It’s been interesting to read the discourse on Hades II (Supergiant Games) because of the varying opinions. Most people agree that the gameplay is the star of the show. Many people agree that the story is shit, especially the ending. There is a near agreement on how terrible the ending is, which is oddly gratifying. Oh, by the way, here is the post from yesterday.
The interesting part is the two camps of thought on how important the gameplay is versus the story. Most people play the game primarily for the gameplay and the addictive loop. I am in the minority (once again) in that I play the game more for the story than the gameplay. This is because I’m not good enough for the latter, and I had to swallow my pride to turn on God Mode, otherwise I would never had finished the game.
Side note: I underestimated how amazing God Mode was beacuse I hadn’t truly thought about the scope of it. It cuts down the damage you take each run after you die by 2% (starts at 20% less damage). It caps off at 80% less damage, and the things that flummox me (not being able to see everything on the screen; being pelted with bullshit from all around; losing so much health per region, etc.) were so much less annoying. It’s a duh realization, but I never used God Mode in the first game so I didn’t know.
Anyway, I think the multiple runs to get the true ending are a bit much (especially since they extended it for the true true ending), but I understand why it’s structured that way. I’m glad they patched the true ending to be the true true ending, but, man. It was such a huge misstep in the first place. I am still not over how bad the true ending was and how
*SPOILERS*
they did Melinoë so dirty like that. It was so egregious, it shook my confidence in Supergiant in general. Seriously. The fact that no one in the company said, “Um, guys? About that completely taking away Melinoë’s agency at the veryy end of the game? Maybe we don’t do that?” leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Warning: I’m about to go on a rant (per usual).
What the fuck, sexism? It’s really depressing how prevalent it is in our society (Supergiant is an American dev) that this game, which was in Early Access for over a year (nearly a year and a half) was released with that ending. I know I’ve been harping on it, but I expected so much more from Supergiant Games. I’m not sure why, really, because it’s not as if they had a female protag before. At least not to this extent.
It showed, frankly. I never gelled with Melinoë, though I liked her well eneough in the beginning. The longer the game went, though, the less appealing she became. All she did was bleat about killing Chronos and being so grateful to the Olympians. She accepted what they said without blinking, and I had a hard time believing she was a hardened assassin. Honestly, if the game didn’t mention often that she was born and trained for this, it would be easy to assume that she had just stumbled into the task.
I like that they made her saltier in the patch, but it should not have come to that. She deserved so much more than what she originally got, and it’s really hard to accept that Supergiant thought letting the protag from the last game make the crucial decision in this game was NBD.
I’m sure some people will think I’m being too picky and insist that I should focus on the gameplay, but if it’s in the game, then it’s, well, fair game. The fact that it takes so many runs to reach the true ending means that it’s important to the devs. So it’s more than fair to judge them on it. The fact that they patched it to add context to the true ending shows that they agreed with the criticisms (or at least wanted to appease their fans).
I have said it more than once, but overall, I prefer the first game to this one. It’s hard to say that because there are things in this game that are clearly better (like some of the tweaks they made to the gampeplay), but I think they bit off more than they could chew with nearly doubling the content. I have heard the criticism that the downward path by itself would have been too same-y to the first game on its own, which I get, but I don’t agree. Or rather, I think it would have been fine as a sequel with the upward path being a sequel to the sequel.
I have no idea why the upward path is so much harder than the downward path. SO much harder. At least for me. Someone in the Discord I’m in did the whole thing in like ten runs. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. I wish I were that good at a game, but I also wonder if people who are that good get as much out of the game. What I mean is that if you’re baseline is that high, then you can’t get much higher than that.
I have said several times that this year is the year of the games that I have very mixed feelings about. They include Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), and now, Hades II (Supergiant Games). Weirdly, of the three, I would say I enjoyed playing Wylde Flowers the most, which is ironic. Why? Because I would also say that the other two are better games in the more objective sense of the word.
People rave on and on about the first game, which is my least-favorite of the three. Funnily enough, Ben Starr is in the first and third games. I did not recognize his voice in this game until I read that he was Prometheus. Then, I could hear it in an instance, but it’s wild that it took me so long.
That’s all I have to say for today. Tomorrow, I will (finally) five a score to this game, perhaps more than one.