage every x because y boon. the game is extremely well reviewed for good reason, and i feel very comfortable knowing that i should be in the minority. many many people love this game and profess their adoration for it, which has fueled my confusion over the span of at least a full year.

i wish i could understand exactly what is so appealing about this game over the first. i think the cast of weapons in hades 1 is phenomenal, and in 2 every weapon feels like a gimmick. dont even get me started on having the weird delay on your dash input coming out unless you use the card that 'fixes' it when they knew fully well that returning players would obviously find that cumbersome. i personally dont feel like the game is playable without it (skill issue ig).

i think the game is great, but its not good. i feel excited to play it and then drag my feet the whole time wondering what made me feel excited to boot it up again. the art is incredible, but i dont find most of the gods to be very visually interesting compared to hades 1. my excitement for a run starts to stagnate when i realize that i have to go consult my potential upgrades, and cauldron, and cards, and my plants, and check on aspect progress, and weigh all of that against which tool i need to bring, and the idea that i need to finish an entire run before i can get any resources from another tool makes me wanna bury myself alive. its too managey and i dont want that. maybe thats inherently my problem, but i wouldnt be bothered if i didnt feel like i was shooting myself in the foot via opportunity cost CONSTANTLY. the nagging feeling that i could literally abandon my run for the sake of snagging the resources i already got and being able to save my literal human time in reality to further my 'progress' when i already know the run isnt looking insanely good. how much is that time worth to me?

i dont know if i wish it was more like hades 1, or if it had iterated further on the concepts and divorced itself from the initial formula, but in my eyes the game is an crooked bastardization of a handful of really cool and interesting concepts awkwardly smashed together. the strange balance between lore/story and gameplay leaves BOTH to be more desired for me. i want either more story or let me continue to have a chance at making real progress in the video game i paid 30 bucks for.

if you liked hades 1 youll probably like it enough to squeeze a reasonable amount of gameplay from it and maintain a warm fuzzy feeling for the lovely people at supergiant