Yeah, I have more to say about Hades II (Supergiant Games), difficulty, and God Mode. This will probably be my last post about the game except for my official review (which will most likely take four or five posts. We all know that because that’s me). Here is yesterday’s post about my frustrations with game.
*SPOILERS*
I have beaten the final boss on both the upper path(twice) and the lower path again. I thought I needed to beat them five times each to get the true ending, but I’m not sure that’s how to get it (the true ending). My cauldron (where I make incantations) indicate that I need to at least beat the final boss of the bottom path five times for one incantation. I had assumed I needed to match it on the upward path because the incantation was asking for five ???, which I took to be five kills of the final boss on the upward path.
However, that requirement did not change after I beat the upward path boss, which I think it would have if beating that boss five times was the second requirement. In fact, another incantation showed up that had beating that boss four times as an ingredient (well, the reward you get for beating that boss, anyway. You need four of them) as well one of the reward you get for killing the big boss of the downward path plus the ??? . So have to beat the big boss of the downward path six times and the big boss of the upward path four times, plus you need however many of the ??? ingredient, which I honestly have no idea what that is.
For those keeping count at home, I have killed the final boss of the bottom path three times and the final boss of the upward path three times (if my count is right). That means I have to kill the boss of the upward path once more and the downward path three times more before I have to do whatever I have to do to get the true ending. Then, as the kids say, the real game begins.
I don’t mind telling you that I’m divided in my feelings about the game. All hail God Mode, though, I can tell you that much. I would not still be playing the game without it; I know that without a doubt. I have to take about 25% of the shit thrown my way because of my (I’m just going to say it for this post) disabilities which puts me at a serious disadvantage.
I’m fully on the Demeter boons, by the way. The one that reduces the damage I take and when I can call on her freezing abilities for my Phase Shift (hex)? Hell yes! She is god tier, no pun intended, and I will go for her boons over almost anyone else’s. Ares are really good, too. So glad he’s back. I think the fact that you have to see the final boss on the upward path before you meet Ares shows that the devs think he’s the best of the best from the last game. Once he shows up, though, he’s back for good, thankfully.
It’s a weird decision to me. I get (sort of) the Athena decision to limit her to one boon per run. I don’t like it for reasons I mentioned yesterday (let someone be OP if they want), but I don’t really get the Ares appearance. I mean, I’m glad to see him, of course, by why make it artificially hard to get his boons if you’re not then going to limit them in future runs?
I’ve also fiddled around with the Oath of the Unseen wehn I realized that I don’t actually have to win a run with the requirements turned on. I just have to beat whichever boss (they call them Guardians) is highlighted for that run.
In other words, it’s not quite as hard to get the material I need to upgrade the weapons as I previously thought. My issue, though, is that I’m paralyzed as to which upgrades to do. I have been choosing the weapon that gives me more bones, but that means that I’m rotating every run. Then again, I haven’t really clicked with any one weapon.
I should max out at least one aspect of one weapon just to see how much more damage it does. The thing is, though, the weapon I’ve done well (twin blades) is not the one I would normally choose. I’m not a melee person–nor am I double weapon kind of person. The key, though, is that the double blades are fast, and the special on throws a boomerang. The charged special shoots arrows, so that’s the ranged option with this weapon.
I was going to rank the weapons, but I can’t really do that. I can say that I don’t like the double flames, and the skull can be really good or really bad. The staff is fine. The rocket-shooting jet pack is a blast (literally) and allows me to move smoothly. That leaves the axe and the double blades. Both of them are basically tied for the weapons I feel most comfortable with.
Since I have been messing around with the Oath of the Unseen, I have a handful of Nightmares (the upgrading material). I decided to upgrade one aspect of the staff to almost the fullest, but I did not want to do the final upgrade because it takes two Nightmares instead of one.
I want to get the true ending before anything else, but I keep getting distracted. There is just too much to do in the game. I also took a peek at the achievements, and there is one that I will not be able to get. I’m not going to talk about it here, but it’s based on not taking damage. *Sigh*
Am I going to keep playing? Probably. Would I have kept playing without God Mode? Nope. Do I still feel guilty about it? Yeah, I do. Not as much as I did before, but it’s hard to shake the feeling. Video games are for young people with good reflexes, which means most empathically not for me.
Back before FromSoft was cool, I used to watch Dark Souls content. I remember a video in which one games journalist was guiding another through the last bit of Dark Souls II. They were talking about summoning because the person playing mentioned a colleague of theirs who had given up on the game because it was too hard. The ‘expert’ insisted that summoning was wrong and that it sullied the ‘true’ Dark Souls experience. The guy playing quite rightly pointed out that their colleague never got to experience all of Dark Souls, and surely it would be better to summon and finish the game than to quit and not have the experience. The ‘expert’ did not have anything to say to that.
I think, more to the point, who cares? In a single-player game, who cares how someone plays it? It doesn’t affect the person who plays it ‘pure’ one whit. Let people enjoy their games how they want to.
The reason I brought up the Dark Souls anecdote is because that’s where I’m at with Hades II. If I did not turn on God Mode, I would have quit playing the game. There is absolutely no way I could have beaten the final boss on the upward path without it.