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.
That’s it. That’s the story. Like I said, simple–but it was effective. I knew what I was doing, and I made it my mission to escape Tartarus (that’s how it was phrased). I did it; I got the true ending; it was good.
There wasn’t much to the story except for the big reveal that Hades was the fourth-level boss (which wasn’t a surprise). But, there were plenty of NPCs who had great side stories that I really enjoyed. More to the point, there were couples I had to reunite. There was Orpheus and Eurydice. He was in the House of Hades, playing mournful music, and she was an NPC in the…I want to say second level/biome. I just looked it up, and I was right. She’s singing whenever I run into her, and she has a lovely voice.
The second couple is Achilles (in the House of Hades) and Patroclus. He is in the third biome, and he was my favorite NPC because he sometimes offered a Kiss of Styx, which replenished a Death Defiance if I had lost one. Also, he and Achilles were just the perfect couple. I really worked my butt off to get them back together.
In this game, there was no couple to reunite, sadly. My favorite NPC duo story was Narcissus and Echo, though. Narcissus is one example of an NPC who grew and changed in this game ,which is ironic given who he was. He’s in the second biome on the downward path. At first, he was simply the self-absorbed guy who was in love with himself. He called me Laurel for whatever reason, which was hilarious to me. He thought I was in love with him as everyone else was, but, hey. He gave me a good gift every time I visited him (from a choice of three).
At some point, Melinoë reminds him of the whole Echo debacle (she’s in the third biome of the downward path) and that she really cared about him. Also, that he hurt her. Narcissus spluttered, but he did eventually go see her, and they became actual friends. Echo is a great NPC, too, so I am glad they smoothed things out between them.
Where I’m at with Narcissus (I got new dialogue the last time I saw him) is that he doesn’t completely trust that I just wants to be friends. He’s spitefully withdrawn his gifts, which is fine with me. I am mildly curious if there is further dialogue, but I don’t care that much about it. Still. I really like how he’s grown in the game.
Now we need to talk about the characters in general. I have griped about them in other posts, but I want to consolidate my feelings on them here. Let’s start with the fact that two of the characters in this game are clearly meant to give the same energy as two of the characters in the first game. They are Nemesis and Moros in this game, mimicking Megaera and Thanatos, respectively, in the first. As I said before, the two in the first game were my favorites. In this game? I hated Nem by the end of the game and I loved Moros throughout–but he became a bit flat once I maxed out our relationship.
It’s not the game’s fault that I’m so shit at it, I maxed out most of the relationships fairly early. I still got some new dialogue when important things happened, but that was kind of weird because it felt very rote. I also feel like there weren’t as many lines of dialogue in this game versus the first, but I might be wrong about that. In fact, looking it up, it seems I’m probably wrong about it, but I don’t know by how much because Supergiant hasn’t said how many lines of dialogue are in this game (there were roughly 22,000 lines in the first game).
I just felt that the dialogue wasn’t as snappy in this game. One reason for that, sadly, is that Melinoë is so bland. I don’t mind that she’s not a quipmaster the way Zag was in the first game (in fact, that got annoying in its own way now and again), but there just wasn’t much there. Someone in a forum said that it was in part because in the first game, you were Zag and in the middle of the family drama. In this game, Melinoë never knew her family so all the drama was second-hand. Yes, there was the bigger world war, so to speak, but it was driven by one spiteful dude–who, again, is related to Melinoë, but she didn’t know him. Or rather, she didn’t remember him.
I don’t play the games for the gameplay; I play it for the story, the lore, and the characters. The first and the third were markedly–I was going to say mediocre, but it wasn’t that.
I’ll write more tomorrow.