Review: Hades II

Moonlight guide us home tonight
In shadow
All are one
Take shelter from the world above
In safety and in solitude
The Sisters wait

lyrics of Moonlight Guide Us by Darren Korb featuring Ashley Barrett and Judy Alice Lee from the Hades II Original Soundtrack

Preamble

When Hades II was first announced by Supergiant Games, I was both pleasantly surprised and cautiously optimistic. Surprised because Hades II was the first time Supergiant Games was putting out a sequel to one of their games. All of their previous games were unique, standalone titles.

Cautiously optimistic because Hades I is genuinely one of the best video games I have played in my life. How was Supergiant going to catch lightning in a bottle twice? My expectations for such a sequel were high, and I thought – no way would they live up to the super high bar they set for themselves.

When Supergiant released Hades II into early access, I immediately bought it and played about 20 hours of the early access version before I stopped. At that time I thought, this is good but I am going to let Supergiant cook and come back to this when this comes out of early access and into 1.0.

The game’s 1.0 release came out on September 25, 2025. I was on vacation in Montreal at the time and while I took my Steam Deck with me I was not in the mood to play video games while on vacation so I didn’t start playing Hades II again until I got back from vacation.

Out of the Gaming Slump

Before I talk about Hades II further I think it is important that I provide more context to my relationship with video games in 2025. After playing Assassin’s Creed: Shadows in March 2025, I was left in what I can only describe as a state of burnout when it came to video games.

As such I didn’t enjoy any of the video games I played for the months leading to the 1.0 release of Hades II. My relationship with the medium was at a low point and I couldn’t find a game that would get me out of this gaming slump. I briefly talked about this earlier this year in a post titled The Art Slump – gaming specifically was the worst affected.

So it was in this mental state that I started playing Hades II in early October. According to Steam I have put in approximately 150 hours into Hades II since then. Suffice to say, Hades II reinvigorated my love for video games and I mainlined it for a couple months. My notes say I “finished” the game on the 15th of November, 2025. I spent the rest of the month cleaning up some side quests and thinking about what my review of the game was going to be like.

Let’s get into it.

The Game

As with my video game reviews of the past, I will broadly divide this review up into two sections – mechanics and narrative with additional forays into things that don’t quite into either bucket.

A Note About Spoilers

The mechanics section will not have any narrative spoilers about the game. The narrative section of this game will include some story spoilers for various side quests and the end game. I don’t think there is a way for me to talk about my thoughts on the narrative of this game without mentioning the relevant story beats so consider this your spoiler warning.

Mechanics

One of the reasons the first Hades I games remains one of the best games I’ve ever played is because it felt so damn good to play. Executing actions in the height of the frenetic combat felt tight in a way that only a few other video games had mastered. In fact, I cannot think of any other rogue-lite video game that feels as good to play as the Hades games do.

My early access experiences with Hades II told me that Supergiant was going to be at least just as good mechanically as its predecessor. So the question I had going into the 1.0 release was how were they going to iterate and improve?

Weapons & Combat

Like with the first game, Hades II provides the player with six different weapons, collectively called the “Nocturnal Arms” to play with on each run. The game starts you off with Descura, the Witch’s Staff and from there you can unlock Lim and Oros aka the Sister Blades, Ygnium aka the Umbral Flames, Zorephet aka the Moonstone Axe, Revaal aka the Argent Skull, and my most favourite – Xinth aka the Black Coat.

All these weapons feel very different to use in combat and also they feel very different from their counterparts, the Infernal Arms from the first game. Don’t expect your mastery of the weapons in the first game to matter here. Each weapon also had several Aspects (the default being the Aspect of Melinoë) which when unlocked significantly changed up how the weapon felt to use and added an additional layer of complexity to what build you had in each run.

While I had weapons I liked more than others, I think all of the weapons in this game are fun and the difference in play styles on offer means that I could keep things fresh and interesting run to run.

Casts, Boons, and Hexes

Another significant change from the first game is how the “casts” mechanic is used. Instead of a limited amount of casts that have to be retrieved, casts are an ability that can expired and can be reused. Each weapon has a unique attack, special, cast and also “omega” versions of each that power up each move at the cost of the magic resource. The player character is a witch and as such, the use of magic to supercharge the weapon abilities plays a key part in combat.

Hades II also brings back the Boons system from the first game. This means that every run will have Olympian gods and goddesses offering you Boons that enhance your attack, special, casts and magic recharge. Like with the Nocturnal Arms, there is a great deal of variety with how these Boons affect your weapon and the way you play.

In addition to the Boons, you can also optionally get a Hex from Selene that can be invoked after a certain amount of magic is used. This game wants you make use of magic as much as possible and being able to use the powerful abilities on offer from Selene is a very very good incentive to master the use of magic. I was especially fond of the Wolf Howl hex.

Slowly learning how to use each weapon and its Aspects, the various Boons, and the Hexes was a joyous experience. Once I stopped playing favourites and started adapting my playstyle to the various abilities the game was giving me I found myself getting better run to run and being really comfortable with the game. Even a failed run was worthwhile because it meant I got better at the game, not to mention the narrative and resource collection progress I made.

A Short Note on Bosses

In addition to the various unique playstyles on display, every boss battle in this game is different and requires different strategies to beat. Like with the weapons, I had ones I liked to fight more than others and some were more interesting from a narrative perspective than others but kudos to Supergiant Games for the wide variety in boss mechanics and especially later in the game when the player can fight harder “Unrivaled” versions of each boss which then have another unique set of moves and attack patterns.

Final Thoughts on Mechanics

I felt myself getting better at the game the more I played – understanding weapon, boon and Hex interactions, enemy and boss attack patterns memorization. This loop of seeking mechanical novelty and mastery kept me hooked on the game for ~150 hours. With Hades II, Supergiant Games provided a master class in iterative improvement in mechanics.

Narrative

When the going gets tough, play a rogue-lite. It doesn’t have a story you have to think about. No narrative, just loop. Start run, stop run, repeat. Do it until your your fingers are tired of pressing the buttons on your controller or you are mentally exhausted, whichever comes first.

The thing that separates Hades from other games in its genre is its focus on narrative. No other rogue-lite does it for me. It has gotten to the point where I think I actually don’t like the rogue-lite genre – I like Hades. Okay, maybe Balatro gets a consolation prize. But it is mostly just Hades.

As far as video games narratives go, there are only are few that are memorable. For some games like Halo: Combat Evolved, the narrative has been burned into long term memory through repetition. I have lost count of the number of times I have replayed the campaign in that game, both the original and the version in the Master Chief collection.

For other games, I remember them because the writing is exceptionally good. Games like The Witcher 3, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind. I love a good story, with complex characters and exhilarating arcs that make me cry, laugh, or both at the same time.

I only remember bits and pieces of the story from the first game. Something about Zagreus and his dad, the titular Hades. There is the adorable Dusa and brooding Achilles and the good boy Cerberus. I remember the song Good Riddance sung by the inimitable Ashley Barrett but not the quest line that is a part of. Something about Orpheus? Hell if I remember.

So here we are, does Hades II manage it? Does it manage to tell a good story? Does it tell a memorable one? Does it tell a story that moves the heart and soul? Did it make me cry, laugh or feel anything? Find out, next time on Dragonball Z. Just kidding, I’ll answer that shortly.

Meta Discourse

As I was nearing the end of the story in this game, I kept hearing rumblings of criticisms of the end of this game’s main narrative arc. I am still not quite sure what the actual criticisms are, all I’ve heard are vague allusions, presumably to avoid spoiling the ending. Regardless of the vagueness of said allusions, it still affected my perception of the ending and of the narrative more broadly.

As someone who reviews media regularly, running into various opinions about a piece of media and having those opinions ultimately shaping your own opinion is a phenomenon I am very familiar with. In most cases, I am able to push past the opinions of others and articulate my thoughts on the work in my review.

In this case however, I was left in a state of confusion. That is one of the reasons it took me a while to actually start writing this review. I spent a lot of time processing my thoughts about the narrative of the game and why exactly it is that I felt this way. Dissenting opinions to my own meant that I had to think deeply about the game’s narrative.

I spent some time doing research into other interpretations of the source material, I read Ovid’s poem about Arachne, I re-read bits of Circe by Madeline Miller. I even contemplated actually starting a reading of The Odyssey, a copy of which has been sitting as of yet unread on my bookshelf. I didn’t, I think that would be a little much even for me and I wanted to have this review written before the end of December.

I wrote this section as a way of providing insight into the way I approach critiquing media, especially media I very much enjoy and have spent a lot of time with. I don’t believe in the non-existent ideal of a objective critique, analysis of media we love is also in some ways an analysis of our own selves. Ultimately, the discourse about this game’s narrative proved to be a boon to my process of critique and media analysis.

Okay so what actually happened in the story?

The narrative super structure of Hades II is identical to its predecessor. There is a main plot involving the player character Melinoë. There is a large cast of characters which play different roles in this main plot – Your allies in the home base (The Crossroads), the Olympians who give you your boons.

There are side quests involving some of these characters, even fewer of them involving a romantic subplot – Nemesis, Eris and I think Icarus. I am not sure about Icarus, I didn’t actually get around to finishing his side quest and I lost interest in doing so by the time I finished the game.

The primary antagonist of the main plot is Chronos, the Titan of Time who has conquered the House of Hades and taken Melinoë’s parents Hades and Persephone and the rest of the House’s residents hostage. The child Melinoë was able to escape this due to the help of the witch Hecate and was then raised and trained by her with one goal in mind – killing Chronos and freeing her family.

Every time Melinoë beats Chronos at the end of her Underworld run, she goes into the world of dreams and talks to her brother Zagreus in a timeline before the events of the game happened. Near the end of the game, Melinoë tells her brother that he needs to find Chronos in this past timeline and talk to him and convince him that there is a better path. This in turn cause a fracture in the timeline.

When you get to the final fight with Chronos, instead of killing him, you essentially use that fracture in the timeline where Chronos chooses a better path as a vehicle to show Chronos a better timeline – he remembers all these events that did not happen and chooses the better path in the current timeline. Melinoë does not kill him and Chronos frees Melinoë’s parents.

Now if this sounds like a classic deus ex machina ending to a plot you would be right. I suspect this is what a lot of criticisms of the ending are about. For the story to throw this curve ball at the end, an antagonist that stops being an antagonist due to time fuckery can feel like a slap in the face.

For a while, I couldn’t quite figure out what I thought of this ending. This was what I meant by confusion earlier. Was this a poorly written ending? Was this a slap in the face after all the hours of narrative investment into the game? I couldn’t quite figure it out.

What my current thoughts on this ending – this ending tries to impart a message about an end to a cycle. A cycle of enmity, familial warfare and misunderstanding going back millennia. What if there was another way? What if Chronos could stop and take the time to understand his family instead of fighting them over and over again?

I think the writers of the story understand that this came basically out of nowhere and the avatar they choose to express the anger, shock and frustration from this choice is through the witch Hecate. She is angry at Melinoë’s decision at first but eventually comes around to it. I don’t think this particular plot thread is going to ameliorate criticisms about the ending.

All that said, I still think this was a rather awkward and hamfisted way to end this story. There was no buildup to this and as such the ending felt in a word – unearned. There just wasn’t enough time for this angle of the narrative to cook. So It also doesn’t help that there is a bit of ludonarrative dissonance in the fact that you can continue to do Underworld runs and fight versions of Chronos in endless alternate timelines after this ending happens.

All of that said, I still find myself not disliking the ending. I don’t love it, I think it could have been written better but I don’t dislike it either.

Arachne and Athena

Now that I have talked about the main story, I think it is time to bring our attention to one of the side stories in Hades II. Namely, the story of Arachne and Athena. Before we talk about the story told in this game, it is worth providing some context to the whole affair between Arachne and Athena.

To do so I’ll borrow some bits from one of Ovid’s poems, titled Minerva. Ovid was an Ancient Roman poet so he refers to Athena as the Romans did, which is Minerva.

Minerva, goddess of weavers,
​Had Heard too much of Arachne.
​She had heard
​That the weaving of Arachne
​Equalled her own, or surpassed it.
​
​Arachne was humbly born. Her father
​Laboured as a dyer
​Of Phocaean purple. Her mother
​Had been humbly born. But Arachne
​Was a prodigy. All Lydia marvelled at her.

from Minerva by Ovid from a copy of Tales of Ovid

Arachne had challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest and the poem details their respective weavings. In the end, Arachne had won the contest. She had bested the goddess at one of her specialties.

And neither the goddess
​Nor jealousy herself
​Could find a stitch in the entire work
​That was not perfection. Arachne’s triumph
​Was unbearable.

from Minerva by Ovid

Athena then in a fit of jealous rage attacked Arachne who then was unable to bear it hung herself. Supposedly at this point Athena felt pity for her and get this – turned her into a spider using Hecate’s poison. That doesn’t seem like pity to me, that is petty punishment.

The goddess
​Squeezed onto the dangling Arachne
​Venom from Hecate’s deadliest leaf.
​Under that styptic drop
​The poor girl’s head shrank to a poppy seed

from Minerva by Ovid

That brings us to the story of Arachne and Athena in this game. Athena in this game still stands by that she punished Arachne for her arrogance. That punishment was a way to teach her humility. Even if I buy this particular spin on the matter, that is a disproportionate response from a goddess, the goddess of wisdom nonetheless.

To the credit of the writers of this game, Arachne is depicted as defiant. In a scene from the end of her quest line – Athena is briefly summoned by Melinoë to the woods of Erebus where Arachne is so that Arachne can apologize to Athena and ask for her to be changed back to her original form.

Instead she refuses to apologize to Athena at which point Athena leaves.. I like this end of the quest line. Athena should be the one apologizing, not Arachne. Alas, Athena in all her wisdom does not see this particular fault in herself.

Circe, Scylla, and Odysseus

I wanted to briefly touch on the side quest involving Circe and Odysseus. As some of you Classics nerds are surely aware, Circe and Odysseus have quite the history, the details of which I am sure has filled up many a essay and book. I haven’t read the Odyssey myself and my only reference point for Circe’s story is the wonderful retelling of her story written by Madeline Miller.

The side quest in Hades II does not dive deep into the history of the relationship between Odysseus & Circe. That is all in the past and this is Melinoë’s story, not The Odyssey. Odysseus side quest involves him talking to various entities from his past, including Circe and burying the hatchet so to speak. I thought it was a rather well handled moment despite not knowing the details.

As for Circe’s connection to Scylla. Scylla is one of the bosses in this game and I think she is one of the best bosses in this game. I do wish her connection to Circe was explored more deeply, the game barely makes a hint at it. For a little bit of context – Circe was the one who turned Scylla into the sea monster she is in this game in a fit of jealousy. What is with Ancient Greek mythical figures and jealousy?

Fun fact – Circe means “hawk” for her yellow eyes, and as Madeline Miller writes it “the strange, thin sound of my crying”. Hades II’s depiction of Circe has yellow yes which I thought was a nice touch. And her voice is lovely. Gives off British grandma witch vibes.

Final Thoughts on Narrative

So to answer my own questions: Yes, Hades II tells a good story. It has multi-faceted complex characters who made decisions that surprised me. On the whole, Hades II’s story and the ending of that story while flawed left me contemplating the Ancient Greek myths themselves and that in itself is why I can give it the qualifier of “good”.

The side stories and characters on display show an appreciation for the Ancient Greek myths unlike any other video game I have played and it made me revisit my copy of Madeline Miller’s excellent re-imagining of the story of Circe which I recommend everyone go read if Circe’s story interests you at all.

Yeah, I am satisfied with what I got.

Music

I would be remiss if I did not devote a section of this review to the music in this game. Darren Korb just doesn’t miss. The soundtrack in Hades II is just as good if not better than what was on offer in the first game.

I have been listening to the soundtrack of the game while I write this review and it is making me appreciate the music of the game even more. It is rare that I listen to the soundtrack of a game outside of the context of the game but Darren Korb has this uncanny ability to craft songs that stick with you well after you are done playing the game.

In the first game it was the song Good Riddance, in Hades II it is Moonlight Guide Us, I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death), and Bewitching Eyes. All three of those tracks stand out on their own and I think they are good tracks even if you do not know the in-game contexts they come from.

You look at me with bewitching eyes
A red and a green give me butterflies
I can’t disguise
The way I feel about you anymore

Do I dare
Open up and tell you
You’re the one I’ve waited for

Your sweet love potion
I just can’t resist
And I know
You’ve got me under your spell
Ohh well I
I’d cross the ocean
And I’d give you my pearl
I confess
You get me out of my shell
Ohh

They call it a crush ’cause the pressure kills
Down in the deep, up to my gills
You give me chills
And now I’ve gotta spill what’s in my heart

lyrics of Bewitching Eyes from the Hades II Original Soundtrack by Darren Korb

This song plays sometimes during the Scylla boss fights and it is one of the reasons Scylla is the best boss in Hades II. Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna be here looping Bewitching Eyes until I’m sick of it.

Visuals

If you have played a Supergiant game before you know that their art direction is always exquisite and Hades II is no exception. This game is a treat to look at, every character, every environment looks fantastic. I almost didn’t put this section in my review because at this point a Supergiant game looking Good is almost routine.

In a world of AAA game studios chasing sheer visual fidelity, Hades II is a breath of fresh air. This is what thoughtful art direction can get you. This is the best looking game I have played this year and it isn’t even close.

Also, the characters in Hades II look hotter than they did in the first game. I don’t know how Supergiant surpassed themselves along that front. Have y’all seen Nemesis? I would let her [REDACTED] me.

Concluding Thoughts

Every once in a while I play a game where in the middle of playing it I get a feeling. The feeling that I am experiencing one of the best video games I’ve ever played. It is a rare feeling. The last time I was this hot for a video game was last year was with Horizon Forbidden West and the year before that it was Baldur’s Gate 3.

Hades II is one of the best games I have played. Supergiant Games have truly achieved a mastery in combining narrative chops with deep rogue-lite mechanics while also having excellent art direction in both music and visuals. In a world where AAA game developers are churning out unimaginative, boring sequels and reboots Hades II is a masterclass in iterative improvement on a existing formula.

In addition to all of that, Hades II reinvigorated my love for the medium of video games which by itself is worthy of commendation. Hades II is the best game I have played this year and it is on my list of best video games of all time. Kudos to everyone who worked on this game.

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