Hades 2

Play it on: PC

Current goal: Beating Chronos and unlocking the surface

Buy it from: Steam

Surprise, someone on staff is playing Hades 2 and really enjoying taking their time with it. Guilty! But really, the sequel to everyone’s favorite (and incredibly hot) roguelike of 2020 isn’t just more of the same: it’s one of the most highly-polished follow-ups to a game I’ve ever played, and it’s still being developed. Hades obviously had a lot going for it, but it wasn’t perfect, and Hades 2 somehow manages to be intimately familiar while addressing things I didn’t even know were pain points in the first game. It tacks even more systems, like farming and resource gathering, on top of the already dense foundation laid out by Hades, but streamlines and implements them in ways that feel complementary to the gameplay loop without deviating too far from what made it work in the first place. Little about what’s new in Hades 2 feels forced and it’s kind of unbelievable how well it all clicks together.

Hades’ story was an obvious high point for many players, but I was always more interested in Zagreus’ interactions with the Greek pantheon than the larger narrative of finding his mother, Persephone, and defeating his father once and for all. Hades 2’s narrative, which unites the forces of Olympus and the Underworld in a war against Chronos, makes the gods into larger and more active players in the plot, rather than simply purveyors of boons and aspects, and I am loving it. It’s fun occasionally bumping into Artemis as she’s hunting enemies in the same arena, and hearing about how Hermes is deep undercover trying to learn about what Chronos’ forces are up to. It’s cool how Hephaestus, who was not in the first game, is introduced here because we need armaments against Chronos, or how Charon goes from a ferryman to the crux of our supply lines. We obviously recognize these mythological characters and their abilities from the stories we’ve read or been told, and it was great to see them adapted and honored in the first game, but seeing them mobilized in Hades 2 and acting on their strengths just hits different.

I’m enjoying Hades 2 so much that I got really close to the Chronos boss fight pretty early on, and let me tell you, some of those later areas and story twists are kinda wild. Rather than sighing in despair every time I fall in combat, I’m relishing every chance I get to go back through Supergiant Games’ immaculately constructed environments and continue unraveling the secrets the scarily dense Early Access build has to offer, including a whole other route through the game with its own set of environments.

Hades 2 already feels like a full game, and yet it isn’t, and that is as terrifying as it is tantalizing. I’m about to lose several dozen, if not hundred, hours to it, and I’m ready to make that sacrifice in the name of whooping Father Time. — Moises Taveras