This post likely won’t hit as well if you haven’t played Hades, which may be my favorite roguelite of all time. Developers (Supergiant Games) have never made a bad game… heck, I’d go so far to say they’ve only made good games.

Hades 2 is certainly in EA. There’s missing half the content of Olympus (2 zones, 2 bosses), some NPCs have early art, and there’s still some rather “interesting” balancing bits to work out. So, what do you get here ?

• 6 zones, 6 bosses. (2 more zones/bosses should come)
• Fully voices NPCs and gifts/relationships. There are a good 30 NPCs in here, with hours of voice acting.
• 5 weapons (there should be 6), with alternate forms.
• Harvesting systems (mining, souls, seeds/farm, and importantly – fishing!!)
• A ton of random upgrades (boons, upgrades, etc..)
• Chaos challenges – preset loadouts in specific zones to meet increasingly difficult challenges

If you played Hades, then most of this seems familiar. Hades 2 does add some interesting changes though.

• Combat is much more strategic instead of tactical. Zagreus was all about melee attacks with speed. Melinoë is about spell casting, which takes longer and requires placement. Some weapons are frankly atrocious if you’re not using an alternate form.
• Weapons are a mixed bag. The staff is weak, but has good casting options. Blades deal cat scratch damage in a very small area, and require a specific boon set to work. Wands are insanely OP when you figure out how to use them. The axe… feels amazing. The gun is undertuned right now.
• Boons had preferences for certainly attack styles. Some are always good, some are extremely particular. The secondary effects (burn, blast, push) are generally weak until combined with something else.
• Boons can have infusions. Each has an affinity, and collect enough affinity to unlock more powerful options. There are times where it makes more sense to take a bad boon to unlock a good one.
• A new type of boon, called a Hex, that provides a powerful effect when you’ve used enough magic points per fight. I really dislike this boon type, as the effects are too weak (except the healing option), and don’t allow infusions.
• Rather than clear unlocks, you get Arcana Cards for passive boosts to future runs. You select which cards you want to use, limited by Grasp (an upgradeable resource). You can upgrade cards too. I really enjoy this system, as you pick what fits your style.
• The enemies + sub-bosses are all decently balanced with some minor exceptions. I would avoid all sub-bosses in the last 2 zones. They don’t provide enough rewards for their HP amounts / speed challenge.
• The bosses are fun and hectic. Hecate, the Sirens, Cerberus are all solid fights. Polyphemus (cyclops) is anti-melee, and therefore quite hard with blades – some fights are fun, others very painful. Eris takes a bit of learning to figure out (use the posts) but then gets a lot of fun when you do.
  • Chronos – this guy is something else. He hits like a truck (with inconsistent hitboxes), has a mountain of HP, there’s nowhere to hide, and his 2nd phase has so much AE (the hourglass adds, ugh) that it hurts my eyes. There are times this fight feels unpossible. That’s right.
• The Chaos Challenges are cool. Small packaged challenges that force you to learn the ins/outs of a given weapon. More bite-sized.

The rest of the game is pretty much Hades, but all the edges sanded down. No more fighting the RNG gods a dozen times to get that 1 drop, you can queue it to craft based on other drop. There are menus that explain where things come from. The artifacts you get, in almost all cases, are useful. You generally have more control of choices before you start a run, though you still may want to end a run quickly if the first 3-4 rooms have truly bad RNG. High fear runs (Heat in Hades) do require specific builds… a piece that has yet to be sorted out yet (re-rolling rooms/boons are in cards, which cost too much to select in most runs).

Oh, it also plays amazing on the Steam Deck, with superb battery life.

If I was to guess, we won’t see the full release til 2025. What’s here has more polish than most of the stuff I’ve played this year, but given the prior track record of these devs, there’s still a fair chunk to go.