Underneath my yellow skin

Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk about story and characters, part three

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I have stalled enough. I need to talk about the ending of Hades II (Supergiant Games). Early warning, there will be spoilers from here on out. As always, I will always try to keep the spoilers as vague as possible, but I will have to get prettyt specific in this post.

*SPOILERS*

When I say the ending, I mean the true ending. The one true ending. Sure, you can beat Chronos in one run and be happy with that. However, there is so much more to the game than that. I expected the true ending to be huge because there was so much more game this time around. I was nervous, though, because the whole theme of the game was Death to Chronos. Chronos is time. You can’t stop time, so what was the solution?

As I killed Chronos again and again, I was able to go travel a mystical road to visit my brother, Zagreus, in his bedroom. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s enough to get the gist across.
I had to convince him that I was his sister from the future. I said we needed to find a way to kill our grandfather, Chronos. I could not do it permanently in my time, so he had to do it in his.

Was this weird? Yes. Was it cool? Also yes. Was it fan-service-y? Yes as well. I was fine with all that, to be clear. I didn’t know where it was going because when you think about it, if you kill Time, well, then what do you have left? Zag even asked if that meant Mel wouldn’t be born, and Mel kind of brushed it off.

I did wonder how they were going to sq0uare that circle, but I shrugged it off. I mean, if they were going to go down that road, they had to have a resolution? Right? I will admit, there was doubt in the back of my mind, though. Chronos is Time. If you kill him off permanently, then how can life continue?

Mel and Zag realize that they need Hades’ spear, Gigaros, to kill Chronos and *double spoiler* Typhon, the final boss of the upward path. I’m not  going to get too into who Typhon is except that he’s the Father of all Monsters, and his boss fight is ridiculous–UTTERLY ridiculous. I will save that for my post on gameplay. For the purpose of this, I will say that I can understand why–no, wait. 

I can’t. Because my stance on this is that the game should have been one or the other path, but not both. It was too much, and as a result, I feel that the story and characters suffered.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk story and characters, part two

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I’m back to talk more about the story and characters in Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have cleaned up everything I wanted to do in the game, and I think I’m ready to uninstall it and walk away. I’m not going to say how many hours I put into it; I will say that I wrung every bit of content out of it. I want to continue talking about the story and the characters, and here is my previous post about both of those things.

I want to start off by saying I think there are two camps of people who play the Hades games. In the first camp are the people who play it for the gameplay. They don’t care about the story and are impatiently mashing through the dialogue to get to the next run. The other camp is filled with people who are there for the story and/or love Greek mythology. The runs are to be tolerated or put up with while getting to the good parts.

I’m in the second camp, which is why, after some deliberation, I think I actually prefer the first game. Yes,, the gameplay is smoother in this game, and, yes, Supergiant improved several things in that realm, but something got lost in the translation in this game. I think they could have made two games out of this one, and while I appreciate what they were trying to do, I don’t think it worked.

One of the reasons is that the story completely fell apart at the end. Warning. I am going to spoil the hell out of the end of the game. From here on out, there will be massive spoilers.

*SPOILERS*

I need to clarify that The Crossroads (the hub world and where I return after each run) is between  earth/Olympus (upward) and Tartarus/the House of Hades (downward). At the beginning of the game, because of the family curse, Melinoë cannot go upward. I think I might have tried it and immediately died, so that taught me to just stick to the downward path.

I have to give credit to Supergiant for seamlessly weaving in important gameplay elements into the story (for the most part). Like, at a certain point (can’t remember when), I got an incantation at my cauldron to counter the family curse. In other words, I could go upward. That was pretty neat, honestly, and, of course, I immediately went that way.

I will get to gameplay later. For now, I’m sticking to story and characters.

Someone in one of the Reddit threads suggested that Supergiant ran out of time, which is why the story ended the way it did. The commenter also said it’s why some of the relationships seemed to come to a standstill after maxing out the hearts. They didn’t explicitly say the following, but that’s in comparison to the ones that had more to them after forging a true bond.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk story and characters

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I’ve been winding down my obsession with Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have a few things that are nagging at me, but in general, I’m done. I’m in the middle of reviewing the game, and I have wanted to talk about the story and the characters for quite some time. I did not want to put it in my official review, so here it is. Oh, and here is my last post, which was part two of my official review.

*SPOILERS*

The story is, I’m sad to say, hot trash. No, that’s not fair, but I wanted to say it because I said it about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, and I meant it for that game), and I thought it would be funny to repeat it for this game. Also, I will be spoiling a lot for both Hades game, so this is your fair warning about that.

I don’t play the Hades games for the gameplay; I’m in it for the story and the characters. In the first game, the story was simple and heartfelt. I played as Zagreus, the son of Hades. He was my gruff, uncompromising f ather who did not know how to show love. Or rather, did not care to show love. He had nothing but disdain for me, in part because I was a young kid who just didn’t care much about his duties.

I started trying to make it to the surface in order to find my mother, Persephone. In order to do this, I had to get through four levels of Hades (the area), which included Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and Temple of Styx (I had to look the last one up). There was a boss at the end of each level, and the big boss of the fourth level was (and this is the biggest spoiler, I guess) Hades, my father.

I mean, who else was it going to be? I don’t remember why he was opposing me. I have a hunch it was because those from the Underworld could not survive on the surface, and he was trying to protect me in his gruff, understated, bottled-up way.

That game was so fucking hard. I despaired of ever beating Hades. I was able to get to him rather regularly, but he wiped the floor with me. I thought about turning on God Mode, but I resisted. Though it took me many more tries than I care to admit, I finally got Hades. Much to my surprise, that was just the beginning. When I returned to the House of Hades, my father informed me that he wanted me to run security because it was clear there were holes in it. That was the excuse given, and it was serviceable.

The first time I escape, I meet my mother. She is surprised to learn she has a son, and I’m pleased to meet her. However, since I cannot live on the surface, I expire soon after and return to the House of Hades.

After I beat Hades ten times, I get the true ending. I think I knew this by the time I got to my tenth win, but it involves Persephone coming back to the Underworld (at least for six months of the year). There’s also a special family banquet that includes the Olympiads. It’s not depicted (or at least not a cut-scene), but it was mentioned.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): my official review, part two

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I’m back with part two of my official review of Hades II (Supergiant Games). I mentioned in the last post that I hundo chievo’ed the game. I have done everything but one Chaos Trial, and this one–ok. I have to confess. This is called the Great Chaos Above, and it’s a totally random load-out for a run upwards. I did the Great Chaos Below already as it was part of the plat. I was braced to it several times because I don’t do well with randomness in a game like this. I got really lucky with that and did it on my first try. It wasn’t that hard, really. Like, at all.

When I say everything, I mean the Arcana Cards (they give you different attributes like Death Defiances, a better chance to find different things, faster this, that, or the other thing, etc.), the Keepsake (from different NPCs, each with a specific perk ilke a revive, armor at the beginning of the level and additional armor for every room you go into when you still have armor, certain perks vs. Guardians, etc.), the familiar, and the weapon. There are a few of each that are plainly better than the others in each category, which makes for an interesting run. And by interesting, I mean terrible.

In addition, the Fear level is 20. That means all sorts of pain points are added (and, again, this is random), such as more mobs, enemies have a chance of reviving as a shadow and if you don’t kill them they respawn, less healing per health item, etc. The worst, of course, is the Vow of Rivals, which makes the Guardians harder.

I ate it on quite a few runs on the upward path for this trial. Oh, I should mention that the Keepsake changed every level–and this was a great way to fuck you over. In the Great Chaos Below, I got Moros’s Keepsake on the last floor. When you hit 0 HP, Moros’s voice counts down from ten, and if you manage to clear the room before he hits 0, you come back with 60 health (at fully upgraded). I was crushed because there was no way I would be able to finish off the final boss in ten seconds if I was felled by him.

I had had such a great run up to that level, too. I was feeling good going into the last level, like, maybe I could do it? I think I even had Toula (the cat) as my familiar? I can’t remember, but it was a strong run. Then I got Moros’s Keepsake, and I was crushed. I went through the floor, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was already preparing myself to do the trial again. I reached the final boss, and I did my best, of course, but he got me. There was no way I was going to kill him in ten seconds, so I resigned myself to having to do the trial once again.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): my official review

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I 100%ed Hades II (Supergiant Games) today. I don’t know how to feel about it because, well, I’ll get into it as I give my offiycial review of the game.

I want to start by saying this is a terrific game. I have to make that exceedingly clear because I’ve been down on it in other posts for various reasons. It may seem like I did not enjoy this game or thought it was a bad game, but neither of these things are true. I enjoyed it very much, especially when I turned on God Mode.

By the way, I read a post I had written about the first game, and I had said I was glad I resisted the urge to turn on God Mode. Now, I will say that if I had not turned on God Mode, I would have quit well before I even reached the final boss on the upward path. This game is exponentionally harder for me, and I don’t think it’s solely because my abilities have atrophied quite a bit in five years (though that doesn’t help, obviously). I know without a doubt that I could not have beaten the fourth and final boss of the upward path if I had not turned on God Mode.

I am amused because I was steeling myself for the last few achievements. Somewhere around me getting the achievement that meant I had seven or eight to go made me start thinking about one-hundred percenting it.  This was roughly the same time I starting thinking the same thing for the last game. Here’s the post in which I talked about going for the not-plat for the original game. I read a few more posts I wrote about that game, and I realized that something I thought was a completely new addition to this game had been in the first game as well, albeit in a slightly different form. Oh, warning. Spoilers from this point onwards. Nothing big, but still.

*SPOILERS*

It’s the animal friend system. In this game, they’re called famaliars, and you find them out in the combat areas. Huh. I read up on it, and you have to do a specific bunch of things before receiving an incantation you can use at your cauldron. Then, you will find the familiars out on the battlefield. You have to give them a treat, and they’ll be back at The Crossroads the next time you’re there. From then on, you can take them out on a run with you. You can also upgrade them with (different) treats that you have to brew up in your cauldron.

I had totally forgotten that you had companions in the first game! You got them by maxing out your relationship with certain NPCs, and then they would give you their animal friend for you to call upon in battle. You could upgrade them, too. And, when you used them in battle, their human friend came to give a battle cry before disappearing. I really liked them for the most part; I can’t believe I forgot they existed.


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Double Fan Form: nearing the end, part five

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Despite what the title is of this post, I’m actually going to finish the list that I started yesterday of my weapons, easiest to hardest to learn. If I have time and the brain bandwidth, I’ll get back to the Double Fan Form. If I don’t, though, then I won’t and will get back to it in another post.

For some reason, I thought I was making a list of the weapons, my favorite to least favorite. Nope. That wasn’t what I was doing, so let’s get back to easiest to learn to hardest to learn.

Before I get to the rest of the list, though, let me quickly rattle off the weapons I’m including. You know what? Let’s throw in the Solo Form as well. No. If I do that, then I have to rejigger my list. The Solo (Long) Form was easy for me to learn for the most part. That’s good; I don’t know if I would have stuck it out otherwise.

Why? Because my first experience with Taiji was a disaster. The teacher was terrible for so many reasons, and I was skittish about trying another studio. When I finally mustered up enough energy to research other studios, I had a list of things that I needed from the studio. One, a female teacher. This was nonnegotiable. Two, no shilling of in-studio products like belts and gis and shoes. Three, related to the last one, no belts at all. That’s not really a Taiji thing, anyway, but I was amazed at how many Taiji studios wanted to mimic more traditional karate studios.

I remember at our last studio, there was a group who used the space after us on occasion. I’m not sure what their group was, but they all wore white. I got the sense that it was some kind of New Age hippie thing. I also got the sense that they looked askance at us. See, we wore mostly black, and we were much earthier. I have visible tattoos for one thing. They were very much peace and love. We were more, ah, not hate and strife, but not what they were.

Plus, they would talk in their normal voices while we were trying to finish up our class. That was as annoying as fuck, to be honest.

It took me some time to find my teacher. She had just started her school, and I was her first official student. We gabbed more than we practiced, and we have the tendency to still do the same. I had a lesson with her yesterday and before it, we both said we needed to hold ourselves accountable.

We did it, too. We talked for five or ten minutes, then got down to business. It’s not that we can’t stick to what we’re meant to do; it’s that we’re both too willing to derail each other (and ourselves).


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Double Fan Form: nearing the end, part four

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Double Fan Form. It’s so fucking hard. The whole post could just be that, but I’m going to unpack it even further. I was talking about my family history for most of the post because that’s how I roll. I am a strong writer, but I tend to meander all over the place. Why use one word when ten will do? Writing is esy for me; editing is hard. I do edit as I go, which I shouldn’t do.  I talked with my Taiji teacher about that today because I have to actively resist doing th same with my forms.

My teacher has told me several times that I should learn a form first and then do the refinements. Obviously, that means actually learning the steps. I tend to fudge them sometimes, so I will occasionally go back and reteach them to myself. That’s what I did when I realized I didn’t know chunks of the Fan Form.

By the way, my memory is shit now. I thought I had taught myself the Fan Form before my medical crisis (which was in September of 2021). When I was looking through my emails to find something else, I stumbled across emails to my teacher from February of 2022 in which I said that I was going to teach myself the Fan form. That was five months after my medical crisis, which is amazing in and of itself.

Earlier this year or late last year, I was teaching myself the left side of the fan. It was going pretty well when I reached a spot that I had no idea what came next. I thought back to the right side of the form, and I could not make that pull. I went back to the video (which I had to dig around to find because my teacher sent it to me, an I did not put it any place reasonable), and then I realized I had messed up several postures in the form. Not only that, I had completely omitted several more later in the form (very much near the end).

I blame my medical crisis. I did not have much long-term ramifications from it, but one thing that was affected was my memory. Now, given what I went through, this was to be expected. Even though I had a great memory before my medical crisis, I did not take it too hard when my memory suddenly became like Swiss cheese. I will say that it’s come back to about 75%, which I’m fine with.

It’s weird, though. As I get older, I start wondering if the small ailments I’m feeling are because of my medical crisis or because of my age. When I have a memory lapse, is it because of my brain getting hit so (metaphorically) hard? Or is it just because I’m getting older? Or is it both?


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Doquble Fan Form: nearing the end, part three

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I am back to talk more about the Double Fan Form. It’s the only form I do every day, though I did not do it for over a month after I got my three shots in one day. I was pleased to be able to pick it up again recently, though I was rusty. There are a few postures I need to refine, but as my teacher is fond of saying, it’s better to finish learning the form first and then doing the refinement. She calls it graduating, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

She’s very generous when she says that, and she’s supportive in general of people wherever they are. It’s one thing I appreciated because I don’t do well by being loudly scolded. Well, let me rephrase that. I did well by being metaphorically flogged, but it made me feel miserable inside.

I find that because of my upbringing, I don’t do well with harsh criticism. I tend to get all bristly and snap back .I’m a porcupine with spikes all over me, and I shoot them off when I feel threatened.

It’s funny. When I was a kid, I was adamant that I didn’t get angry. I kept my emotions tamped deep down inside, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have them. I just was not allowed to show them, which meant that when I did finally express any dissatisfaction, I would explode in white hot anger.

Since my medical crisis, I have had more difficulty tempering my, well, temper. I think it’s because of the stroke I had. I’m not trying to make excuses, but it does feel out of my control. I do my best to mitigate it by clamping my mouth shut when I get heated, and I’m very good at keeping my face immobile. However, I know I have tells, even if I don’t know what they are. I know one of them because Ian told me about it. He said that when I’m absolutely done with a conversation, I cut my eyes up and to the left. Which is good to know, I guess, but it’s not as if I can stop myself from doing it.

Nor, quite frankly, do I really care to train it out of me. In the blog, Ask A Manager, there is an emphasis on not making faces in the office/on Zoom. It’s disrespectful to your coworkers, you see. There have been a few letter writers over the years who had difficulty training their faces to be neutral enough for their offices.

Now, I understand that you can’t be grimacing, scowling, or rolling your eyes at your coworkers. However, people find it creepy when you hold your face perfectly still, which is annoying as well. I mean, it feels very damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Or rather, there is a narrow range of acceptable emotions/reactions you can show in polite society.


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Double Fan Form: nearing the end, part two

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I want to talk more about the Double Fan Form because I’m reaching the end of the form. Well, I mean, I have seven postures left to learn, but they are hard. I watched to the end one of the three videos I’m using to teach myself, and damn. Here is the post from yesterday, in which I talk a lot about my triple shots day and not as much about my Double Fan Form.

There is a truism in Taiji that the last part of any form is the expert part of it. Meaning, this is the part that is going to test your mettle and kick your ass. You’re going to have to put all the knowledge you have gained through the rest of the form together and take your game to the next level.

That’s it for my pep talk. Let me drop that and emphasize yet again that this is by far the hardest weapon form I’ve learned. There was a time early on when I considered giving up. We’re talking in the first quarter of the form. I remember struggling so much and wondering if I would ever get it. I tend to look at how long the journey is, which makes me discouraged when it’s not going well. I also have a very low frustration tolerance level, which doesn’t help.

I’m glad to be back at it again. I’m still not quite a hundred percent, but I’m close enough to get back to teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I am proud of myself for sticking with it, to be frank. It’s a weird trait of mine that if I’m into something, I will be obsessed with it. Until I hit my limit, and then I’m done with it. It’s not a good thing, but it’s how my brain works.

Both in microcosm and macrocosm, really. I do that with things like friendships, websites, and hobbies. Not the hobbies as a whole, but projects in my hobby. Well, let me put it this way. I give up easily. Usually. The reason is because when I was a kid, my parents were very exacting. There is the stereotype of the Tiger Mom, and it’s pretty apt.

I had to be busy all the time. In addition to school, I had to play an instrument (I chose cello), take dancing lessons from the age of two (which I mostly enjoyd until en pointe ballet entered the conversation), and I played ping-pong, tennis, and softball. I liked them all to some extent. Oh, and I had to go to summer school every summer as well. And it had to be an enrichment kind of summer school, too. I went to T-CITY (Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth) for five years, taking writing twice, acting twice, and Latin once. We had class all morning, then had sports (against the other classes) after lunch. It was also fun for the most part, and I met my first boyfriend there.


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Double Fan Form: the Dark Souls of Taiji weapon forms

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It is a month and a half since I got three shots on the same day. My second shingles shot, my pneumonia vax, and my regular blood work shot that I have to get every year. That was NOT a smart idea, especially as the second shingles shot was notorious for being an extra-impactful one. Or rather, I had heard that everyone who got the shingles shots felt one or the other disproportionately hard. K had difficulty with the first one and thought she would have to go to the emergency room after getting it.

I am sensitive to shots in general, anyway. When I got my first Covid vax, I had a swollen bump until I got the second shot–six weeks later. It was pretty small and not hot by the time I got the second one, but it was still there.

I got the first one and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t bad–for me, anyway. Yes, I reacted to it. Yes, my arm was hot, swollen, and throbbing for a week or so, but that’s what I expect when I get vax shots. Yeah, I was a bit feverish, too. But, again, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I was at half-mast for maybe three weeks in total.

The second shot? My god. It was brutal. Absolutely brutal. I have never had a reaction like that to a shot before. Again, it did not help that I had gotten my pneumonia vax on the same day (different arm), but that was a walk in the park compared to the second shingles shot. It wiped me out, and I didn’t do any Taiji for several days. Then, I started to cautiously add to my practice day by day, and it’s only yesterday that I finally felt ready to teach myself more of the Double Fan Form.

Before I get to that, I have to mention that on the day of the three shots, I got one in each arm and one in the back of my left hand. About a decade ago, I d discovered the wonder of butterfly needles. I don’t remember how, but probably a phlebotomist suggested it once, and now, I bring it up whenever I need to get a shot. It’s not always viable, but when it is, it makes blood drawing easy-peasy. I don’t want to insult any phlebotomist, but I know that using a butterfly needle is going to make it so much easier for both parties.

Even before I had to take time off to recover from my shots, the Double Fan Form was kicking my ass. I am used to learning weapon forms with ease. Yes, the Saber Form was difficult as my second form, but that was because I was looking at it like it was just a bigger sword. Once I realized that it was its own thing, I was able to learn it in a brisk fashion.


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