Hades II is the sequel to one of the greatest roguelikes ever made. That's both its greatest asset and its heaviest ****'s get this out of the way. The game is good. The loop is dangerously addictive, the art direction is jaw dropping, and Supergiant clearly poured their souls into this. But "good" hits different when your older brother is a **** combat swaps Zagreus's visceral, in your face aggression for Melinoë's spellcasting heavy kit, and honestly? It's a downgrade. Hades 1 made you feel like a weapon. Hades II makes you feel like you're managing a weapon. The flow isn't there. The synergies between boons and builds, the secret sauce that made the first game's theorycrafting so intoxicating, feel muddier, less intuitive, like the pieces almost fit but never quite snap together.Then there's Melinoë herself. She's fine. And "fine" is the problem. Zagreus was defiant, self deprecating, layered, a protagonist you'd actually want to grab a drink with after he crawled out of a river of blood for the fortieth time. Melinoë is dutiful, determined, and... that's kind of it. She carries the weight of the narrative without much of the **** the real sin? The dialogue. Supergiant, the studio famous for making every single line of NPC conversation feel like a gift, somehow buried this game under a mountain of words that say remarkably little. In Hades, I would literally die on purpose just to go home and talk to everyone. In Hades II, I'm mashing through conversations like I'm clearing pop up ads. The writing mistakes volume for depth, and for a studio with this pedigree, that **** bosses will humble you. The atmosphere will haunt you. The "one more run" pull is absolutely real. It's a great roguelike that just happens to be a disappointing sequel, and there's a strange, bittersweet space between those two truths.Worth every penny. Just don't expect lightning to strike the same place twice.

I bought Hades 1 and Hades 2 together. I never really got hooked on Hades 1, so I was a bit skeptical when I started playing Hades 2, but I ended up feeling much more positive about it. I think it’s a better game overall. There are more progression options, and the pacing is faster, so you rarely feel like you’re getting stuck. That said, I still think it sometimes can become a bit boring and drawn out to go through the same levels over and over again.

This game is rubbish. Nowhere near how good Hades 1 was. Hades 1 is miles better than this crap. The game doesn't explain anything it's so confusing as well but once you get past that the game still ****.