I’m back with part two of my official review of Hades II (Supergiant Games). I mentioned in the last post that I hundo chievo’ed the game. I have done everything but one Chaos Trial, and this one–ok. I have to confess. This is called the Great Chaos Above, and it’s a totally random load-out for a run upwards. I did the Great Chaos Below already as it was part of the plat. I was braced to it several times because I don’t do well with randomness in a game like this. I got really lucky with that and did it on my first try. It wasn’t that hard, really. Like, at all.
When I say everything, I mean the Arcana Cards (they give you different attributes like Death Defiances, a better chance to find different things, faster this, that, or the other thing, etc.), the Keepsake (from different NPCs, each with a specific perk ilke a revive, armor at the beginning of the level and additional armor for every room you go into when you still have armor, certain perks vs. Guardians, etc.), the familiar, and the weapon. There are a few of each that are plainly better than the others in each category, which makes for an interesting run. And by interesting, I mean terrible.
In addition, the Fear level is 20. That means all sorts of pain points are added (and, again, this is random), such as more mobs, enemies have a chance of reviving as a shadow and if you don’t kill them they respawn, less healing per health item, etc. The worst, of course, is the Vow of Rivals, which makes the Guardians harder.
I ate it on quite a few runs on the upward path for this trial. Oh, I should mention that the Keepsake changed every level–and this was a great way to fuck you over. In the Great Chaos Below, I got Moros’s Keepsake on the last floor. When you hit 0 HP, Moros’s voice counts down from ten, and if you manage to clear the room before he hits 0, you come back with 60 health (at fully upgraded). I was crushed because there was no way I would be able to finish off the final boss in ten seconds if I was felled by him.
I had had such a great run up to that level, too. I was feeling good going into the last level, like, maybe I could do it? I think I even had Toula (the cat) as my familiar? I can’t remember, but it was a strong run. Then I got Moros’s Keepsake, and I was crushed. I went through the floor, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was already preparing myself to do the trial again. I reached the final boss, and I did my best, of course, but he got me. There was no way I was going to kill him in ten seconds, so I resigned myself to having to do the trial once again.
Except. Once Moros was done counting, I died. And then I revived because I had 3 Death Defiances. I did not remember that they worked as intended even with Moros’s bullshit Keepsake! I say remember because after it happned, I did remember that it had happen to me before. I was so relieved that I got it done in one. I had a hunch that the upward path one would be harder because it’s markedly harder in general, and I was correct.
After several tries that were awful–by the way, there is one Keepsake that is even worse than Moros’s. By the way, I’m sure if you prefer Strength to Death Defiances (you do more damage and you take less as long as you don’t have a Death Defiance), the keepsake is helpful, but I don’t think I would take it over several other, anyway.
After several terrible tries, I did what I had to do. If I got stuff I didn’t want, I undid the night and switched the seed. That’s considered cheesing, but it was also what people in the forums suggested when someone lamented that they couldn’t do it.
Look. I think we all know I don’t care if I cheese the game. I mean, I turned on God Mode and finally hit the cap (80%). I still feel a tad bad about it, but I would have quit a long time ago if I had not done that. Even with God Mode near the cap, I was still dying on the harder challenges. I do not play the Hades games because of the combat, anyway; I’m in it for the characters and the story.
Because of this, I am going to make a heretical statement. I did not enjoy this game as much as I did the first game. Combat-wise, the combat is smoother is this game, but it also has more visual noise. There were times when I literally could not see what was happening (and not just because some enemies bring about darkness), and I just resigned myself to getting hit.
I know it’s partly my ability issues, but it’s also just too much. In the DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring), the last boss was a hot mess in that way. There was so much light emanating from that boss on every move, I just could not track the boss. There must have been many complaints because it was patched soon thereafter (but after I beat the boss), but it’s still very light show-y. And I hate it. I sigh heavily every time I fight the boss because it’s just not fun. Well, the boss isn’t fun for other reasons, but that doesn’t help.
I feel that way about Hades II in general. There were some issues in the first game with visual noise, but it’s so much worse in this game. I find that to be true of sequels in general because the devs want to surpass themselves. It’s a natural instinct, but I don’t think it serves them well.
I’m not going to talk about the story/characters specifically because I’m going to do a whole post on that, so let’s move on.
The loop is satisfying, but not quite as much as in the last game. There was something special about the House of Hades, and the NPCs in that game were so good. I know I just said I wasn’t going to talk about the characters specifically, but they had so much personality in that game. There are so many who made an impact on me. I’m just going to name two of them in this post: Meg and Than. Or, to be more formal, Megaera and Thanatos. The former is one of the Furies and the later is the God of Death. I could wax poetically about them for days, but I’ll save it for the NPC-centric post.
I mentioned this in another post, but so many of the NPCs in this game can be mapped back to NPPCs from the first game. My second-most hated NPC in this game, Nemesis, is based on Meg (I think). My second-most liked NPC in this game, Moros, is based on Than. Odysseus is similar to Achilles, and Dora is this game’s Dusa. Hecate is Nyx (er, kind of. It’s complicated).
That’s all for now. I’m probably going to do the story/character post tomorrow.