Saturday Morning Gaming: Hades II First Impressions

I had intended to discuss an entirely different game this week.

A co-worker asked me if I ever played the original Hades and my response was something to the effect of “OH HECK YEAH I DID!” and he told me that I should give Hades II a look.

“I thought it was in Early Access”, I said.

“Oh, it is!”, he told me. So I scoffed and said that I would wait until it was released.

And then I saw that it was on sale at the Steam store… And I was going to be buying it anyway because the first one was so good…

Okay, fine. I’ll just check it out.

And then I got to the title screen…

(Warning: I’m not going to give any real spoilers but I have no problem talking about stuff you find out in the first five minutes of the game. If you don’t want to know stuff about the main boss or the weapon types, press your back button.)

Do I remember how to play? I asked myself… so I went back to the original and did a handful of runs and I finally maxxed out the last upgrade of the last of the six weapons (it was the Hestia build of the Adamant Rail, if you want to know) and amassed enough gems to purchase the Princely Theme from the builder.

I killed Hades once on a zero heat run and ran into the same brick wall that I hit last time on my 13 heat sword run and 13 heat bow run.

Okay, I thought. I am now ready to never play Hades again… and I loaded up Hades 2.

In this one, you play Melinoë, sister of Zagreus, and the final boss is *NOT* Hades but Cronos. You’re in the Crossroads and, under the tutelage of Hecate, you’re going to take Hades *BACK* from Cronos and… well, I’m not sure what the final gameplan is. Along the way, you’ll get help from some of the various Olympian gods you remember and a handful of new ones that you didn’t meet in the first one. The weapons are all new but you’ll recognize the first few types. The long-distance pinger, the short-distance fast attack weapon, the short-distance slow heavy hitter… and a couple of “what the heck is going on here?” weapons that I have no idea how to use well yet.

Once again, there are a bajillion kinds of currency. To unlock a pick that will help you mine silver or copper, you’ll need to spend ashes. To unlock a shovel that will help you gather seeds to plant (and generate new units of currency), you’ll need 10 silver. You may idly wonder if there is a fishing pole to unlock and, I can tell you, there is. You can catch fish that you can exchange for yet another different kind of currency.

So after saying “well, I’ll just check it out…”, I’ve now unlocked all of the weapons, discovered multiple gods that only start showing up once you reach a certain new plateau, and holy cow I can’t believe that this game is already taking over my life even though it’s still in early access.

The game is even better than Hades.

Dang it.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is the Hades II start menu. Screenshot taken by the author.)