I have played a surprising number of games this year (I tend to only play FromSoft games), and there is a theme that sums up how I feel about many of the games. That theme is love-hate. Or, in social media talk, it’s complicated. My relationship with the games, I mean. Those include Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), and now Hades II (Supergiant Games). Oh, and I would put Date Everything! (Sassy Chap Games) in that category as well. I have not played that much of the last game, but I have my issues with it, which I will not talk about in this post. Here is yesterday’s post, to which this is a continuation of sorts. But not really.
I want to emphasize once again that Hades II is a great game. I don’t want the takeaway to be that I think it’s a shit game. In many ways, it’s a better game than it’s predecessor. However, I have had my frustrations with it, and I need to vent about them. Needless to say, there will be spoilers. I will try to keep them vague, but I can’t talk about my issues with the game without at least mentioning them.
*SPOILERS*
Today, I was doing a quest/mission on the Fated List of Minor Prophecies. It’s another one that was given to me ages ago, but I knew that I would not be able to finish it until after the true ending of the story. It had several different pieces to it; most of them were done just by playing the game–and meeting very specific conditions. Then, I reached the end of the mission with just one vague, cryptic instruction on what to do for the final piece. I had to read it a few times to understand what it was asking for.
Then, I had to do a run on the downward path in which I had to die in a very specific way in three consecutive rooms before dying for good (don’t ask) in a fourth room. All of this had to happen while having a certain keepsake equipped.
I cannot tell you how many times I fucked it up. First of all, this area is the second biome of the downward path, so not that hard. I had several variants turned on to make the run harder just so I wouldn’t cruise my way through each room. I also had my cat with me so I could breeze through the first biome. You have to prod the cat in order to get her to attack, and then she’ll attack several times (depending on how much you upgrade her) before going to sleep. I thought I could use her in the first biome with a Fear level of 10 (that’s still a relatively-low Fear level), but that made the last stage of the mission impossible.
So, I got rid of her and all my Death Defiances. I never play with just one life (though I will have to if I want to do another quest on the Fated List of Minor Prophecies), so it felt weird to do a run ‘pure’. Also, my weapons are all highly leveled (well, except for the ones I don’t like), and–
Oh. I was right in that I have to fully max out one aspect of a weapon and then talk to one of the people involved with one of the aspects of that weapon in order to get an incantation to awaken the sleeping aspect of said weapon. I don’t have enough materials to unlock two aspects I have discovered. That’s really deflating, I’ll tell you that much.
It goes back to what I was saying in an earlier post–the balance is just a bit off in this game. I am down with the assumption that a player will do endless runs of a roguelike game. That’s the whole point of a roguelike, but at some point, it’s diminishing returns. Also, it’s a delicate balancing act to make it so someone who just beats one run gets something out of it, even if they decide not to keep playing the game.
In this case as with many roguelikes, I feel that it’s no longer true (if it ever really was). I mean, you can just do a few runs of Hades or Hades II and be done with it. If you like roguelikes, you’ll have a good experience, and then you’ll move on to something else without knowing the full scope of the game. And there’s nothing wrong with that! But my brain doesn’t work that way. I know there’s more to it, and I have to keep playing to find out what that more is. Even if I don’t want to. Even if I’m sick of the game (which, I’m not yet, but I’m getting there).
To be clear, I know I am doing it to myself. Nobody is forcing me to play the game compulsively except my own weird brain. I am very compulsive/obsessive when I like something, and this game is no different.
Back to the mission I was doing, the one on the Fated List of Minor Prophecies. After I did the thing and it worked, I got a cut-scene that was hilarious, which quickly rolled over into an epilogue.
Wait, what? An epilogue? I mean, I knew this was a big thing, and I was disappointed that the cut-scene was what it was (though it was really funny), but, uh, what? When I went back to The Crossroads, there was a new incantation that had to do with the epilogue. I don’t have all the ingredients I need for it (sigh), which goes back to my gripe about resource management/gathering in this game.
I was flummoxed and perplexed by this epilogue. It included a cut-scene with my headmistress back at The Crossroads that had me scratching my head in confusion. I understood the scene–I just didn’t get how it tied in with the story thus far. And if I was to accept what I thought this scene was telling me, well, it didn’t really make sense. I did a quick Google, and it seems to be canon (what I thought the scene meant). If that’s the case, it doesn’t sit well with me.
The story in the first game was quite basic. The dialogue was rich and varied, but the story itself was simple. That’s not a negative, by the way. I liked the story in the first game, as slim as it was. In this game, it feels like they were trying to make it deeper and more meaningful, but were still contained by the parameters they followed int the first game.
I am going to do a whole post about the story of the game at some point, but it’s sufficed to say that I’m putting this in the same category as the other quest I mentioned from the Fated List of Minor Prophecy–the one that was given to me in the very beginning and wasn’t resolved until after I got the true ending.
There was no reward for doing that quest, and there wasn’t one for this one, either. Well, I should not say that yet because I have not been able to make the incantation I got from the epilogue.
I’m done for now, but will have more to say later.