izigame.me

It pains me to leave a negative review to the sequel to one of my favorite games but it has changes and issues i'm just not entirely happy with and needs changes and time to improve.

First of all let's start with the good:

- A lot more content! Even in early access already feels like there's a lot more stuff and still more coming.
- New and returning areas and they all look awesome are really well designed and a lot more fun to traverse. Generally a lot more areas and another planned.
- Art style. absolutely stunning, flamboyant, drastically improved.
- Fantastic voice acting, music, audio engineering, environments and charming characters.
- Magic, spell casting system.
- New things to do in addition to fishing like mining, gathering, planting and other fun stuff.
- More Interactivity with characters, progression and the world. Well designed bosses.
- Animal Companions. How cute and cool is that?
- Writing and narration is stellar.
- Great Optimization it runs buttery smooth. Both on PC and Deck.

Now the bad, in comparison to the first game

They slowed and tuned the game down, combat is slower, more meticulous and punishing. Movement is not as smooth and lost that snappy responsive feeling, with not much to compensate those changes.
Things changed that worked so well in the first game, don't fix something that isn't broken.
A lot of the mechanics revolve around holding buttons now and it feels bad and tiring to use.
Here are the issues i have with the game so far:


Dash

- Dash, there's only 1 dash, it's slower, has a small delay, delayed i-frames and a long recovery delay. EDIT: Update made it you can now animation cancel out of most attacks.

Sprint

- The new game mechanic: Sprint. After you dash you can hold the dash button to sprint, this feels clunky to use. It doesn't transition well during combat.
You can't sprint without dashing first so if the dash is on cooldown you can't sprint or make use of the sprint boon. You can't attack while sprinting, you can't use it's momentum to transition into something offensive.
It has a windup. No toggle option, it's tiring holding the button down while sprinting. There's no way to rebind it to a different separate button. Sprint is implemented in such a way i generally avoid using it.
Sprint isn't inherently bad but it's not executed well enough to compensate for the lack of dashes. as it offers no natural transitioning into the game's mechanics. It's just it's own thing.

Omega moves

- You have to use and hold an attack, cast or special for a duration until it triggers the Omega move. It feels bad to use and disrupts the game flow.
A lot of the attacking now is just click hold or click, wait.. hold. Resulting in either standing still a lot, getting stuck in animations and or triggering slowmotion if you enabled the power which is pretty much mandatory cause it's too strong and cheap not to.

Weapons & Aspects

- Weapons. Most weapons aren't as cool or fun to use. The attack/special don't synergize well together. In comparison to the first game i loved every weapon and used them all, having a lot more fun and variety with them.
- Aspects. Lackluster. Some are just straight up only stats or damage and don't change the way you use the weapon as drastically. This is probably also a big factor why the weapons aren't as fun for me. Aspects opened up a lot of different play styles and boon synergy in the first Hades game.

Boons

- Many boons feel weak, under tuned. The powers are less interesting, not as exciting nor as impactful. Lack of boon diversity and variety. Bonuses for many boons are minuscule, RNG bonuses or conditional. Boons don't scale well into later areas. In short most boons don't feel reliable or worth it.
- Stingy with boons. It's hard to make a build cause of the lack of boons they give you especially in the first area. Often rooms give resources and not boons.

Daedalus hammers

- Daedalus hammers don't drastically change your weapons as much as they used to. Before they opened up entire fun new play styles and really rewarded you for it.

Hexes

- Hexes, The replacement for god calls. Most of them are unappealing, underwhelming and weak.
Many hexes animation lock you into place, are slow and don't provide i-frames. Hex powers don't synergize fluidly with the boons or weapons. Hexes don't charge on their own and explicitly require magick usage to be able to activate.

Enemies

- Most are annoying and fast with over tuned attacks. Before enemies were susceptible to backstab damage. Well no longer cause backstab bonus has been removed from all weapons. It's now an upgrade you can get for a specific weapon through a Daedalus hammer or aspect. Enemies also LOVE to spin now, they slide and rotate around, trying really hard to face you at all times.
- Enemies are spongy, especially bosses have a huge amount of health. While normal/miniboss enemies are spongy when you remove their armor they no longer pose any challenge as you can stunlock them forever.

Difficulty

- The game became a bit harder and more punishing, mostly the early difficulty curve. And that's coming from someone that 100%'d the first game with 90 hours.
Examples; No temporary invulnerability when you get hit. 1 dash only with long recovery time. Can't attack to destroy enemy projectiles. Deflect is gone. Less animation cancelling. Backstab removed from all weapons except one. 'Magick (Mana) management', Harder high damage, Enemies and bosses with more HP, faster movements and attacks.
After a lot more playtime it did get easier, naturally cause of progression. However it took a while and the difficulty curve especially early on is definitely higher than the previous game

Other

- Projectiles. You can no longer destroy enemy projectiles while attacking. Why? I don't know but now you have to use the dash to dodge or the sprint to run away from projectiles. There's also no deflect anymore. While being more of a bullet hell than the first game.
- Resources/Grind/Tool limit. Overall there's a lot more meta progression and resources to grind. EDIT: Tool limit is gone, you can now use all tools to gather all resources.
- Padding. Early on a character forces a curse upon you that makes you take exponentially more damage taken after every successful encounter.
This is to ensure the player doesn't get too far too quickly and punishes good players and or good builds. It feels cheap and if you really have to slow down the player it should be done a lot better! EDIT: Character a bit less punishing and less frequent but still remains.
- Lack of info on tool tips. Some bad explained descriptions and lack of tutorials for some game mechanics. Some bad visuals for hit boxes on enemy attacks and other small fixes and QOL that needs to be added.
Speaking of QOL here are some i'd like to see:
- Need the dash at cursor option back, please.
- Sprint toggle option
- Photosensitivity options
- Pool of purging, ability to remove a boon.
- Re-roll Daedalus hammers.
IMO the gameplay and combat is a downgrade. It doesn't feel as smooth and satisfying to play nor does it feel as natural as the first Hades game.
I do like the game, even if it's a negative review. This is to point out what i think are flaws hoping they get addressed. It's still a Hades game and it's Supergiant games we're talking about here. I want Hades II to succeed and be as good as it possible can be. Hence why i took time to leave a detailed review.
It's early access and i hope they tweak, change and improve it, time will tell.
As of now if i could give the game a mixed review i would.
Sorry for the huge wall of text and if you made it all the way here i hope this review helps you decide whether the game is worth it for you.
I will update this review with (EDIT:) if they tweak or change any of the issues i wrote here.