I want to talk about Hades II‘s (Supergiant Games) dirty little secret–God Mode. To put it simply, in God Mode, you start by taking 20% less damage. Every time you die with God Mode on, you get an added 2% resistance to damage. This was also in the first game, but I never turned it on in that game.
Why? Pride and stubbornness. In most hardcore gaming communities, it’s considered cheating to do anything that makes the game easier. I’ve seen it ad nauseam in the FromSoft community (well, I did. I rarely visit any FromSoft forums these days), and it was quite the intro into Dark Souls when I finally had to look something up. (How to beat Kalameet.) So many ‘git guds’. So many ‘if you don’t do it the way I do it, you’re cheating/wrong’. Sooooooo many ‘I did it on the first try noob trolololololol’.
This has been a toxic part of the community, and even though I try to stay away from it, it does bleed through to the RKG forum from time to time. With Elden Ring, there was tension over the idea of using the spirit summon. From put it in the game to make it friendlier for people who have never played a FromSoft game. However, because the assumption was that the player would use a spirit summon throughout the game, they tuned the boss fights with the assumption that there would be a spirit summon in the fight.
Oh, the angst and anger in the hardcore community. The gnashing of teeth and the tearing out of hair! The rending of shirts. The wailing! I’m talking about the FromSoft community in general, not the RKG community. Even in the latter, though, there were grumblings from people who wanted Rory to do the boss fights ‘pure’. Which, fine. Have your opinion. But it felt like they were a minority, even if they were very loud.
But I digress.
My point is that any time there is a hard game, you can count on the following things to be true: 1. There will be a loud chorus of people proclaiming that noobs need to ‘git gud’ while simultaneously saying that the game isn’t that hard. 2. Anyone who doesn’t do it bare-naked with nothing leveled up is cheating/cheesing/playing it wrong. 3. If you dare use the tools in the game that make it easier, you’re not playing the game right/you’re a loser. 4. You’re not getting the true experience/you’re cheapening the experience by using those tools.
I have actively rebutted these beliefs, but they have sunk in, nonetheless. So much so that I’ve considered giving up the game rather than try God Mode. It’s ridiculous. No one but me needs to know that I’ve done it. And it’s in the game. Which means that Supergiant themselves think it’s legit. But I haven’t seen anyone stream with it on, and most games journos have the air of it’s a sin to use it. Others don’t even mention it like it doesn’t exist.
I decided to give it a go today because I was so frustrated about not being able to get into the
*MILD SPOILERS*
fourth realm of the upward path. Or rather, getting into it once and promptly dying. All my relationships were as maxed out as they were going to get without me advancing in the game (or so I thought). I was getting weary of the gameplay loop, and I just wanted to see more of the story. It’s the same with the first game. I wasn’t there for the gameplay–I was there for the writing and the story.
The gameplay is sharp, don’t get me wrong. But it’s also tedious after a while beacuse it’s a lot of enemies swarming the field. I felt that way in the first game, especially in Elysium Fields (third biome), and I really feel it here.
Here’s the weird thing about God Mode. I finally flipped it on because the alternative was me not playing the game any longer. I swallowed my pride and reminded myself that I could turn it off at any time. I decided to try the upwards path–by the way, that is one of my complaints about the game. The upward path and the downward path are so different in how hard they are. The downward path is hard, yes, but I can at least get to the boss of the fourth realm consistently. I rarely die before getting to that boss, and the last time I did was because I was trying to do the Vow of Rivals (adding difficulty to the boss fights by degrees), which made the boss fights so much harder.
The upward path, on the other hand, is so fucking hard. The second boss did me in so many times, but it was because of the weapon; the fact they were my size; and all the visual noise. I could not see them a quarter of the time; they could train a reticule on me that I could not outrun; and I resigned myself to taking a shit-ton of damage against this boss. I can now beat them most of the time, but I will almost always lose a Death Defiance or two, and much of my blood will be spilled.
The third biome is a leap up in difficulty, and I rarely even made it to that boss. When I finally did, the boss didn’t seem that terrible, but I did not have enough lives left to withstand the onslaught. There’s an attack in which you have to memorize a pattern on the arena floor, which is not good for me. I did manage to beat this boss once without God Mode, but then I promptly died within five seconds of making it into the next biome.
This is the reason I seriously considered using God Mode, by the way. I have played this game almost unceasingly since it came out, and I couldn’t even make it to the fourth biome of the upward path (basically). I decided to try out God Mode on an upward path run, and I would swear that tthere were less enemies. From what I’ve read, though, that’s not the case. Just the damage reduction. I wish you could cap it off at any point, but it’s up to 80%–you can’t do anything about it.
Turning it on, I made it all the way up through the fourth biome. Not only that, I made it more than halfway through the boss fight. I think. I definitely made it through a phase shift, but as there’s no boss health bar (sigh), I don’t know how close I was. Melinoë made a comment that the boss was looking worse for the wear after the phase shift, but who knows?
I have not yet been back to this boss, but I’ve only made one serious run to the top. I’ve been doing some other stuff in the game, and I’ve been filpping God Mode on and off. I have died five times with it on, which means my damage reduction with it on is 30%.
No matter how much I tell myself that it’s ok to use God Mode, I still feel ashamed for doing so. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.