recent posts...
-
con season 2026
26 May 2026 - digitalily
Another May, another ACEN & now Combo Breaker wrapped up- a welcome pair of events after a slow start to the year, featuring a bunch of recurring colds/illness and a hefty serving of cabin fever.
... -
a new year
12 Jan 2026 - digitalily
Happy 2026!
...
hades II
01 Jun 2026 - digitalily
I remember seeing the original Hades featured prominently on Steam a few months after it left early access and found the art style fairly appealing, and after diving in and getting immediately hooked, and eventually sharing many a run over voice calls with others playing at the same time, I knew it was something special. Everything from the music, the familiar setting of Greek myth with Supergiant’s unique spin, the clean gameplay, seemingly endless amount of dialogue, and the incredibly well put together gameplay loop of: do a run -> die -> go back to the house and talk with everyone -> next run, Hades was an absolutely outstanding experience. In the time that followed, with the pool from which you could pull for Greek myth, the idea of a sequel sounded great, even if they could put a fraction of what they did into it, but at this point in time Supergiant had yet to make a sequel for anything they had release, so when the day finally came that Hades II was announced, myself and everyone I knew who loved the first were pretty excited. So much so that I think we all essentially blocked ourselves from touching the initial early access release, buying it anyway as show of support, to wait for the full v1 release to binge all at once. In the end, I ended up taking a gap between starting and finishing, but either way, if anyone doubted if the sequel could live up to it’s predecessor, their doubts were handily assuaged.
At first I actually found it a little bit difficult to get into. Whereas in the first game, the setup is a very basic ‘you want to escape the underworld and your dad isn’t helping,’ in Hades II, you begin very much in the middle of something, so you had to learn context about something you were already involved in, which while understandable given the plot, did invoke a little bit of ‘why do I care.’ It had also been a while since I played the first game and I was very rusty, so getting into the first couple runs was a little painful, and I at first actually found the colors present in the first area to be difficult to see some enemies against, which in hindsight was really just unfamiliarity. This hesitance quickly gave way though, as what was going on became very clear, and the performance of Melinoë’s VA along with her writing made the weight of the task very real. But it also didn’t take long for the familiarity to set in hard, seeing all the gods & goddesses with their updated new looks and including ones we missed out on last time, as well as being able to enjoy the excellent gameplay loop in a different coat of paint. The new characters were also by and large a massive treat- there are too many to call out explicitly as I don’t have major complaints about most people, but some standouts definitely include Nemesis, Narcissus, Scylla (& the Sirens), and the big bad Chronos himself. Speaking of which, the fact that Chronos has commentary if you pause during his fight is chef’s kiss. And all that is pretty great, except for that you eventually discover that the game is actually two games, and not only can you go down through the underworld, but also up toward Mt. Olympus itself, with another large cast of new characters, fun fights, and interesting challenges.
Where I ultimately stopped before taking my hiatus was clearing the buffed up versions of all the bosses. Vow of Rivals Prometheus and Typhon in particular were incredible, the latter more so, but definitely something I didn’t much care to have activated forever! When I did come back, I had only really had the epilogue left in terms of story, and like the previous game, I also wanted to knock out 100% achievements, as one thing I’ll respect Supergiant forever for is in the original Hades, they didn’t include an achievement for the final statue you can unveil because they didn’t want the final experience of somebody’s time with the game to be as frustrating as that task could be- bravo to that. Unfortunately, this is where I think Hades II stumbled a little bit for me, because a lot of this wrapping up time was extended greatly by lack of resources, i.e., can’t advance bond with a character because I don’t have spare ambrosia and need it for a rare encounter or particular side quest, and I can’t craft ambrosia because the cost is high, and I also need to unlock new weapon aspects and upgrade them, etc., etc. Looking back, I think I had times where I was being inefficient about resource usage. In particular, since I had taken a break, I wasn’t actively gathering Nightmares from the Oath of the unseen, as I was going for specific builds and lower fear at first until I could get back into it, but even then there still was a good amount of intentional grinding I had to do, which definitely wasn’t the most fun, and because I’m not one for doing speed challenges or anything like that, the gameplay did start to become a little more rote than ideal. Which is partly a problem of my own making, as at that point I was chasing an award rather than having maximum fun per run, but even then, I also had to grind out a bit in the first game, and it wasn’t as ‘bad’ in my memory. Certain prophecies were also not great to try and do all at once, whether that be because you get unlucky with NPC spawns, or because you get faked with them saying to come back a couple times before it can proceed. In the end, it felt like the amount I had to go out of my way to finish up was a little on the higher side than I would have preferred, but when I finally capped it off with a Great Chaos Below run that almost went super poorly, I can definitely say I finished on a high note.
While I do enjoy the characters of Greek myth, I’m certainly no expert, so if there is a way to create a meaningful 3rd game, I don’t know, but I can say for sure I’d love to play it. Despite some a couple small rough bits, Hades II stands as a worthy successor to the first game, and something that can provide many hours of very fun and at times frenetic gameplay, with many excellent characters to interact with and a solid narrative to cap it off (and a fantastic soundtrack).
That’s all for now- ‘til next time!