Improving on perfection
Finished: 2026/05/22
When Hades II was announced, I was skeptical that it was a good idea. The original Hades was fantastic and set the bar for any game made by Supergiant, let alone its successor, very high. After all, was it even possible to improve upon it? Supergiant proved the answer is a resounding yes. Hades II manages to surpass the original in every possible metric: the game looks better, plays better, is larger, more intense, and is even more addictive, to the point that it would often make me play more than I rationally should. The main improvement is that the game feels more polished. Take, for example, the Nocturnal Arms: they feel more balanced and diverse than the Infernal Arms, making me engage with each of them more often, while in the original, I ended up focusing on the ones I liked the most.
The main difference between the games is the tone of their stories. While Hades was about a rebellious young man fighting to escape the underworld and find his mother, the stakes in Hades II are higher, focused on the existential war between the gods and Chronos. This shift in tone explains the difference between the protagonists: Zagreus is laid-back and good-humored, while Melinoë is serious and laser-focused on completing her mission. This works perfectly for the story; however, it makes Melinoë a less approachable character at times, even though she grew on me as the story progressed.
It is impressive how the game gets almost everything right, to the point that finding flaws is difficult. I would say the problems of the game are inherent to it being a roguelite, especially one that tells a story.
The greatest challenge of this genre is the inverted difficulty curve, as the game becomes easier the more you play and unlock upgrades. The solution is the same as in its predecessor: the player can add difficulty modifiers (increasing the Fear) to each run. However, the problem remains the same. At high Fear levels, the game becomes annoying and often feels unfair rather than genuinely challenging. Even though I don’t enjoy it that much, the motivation for the system is understandable; true roguelikes are often inaccessible to most people, making this a necessary compromise to provide a challenge for those who want one while catering to a large audience. Still, perhaps a different approach with more guided difficulty increases could have been tested.
The other hard part of the genre is telling a story. Because the plot unfolds across multiple runs, the game must ensure the player is not progressing too fast and breaking the intended pace. This is done quite explicitly through a debuff that makes the game harder if you reach certain depths too quickly. While this is understandable and better than a hidden debuff, it is still annoying to feel artificially limited by the game.
This also affects character development because, to allow for endless replayability, the world cannot meaningfully change despite the player’s actions. Characters can grow as long as they do not affect the gameplay; otherwise, players would have an incentive to not engage with this growth. For example, characters like Arachne, Echo, or Narcissus may find resolutions, but the only possible solutions are those in which they remain as NPCs found during runs. This is also reflected in the post-game, as the world must keep the same bosses and levels despite the player finishing the story. The explanation for this is convoluted (we are fighting the possibilities of Chronos and Typhon), and the developers seem aware of it, as most NPCs explicitly state that they find it very confusing.
Hades II is an amazing game in all aspects. I am really surprised that Supergiant managed to outdo themselves, and I look forward to what they come up with next. I hope their next project is something entirely different: while I love both installments, a third game would have an even harder time outdoing them without feeling repetitive. I could be proven wrong, as Supergiant just proved here, but I look forward to a new setting and gameplay style.