Hades II Reviews

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating to the follow-up game of Hades Hades II somehow pulls off the impossible: it takes everything that made the first game amazing and makes it bigger, deeper, and even more addictive. The combat feels faster and more strategic, the build variety is insane, and every run gives you another reason to say, "just one more." Melinoë is a fantastic protagonist, bringing a different energy from Zagreus while still fitting perfectly into the world. The art, music, voice acting, and character writing are all top-tier, which is exactly what you'd expect from Supergiant Games. What impressed me most is how polished the game feels. Even during Early Access, it launched with an enormous amount of content and was already being praised as one of the strongest Early Access releases in recent memory. Steam reviews remain overwhelmingly positive, with players praising the expanded gameplay systems, bosses, and progression. Is it harder than the first game? Definitely. Some encounters can feel brutal, and a few mechanics might frustrate you at first. But every victory feels earned, and experimenting with different builds never gets old. If you loved Hades, buying Hades II is a no-brainer. If you've never played either game, congratulations—you've just found the next 100+ hours of your life. Pros: Incredible combat and build variety Amazing soundtrack and voice acting Gorgeous art style Tons of replayability "Just one more run" syndrome is stronger than ever Cons: Sleep schedule may be permanently destroyed Chronos doesn't care about your feelings 10/10 — The gods cooked again. 🔥

Definitely an upgrade compared to Hades 1, story, items, boons etc wise, feels alot more balanced and actually more fun. Can reccomend, if enjoyed Hades 1 initially.

Hades II is a monument of the rougelike genre. The plot is good (though not quite the masterpiece of its predecessor), the music is excellent, and the core gameplay loop is one of the smoothest out there. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the first game.

One of the best roguelikes I've ever played!! I recommend this game to literally everyone I know its so peak....10/10

The game is great, with fantastic character art and the storylines are amazing. Really gripping and worth every penny. The looping is smooth and very addictive, the mystery feels surreal, the voice acting is great and all the little mini games you can do are fun. Progress feels linear and rewarding, making the gameplay loop amazing. Only gripe is the storyline. Melinoe is too perfect, too goodie-two shoes and lacks some of the grit Zagreus had which made him fun. You hardly relate to Melinoe. Sure she can be naive at times and endearing but for a protagonist we live through so long, she is tiresome. Especially the end made me not root for her anymore. Spoiler re story beats I highly disliked: [spoiler]The ending story-line falls short. We do not even see Hades and Persephone in the House, we hardly see Zagreus, she is not reunited with her family at all. It is just fighting and war, ever-ongoing for her. It is so unsatisfying. I wish we visually saw the accomplishments we fought to achieve: a safe Olympus and a restored House of Hades. I wish we saw more of the Olympus drama as a reward for beating the last Olympus boss, I wish we saw more of the House of Hades cast as a lil reward for beating Chronos. But nope. I feel like they could have come up with a different solution as to why we can keep playing the game, like she needs to continue training or something. The found family of the Crossroads feels really flat. Why can't they all go to the House of Hades? Replacing that as your starter area after the epilogue could've been cool. Or having Hades/Zag/whoever else from her family visit from time to time at least. The fact that our protagonist, after her whole story, is rewarded with continuous "work" instead of being surrounded by the people she fought to save is lame. No one from the Crossroads -feels- like found family. Just war comrades and unserious romantic interests. [/spoiler]

Warning, unpopular opinion incoming. I really enjoyed the first 30 hours of [i]Hades 2[/i] (which is objectively a lot), but once I got the first ending and entered the late game, I became rather disappointed and started noticing some of the critical flaws of the game. Firstly, the plot in general and the ending in particular. It felt dull, even toothless. Like a childish fairytale. I was expecting a copelling conflict, a meaningful resolution. Instead I got… this. I didn’t enjoy the side stories either. There is little to none conflict, the protagonist treats almost everyone in exactly the same way. The filler dialogues are very boring. The characters are overly serious and many conversations add nothing to the personalities of the people involved. There is almost no humor whatsoever. Everything feels bland. Also, a lot of content is gated behind a heavily rng-dependent grind, including the main epilogue and side stories. The gameplay became repetitive pretty quickly for a roguelike. The build variety may seem vast at first, but in reality it’s fairly limited. Once you reach a certain upgrade threshold, most runs start feeling the same. The balance is very wonky. Playing on a base difficulty without heat modificators is too easy, stacking several modifiers often makes the game feel unfair. This is especially noticeable in the later stages of a run, when battles are filled with AoE attacks and visual clutter. You can barely see what's coming at you. On top of that, the damage output is insane — some enemies can kill you in just two or three hits. Unfair, not fun. At least the music and voice-acting are good. Though it felt a little odd that most songs with female vocals seem to be performed by the same singer. Another player made a point that perfectly matches my experience: “my drive for completion kept me playing, not fun or excitement". For the record - I have 100% achievements in [i]Hades 1[/i] and I had a blast completing it. To me, this is one of the best examples of “bigger doesn’t equals better’. It’s easily my biggest disappointment of 2025, and a disappointment from [i]Supergiant games[/i] in general. I’d much rather see them continue making original titles than sequels like this… I mean, the game can be fun, but personally I cannot justify buying it and supporting such experiments.

Phenomenal sequel. A pioneer of the roguelike genre and layers of complexity that maximizes delight. It is both a satisfying tactile experience, it is as well, a beautifully concise and eloquent story. You guys done it again. Can't wait for what's next.

Great continuation of the story, gameplay amazing, only issue i had was too many gathering items for my taste

It's hard to say "not recommended" on a game that I've put 112 hours into. Early access was very fun and gameplay-wise I have little to complain about. It does many things better than the first Hades game, some worse, but is overall an improvement. If you only care for the gameplay, this game will surely be a blast, by all means, GLHF. But I cannot stress how big of a letdown story-wise it has been. Before launch, there were many things hinted at that would be expanded upon as the updates were being released. I was excited to learn what both the main story and the many interesting side quests had to offer, only to be thoroughly disappointed with almost every. single. one. I was wondering how the main story was going to end, especially assuming the game would follow its predecessor in still allowing you to play after the ending. In my worst predictions, I could not have anticipated how rushed and badly written it actually turned out to be. It felt like a spit in the face and a waste of time spent on the game up until that point. The vast majority of side quests also make you feel like you wasted your time on them. They might be really entertaining, or even exciting, to do, up until the last dialogue that makes it all just... not matter. Almost all of them end with the same thing: [spoiler] the character making you feel bad for trying to help [/spoiler]. The absolute worst example of this is [spoiler] waking up Hypnos [/spoiler]. Teased in I'm pretty sure every early access update since its first part, it seemed like something big was planned for it. There wasn't. It ends with [spoiler] a joke at the protag's expense and Hypnos just disappears forever. [/spoiler] Great. I love when developers make me feel excited and then purposefully don't deliver. If you've been keeping on top of the quests until the epilogue, it leaves you wondering... what is the message of the game supposed to be? What's the moral of the story? [spoiler] That everybody can be redeemed (main quest) and we should preserve the status quo lest we disturb something or someone (side quests)? [/spoiler] Terrible. Made everything feel bad in retrospect and makes the game feel unreplayable.

[h3] So, I've 100% this game, what can I say [/h3] It's kinda crazy to me, that the first game I've properly finished 100% and made a review on, was Hades 1. That game was the reason I've started doing these, so I think it's only fair I'll write this review straight from the heart, without segments and just how I [i] feel [/i] it. This game man. This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. I've had such high expectations from the first one, I mean, Hades 1 was literally my favorite game for multiple years. And it was specifically dethroned by its sequel. I am completely baffled at how amazing it is. I expected more of the same, with a couple of new things, BUT NO. They went absolutely Fcking wild with this one. It really should be called Hades 2.5, since they practically said ''Game content? Double it and give it to the next person''. They could've just given me more Zagreus shenanigans and I would've been happy. But they gave us a whole new protagonist, whole new areas, switched up the roster of Gods (and brought back some of the old), new assortment of weapons and basically revamped and upgraded already present systems. I HIGHLY advise you to first play through the first game. You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you played this first and then went back to Hades 1. Not only because of the lore, but also because you'll be missing a lot of things present here, that weren't in the initial First game. Once again, everybody in this game is hot AF. I am literally fawning over every damn character. You just kinda have to forget how absolutely horrible Gods in this pantheon are, because in this game, they are all very likable. I was very hesitant whether I'm going to like the new protagonist, but man, I just love Melinoe. Zagreus is my boy, I see myself in him still, but his sister is just such a well written character and protagonist. To Hell with it (literally), ALL characters are well written. I just love the gradual growth these characters go through and the pacing is [i] Just Perfect. [/i] Every run you learn juuuuust enough to keep you going, but not too much, to the point that you can speedrun the game in a few days. I've challenged myself to win as many runs as possible and finish the whole 100% in as little runs as possible. It took me exactly [b] 98 nights [/b] (runs) to complete. Out of those, I've lost about 13 (with 4 of those being unavoidable scripted deaths). But I'm a complete nutjob and a roguelike veteran, so I approximate that a normal mortal would need around 150-200 runs to completely finish the game. Enough general rambling, how's the game apart from the amazing story? The gameplay is a FCKING blast, in many aspects [b] Better [/b] than the first game. Personally I've preferred some weapons from the first game, but I've grown to love the new weapons. I don't even have a favorite, I have multiple favorite aspects of multiple weapons (since each of the 6 weapons has like 4 aspects). There are new enemies, new COOL AF bosses, new depths of relationships with characters (it's literally a dating sim sometimes), but most importantly, new ways to play your runs. They went so out of the box with some weapons and boon upgrades, that it kinda redefined how I play these games. I won't go into painstaking details, just know that I went from a long distance sniper type player, to a literaly suicidal maniac that goes RIGHT up to my enemies without flinching. They also reintroduced the [i] Heat [/i] systems as [i] Fear [/i] , which if you don't know, is a very interesting way to make your runs harder. You can give you enemies the standard of more health, more damage, but you can also give them extra shields, extra perks, possibility to respawn, bigger spawn rates, higher animation speed. You can add a timer, make pricier items in shops, limit the number of choices of boons, etc. etc., but my most favorite [u] literally upgrade bosses one by one. [/u] I cannot stress enough, how cool, amazing, refreshing and downright scary that is. You can go from easy no problem run to ''I am literally pissing my pants. Yes, as we speak'' type of mood. Supergiant devs are just masters at adding additional difficulty for skilled players. Gameplay might be the closest thing to a 10 as an aspect, easily 9.8/10 When it comes to artstyle and music, I couldn't be happier. They kept the charm of the first game and EXPANDED upon it. Some of the artistic direction is borderline gooning material. Did I mention the characters are HOT AF? Well, I'll mention it again I DON'T CARE. You're giving me a hot goddess protagonist? SIGN ME TF IN. Hotness level of these characters is out of this world, as it should. And the music? 5 songs went straight into the playlist. I'm literally continuing the trend from the first game, where in private, I would sing these beautiful songs in high notes sounding awful, but again, I DON'T CARE. The songs are.... UGGHH I CAN'T GET OVER THEM. Imagine someone approaches you to sing a song as a God of Music and you... FCKING NAIL IT?! Because now I want to nail Darren Korb for singing Fated Glory. That's how good the music is. When it comes to both art and music, they are both unreasonably good for a roguelike. What a damn treat. Music and Artstyle is an easy 9/10 I'll circle back to the story, because I want to emphasize how well written it is. I was very skeptical when I found out about the time proponent and time travel and how they would handle it. But they handled it MASTERCLASS. I also loooove the nuggets of wisdom and lessons this game has. It has the soul of old movies and fairytales that always had profound lessons tied to our lives. This game has Plethora of them. Not one or two, but going into double digits. About the importance of comradery, relationships with depth. Lessons about not wallowing in the past, about the folly of us mortals, about causes worth fighting for, about self respect and being example to others. About passion, hope, love and grief. I could go on and on about all the profound moments the game presents. Couple that with all of the resolutions that tie up both games and things you relive from the first game and you get an absolute gem of a game. I was literally sobbing as the credits rolled. How can you even top this writing now? 9.5/10 All in all bro, I've waited literal years (five of those) for this sequel and I have not been disappointed in the slightest. It completely exceeded my expectations, I couldn't have been more satisfied. If you haven't played the first entry, I highly advise you to do so, before diving into this one. Also, when it comes to 100%, it was almost completely seamless and not hard at all. There is like 1 fairly difficult one and I did it first try. How's a 100% achievement hunting even a challenge here? 9/10 This became my new absolute favorite. This is a must play when you like roguelikes. Hell, I'll say, it should be mandatory to play this Since I still don't give games a 10 (because a perfect game doesn't exist), this is easily [u] 9.7/10 [/u]