Hades II takes an already exceptional game and improves on just about everything.

I think the quality of the writing and voice acting in this game is the best in the medium and it’s kind of crazy how nothing else even comes remotely close. That paired with the fact you can play this game for tens of hours and get unique dialogue out of about every single character that reacts appropriately to what you’re doing in the game brings this to another level. I wouldn’t be surprised if you played this for hundreds of hours and still saw new things popping up all of the time.

Combat feels very solid and the amount of builds you can piece together is practically infinite.

I’d say my biggest complaint about the first one was that runs started to lack a good amount of variety in the late game as you faced off the same 4 bosses over and over again. That’s been completely mitigated here by the 2 paths that you can choose from at the start of your run. If you’re getting tired of your path to Olympus, you can just swap over to fighting through the underworld and vice versa. On top of the amount of variety, the bosses here are also considerably better than what we got i the original. More varied move sets for sure, with their challenge versions really stepping up the level of complexity you have to face off against.

I thought offloading the super move to a single god was a great idea and allowed for a more consistent rotation of boons so you could more reliably get what you want for whichever build you’re going for.

The companion system is a great addition and adds yet another layer onto the combat variety, especially once you’re able to upgrade them.

I’d say that the only thing that could be considered a negative is just the fact that it’s a direct sequel. The fact that the first game was a complete unknown and had so many surprises and brand new things I had never seen in any other game really made that experience special. A lot of the gods from the first game return and their boons are basically the same things that we saw during their first appearance. While basically everything has been improved on, a lot of it I kind of expected to happen in one way or another. Sure there were a few story moments and new mechanics that caught me off guard, but they paled in comparison to the amount of moments I got out of that first game. It probably would have helped if some more time passed and there was another project put out between games, but this is just me kind of grasping at straws for something critical to say.

After you roll credits, there’s plenty to keep picking at including doing post game missions to figure out what happened to the Fate’s. While a lof of it just boils down to doing runs back to back to progress socials links and collect upgrade material, I will say the final revelation that they drop at the end of the questline caught me completely off guard in a fun way. Whenever people say that they’ve slowed down on seeing it through to the very end, I always try to motivate them by saying it’s worth seeing all the way through.

A worthwhile sequel that continues to show off why Supergiant Games is one of the best in the business.

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