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Hades 2

Eishtmo

Eishtmo

It's not out yet, but they are letting some people do a "technical test" as a lead up to Early Access.

Somehow, I managed to get into the test. I suspect it's because I have an older video card. If you want to try to get in, find it on steam and request to join the test. You're supposed to get an email, but I didn't. Instead I was going to play something else and it was at the top of my play list.

It's more Hades. If you liked Hades, Hades 2 is more of that. The basic ideas are the same: Grab a weapon, go into an area, fight monsters, go to the next room, kill more monsters, eventually fight a boss, move the next area. Die, go back to your home base, talk to the locals for story, give gifts, back to the fight.

It does want you to play a bit different. There's a magic meter and you're strongly encouraged to use it. It refills between rooms, so go ham, and not, like I tend to do, save it for "later." Later never comes. It plays a bit different because of that, so you're not just beating things with a stick, but actually zapping them from range. I mean, you CAN beat them with a stick, but it's not required.

It's the same art style (though some place holder images). Same method of story telling. There is no dog to pet, but there is a frog, so that's pretty even.

Really, the differences are in the details and the goals. I did manage to beat the boss of the only area available, on my second try at them too. Considering the first try I didn't even get off a strike, let alone land a hit, I felt pretty good about it. Likely means it's too easy, but again, it's basically a demo, so that's fine.

Am I posting this as a form of boasting? A bit. But also so you guys can try to get in. Hades 2 is so far living up to name, so keeping it circulation is a good idea.

Oh, there is a vod for a livestream of the game out there from the devs, sorry I don't have a link handy.
 
I'm extremely ready for this. I signed up for the technical test, but haven't seen/heard anything (and I did check my list of Steam games after reading this, Eishtmo).
 
I got into the tech test the other day, but when I went to install it I was very sad to discover it was PC only. (I'm a Mac user.) I guess I probably should've seen that coming, but still. I want to pet the frog!
 
Okay, I dug out that video:

www.youtube.com

Hades II Technical Test - Live Gameplay

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERSJoin Supergiant Games' Studio Director Amir Rao and Creative Director Greg Kasavin for a first look at Hades II Technical Test. Wai...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

So I finished the test. Only get to complete the one area 5 times and then you can't do it any more. Though I haven't tried a different save, that might work. Nah, I would just be frustrated that I can't play any more. Best to back off for now. Might be the first game I actually buy the early access for. Now, spoilers, in no particular order.

Mel and Zag are different in personality. Zag was always sure he could pull it off, almost never any doubt of it. Mel, well, not so much. Even when she does succeed, she isn't always sure she deserves it. She often claims it's luck, fate or something that is NOT her own hard work. It's fine that she wants to credit her teachers and allies, but often she downplays her own role to the extreme.

I love that they changed up the core gameplay. I suspect that it does play out differently than the first game. There it was one route out, and that was it. I think this game will have multiple paths to take and for reasons other than completing the game. The fact that the home area is called the Crossroads implies this, but also the fact that there are at least 2 combat area exits, and a third one back in the main area that is guarded but with no explination as to why.

The characters are a new mix of personalities and a couple old favorites. Odysess being there is interesting as it doesn't seem to indicate that he's dead. I do seem to remember he went into Hades once in the stories, so perhaps he is still quite alive, but there's not much story there right now.

Nemesis is harsh, like super harsh. I get it, she think she's the one that should do the what Mel is doing, but she comes down hard about it.

Hecate is kind of a rerun of Nyx, she raised Mel (wow, Persephone didn't get to raise EITHER of her children, that's got to hurt), but insists that she is NOT Mel's mother. The fact that the first boss is Hecate is a nice reversal of the orginal game. She is pretty hard initailly, BTW, the first time I fought her I didn't even get a hit off, let alone in. Got her the second time though (and 4 more times too).

Dora is a shade that hangs out in Mel's tent and I think is supposed to be kind of a Dusa replacement, but they are very far apart personality wise. She doesn't even want to leave the tent, let alone do anything besides occasionally trying to haunt Mel.

Hypnos returns, but is asleep. Charon apparently says it's the best place for him, I can't say I disagree, but we'll see. Skelly is back, as a commander with medals and everything. Still there as a punching bag though.

The god mix is different with old favorites coming back and new ones that were probably missed from the first game. Hephestus being in a wheelchair is a nice touch. Artimis isn't so much a boon granter as an active contact in the field (at least in the first area). Think how Than would occasionally get involved in a fight in the first game. She and Mel treat each other as close family, and I love tha interaction. I think Hermes will show up much the same, or perhaps as a boss later (I could totally see that).

Instead of simply paying to expand and decorate the house, there's a whole craft system that is being built up here. It does much the same thing, giving you access to new powers and traits. I think an interesting thing to point out is the inventory keeps track of the phase of the moon, so that might play a role later. There must be more to the alter (think the mirror from the first game) as I managed to max it out in 14 runs, which feels very quick. Could be a balancing thing, but I'm not convinced. Keepsakes return, you get them the same way.

There are a lot of placeholder images floating around. Charon and Hestia have placeholder images as well as all the keepsakes and most of the boons.

The only visitable encounter in the field is Arachne, which introduces the idea of armor. There is a death defiance (one so far), but I was kind of hoping they'd get away from that and I suspect the armor idea is part of that. We'll see how it goes.

The weapons are a staff and a pair of knives. If a pair of swords and nunchuks show up, we can guess where their insperation came from for this set. The staff is the starting weapon and is much like the spear from the first game, which I hold affinity for as it's how completed my first run of Hades. Long range, slower, hits hard. Knives are short range, fast. Both can be charged with magic for larger scale attack. They should be the bread and butter of a run, and since magic restores between rooms you are very strongly encouraged to do so. Most of the boons effect either the charged up attack or special, so again, do it more and more.

It's more Hades, but it's different enough to provide a new experience. I'm really ready for the next game, and bummed I can't play any more, at least until Early Access activates. I had no crashes, the game played fast and smooth and the controls were crisp and fun.
 
Same. Stuck on the second boss right now, but I took the long slow route through the first game, so that's fine. I still find the first area to be too easy, but the second one MORE than makes up for it. The game feels damn near finished. I suspect they didn't even really need the early access, but there's always some fine tuning to do. I am enjoying it, but I have to ration myself or else I might just stay up all night and I have to work in the morning.
 
I am playing this. It's real good. Still have barely made it into zone 4 after 9 runs or so.
 
I have now beaten every boss currently in the game. I'm not sure how much I will keep playing it between content updates... there's certainly enough stuff left to do I could occupy myself with, but I might need the extra incentive of story content/achievements to keep going.
 
So the second major patch came out yesterday. Added a lot of the icons and did some mods to the various powers. And made the final boss less "unfair."

I managed my first clear last night with a good, solid build. And then I did another clear just a bit ago, but using the Hades equivalent of Heat to remove my ability to recover any health. I wasn't planning a dive all the way down, I even figured I wouldn't make it. Yet I did, and made the clear. What ever that "unfair" thing was, it must have tipped me over the line to clearing it.

That said, I'm not sure how much more I should play before the next major patch as, well, I'm at the point where they haven't finished some stuff yet. I will probably just do some of the trial runs for giggles, but pushing the story is pretty much frozen at this point.
 
Hey, this is out for real now...as long as you want to play it on PC/Mac/Switch. Is anyone here playing on Switch 2, by chance? How does it perform? I want to play it on my TV, so playing it on the Mac is less appealing, but I don't really know if I want to play it with Joy-Cons. (I don't currently own any other controllers for the Switch 2.) On the other hand, they haven't said how long it'll be before it comes to other consoles and it's already been a long wait for 1.0.
 
As a rule, I don't do Early Access for games that have stories, so I haven't played a single frame of Hades II before today. Got it on Switch 2 because with the end of support for Windows 10, I've become that much less likely to do couch gaming with my PC.

I've tried runs with the first four weapons. I can get to Oceanus about as often as not, but haven't seen its boss. Still early. Impressions: it seems about exactly as good as the original Hades, which is to say, ridiculously fucking good. But individual aspects invite comparison. I think that I like most of Zagreus' weapons better than any of Melinoë's that I've tried. On the other hand, Melinoë's default cast is a lot more interesting and tactical, and the Ω system feels good to use and easy to remember in the heat of the moment.
 
Decided to just go for it with the Switch 2 and after playing most of today I have no regrets; it runs fantastically and the Joy-Cons are perfectly cromulent controllers.

They really took a "more is more" approach to this one, huh? I feel like I've done a lot for one day of playing (reached the third area once, gained access to the surface), and yet also just barely scratched the surface.
 
As soon as I started the game yesterday, I said "When do I get a frog pal to come with me", and now that's happened. I'm manifesting!
 
Got my first Chronos victory today, but then I immediately had to put the Switch on sleep mode and run out to do something, so I haven't actually seen what happens post-fight yet. Looking forward to picking that up tomorrow.
 
I'm playing on Switch 1, same as I played H1, and it plays perfectly smoothly. I've got two Chronos victories so far, both pulled out by the skin of my teeth, one with torches and one with a staff aspect. Also a couple more near misses; I'm less good with melee weapons, as a rule (Was the same in H1). Still working on the Surface too, but only up to the third boss there; it's much harder than the Underworld.
 
So I stopped playing right sometime after the surface got released (Eris and I became very good "friends") and finally got some time to actually start up a new game. It's as great as ever.

That said, I switched to running Linux a few months ago, and the game plays perfectly well. Any game failures are strictly on me and being rusty after several months of playing Two Point Museum instead of Hades.
 
Paul le Fou said:
Still working on the Surface too, but only up to the third boss there; it's much harder than the Underworld.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the Surface has been kicking my ass too. I made it to the final boss there for the first time today, but was on my last death defiance and got caught in an attack I'm not sure I could've avoided. Feels like I might be able to get it on my next attempt, though (whenever I make it back there again).
 
My partner got this for me for my birthday, and I'm loving it so much. I was interested in the original Hades, but then Hades II was announced with a lady lead, so I was like "I'll just wait and play that one", ha. I've gotten to the Oceanus boss once, after like ... six nights? This game has a great rhythm of frantic and flow.
 
My favorite weapon so far is the Skull. Constantly using the special to dash through enemies feels awesome. Rolled credits last night, so I'm hoping there's some worthwhile postgame stuff to do, because I don't want this to end yet.
 
If it's anything like the first Hades, which I have every reason to believe it is, you'll have every opportunity to keep going and a lot of stuff to max out if you want. Relationship and character stuff mainly, and increased Fear runs to challenge yourself and power up more weapons.
 
Got two more Chronos kills today, the latter of which was on my very first outing with the Black Coat. That was a really fun build that reminded me of the Ares/Athena combo from the first game, because I was able to find a hammer that made my dash attack hit three extra times. I mostly just zoomed around rooms with Zeus on my main attack deleting enemies.

I don't know if other folks are interested in this sort of thing, but I found a super helpful and in-depth guide to various builds for every single weapon aspect, written by someone who's cleared at least 50 Fear with all of them. I'm hoping some of their advice might get me to a Surface clear tomorrow. I need to switch back to that path to get some more incantation ingredients anyway. Potential spoiler info for folks clicking through: it names all the weapons and aspects, gods, Arcana, and familiars.
 
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Finally got my first Surface clear today, with a sweet Sister Blades build leaning mostly on Zeus (with a bunch of duo boons along the way). One gigantic help was a Dionysus boon I picked up towards the end of Mt. Olympus which healed me for a giant portion of any damage I took at the end of an encounter. That combined with a decently upgraded Fountain hex meant that I didn't even end up using a death defiance in the final encounter.

Is it silly to be putting things like areas, weapons, gods and whatnot in spoiler text? I know some folks played this in early access but I'm not sure how the people who didn't (like me) feel about things like that.

Anyway, after clearing the path, I thought that the material I'd get for beating Typhon was going to be the other half of the incantation I needed to make Chronos permanently killable, but it still shows up as a mysterious question mark when I look at the Cauldron so I guess it wasn't. In any case, I think I'm going back to the main route for a run or two, since I need some incantation reagents from down there anyway.
 
I'm currently trying to convince myself to try the surface with a weapon besides my beloved torches, but I don't have a lot of confidence in my performance with anything else yet; I haven't even beaten downstairs with the daggers or axe yet, much less done any heat fear on them. But I'm at the point in the game where I'm being telegraphed to do more upstairs clears rather than downstairs, but the upstairs is harrrrrrrrrder waaaaaaaahhhhhh
 
Paul le Fou said:
I'm currently trying to convince myself to try the surface with a weapon besides my beloved torches
Click to expand...
Pro tip: try the Black Coat, it fucks. Follow-up tip for that weapon: the dash attack hits three times. Get yourself a boon like Poseidon or Zeus or Hestia on attack and go to town. Don't ignore the fact that your omega attack will [block almost every attack in the game while you're charging, either. (I've never actually used the omega attack to intentionally do that, probably because I'm not good enough to pull it off consistently.)

Barring that, you might consider taking a look at the build guide I linked in my post from Thursday. It's really helped me step things up a lot, both in terms of going into a run with a plan for what kind of build I want and also learning what kinds of weapons want particular gods and boon combos. To say nothing of simply getting more comfortable with all the weapons in general.

Got my fifth Chronos kill today. Seems like the game wants me to keep doing that, so I'm gonna stick to the plan for the time being.
 
So random run, just pocking at the surface. Took Circe's staff, and a Hephaestus boon for the cast. That did like 90% of my damage. Got all the way to the surface boss, the first time I have even gotten past the damn beach since I stopped playing during Early Access. I think I got the big guy down to half, maybe only a third, hard to say since the life bar wasn't on screen. On purpose or bug, I can't say, and don't care. What a final fight. Grand and spectacular.

Honestly I thought I borked myself taking a certain boon because I didn't read the damn thing on how much mana it was going to prime (150 out of 164, yipe!). I recovered though and made good use of it all the way to the top. Ultimately I just messed up and got hit too many times. Simple as that.

Now to take a break for a bit. Shaking a bit from the adreniline of a getting damn close to clearing the surface on a poking run.
 
Second Surface clear tonight on a run I thought was dead at Mt. Olympus, having run out of death defiances, but then a chance encounter with Athena gave them all back and better than before. It was pretty smoothly sailing from there. I feel like I actually have a decent handle on the Typhon fight itself, but the Tail miniboss beforehand still takes a lot of work for me. I just have a hard time knowing when I'm actually going to hit it.

In any case, my meta-progression path is now pretty clear, so it's nice to have a solid goal (and presumably rolling credits) to work towards.
 
You know a build is good when Chronos didn't even manage to trigger a single death defy. I spanked ass so hard it almost felt unfair. I think this same build will make the surface boss howl too. Circe's staff and a kitty familiar made ALL the difference.
 
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