Hades 2 review: "Impeccable combat and flawless characterization across a huge roster make for a follow-up that surpasses even its excellent roguelike predecessor"

Fittingly for its mythological setting, there's something sisyphean about the way Hades 2 plays with difficulty. A single boss might stand in your way night after night, a frustrating roadblock that no combination of weapons and boons will let you pass. And then it dies once, and then again, and suddenly it's just a trivial part of your journey, a minor strength check rather than a genuine obstacle. It's an approach that flies in the face of the traditional difficulty curve, and one that at times made some of Hades 2 feel unfair – until everything clicked into place and reminded me how technically excellent this game is.

That excellence came as little surprise. Supergiant has been making some version of its Hades series for nearly a decade now, and from the moment it launched into early access this sequel's divine hacking and slashing imitated its predecessor. A new cast and some new toys overhaul the original game enough to ensure you don't feel like you're simply retreading old ground, protagonist Melinoë replacing her brother Zagreus to lead an overhauled cast that bands together to offer a few tricks worthy of Melinoë's witchy upbringing.

Those tools are what really allow Hades 2 to feel like its own experience. Melinoë's 'Cast', for instance, is an area of effect spell that holds enemies in place, usually while additional effects rain down upon them courtesy of your divine family members. It's a pleasing bit of skill expression among the frantic strikes and rapid dodges that are the core of the series' combat.

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While cast skills were a lynchpin of my entire playthrough, I did struggle to find a place the other tricks up Melinoë's sleeve. Every fight, whether it's against the smallest mob or most towering boss, is such a rapid interweaving of all the traditional tools at her disposal that I struggled in the midst of combat to find use for nearly anything else. Empowered 'Omega' abilities can be coupled with Hexes handed down from the moon goddess Selene, but despite their potential power I found they slowed the pace of the fight down too much to make them a worthy addition to my arsenal.

Godspeed

Thankfully, the divine 'boons' – blessings handed down from the gods of Olympus – were enough to let me stick to that core experience I was pleased to see return from Hades. The likes of Zeus, Poseidon, and Aphrodite all return, but they're regularly outshone by new arrivals. Forge god Hephaestus' devastating hammer blows and the building heat of hearth goddess Hestia's Scorch effect are the highlights of a significantly expanded roster, and while that huge cast can make intricate build-crafting a little tricky, by the time you reach some of the later bosses you're often so laden-down with upgrades that it ceases to matter exactly which ones you collected. On some runs, lighting bolts, howling winds, roaring flames, and hails of arrows were just the start of the punishment that Melinoë could inflict as she danced her way through the legions of monsters that stood between her and her goal.

Yet for all that, there were times when even the most powerful builds didn't seem to be enough. On too many occasions, what felt like titan-slaying runs were stopped in their tracks by bosses that didn't even flinch at the combined might of the gods. At least twice as big as its predecessor, it's easy to marvel at the scope of Hades 2 and its ambitious Guardian fights – right up until you're knocked off Olympus again by an enemy you feel you've barely had time to study. Even during battles where you could feel the technical achievement that had gone into fights against bigger foes with flashier movesets, these were moments where Hades 2's roguelike structure felt stretched thin, as though it had been adapted to match the scale of this vastly-augmented experience.

Overcoming challenge through repeated failure is, of course, the nature of the roguelike formula, and it's to Hades 2's credit that its narrative twist on the genre remains robust in the face of all those deaths – folding the repetition into a core part of the storytelling. But as it returned me to Melinoë's Crossroads home over and over, I started to see the gaps in the rest of Hades 2's progression structure. There's so much to unlock, so many skills to develop and magical items to craft that Zagreus' Mirror pales in comparison. There are dozens of different resources to gather, with so many of them used for a single, non-critical purpose, that it's hard not to feel like you're being deliberately waylaid to buy more time for the upgrade system to do its job.

That feeling makes Hades 2's difficulty curve feel distinctly uneven at times. But in a game this large, where a single run can only possibly show you half of what the game has to offer and might grant you none of the resources you need to ever-so-slowly increase Melinoë's power, the irregularity of that curve becomes an oddity. Its various lumps and bumps are eventually smoothed, but only once you're approaching the real endgame upgrades – ones in which you can feel Supergiant handing out bonus tools to ensure that you can actually reach the end despite its awkward balancing. That artificiality is my biggest frustration with Hades 2, and it's one only heightened by the feeling that 18 months in early access should have helped iron kinks like these.

A real boon

That uneven difficulty is an unfortunate distraction, because when Melinoë is in the thick of it, Hades 2 shines. Moment-to-moment combat is a thrilling balancing act of dodges and attacks which asks that you constantly reconfigure around your most powerful tools. There's no 'one-size' approach – a blessing from the same god could easily require two entirely different approaches on different nights. There's a huge degree of skill expression even amid the most chaotic encounters, with multiple ways to shape each run towards your desired strategy, or to bend even the most aggressive boss to your will. And in the moments where it all aligns, where every boon triggers just right in the midst of another devastating combo, it feels amazing.

That divine combat would mean little without the broader mythological framing that surrounds it, but Supergiant has surpassed itself there. The scale that hinders the game's progression elsewhere manages here to elevate a world that feels far greater than the sum of its parts.

The characterization of its setting and its biggest players is a delight, as is the attention paid to every facet of even the smallest cameos and the stories behind them. Against the backdrop of yet another impeccable soundtrack, the details woven into every performance or moment of character expression exhibit Supergiant's deep love for its setting. This isn't just a roguelike with a narrative twist, it's a narrative roguelike that wants to make sure you find as much joy in every part of its world as you do in triumphing over its final boss.

My issues with progression do hamper some of that joy, but there's enough of the game left to see by the time you complete the main story that even my biggest concerns are starting to evaporate. An Oceanus-deep endgame ensures that I've already delved far deeper into the post-credits of Hades 2 than I ever did with its predecessor.

Dedicated challenge runs, continuing character arcs, additional upgrade paths, and the pure joy of carving through even a powered-up late-game boss with a disgustingly punchy build all make for an experience that feels endlessly replayable, settled beautifully in a world that rewards your investment in it long after the credits have rolled. The mid-game bump in the road is frustrating, but in the long run it does little to derail this intricate, ambitious roguelike sequel.

Yearning for even more runs? Our best roguelike games ranking can help.