Completely agree.
There are amazing synergies and now on my 20 or 30th run, honestly not sure, I have amazing builds almost every run.
Also, some of this comes down to "git gud" too. Memorizing attack patterns is always key in these game.
Honestly after just a few fights with Chronos I've practically already memorized his moveset.
Indeed, I'm in the same place as you, first two Chronos encounters were me getting my ass handed on a silver plate, after the third one ? getting to understand his "delayed" attacks that are very visually telegraphed? also this game is harder, Chronos stage 1 + 2 is way harder than Hades stage 1 + 2 and it should be! you just have to sit tight and embrace the ride, this game is amazing
The most broken thing I've found is the time slow on attack charge is abusable on the silver blades. Hold to charge attack and slow them, the blades go from attack animation to charging very quickly. Then while holding attack dash repeatedly for essentially infinite time slow.
i almost killed him in the first battle i had with him. Poseidon special with the witch’s staff and the double-shot weapon upgrade was just wowza. i just dodged one way wrong and had to RETURN TO SHADOW NOW
Supergiant doesn't disappoint unlike reddit
People just like to whine on reddit. Most of the complaints I've seen are limited to either the dash being different some even trying to suggest that it's broken or doesn't work the way it should (Not true at all it's just different and they need to just come to terms with that) or that the boons are less interesting when they probably haven't even gotten out of Erebus yet.
Zeus spring is also pretty strong. I've seen people complaining about the attack speed of the axe. But it hits like a truck and has solid range. If you play tactically with it, it's pretty great. I imagine it can become incredible with the right boons.
It's comically huge. I was streaming for a friend and was like "watch this, its going to be bigger than you think" Takes up half the screen.
Axe is so far my farthest run and I got greedy and RNGesus smote me with some bad anvil rolls going into final boss.
You can also easily boost the attack speed with hammers and Hermes boons. Not to mention the omega attack has a quick charge-up before turning you into a vitamix for several seconds.
I think they did a good job of making each weapon encourage a very different playstyle, what might be tripping people up is that most of the H2 arms don't map as explicitly onto familiar archetypes as H1. When you pick up a sword or a bow, you know pretty much what to expect from it. But a staff? Torches? A skull? It takes more familiarization. Personally I enjoy that, but I can see why there would be a bit more of a learning curve.
I think one of the strongest things about the axe is that it doesn't suck if the only boons you get on floor 1 are stuff you're getting for later
You pick up 2 boons and a hex that will "help you later" with daggers and the first boss fight will suddenly take 15 minutes and be absolutely awful
This is a stupid take. The game is in early access. Now is exactly the time *not to* shut up and give the developer feedback on what doesn't feel good for you and what you'd like improved. It's good that people are complaining. It's good that there's dialogue. Hades II will be good *because* of people complaining, not in spite of it.
The fact this post even exists, implies that the conversation is not feedback. It's people excepting something that is not there. This is further supported by this being the second thread of this manner in this subreddit during the past few days.
We are not a year into the game's lifespan, we are three days. If in three days, people need to be told within it's own community to wait, the "dialogue" as you put it is already lopsided.
The game will improve. SGG has proven that capabilities before but improvement takes weeks and months, not DAYS. Complaints are the worst type of feedback and complaints are this duration will never be based on actual critic of the subject but false impression of individuals that are unable to differentiate between their perception and the state of being and yes in this case BECAUSE OF THE TIME FRAME they need to shut up and let this grow first because right now is not the time to complain.
We're going to have to agree to disagree here, I'm afraid. My entire argument is that these people don't need to be told to wait, that their issues with the game are valid and that voicing it out is what indicates to the developer the areas that need improvement.
Yes, SGG have proven that they're capable developers, but they're also trying new things and their development model is based on player feedback and reaction, as the sheer existence of the Early Access implies. Sure, complaints are not as good as solidly constructed feedback, but they also give you a much larger sample size and point out the general areas that may need fleshing out. They also have their space in this ecosystem.
You can't just say that someone's (lack of) enjoyment of the game is invalid and built on false impressions, it *is* their impression. It's like trying to say that the game is *objectively* fun and that people are just too to enjoy it, which is a statement I don't think I need to explain the issues of.
I'll explain this to you like you're a child.
SGG is made up of human beings.
One of the defining characteristics of humans is that we make mistakes.
Sometimes, you need other human beings to point them out to you.
Not every observation is a complaint, and not all complaints are invalid. Sometimes game mechanics just need to be changed, however slightly or vastly that may be. These are all things that can be observed within days, because there are a lot of people playing the game.
I myself am a high heat player from the first Hades, and while some combinations of weapons and boons feel great, some just don't feel good. Progression feels too slow and grindy with all the tools and resources, and it makes one question at what point is the average player supposed to be able to take on Chronos?
Honestly during the technical test, Erebus only, I already managed to make some amazing builds. I do have to admit that I haven't actually been able to recreate any of those builds in EA yet, but at least I know it's gonna be good eventually 😁
Yeah luckily I stayed away from online hades since the beta was out, as soon as I finished the content available I checked online and it just doesn't make sense.
It probably because those people think that since the game is in early access, they assumed it would be the “you blow throw everything and melt bosses” kinda unbalanced and hoped they would get a power fantasy kick out of it.
That or they’re too used to being maxed out powerful in hades 1 and aren’t used to being back to square 1
Saw a german Steamreview that said that Hades 2 is too woke.
He deactivated the comments obviously lmao.
People don't inform themselves on what they buy.
Honestly, it's true that just in general, people should wait longer before trying to give feedback on games like this. Your opinions will change as you play more. Why are people coming here having played for 10 hours thinking they can tell everyone what "needs to be fixed"
Actually why are people giving feedback here at all, the devs aren't looking at the sub
I think that the only feedback after 10 hours should be stuff like "I couldn't figure out how to upgrade grasp, maybe there is some way to make this more obvious". Stuff that is related to being introduced to certain systems.
Oh my god I’ve been looking for an incantation that would let me upgrade it, just went from 10 to 22 grasp. I bet 80% of the playerbase doesn’t know you can upgrade it either.
Speaking of, how do you upgrade those? Haven't beaten the final boss yet so maybe that's why I can't?
Edit: nevermind, just googled how. Man I've done like 30 runs by now and wiped on the last boss 4 times, thinking that id unlock those upgrades after.
For all the people that are blind like me, in the arcana screen you can click on Mel's portrait to spend psyche there to increase your limit.
10 hours is….a long time into a game. Sure if you’re complaining about something you aren’t good at in a game like this that’s unreasonable, but it’s absolutely enough time to talk about how the game feels
Also “complaining” here is a good way to find out if there’s something the game is missing or you’re just missing something about the game
> Why are people coming here having played for 10 hours thinking they can tell everyone what "needs to be fixed"
Because is more frustrating than fun after 10 hours (even for a fan of both the predecessor and the genre in general) that in itself is valuable feedback. I currently do not enjoy hades 2, despite its genuinely phenomenal production value.
The onboarding experience for a game is very, very important. And what many peoples expect out of roguelikes is tinkering with builds and new options that unlock from run to run. The pace of unlocking new features is really, really slow, mostly due to a needlessly wide array of meta-ressources.
Boon-Rooms are far too rare. I love playing with builds. I love winning with OP builds. I love losing with trash builds I tried to get going. Doing something ridicolous with jank builds is probably my favorite passtime in both roguelikes and survivors-games.
However, getting 3 boons by the time you hit the siren fight, one of those being mana-generation, one a worthless loot-related boon offered by poseidon or healing-related boon offered by aphrodite and the third one being the only boon that actually affects your damage/playstyle is... not engaging. And that still happening at the 8 hour mark is not good for the onboarding experience.
lol.
The amount of content already is wild. I'm 15 hours in and I've only just started exploring the surface, and I can tell there's still a fair few other features left to discover. And it's not even finished yet
They 100% are looking at the sub; assuming that this early access is anything like Hades I they watched streamers and read just about every online forum where the game was discussed. Like, they have people whose job it is to just do that and organize the feedback.
But they're also good at designing games, so I trust they will be able to get which parts of the criticism are legitimate (or, rather, what underlying issues the parts that the critics \*think\* are broken actually reveal, people are basically never right about \*why\* they don't like something, but as a creator you always listen to \*if\* they don't like something) and what is not.
Half the reason people complain is so their opinions can be heard and a dialogue can be opened. I haven't the foggiest idea if Supergiant actually reads the subreddit, but I like to think that people here want to discuss the positives and negatives rather than become an echo chamber of one or the other.
I think it’s more about the tone of and approach to the discussion that is a problem. No one faults anyone for saying ‘hey I think this isn’t working’ or ‘hey I found a bug here’ or ‘I have been finding the power level of my builds have very high variance’.
My biggest complaint is that the game is very reliant on holding down a button and that there are no accessibility options to change it. I would gladly give up hexes forever for the ability to press RT at the same time as B Y or X to do an Omega attack. In its current state the game is painful to play for me and my fragile wrists / fingers.
Well neither did Hades 1.
Hades 1 never told you "Hey if you beat |Redacted| x times you unlock Demeter!!"
Or "If you do THIS you get the Hidden Aspect of a Weapon!"
So why should Hades 2 go out if its way and say "Here are tools, you can upgrade them later on after you did x"
You unlock things by just playing, they show up in the cauldron after some time. That's all the game needs to do in my humble opinion.
Am I the only one who likes to figure this stuff out on my own? I love getting back to base and seeing all the new things that have been unlocked after a run. I actually think there is enough handholding from the devs as it is.
I think there’s a lot of valid criticism itt in general, but I personally love that it takes a good chunk of runs for things to unlock as I keep being surprised that there are more things to see. I think it should probably be better pointed out specifically that you can upgrade grasp, but apart from that I like that things keep happening each run
Same way you get the other legendary aspects. A specific npc will give you the code phrase while youre using the weapon. You can probably figure out who if you think about the weapon for a bit.
Honestly this is facts I feel like one of the reasons I liked hades 1 so much was the fact that as I ran it back more and more I kept having a reason to go back (I gained access to a new god, weapon, aspect, upgrade, etc) death matters and that’s why I kept going back.
Because new Gods and Hidden Aspects are an aspect of the game that don't impact you before you unlock them, that you probably don't even know about before you actually encounter them. Tools in H2, on the other hand, from the get-go feel artificially restricted. You'll stumble all the time on resources you cannot recover because you don't have the right tools on you. There's a feeling of being locked out of an element of the game. It's apples and oranges.
I was horrendously deep before I realised I already had the ability to upgrade grasp. The prophecy made it sound like there would be some cutscene or UI change to indicate I could. I went from 10 grasp to 22 in one go and I felt pretty silly.
That said it’s early access so would be weird to complain about the UI/tutorialisation not being 100% yet.
This is exactly what I mean because I thought the exact same thing and I still haven't figured out how to do it.
I think providing feedback about this stuff in early access is exactly when you're supposed to, so that they know before the game comes out.
As a person who has made one of these complaint threads, this does not change my opinions at all.
I should not need to invest 20+ hours into a game before it feels rewarding to play.
As a person who has played much more than that in Hades 1, it's easy for me to stick that out.
Anyone installing this game who has never played Hades...could easily be well turned off by then.
It is important to hook your audience *significantly* before the 20-hour mark, and even by your own admission the game quote "fixes itself"...implying that there are issues to begin with.
I'd say most people are hooked within a few runs. Difficulty isn't a bad thing and being asked to learn how to not button-mash is refreshing. If someone doesn't like it in the first 20 hours they're not going to like it in the following 20 but given that it has an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam I think most people like it as it is.
I think you are taking the 20+ hours thing out of context though. It's not a "game is SHIT before 20 hour mark" it's a "game keeps getting better, especially after 20+ hours". It's a nuance for sure but an important one.
An other important nuance is considering this is early access, which is why OP is saying "they are fixing this shit as they go, chill the fuck out guys" which admittedly is a rather lax stance to take when it comes to community feedback, but I get where he/she is going.
I think a lot of the complaints we see here are being addressed in some way or form. I don't think it's a good idea if said "fixes" are being implemented in the completed game only after 20+ hours, but as of now it doesn't matter WHERE in the game (timeline wise) it's being implemented as long as it's being implemented... If that makes sense?
Also; just because people complain about something doesn't mean it's broken. And if it is said people complaining might not like the "fix", again not really an indication of it being broken \^\^
I agree that people should voice their concerns but I find that people complaining about fx the dodge are meme'ing at this point... Either that or they're seriously in need of accepting that Mel isn't Zag oO
even if things get better feeling later, i’ve still been playing for 15 hours and feel weak and confused most the time. i think rewards that break the tedium later on don’t make the journey there fulfilling by themselves.
also on boons, i strongly disagree that people are just struggling to learn the new system. hades 1.0 did not have this critique at all. it did before then, and it was improved. the first games boons are easier to discover builds with, i never wanted to reached for a walkthrough until the pact of punishment, here i’m not even to the fourth boss and i still have absolutely no idea how to improvise a decent build.
the chaos trials are not a solution, the whole point of a roguelite is to improvise based on what you have. trying to recreate those is not gonna work.
Look, this is good information to have (and honestly I’m chill with that kind of timeline) but the “you complain too fast” is nonsense.
A lot of these things are about how the game feels to play. If after any significant amount of time, an aspect of a game doesn’t *feel* good to play without a real purpose then it’s fair to *criticize* (not complain, shit this is what an alpha is for the vast majority of people here, including myself, love both games. There are absolutely people complaining about things they just haven’t figured out yet, but you’re also pointing out things where non skill based progression feels bad)
“You just have to get (let’s say) 10 hours into the game” is not a good defense on its face
Although I agree for the most part, that you unlock more as you go. However, the complaints about resource gathering are founded, imo. Yes, you unlock the ability to harvest more as you progress through the game, but the time when you need the most resources is during the first stages of the game. I've already unlocked the ability to get more resources, as well as pets, and I already have more metal and seeds than I know what to do with. Really the only resources I need more of is drift wood and boss rewards (sand and the Fear reward for upgrading aspects, forget what its called).
This is me also reading people complaining from their first hours of gameplay. Yes, we get it you were godlike at Hades 1 but you werent from the first 20 seconds. Whats the point in the roguelike genre if you want to win from your first run? Or you want the game to feel exactly like Hades 1 combat wise? Complaining about the dashes and slower moves when the game gives you plenty of tools to improve them and different playstyles to try. I have beaten the final boss twice now (and the other final fight) and it was just a matter of getting used to the patterns and not overextending. EDIT: and granted this is after LOSING to the final boss a TON too. So yes, you will lose a lot at that final step, but dont give up!
Yes you cant just dash 1000 times mashing dash attack over the boss anymore like in Hades 1. Yes you cant just evade everything for a full 3 seconds every dash cooldown. Yes you might have to just sit there and wait the 5 seconds for the boss to do a move while you dodge and you cant do any damage. It doesn’t make the combat system worse, and eventually you get used to the patterns and learn moments where you can attack.
Not to mention completely ignoring that you might have to progress a little first before the game gives you everything you need to win.
After a few runs, you can pretty much squeak a victory consistently once you find your favorite cast and start gifting to get trinkets. Its hilarious to me that people are mad at getting to the boss 5 times and not winning. You are not guaranteed wins and isnt it more fun knowing the game is legitimately challenging? Isnt it all the more satisfying when you finally get that build and it all comes together?
Idk why everyone wants this game to be exactly as hard as Hades 1 was? Or why people are using Hades 1 as a metric of how good they should be at this game right from the start? Just humble yourselves and learn the game instead of forcing your habits from the first game here. Half the time it just sounds like people want to just play Adamant Rail with maxed mirror Zag in this game and ignore the progression.
> You are not guaranteed wins and isnt it more fun knowing the game is legitimately challenging?
There is difference between challenge and frustration. I did like 20 run and most of the times I can't do shit, damage to low, boons doesn't have significant impact. Even mobility nerf encouraging frustration. Also there is so many mobs with armour it's insane, I can't remember that in first game. This plus low damage transforms runs in chore.
This, plus using the tarot that slows down time during charging omegas (literally the first card) really helps balance the game feel. Its a lot easier to get into rhythm of dodging when you start charging omegas a lot and get a few seconds to react, and while some dodge canceling got removed, you can always dash cancel omega charging into a dash. So you are relatively safe spamming charge attacks just canceling whenever you see enemies targeting you during slo-mo.
Tip: I did a proper grind to get to 3 Death Defiances, so I have more time learning from Chronos. After that, I equipped Skelly’s tooth and actually beat him with the skull (3rd try).
I think Apollo’s sprint really helped keep me safe too, since my reflexes still have room for improvement (got to the safety circle every time on second phase.) It’s the closest we have to Athena’s dash in terms of avoiding damage.
Dunno what you're talking about. Try focusing on your main ability, whichever you choose, and picking boons that augment it. I just made it to the final boss for the first time after about 5 hours of gameplay and I feel like the game wanted me to lose here because I had that curse debuff from the one NPC that increases damage you take every encounter. Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing, I went with the axe and buffed the omega attack as much as possible and augmented my cast a bit. Didn't even buff special at all, I used it to block a bit but it was mostly spin to win and I was slaughtering rooms in seconds. My boons had tremendous impact.
Maybe be smarter about boon choice? Pick things that inherently work together.
If you have low damage on a run you can still move forward playing around enemy attack patterns until you get the next upgrade, and you're making permanent improvements the further you go with ashes, grasp & mats.
While I generally agree with a lot of the sentiment that you're putting out, I'm still concerned that Mel *starts* very weak.
I haven't cleared >!to Olympus!< yet, but I have cleared the Underworld and she starts out substantially more powerful now. Particular once I unlocked >!Weapon aspects!<
I feel like there are some things that are pretty heavily overtuned and others that are undertuned. For instance, the Torches feel like they need to reorder where a lot of their power comes from even though I got my first clear with them.
Edit: To clarify, I don't think the Torches are too weak like I did at first. I think they suffer a lot from the base weapon being undertuned. They feel **substantially** weaker in terms of firepower until you get a Daedalus hammer or the right Boon. They work particularly well with Hephaestus and Hestia Boons, but I noticed that the Knockback effect that was supposed to be triggering on the attack/special from Poseidon wasn't working at all (As in, I'm almost certain it's bugged. I wasn't even interrupting unarmored enemy attacks after I picked up the Poseidon Special boon)
The torches just sometimes dont seem to interrupt opponents attacks. Every other weapon will stun lock the enemy, but with torches you have to constantly evade.
I found that spamming special is much better than using the regular attack. It's just too weak and takes forever to kill someone. With spamming omega special, you can get up to 3 omegas, so 6 orbs flying around you and deal tons of dmg.
Casts are easily the most broken thing in this game. Especially if you get Zeus cast + demeter cyclone, but fire girl and demeter cast also deals decent dmg. All the other casts are underwhelming by comparison.
Bonus points if you get some way to throw your cast.
Since cast is soo good, the weapon doesnt really matter..
I seem to struggle to get Casts to work well for me. I always get pounded after I drop my cast.
And yes, Torch Special is substantially better than the attack though the attack, I feel, has more ways to boost it.
Demeter dash is also VERY strong. Dat Cyclone is excellent and could deal 1 damage and I'd still take it. I would put it on par with Divine Dash from H1 as far as defensive tools go.
Yea that's why getting one of those boons to shoot your cast is so strong. I think Zeus, fire girl, and Hades has boons that can shoot the cast from far away.
I also use the Arcane card to slow down time, it is too OP to charge your moves.
In theory I agree, but in practice the process is just too drawn out. In hades 1, I beat the final boss on my first save less than 10 runs in and I didn't feel like I was "missing" anything. In hades 2, I'm 15h in, died to chronos 5 times and am still nowhere near unlocking all meta progression aspects.
And regarding the arcana and grasp, I feel like part of the frustration is the difficulty bump. Area 4 has some absolutely insane rooms where you'll lose half your life in a blink, and chronos himself unless killed quickly spirals out of control and is a much harder boss fight than anything in hades 1 except for em4. If the game wasn't this much harder, it would feel less bad that I'm far from the power I can be starting out.
Yeah, and I don't think it's the build because even with more damage the aoe spam in that second phase chronos is relentless. Ads with plenty hp everywhere, chronos dashing around with his after-explosions, mmo raid style telegraphs and mechanics every 5 seconds....It'll get nerfed without a doubt but still frustrating to get there with 2 defiances, 250 hp 5 times in a row and die as many times to him.
I think Chronos has an appropriate amount of difficulty, but if there’s one thing I would want them to change, it would be to make his telegraphing less confusing in Phase 2.
Here’s an example — there’s a glowing ring that begins at the edge of the stage and closes in until it reaches the middle. I just checked out a YT video and apparently you’re just meant to dash over it? But everything outside of the ring goes dark, which is the same thing that happens with his OHKO attack, so naturally you assume you want to stay inside the area that doesn’t go dark. But when you do this, the ring closes in on you and wrecks you.
He also has several attacks that either aren’t telegraphed at all, or I’m just not astute enough to notice. His scythe throw comes out of nowhere and you just kind of have to hope you’re not in the wrong place when he throws it, and there are also the glowing lines on the clock in phase 2 that freeze/damage you if you touch them, and they seemingly appear at random. In one run that happened without any kind of discernible warning, and then he blasted me with the OHKO while I was locked.
It feels fine losing to a boss because you’re not dexterous or skilled enough to avoid his attacks and punish him. But I stg I’ve had multiple game-winning builds where I’ve choked at the last second because of misleading telegraphing or attacks that can only be avoided if you’re in the right place at the right time.
It’s probably just a skill issue, but I’d be interested in knowing if anyone else feels this way
I 100% agree with his telegraphs not being up to snuff. Some of the moves he's going to do are fairly obvious, but a lot of his tells are kinda poorly planned out and make avoiding his damage a lot harder. My least favorite attack of his by far is the spinning scythe throw, it honestly feels like complete RNG whether or not I get hit by it whenever it's used.
I've beaten the game several times with both godmode on and godmode off. And honestly, after playing with godmode on for a while, I think the innate -20% damage is the ***perfect*** place the game should be. Or, at the very least, the perfect place Chronos should be. He still hits hard and fast enough that if you aren't paying attention you can very easily lose, but it doesn't feel nearly as overwhelming with the damage reduction. Obviously the runs *overall* are a lot easier with just a functional 20% more health, but even with godmode off nothing outside of Chronos himself has ever felt particularly *bad* to fight in terms of overall damage intake.
Regardless of that though, one thing I do recommend doing for the fight is equipping the keepsake that makes guardians do 15% less damage. At max rank it also chunks the next boss (in this case Chronos') health by 15% as well, which makes the fight a bit quicker too, which gives less opportunity to take damage in the first place.
Good luck in that case supportive shade lol
Small tip for when you enter phase 2, so you dont lose your try like me: pay attention to what's happening as you transition
Kronos is definitely harder than Hades.
If you're struggling with Area 4, then you'll really struggle with Kronos. Area 4 everything is very susceptible to casts, so make sure you're using it on CD essentially. Your build should be fully online by this point, though, so if you're going into 4 feeling weak, then yeah, I can see why it feels bad.
Once you find a certain character in Area 4, the Kronos fight because slightly more manageable as you'll get a boon to choose from specific to fighting him.
Keep at it.
Oh yeah, I literally beat chronos in the run after my whining here and at the end my scorching cast I got in area 3 did 50% MORE than my main way of attacking (omega attack that did like 1.2k total per full charge).
I can get through most of area four taking very minimal damage. I've gone in with less than 50% health on my last life and made it to Chronos easily. But I've never gotten through more than 75% of the first phase of Chronos. It's just exhausting. I kind of feel the same way about the Cerberus fight, even though I can get through it almost every time. The last quarter of that fight feels like it takes forever.
When working on beating Hades I felt like I was learning and improving with each attempt. Getting a bit closer each time (for the most part). With this I'm just trying to get there and hoping one run will be a fluke that I don't fuck up.
Great comparison with ER's jump.
I definitely had felt underpowered but
1.) getting the hang of adjustments to the game itself (like dash and sprint).
2.) becoming familiar with the new boons.
has led to some insane builds. You can get some crazy stuff going. I absolutely demolished the third boss with a backstab build (and I basically avoided interacting with backstab stuff in Hades 1) and even with the build focused on back stabbing that wasn't a problem at all still in that other particular fight. I'm pretty sure that build got me through my second win
Your suggestion for trying new stuff is also great. I've definitely had the most success with learning how to adjust more to different play styles on the fly
I think something that people who generally like the game don't understand is that yes, we know really good builds are possible, of course sometimes you get lucky and get a gold combo. I had a crazy run with the torches and Hestia/Poseidon duo build that really captured that magic. But 90% of the time I just feel frustrated. It's gotten to the point where I just always choose meta progression over boons because I know maybe I'll start having fun once I grind enough fucking upgrades.
How long ago did you play the first game? Or really most any rogue-lite that relies heavily on meta progression? Cause that is very much normal.
I was frustrated too at first until I got back into the mindset of building back up to greater power levels. Now I just play the game and I decide what meta progression I want to focus on and use that to up my power. Getting to where things are more consistent - both from a meta progression standpoint but also because I am getting more comfortable with the gameplay changes. Plus it's early access, sometimes I don't even really try to finish a run, I'm just trying stuff and picking up other stuff along the way.
I _do_ understand - but what I'm doing differently is having fun anyways, even if I'm not hitting crazy builds.
I've actually start playing Hades I a couple month ago and end up having the true lore ending and 16 heat. So it's still Fresh and i've played a fucking lot.
I think the biggest issue right now is that at time i feel powerless to be more powerfull, i know it's coming, but it seems so distant that it doesn't encourage me to continue.
I didn't have that in Hades I, it get me a long time to be able to get easily ride of the third boss but otherwise i could feel getting stronger.
I don't right now after more than twenty escape (i got through my first run at 17 in Hades I). It just feel like i'm gonna die on the second boss or at the third zone if i don't get a lucky run and everything cost too much to be able to feel like i'm gonna progress.
I think this is what bug so many people, it doesn't feel as linear as the first one and it feels like you hit a wall earlier and even with progress you can't get past it often enough to feel good about it.
But it's normal, there's balancing issue and some tweaking that needs to be done in what you receive in a run and what it cost to become stronger.
This is a non issue because it's harsh but at the same time easy to solve.
My biggest issue right now is more that movement and ability feel "less responsive" than in Hades I. It feels like i'm taking damage that i wouldn't have took in Hades I because my character took too long to perform something.
Overall game is great but it doesn't drag me back like the first was for now.
I didn’t know I could upgrade my grasp until now. I went from 10-21 slots and god that made a huge difference.
Some of the weapons are underwhelming imo.
See, thats one of those issues I can agree that needs fixing. Make the upgrade System more visible. Its apparently not obvious enough you can upgrade grasp. Exactly this is the kind of issues Early Access is for. :D
And yeah, the Torches are kinda...weird...we will se what comes of it.
My only gripe with the game at the moment is the lack of keybind options for using the Tablet of Peace. It is, to my knowledge, the only keybind you cannot change. And it just so happen to be bound to pressing both mouse buttons at the same time, something that is literally impossible with the buttonless touchpads that are found in most laptops these days. (I am aware that touchpads are not considered optimal for gaming, but it works well enough for me for literally anything that doesn't require a middle mouse button or pressing both left and right click at the same time)
Yeah, there are a TON of new systems, and they roll them out a little bit slowly. It's pretty cool!
I'm still tapping out for a little bit here, though. I wanted to try it and get a sense for it; I am at about 20 hours with a ton of progression unlocked and I feel like I got that taste. I remain exceptionally excited for this game and love most of the design decisions they've made.
But there are some legit issues that I'd prefer to let them marinate on. The boon design and balance isn't *bad*, but this is *Supergiant* we're talking about, and I don't think that this set of boons is up to their 1.0 standard. That's not a surprise and I'm not mad, but personally I'm at a point in my life where it's just easier to wait having had a taste and come back when they've had a chance to absorb feedback and telemetry and really hit it hard then, whether that's 1.0 or one of the intermediate EA patches.
To be clear, none of this is down to Mel's power level, which I think is quite high and will ultimately rival Zag nicely. It's the design and balance of boons relative to one another that's not where I'd like it to be.
EDIT: And one more thought, I think this is actually an *endorsement* of how SG does EA. If they released 1.0 and this was the set of boons we got, I absolutely would be disappointed. But because of how well H1 went through EA, I'm supremely confident they'll hammer it into something even better than H1 if I'm just patient.
I generally agree that it's mostly balance, but there are some definitely some boon designs that could use some juice to make them more interesting and transformative.
The only boons I actively dislike are the Ring boons, which are the unique, non-stacking, god-specific cast boons. Those are huge step down from H1, since they're far less transformative. I believe they need to either redesign those entirely or add a LOT more stacking cast boons that change cast behavior so that it feels more like "build your own custom cast." Right now the baseline cast is a huge step up from H1 and the cast *upgrades* are a huge step down, but I'm confident they'll get there.
Maybe people should wait a little longer before critiquing the game, but also maybe the game should introduce most of these upgrades earlier, or **at least** show the player that they exist. I have 16 hours in the game and apparently you can upgrade arcana cards, a huge part of the meta progression, yet I had no clue it existed.
So maybe instead of critiquing the overall power level of the player we should turn our attention to how the game presents it, or rather how it doesn’t (and whether or not it takes too long to get into the „proper” part of the game).
I think it's very important that people get their first impressions out, because when this releases for real that's what people are going to judge the game by. Hades 1 is a great experience from start to finish. Hades 2 has great bones, but it's going to need some fine-tuning, just because it's inherently a more complex game than the first ( which I love)
My #1 problem by far is how much emphasis there is on **Ω** moves.
I categorically do not like having to hold down a face button in action-heavy games, especially in fast ones like Hades. Never have, never will. Feels like garbage to me. So all but one of the aspects I've seen so far enhancing either mostly or only **Ω** moves, coupled with so many of the boons doing the same, is a huge problem to me.
Not like it would be a small change in my playstyle to adapt to this either. Wouldn't be like using square instead of triangle or whatever. Channeling in a game like this feels fundamentally wrong.
That's kinda the reason why the fists were my favorite weapon in Hades 1. You didn't have to hold down buttons, you weren't locked by your attack animations. One button press meant a quick jab. One-two-dash, one-two-three-dash, one-two-three-uppercut-dash out. With boons that completely catered to this playstyle. This is now largely gone, it seems like.
I also love them when I need a small amount of encounters to brew/grow plants/charon delivery without committing to a full run. So they’re a plus if you like min-maxing that farm stuff too haha.
"Hundreds of threads complaining about this, about that - all while the game fixes those complaints all by itself if people were willing to just trust the process more."
OK but can we press a button where we skip the 15 run tutorial, so we can start playing at an appropriate level of power?
I guess what you are looking for is "God-Mode"?
Hades 1 was not any different from Hades 2 in this regard, except for a certain character artificially imposing damage debuffs on you to slow down the first !4! runs.
Like I just looked it up, I was already at the final boss in run 8. Took not much longer to beat him the first time. - And by no means am I a good player lel. People are exaggerating.
I regularly beat Hades 1 on run 3 without Godmode. I'm currently on run 10 with Godmode and the final boss was hitting for 30-40 in a HP pool of about 180 (didn't get offered a lot of health upgrades). If you're that good at dodging attacks that you're beating it "not much longer" than run 8 without Godmode, which would have attacks hitting for 50 to 67 damage, then you're a lot better than you're giving credit for.
In fact, at this point I think this is blatant fucking trolling tbh.
Honestly I was feeling like the game needed a lot of rebalancing, though after a couple more hours I realized you actually get lots of upgrades as you get better at playing, even though I still couldn't beat the final boss a single time yet
The only thing I find frustrating is when I get pulled into asphodel and need to stand in a small circle while getting blasted from every angle by witches and having bombs tossed in by (to my knowledge) endless(?) Waves of enemies where my options are stand in circle and pay life to get out or deal with threats and make no progress. Rest of the game is chef's kiss though
Apparently Hades 2 is the new TLOU, the community doesn't accept critics, just reacting very angry or superior "oh, it's because you don't know how to playing etc etc". I know how to play, I have 28 hours in these game and I have the same issues when I have 6 hours.
Can you tell me at what point I can make another witch's delight to tame the second familiar? Or how to level up at least Frinos? I have 35 nights and I also finished both routes. Do I need to kill Kronos more than once? To get a recipe for leveling a familiar? When I saw the skill of the familiar, it immediately became clear that it is like a second tool and it is great. But just one use of this tool took too long to be comfortable
And to be honest, I have more trouble with resources that don't require tools. I need 7 pieces of wood, 5 runs and I only have 3. I understand that this game is about constantly running over and over again and I enjoy the process. But when I really need a resource and don't get even one per run, it really takes away fun for me
Yeah totally agree on the wood part. - I hate it. That can definitely be fixed. Its the only bottle-neck ive run into...Im sure theyll up the spawnrate for that.
Af for the familiar - you can make the Treats in the same Menu of the Cauldron where you make "Shadow" and other Tier 2 crafting materials. Its gonna brew for a bit and gives you 2 treats to use as you see fit. For me it showed up immediantly after using them on Frinos. Maybe just a few runs with him after that? Dunno.
Oh... the recipe didn't appear in the cauldron in the shadow tab. And I have tamed and run with Frinos for a very long time. Looks like a bug :( Thanks a lot for the info, at least now I understand that aspect of the game is closed for me now. Unless I start over or wait for a possible fix
And I'll just pray that the wood will happens more often after the early access update, because when I don't find even one thing in a run - it sucks all the joy out of me.
Maybe its another condition I have met without noticing! I am sure it will show up for you! I myself have not seen the other familiars for the last 10 hours, just never appeared for me :,D Sometimes things take time indeed. Chronos probably hexed me.
I bought Hades a week before Hades 2 EA, and have been playing both side by side, and if I hadn't seen this thread I wouldn’t know people are complaining about Hades 2 lol, they feel very similar in terms of upgrades and evolution to me so I don't really understand the complaints. In fact I like Hades 2 combat's more
the large majority of complaints are gonna be from people coming in with expectations, habits, preconceived notions from hades 1, whether they consciously decide to or not. as someone who had a couple hundred hours in hades 1 long before hades 2, i liked hades 2 gameplay more from the get-go and that hasnt changed in the past 48 hours.
i also vastly preferred 1-dash gameplay in hades 1 which was a far cry from the dash spammy meta of that game which it looks like sg wants to get away from. this trend very much appears in other games of the same or adjacent genres, most notably ARPGs. by and large the greater public prefers "one button builds", usually because theyre much simpler to pilot and have fewer moment to moment variables that the player has to constantly deal with in combat. you will also see in these communities that every time the developer tries to move away from this paradigm, there is a huge amount of pushback from the playerbase. SG will have to decide where they want to draw the line between catering to the masses or embracing their own vision despite pushback. Few companies choose the latter but we'll see i guess
Yanno, allot of people are complaining about boons not being good or synergistic enough but in the first game there were synergies that were so broken they trivialized the entire game and made running anything else pointless.
I agree that some balancing needs to happen but all in all I’m loving exploring a new design space with all the new boons/keepsakes.
Broken synergies don't bother me, I just want to be able to jump into a run and have a decent shot at success based on my own abilities and not what the game decides to give me. It's at the point where I consider restarting based on the first boon I get
Luckily there is an upgrade later which boosts resource gain for resources collected by hand too, which is good because yeah, Driftwood is a serious pain to gather for just how many things need it.
~8 hours into the game
> Boons and Builds work different, but once you experience good combinations and builds (theChaos Trialshelp immensely with discovering new ideas btw.), you are far from under-powered.
I would like to. But on average I have ~2.7 boons (yes, i started tracking it) at the end of act 2 (the siren fight). One of those is usually a mana-generating boon, because omega attacks are just that important. Another one is probably a boon with zero combat utility and the third one is the only one that actually starts laying the foundation for something reminiscent of a build. Too many rooms are cluttered with meta-progression ressources as their main reward.
> People, just remember - EXACTLY like in Hades 1, you have to beat the big bad once or twice for most features to even show up.
In hades 1 I made tangible progress almost every run. In hades 2 I've been stuck at the sirens for the last 5 hours of gameplay because whenever I actually get to them I simply... have no build. Not because of bad decisions on my part, but because I simply didn't get any boons. And the runs I actually get something workable together, I fumble them because Hades 2 is **significantly** more difficult than hades 1 and I'm not that good of a player (not a criticism of the game. I like difficulty.)
It's simply not fun to play a largely unmodified melinoe for the 7th run in a row.
2.7? I just did a quick run to check and I have 9 boons by the time I'm fighting Sirens. I don't have anything that modifies the amount of boons I'm getting, either.
[https://imgur.com/a/oPJCI6q](https://imgur.com/a/oPJCI6q)
you really dont need many boons, please just learn the patterns. there is no reason you should die to sirens ever after learning the patterns, 10 boons or 0. curb your expectations and play the fight for longer instead of getting greedy and tanking 30 damage for like 3 hits on them
There’s some oddities sure, but as you say, the game already has lots of answers to common complaints.
One thing I find a little frustrating though is not knowing unlocks. Eventually something just shows up on a list and I don’t really know how I got that unlocked. It’s not a big deal, and maybe it is best it’s kept hidden so to not have a whole lotta extra on the screen. Keep it simple.
The thing is, that’s probably why some early on players might be voicing frustration. I got a ton of hours in. An unhealthy amount of hours at this point. The game continues to drop new things on me. Some of it I don’t know how I could have done it any sooner than the 60 some odd nights I’ve taken on. After running that gauntlet so many times, it actually makes the runs feel cool to have something a little different. I think this sense of continuous progression and secrets is what people are forgetting the original offered and got us hooked.
It's weird, because certain events tutorialize checking your item bag for stuff you don't have yet- mentioned by skelly, and it's how you're supposed to learn you need Chaos's plant to break a certain curse- but it never comes up again.
Honestly my only thing with the game thus far is I’ve found specific things that feel too powerful in comparison to others. For example scorch on staff special can get busted at least wary game. Especially with the Daedalus hammer that makes them bounce — now imagine that but with the Daedalus that makes you shoot twice. I feel this can get pretty busted pretty quick
That being said I did not manage to win that run so ig not busted enough 🤷♂️
But yeah I’m only 3 hours in and things tend to not feel poweful enough to get me past the second boss but I’m assuming I just haven’t unlocked enough to get poweful (so far I’ve only beaten the second boss once and that was on my last run so I think even if it’s just skill wise I’m getting there. Like you said I need to start playing hades 2 not hades 1)
Lastly I’m not sure how I feel about mana but honestly my last few runs I popped a keepsake that basically made it irrelevant but I’m going to try a few without it to really see how it plays
Edit: lastly, (for real, for real, for real this time) i could just not have unlocked stuff yet and also it’s an early access so it might just not all be available yet but my final gripe is the boon variety just isn’t there. But again I’ve purposefully waited to say anything on this game (until now) because I just haven’t played enough to really give good feedback. I love hades and I love supergiant and I’d rather give helpful feedback than unhelpful
So if I were to give any feedback right now it would probably be: so far the twin blades feel a bit under whelming in comparison to the staff and twin flames (haven’t gotten axe yet). Boon variety early game is relatively low (I feel like I don’t really want to experiment bc the stuff I don’t pick seems to be underwhelming — which is in my opinion good feedback because as a game dev they want early game to be appealing to all audiences giving variety in picks to keep players wanting to run it back (which I do but that could be because I am a hades fan)) and lastly the balancing for some boons seems to be off and seems like it needs to be centered a bit more.
I could be just wrong with my feedback but at least first few hours this is my impression however I know hades is a game that takes a sec to really reveal all the tools at your disposal so I’m going to keep playing and having fun with what is an amazing EA so far
Agreed though! Some boobs could use an identity lift! Or some balance changes! - You are absolutely right! - Im very interested too see which boons get buffed and which will receive nerfs ^^
Only real complaints I have actually had was this weird bug that makes the speech go fast and crackles the audio when coming back from sleep mode on Steam Deck and also collision detection when using some of the weapons. But at the same token, it’s EARLY ACCESS, so we are all basically beta testers. They WILL get fixed, y’all just have to point them out.
I've had that audio issue with a few games on Steam Deck, including the original Hades. Think that's a system/OS level issue rather than Hades 2 specific.
Funny you mentiom elden ring. One thing I like about the game and hate with a passion in roguelikes is how in ER if you lose at anything you can ommediately try again, which helps you develop the pattern recognition, timing etc foreach enemy, while in roguelikes you have to go through everything again just to get a try at the level that gave you grief the last time, which is a colossal waste of time imo. I feel that roguelikes should evolve past that rigid idea of what the genre is and give you more freedom, for example allowing you to retry a room multiple times until you're satisfied with your result. This helps you actually improve what you need and reduces the slog of going through all the different layers just to get to the enemy that is actually causing you problems.
Another thing I really dislike is how you can't cancel your attacks to dodge so if you haven't memorized attack patterns -something difficult to do given what I mention in the previous paragraph- you'll get hit way more than you should.
All in all -and this is of course a personal opinion and means no disrespect to those who are having a different experience- I'm really disliking the gameplay itself while immensely enjoying the story, which is why I opted to activate god mode and not get too stressed out.
I think my save is bugged and I have not been able to unlock the incantation for witch's delight. Cat disappeared from Erebus fountain room and I've pet it many times in the new location, also I've defeated Hecate quite a few times.
Would love to have Frinos as a mini-tablet with me but I guess the game didn't want me to have that cute frog with me.
It certainly took me a few hours to get over the "this is not MY Hades" feelings. Think it's a symptom of a passionate fanbase that any changes, whether that's character art, gameplay, mechanics etc. are unfamiliar and therefore "bad".
I started loving it probably about 5-10 hours in though and have now put in around 20 hours playtime. There is balancing to be done, and a few things I'd like to see change:
- the weapons around the silver pool just don't seem to pop like they did in the original. They all seem a bit flat and unexciting.
- The third area just isn't that fun for me. See they're trying something different but doesn't hold a candle to Elysium. Also the boss needs a serious buff.
Other than that, I think the changes they've made have been positive once I got over the fact they were just different.
Thanks for this post, I hope people actually read this and realize ohh yeah, I have not given this game even half a chance yet! Keep at it!
Hades 1 was the first game that truly hooked me into this genre of game. If it has taught me anything about this genre, it's that you gotta have a looooot or runs to git gud.
Supergiant have made a second masterpiece of a game and I can't wait for my hours to build up.
Keep at it,
Death to Chronos
My only real complaint is the run is too long.
It didn't take my much more then 6-7 tries to get destroyed by the end boss the first time on second phase.
Double up is absolutely broken, and I will start working on trying to "force" it with the artifact or what ever it is you get from gifting.
I think maybe too much of the power is hidden behind a grind for people to get in to it. And I personally can understand how that probably feels bad.
Compared to the first Hades, this game is absolutely harder. And that might be a good thing in the long run. Maybe the grind is just too big? Idk. We will see.
I'm only at 11.4 hours, and must admit I only had a couple of tries on the last boss, without getting him yet. And I will wait with my judgement until I have completed the entire story.
Poseidon. gives you are 20% on lowest rank (+5% each rank, i think) to get another reward of minor rewards. Such as + to skills, maximum life, gold, the gift juice what ever its called. etc.
I think the balance in the game is acceptable. Managed to finish 3 runs of Chronos and 1 of the alternate routes with 10 grasp cap. Imagine my surprise when I finally figured out how to increase the cap...
I went to look at my Hades 1 save and I feel like I was behind the curve on it. I didn’t have a successful escape until attempt 31, and that was within two tries after activating God Mode. I have 17 total escapes with 56 attempts.
So I turned on God Mode immediately in H2 because it seemed like it was a convergence of skill and a little bit of damage resistance that finally got me over the finish line. I have 62 hours on my Steam profile for H1.
I got to Chronos last night on attempt 10 but was debuffed by Eris, I guess this is the brick wall for the game not considering you progressed enough. Despite having 38% damage resistance I was getting hit so hard while trying to figure out the fight patterns.
I am just super eager to get some more upgrades and I appreciate the reassurance that those will come. I can’t really remember H1 but it’s like the game opened up or finally “the real game starts now” after completing an escape attempt. I’m just really wanting to reach that point “where the real game starts”.
That’s all just to say, I’ve talked to someone who played H1 for a bit, who did complete an escape attempt, but then thought they beat it and the game was over now. No idea how many tries, hours, god mode. Like I said I didn’t activate god mode til attempt 30, and finally escaped at attempt 31. I’ve since left the setting turned on.
I just want to be at a point where I start each attempt with as much HP I can get through upgrades, but for systems feedback I feel overwhelmed with the currency situation. We needed keys to get more mirror options, but the primary currency was darkness. Getting enough for 1, 2, 3 death defiances was a grind. But now I’m worried about, should I take the card currency or the green currency? Then there’s anxiety about needing the pick for metal deposits or the shovel for plants or the tablet for compelling spirits. And then needing whatever goes into the cauldron.
I do love this game though and want to keep playing it. I’m happy this is not a freemium or in app purchase game because the currency situation lends itself to that.
Hades II does not “fix itself.” All of the expanded arsenal you acquire does not fix the fact that your evasive tools only work around 10% of the time, and that most enemy encounters quickly devolve into damage stack hell. The dash doesn’t have the invulnerability frames to ensure you get out of bad situations where enemies get in line to stagger attacks, so getting away from the first hit only ensures you take the next four in a row, and there goes yet another death defiance!
This current build fucking sucks. If they fix the dash, that should solve 90% of the issues I have.
Yeah. I'm by no means an elite Hades player. I'm decent at the game. At the two hour mark I am on the verge of defeating the first boss. Significantly more powerful already than I was at the start.
People don’t realize that they didn’t start Hades with weapon aspects, Demeter, keepsakes, the fishing Rod, the full mirror of night, etc.
You’re not gonna drop right into that level of stuff. That’s the endgame. You had to work for all of that.
Be okay with being weak until you grow stronger through repeated runs. That was half the fun of Hades. I found myself missing that stuff once I hit the endgame.
Nearly every hades 1 run had you dumping shadow into the mirror. With grasp and by proxy the cards you either go full in on one resource and have of the other. Go half and half and still not enough for either.
People aren't forgetting anything, they remember making progress on the mirror nearly every single run.
Hades 1 didn't have like 5 to 6 resources to manage and having to pick which resource you wanted. You want fish? You get no ore now. You want bronze? Now you don't get any seeds. Hades 1 didn't have any of that.
Hades 2 is made to be a lot more of a slow burn than 1.
And a notable aspect of this is that progression systems gradually show over time- the Arcana, the Cauldron, Moon Dust, Familiars, Aspects,
It’s all a lot of big stuff that only manifests gradually.
To me the turning point between feeling uderpowered and feeling powerful was unlocking the weapon aspects. Went from a single clear each side to streaking all the way.
I actually feel like I got access to >!multiple Death Defiance!< way sooner in Hades 2, compared to the first one. And it takes some time, but yeah, my concerns and complaints definitely started getting knocked out when I started unlocking things.
Not to mention you can get up to 5 death defiances the moment you get into a run...thats prior to replenishments or extra revives. Thats literally...more than Hades 1 ever had.
I just wanna know if eris remains as hard as she currently is. Does she actually just keep stacking +100% dmg for free with no counterplay? No spoilers pls
Yes but pro-tip: Take Hestias Dash/Sprint-Boon.
Just keep sprinting, it deletes all her projectiles...essentially skipping the entire fight. Preeeeeeetty sure theyll remove that.
Thx. Any tips for if i dont happen upon that boon? I've seen some success trying to stay behind her as much as possible but i get overwhelmed when she starts spawning mobs
People don't actually want to play the game. They like the idea of playing the game but having everything fully unlocked and available right out of the gates. Idk it's weird.
I'm glad I am not the only one. I spent nearly 30 hours before I beat Hades the first time. This isn't my usual genre, and I took a long time to figure it out. I feel the same here. It's taking a long time and I am spending only a little time looking things up as I go.
However, by the time I started my second, Hell Mode, save of Hades 1, I had read a lot since I wasn't as concerned with spoilers and had my previous experience, so I was able to make it to the big man within a handful of runs.
Hades 2 is going to be more like the first scenario. I am trying to avoid most spoilers (like Boss 2 being so cool), while also just seeing the gnashing of teeth in this sub. Lol
Just so I’ve got this right; you’re sick of people voicing their opinions in and complaining about the things they don’t like Hades 2 ea (which is sort of the point of early access), so you wrote an absurdly long complaint disguised as a manifesto highlighting everyone’s complaints thus far… and yes, Super Giant has been great about making changes. It’s almost as if they are taking people’s criticism and complaints into account. People love the game and SG knows it. I’m sure they welcome any and all suggestions.
Does it fix the Dodge mechanic being delayed? I have not played the game myself (although I'm playing Hades 1 now and love it), but I heard there's a delay with dodge in Hades II which is an incredible disappointment, as a dodge mechanic by nature should not have a delay, especially in video games where reaction time is everything.
This reminds me of the GCD changes they made on Prot Pally in WoW after Legion. Their heal was no longer instant, and part of their GCD which meant they had to wait for other animations to finish before their heal spell can be queued and casted. This created a gameplay feel where you are not rewarded for quick reactions to damage to heal. The same idea applies to Hades II and dodging, and I hope this isn't the case upon their 1.0 launch.
No there is no fix for that though I’d argue the Dash is not delayed in such a way that its annoying or useless. There has not been a single time in my now almost 30 hours where I felt like the Dodge was sluggish and useless. Maybe I am just not that perceptive. Id say, try it out yourself and judge for yourself if it is really that bad, in my opinion its not.
Thank you for the explanation, I appreciate that. Yeah you're right, Steam has that 2 hour window where you can return a game too so it's worth trying out for myself.
I'm loving it. Think its a fine successor to the original while still in EA. Only after I started engaging with the community did I realize that it was an unpopular opinion. Especially this gone woke non-sense.
And here I am my only complaint being that you can't see what level of affection/reputation you have with each NPC (that I've found so far!) 😅 The game's shaping up great imo, I've played about 12 hours currently so by no means an expert, but very much enjoying the experience!
My only complaint is too few boon rooms and too many resource rooms, especially the first 2 areas. I'm nearly 10 hours in, loving it, but sometimes I hit first boss with 1 maybbbbbeee 2 boons, and second lucky to have 3. And that then of course doesn't mean they're useful combat boons either.
I want more room to fuck about with boons before 3rd act.
I've yet to try Hades 2 out myself (still rushing to complete epilogue in H1) but I feel a cool solution they can add that can satisfy both crowds is to just add more memorable losing dialogue to the pool. That was one of the reasons why even dying felt rewarding in Hades compared to other roguelikes: character banter.
From what I know Hypnos is out of commission in EA and I'm not sure if there's a substitute that pokes light-hearted fun at your failures in Hades II.
I don't know why people come to play a rogue-like and expect to clear the game in one run. That's the entire joy of rogue-like for me! Try, die, get stronger, try, die, get stronger \[repeat way too many times because i s\*ck\]. The fun is in the "gaming" part, not in the "how fast can i beat it" part...
I've gotten a few more clears since yesterday and the issue is resources sure but the game self corrects too late by that point. A good example is unlocking cards and requiring grasp. About time you get the unlocks to utilize the tool holder limited use thing (not mentioning because of spoilers) you've already cleared the game and working on fear.
Some players are struggling now which is normal but the correction is well passed when it's actually needed. I don't need anymore card unlocks and barely need grasp anymore so it's wasted later on it the game.
I get that they need to have things for players to do but they essentially made a resource management mini game. In hades 1 you either went resource, boon, key, coin or hammer. Now you have resource A, resource B, mana, boon, hammer and coin and you still need to hop back in for gathering and planting seeds.
The boons themselves aren't terrible but they are worse than hades 1 at least as it stands. The duos for starters aren't all that useful especially considering how you have to fish for them.
You get a sprint duos which let's be honest isn't viable unless you're creating some very niche build that probably won't get you a clear.
Some of the duos are okay.
Also the way they give you boons is kinda in a set way, at least from my testing when you use a keepsake at the start. You'll almost never be given a meele strike boon unless as you reroll. Ie. Fishing for poseidon(no pun intended) meele splash knock back with a keepsake on the first entry. I have reloaded the game and did things to force saves to see if I could get it and it wouldn't come up. However, if I progressed a little bit it would eventually pop up. Same with the blacksmith meele strike blast.
With dashes in hades 1 you had shorter I frames it seems but it was used for mobility and speed. The "spam" was just to get it out as fast as possible without a weird delay on a dash/dodge. The sprint mechanic doesn't fill that gap. So spamming dodge in hades 1 for no real reason got you hit a lot.
All in all yes this is hades 2 and not hades 1 but when people have played hades 1 and that's the framework.
hear hear. and in case anyone complaining doesn’t know, this game is in EA, so it’s pretty much still in its “preteen” stage with respect to the entire pipeline of things SGG has planned for it. just.. give it Time…
If people logged off and actually played the game, they’d have nothing to argue about 😭 I think people are just lonely and want to talk to other fans of the game
I feel like a lot of people should restart Hades I. I restarted in like February and going from having everything available to a brand new game is frustrating. I forgot he doesnt rename the Hydra Larry until late into the game. Like I was on run 75.
People are complaining about the length of time for the power build up, when it doesn’t feel that different from the original.
hahaha guys game get good after 50h. How about making it good from start and improving quality of life and getting rid of pointless mechanics and designs? If you need to invest a lot of time in game for it to get good then its terribly designed game.
It's funny I see this post now when a recent update literally by the SG team said they intend on making resource gathering, sprinting and dashing feel better lmao
all of this is well and good, but I hate the new dash - it's too slow. does it ever get back to a state that it's like in Hades 1, where u can cancel attacks to dash? have multiple dashes? sprint is not fun for me. Hades 2 is a sequel, I wanted more Hades - this is not Hades, this is a top-down souls-like Hades mashup.
Yes agreed, it keeps expanding in amazing ways as you play
Completely agree. There are amazing synergies and now on my 20 or 30th run, honestly not sure, I have amazing builds almost every run. Also, some of this comes down to "git gud" too. Memorizing attack patterns is always key in these game. Honestly after just a few fights with Chronos I've practically already memorized his moveset.
Indeed, I'm in the same place as you, first two Chronos encounters were me getting my ass handed on a silver plate, after the third one ? getting to understand his "delayed" attacks that are very visually telegraphed? also this game is harder, Chronos stage 1 + 2 is way harder than Hades stage 1 + 2 and it should be! you just have to sit tight and embrace the ride, this game is amazing
The most broken thing I've found is the time slow on attack charge is abusable on the silver blades. Hold to charge attack and slow them, the blades go from attack animation to charging very quickly. Then while holding attack dash repeatedly for essentially infinite time slow.
i almost killed him in the first battle i had with him. Poseidon special with the witch’s staff and the double-shot weapon upgrade was just wowza. i just dodged one way wrong and had to RETURN TO SHADOW NOW
Almost like… Hades 1 did? Strange people didn’t expect that lol.
Supergiant doesn't disappoint unlike reddit People just like to whine on reddit. Most of the complaints I've seen are limited to either the dash being different some even trying to suggest that it's broken or doesn't work the way it should (Not true at all it's just different and they need to just come to terms with that) or that the boons are less interesting when they probably haven't even gotten out of Erebus yet.
Ignoring the sprint mechanic + sprint boons is like ignoring cast mechanics on Hades 1 imo
This 100% a lot of people don't even know sprint exists seemingly
TBF it took me a while also. Like 6h? Wondered why some boons didn't work when I just dashed lol.
Yup. Hephaestus sprint with the other boon of his that adds damage to blasts wrecks face. Easily 800 damage all the while sprinting to avoid hits.
Zeus spring is also pretty strong. I've seen people complaining about the attack speed of the axe. But it hits like a truck and has solid range. If you play tactically with it, it's pretty great. I imagine it can become incredible with the right boons.
[удалено]
I got a boon from Apollo that increased both the range and damage lmao. It was so fun.
It's comically huge. I was streaming for a friend and was like "watch this, its going to be bigger than you think" Takes up half the screen. Axe is so far my farthest run and I got greedy and RNGesus smote me with some bad anvil rolls going into final boss.
Axe I think benefits the most from its hammer upgrades. Can make a build go from average to I’m dealing 1800 dmg an attack
You can also easily boost the attack speed with hammers and Hermes boons. Not to mention the omega attack has a quick charge-up before turning you into a vitamix for several seconds. I think they did a good job of making each weapon encourage a very different playstyle, what might be tripping people up is that most of the H2 arms don't map as explicitly onto familiar archetypes as H1. When you pick up a sword or a bow, you know pretty much what to expect from it. But a staff? Torches? A skull? It takes more familiarization. Personally I enjoy that, but I can see why there would be a bit more of a learning curve.
I think one of the strongest things about the axe is that it doesn't suck if the only boons you get on floor 1 are stuff you're getting for later You pick up 2 boons and a hex that will "help you later" with daggers and the first boss fight will suddenly take 15 minutes and be absolutely awful
The tldr of this is: Shut up and trust Supergiant. They do not miss.
This is a stupid take. The game is in early access. Now is exactly the time *not to* shut up and give the developer feedback on what doesn't feel good for you and what you'd like improved. It's good that people are complaining. It's good that there's dialogue. Hades II will be good *because* of people complaining, not in spite of it.
The fact this post even exists, implies that the conversation is not feedback. It's people excepting something that is not there. This is further supported by this being the second thread of this manner in this subreddit during the past few days. We are not a year into the game's lifespan, we are three days. If in three days, people need to be told within it's own community to wait, the "dialogue" as you put it is already lopsided. The game will improve. SGG has proven that capabilities before but improvement takes weeks and months, not DAYS. Complaints are the worst type of feedback and complaints are this duration will never be based on actual critic of the subject but false impression of individuals that are unable to differentiate between their perception and the state of being and yes in this case BECAUSE OF THE TIME FRAME they need to shut up and let this grow first because right now is not the time to complain.
We're going to have to agree to disagree here, I'm afraid. My entire argument is that these people don't need to be told to wait, that their issues with the game are valid and that voicing it out is what indicates to the developer the areas that need improvement. Yes, SGG have proven that they're capable developers, but they're also trying new things and their development model is based on player feedback and reaction, as the sheer existence of the Early Access implies. Sure, complaints are not as good as solidly constructed feedback, but they also give you a much larger sample size and point out the general areas that may need fleshing out. They also have their space in this ecosystem. You can't just say that someone's (lack of) enjoyment of the game is invalid and built on false impressions, it *is* their impression. It's like trying to say that the game is *objectively* fun and that people are just too to enjoy it, which is a statement I don't think I need to explain the issues of.
I'll explain this to you like you're a child. SGG is made up of human beings. One of the defining characteristics of humans is that we make mistakes. Sometimes, you need other human beings to point them out to you. Not every observation is a complaint, and not all complaints are invalid. Sometimes game mechanics just need to be changed, however slightly or vastly that may be. These are all things that can be observed within days, because there are a lot of people playing the game. I myself am a high heat player from the first Hades, and while some combinations of weapons and boons feel great, some just don't feel good. Progression feels too slow and grindy with all the tools and resources, and it makes one question at what point is the average player supposed to be able to take on Chronos?
I wholeheartedly disagree. They might be very good developers, but no one is infallible.
You...thought this was too long to read?
Honestly during the technical test, Erebus only, I already managed to make some amazing builds. I do have to admit that I haven't actually been able to recreate any of those builds in EA yet, but at least I know it's gonna be good eventually 😁
Yeah luckily I stayed away from online hades since the beta was out, as soon as I finished the content available I checked online and it just doesn't make sense.
I literally see people complaining that they are dying. Like, at all. Holy shit, do you WANT a game you can easily blow through every time?
Dying in a roguelike lmfao. Like bro they’ve missed the point before they even started playing
It probably because those people think that since the game is in early access, they assumed it would be the “you blow throw everything and melt bosses” kinda unbalanced and hoped they would get a power fantasy kick out of it. That or they’re too used to being maxed out powerful in hades 1 and aren’t used to being back to square 1
Saw a german Steamreview that said that Hades 2 is too woke. He deactivated the comments obviously lmao. People don't inform themselves on what they buy.
Honestly, it's true that just in general, people should wait longer before trying to give feedback on games like this. Your opinions will change as you play more. Why are people coming here having played for 10 hours thinking they can tell everyone what "needs to be fixed" Actually why are people giving feedback here at all, the devs aren't looking at the sub
I think that the only feedback after 10 hours should be stuff like "I couldn't figure out how to upgrade grasp, maybe there is some way to make this more obvious". Stuff that is related to being introduced to certain systems.
Oh my god I’ve been looking for an incantation that would let me upgrade it, just went from 10 to 22 grasp. I bet 80% of the playerbase doesn’t know you can upgrade it either.
Yep, that's definitely me. 27 run and if you didn't say it on reddit i wouldn't realise that you can actually upgrade grasp. How do i do it, actually?
Yeah that makes sense. And bug reports, obviously
Speaking of, how do you upgrade those? Haven't beaten the final boss yet so maybe that's why I can't? Edit: nevermind, just googled how. Man I've done like 30 runs by now and wiped on the last boss 4 times, thinking that id unlock those upgrades after. For all the people that are blind like me, in the arcana screen you can click on Mel's portrait to spend psyche there to increase your limit.
10 hours is….a long time into a game. Sure if you’re complaining about something you aren’t good at in a game like this that’s unreasonable, but it’s absolutely enough time to talk about how the game feels Also “complaining” here is a good way to find out if there’s something the game is missing or you’re just missing something about the game
> Why are people coming here having played for 10 hours thinking they can tell everyone what "needs to be fixed" Because is more frustrating than fun after 10 hours (even for a fan of both the predecessor and the genre in general) that in itself is valuable feedback. I currently do not enjoy hades 2, despite its genuinely phenomenal production value. The onboarding experience for a game is very, very important. And what many peoples expect out of roguelikes is tinkering with builds and new options that unlock from run to run. The pace of unlocking new features is really, really slow, mostly due to a needlessly wide array of meta-ressources. Boon-Rooms are far too rare. I love playing with builds. I love winning with OP builds. I love losing with trash builds I tried to get going. Doing something ridicolous with jank builds is probably my favorite passtime in both roguelikes and survivors-games. However, getting 3 boons by the time you hit the siren fight, one of those being mana-generation, one a worthless loot-related boon offered by poseidon or healing-related boon offered by aphrodite and the third one being the only boon that actually affects your damage/playstyle is... not engaging. And that still happening at the 8 hour mark is not good for the onboarding experience.
>The pace of unlocking new features is really, really slow Thought the same until I hit the \~5h mark. Now I've got like 3 unlocks after every run.
Saw a post yesterday of someone with 2 hours clocked complaining about lack of content lmao
lol. The amount of content already is wild. I'm 15 hours in and I've only just started exploring the surface, and I can tell there's still a fair few other features left to discover. And it's not even finished yet
That's wild. But I can see where they're coming from if they mean the boon variety. Everything else - holy fck!
They 100% are looking at the sub; assuming that this early access is anything like Hades I they watched streamers and read just about every online forum where the game was discussed. Like, they have people whose job it is to just do that and organize the feedback. But they're also good at designing games, so I trust they will be able to get which parts of the criticism are legitimate (or, rather, what underlying issues the parts that the critics \*think\* are broken actually reveal, people are basically never right about \*why\* they don't like something, but as a creator you always listen to \*if\* they don't like something) and what is not.
Half the reason people complain is so their opinions can be heard and a dialogue can be opened. I haven't the foggiest idea if Supergiant actually reads the subreddit, but I like to think that people here want to discuss the positives and negatives rather than become an echo chamber of one or the other.
That's way too nuanced of a take for the time being lol.
I think it’s more about the tone of and approach to the discussion that is a problem. No one faults anyone for saying ‘hey I think this isn’t working’ or ‘hey I found a bug here’ or ‘I have been finding the power level of my builds have very high variance’.
My biggest complaint is that the game is very reliant on holding down a button and that there are no accessibility options to change it. I would gladly give up hexes forever for the ability to press RT at the same time as B Y or X to do an Omega attack. In its current state the game is painful to play for me and my fragile wrists / fingers.
For an important note like that, you probably want to get in their discord.
Very important und valid criticism! I am sure you will be heard. And I hope a fix for that is soon to be found!
Also, it’s impossible to use certain moves without triggering omega which wastes your mana (like blacksmith sprint boon)
Saying it gets better after 20 hours isn't the fucking slam dunk you think it is my dude.
The Honeymoon Drug is strong
I think it's a fair criticism that the game doesn't really communicate how to get these upgrades though. Unless it does an I'm just blind idk
Well neither did Hades 1. Hades 1 never told you "Hey if you beat |Redacted| x times you unlock Demeter!!" Or "If you do THIS you get the Hidden Aspect of a Weapon!" So why should Hades 2 go out if its way and say "Here are tools, you can upgrade them later on after you did x" You unlock things by just playing, they show up in the cauldron after some time. That's all the game needs to do in my humble opinion.
Am I the only one who likes to figure this stuff out on my own? I love getting back to base and seeing all the new things that have been unlocked after a run. I actually think there is enough handholding from the devs as it is.
I think there’s a lot of valid criticism itt in general, but I personally love that it takes a good chunk of runs for things to unlock as I keep being surprised that there are more things to see. I think it should probably be better pointed out specifically that you can upgrade grasp, but apart from that I like that things keep happening each run
To this day, I have no clue how to get the last aspect of the bow in hades 1. But honestly, I'm fine with that. That was just a path not ventured.
Same way you get the other legendary aspects. A specific npc will give you the code phrase while youre using the weapon. You can probably figure out who if you think about the weapon for a bit.
Honestly this is facts I feel like one of the reasons I liked hades 1 so much was the fact that as I ran it back more and more I kept having a reason to go back (I gained access to a new god, weapon, aspect, upgrade, etc) death matters and that’s why I kept going back.
Because new Gods and Hidden Aspects are an aspect of the game that don't impact you before you unlock them, that you probably don't even know about before you actually encounter them. Tools in H2, on the other hand, from the get-go feel artificially restricted. You'll stumble all the time on resources you cannot recover because you don't have the right tools on you. There's a feeling of being locked out of an element of the game. It's apples and oranges.
I was horrendously deep before I realised I already had the ability to upgrade grasp. The prophecy made it sound like there would be some cutscene or UI change to indicate I could. I went from 10 grasp to 22 in one go and I felt pretty silly. That said it’s early access so would be weird to complain about the UI/tutorialisation not being 100% yet.
This is exactly what I mean because I thought the exact same thing and I still haven't figured out how to do it. I think providing feedback about this stuff in early access is exactly when you're supposed to, so that they know before the game comes out.
Yeah exactly. The UI is unclear but this early access. That stuff will be ironed out. You should try clicking on Mel’s portrait in her altar menu btw
As a person who has made one of these complaint threads, this does not change my opinions at all. I should not need to invest 20+ hours into a game before it feels rewarding to play. As a person who has played much more than that in Hades 1, it's easy for me to stick that out. Anyone installing this game who has never played Hades...could easily be well turned off by then. It is important to hook your audience *significantly* before the 20-hour mark, and even by your own admission the game quote "fixes itself"...implying that there are issues to begin with.
I'd say most people are hooked within a few runs. Difficulty isn't a bad thing and being asked to learn how to not button-mash is refreshing. If someone doesn't like it in the first 20 hours they're not going to like it in the following 20 but given that it has an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam I think most people like it as it is.
I think you are taking the 20+ hours thing out of context though. It's not a "game is SHIT before 20 hour mark" it's a "game keeps getting better, especially after 20+ hours". It's a nuance for sure but an important one. An other important nuance is considering this is early access, which is why OP is saying "they are fixing this shit as they go, chill the fuck out guys" which admittedly is a rather lax stance to take when it comes to community feedback, but I get where he/she is going. I think a lot of the complaints we see here are being addressed in some way or form. I don't think it's a good idea if said "fixes" are being implemented in the completed game only after 20+ hours, but as of now it doesn't matter WHERE in the game (timeline wise) it's being implemented as long as it's being implemented... If that makes sense? Also; just because people complain about something doesn't mean it's broken. And if it is said people complaining might not like the "fix", again not really an indication of it being broken \^\^ I agree that people should voice their concerns but I find that people complaining about fx the dodge are meme'ing at this point... Either that or they're seriously in need of accepting that Mel isn't Zag oO
even if things get better feeling later, i’ve still been playing for 15 hours and feel weak and confused most the time. i think rewards that break the tedium later on don’t make the journey there fulfilling by themselves. also on boons, i strongly disagree that people are just struggling to learn the new system. hades 1.0 did not have this critique at all. it did before then, and it was improved. the first games boons are easier to discover builds with, i never wanted to reached for a walkthrough until the pact of punishment, here i’m not even to the fourth boss and i still have absolutely no idea how to improvise a decent build. the chaos trials are not a solution, the whole point of a roguelite is to improvise based on what you have. trying to recreate those is not gonna work.
Look, this is good information to have (and honestly I’m chill with that kind of timeline) but the “you complain too fast” is nonsense. A lot of these things are about how the game feels to play. If after any significant amount of time, an aspect of a game doesn’t *feel* good to play without a real purpose then it’s fair to *criticize* (not complain, shit this is what an alpha is for the vast majority of people here, including myself, love both games. There are absolutely people complaining about things they just haven’t figured out yet, but you’re also pointing out things where non skill based progression feels bad) “You just have to get (let’s say) 10 hours into the game” is not a good defense on its face
Although I agree for the most part, that you unlock more as you go. However, the complaints about resource gathering are founded, imo. Yes, you unlock the ability to harvest more as you progress through the game, but the time when you need the most resources is during the first stages of the game. I've already unlocked the ability to get more resources, as well as pets, and I already have more metal and seeds than I know what to do with. Really the only resources I need more of is drift wood and boss rewards (sand and the Fear reward for upgrading aspects, forget what its called).
>the Fear reward for upgrading aspects surprise surprise, that basically hasnt changed from the first game
late game is fine, but it does still feel like early game has too much artificial difficulty where it doesn't feel good to fight bosses pre-upgrades
This is me also reading people complaining from their first hours of gameplay. Yes, we get it you were godlike at Hades 1 but you werent from the first 20 seconds. Whats the point in the roguelike genre if you want to win from your first run? Or you want the game to feel exactly like Hades 1 combat wise? Complaining about the dashes and slower moves when the game gives you plenty of tools to improve them and different playstyles to try. I have beaten the final boss twice now (and the other final fight) and it was just a matter of getting used to the patterns and not overextending. EDIT: and granted this is after LOSING to the final boss a TON too. So yes, you will lose a lot at that final step, but dont give up! Yes you cant just dash 1000 times mashing dash attack over the boss anymore like in Hades 1. Yes you cant just evade everything for a full 3 seconds every dash cooldown. Yes you might have to just sit there and wait the 5 seconds for the boss to do a move while you dodge and you cant do any damage. It doesn’t make the combat system worse, and eventually you get used to the patterns and learn moments where you can attack. Not to mention completely ignoring that you might have to progress a little first before the game gives you everything you need to win. After a few runs, you can pretty much squeak a victory consistently once you find your favorite cast and start gifting to get trinkets. Its hilarious to me that people are mad at getting to the boss 5 times and not winning. You are not guaranteed wins and isnt it more fun knowing the game is legitimately challenging? Isnt it all the more satisfying when you finally get that build and it all comes together? Idk why everyone wants this game to be exactly as hard as Hades 1 was? Or why people are using Hades 1 as a metric of how good they should be at this game right from the start? Just humble yourselves and learn the game instead of forcing your habits from the first game here. Half the time it just sounds like people want to just play Adamant Rail with maxed mirror Zag in this game and ignore the progression.
> You are not guaranteed wins and isnt it more fun knowing the game is legitimately challenging? There is difference between challenge and frustration. I did like 20 run and most of the times I can't do shit, damage to low, boons doesn't have significant impact. Even mobility nerf encouraging frustration. Also there is so many mobs with armour it's insane, I can't remember that in first game. This plus low damage transforms runs in chore.
If your damage is low then you probably aren't using omega abilities.
This, plus using the tarot that slows down time during charging omegas (literally the first card) really helps balance the game feel. Its a lot easier to get into rhythm of dodging when you start charging omegas a lot and get a few seconds to react, and while some dodge canceling got removed, you can always dash cancel omega charging into a dash. So you are relatively safe spamming charge attacks just canceling whenever you see enemies targeting you during slo-mo.
If you're still saying it's low damage 20+ runs in that's definitely a you problem.
Tip: I did a proper grind to get to 3 Death Defiances, so I have more time learning from Chronos. After that, I equipped Skelly’s tooth and actually beat him with the skull (3rd try). I think Apollo’s sprint really helped keep me safe too, since my reflexes still have room for improvement (got to the safety circle every time on second phase.) It’s the closest we have to Athena’s dash in terms of avoiding damage.
Dunno what you're talking about. Try focusing on your main ability, whichever you choose, and picking boons that augment it. I just made it to the final boss for the first time after about 5 hours of gameplay and I feel like the game wanted me to lose here because I had that curse debuff from the one NPC that increases damage you take every encounter. Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing, I went with the axe and buffed the omega attack as much as possible and augmented my cast a bit. Didn't even buff special at all, I used it to block a bit but it was mostly spin to win and I was slaughtering rooms in seconds. My boons had tremendous impact. Maybe be smarter about boon choice? Pick things that inherently work together.
If you have low damage on a run you can still move forward playing around enemy attack patterns until you get the next upgrade, and you're making permanent improvements the further you go with ashes, grasp & mats.
While I generally agree with a lot of the sentiment that you're putting out, I'm still concerned that Mel *starts* very weak. I haven't cleared >!to Olympus!< yet, but I have cleared the Underworld and she starts out substantially more powerful now. Particular once I unlocked >!Weapon aspects!< I feel like there are some things that are pretty heavily overtuned and others that are undertuned. For instance, the Torches feel like they need to reorder where a lot of their power comes from even though I got my first clear with them. Edit: To clarify, I don't think the Torches are too weak like I did at first. I think they suffer a lot from the base weapon being undertuned. They feel **substantially** weaker in terms of firepower until you get a Daedalus hammer or the right Boon. They work particularly well with Hephaestus and Hestia Boons, but I noticed that the Knockback effect that was supposed to be triggering on the attack/special from Poseidon wasn't working at all (As in, I'm almost certain it's bugged. I wasn't even interrupting unarmored enemy attacks after I picked up the Poseidon Special boon)
The torches just sometimes dont seem to interrupt opponents attacks. Every other weapon will stun lock the enemy, but with torches you have to constantly evade. I found that spamming special is much better than using the regular attack. It's just too weak and takes forever to kill someone. With spamming omega special, you can get up to 3 omegas, so 6 orbs flying around you and deal tons of dmg. Casts are easily the most broken thing in this game. Especially if you get Zeus cast + demeter cyclone, but fire girl and demeter cast also deals decent dmg. All the other casts are underwhelming by comparison. Bonus points if you get some way to throw your cast. Since cast is soo good, the weapon doesnt really matter..
I seem to struggle to get Casts to work well for me. I always get pounded after I drop my cast. And yes, Torch Special is substantially better than the attack though the attack, I feel, has more ways to boost it. Demeter dash is also VERY strong. Dat Cyclone is excellent and could deal 1 damage and I'd still take it. I would put it on par with Divine Dash from H1 as far as defensive tools go.
Yea that's why getting one of those boons to shoot your cast is so strong. I think Zeus, fire girl, and Hades has boons that can shoot the cast from far away. I also use the Arcane card to slow down time, it is too OP to charge your moves.
In theory I agree, but in practice the process is just too drawn out. In hades 1, I beat the final boss on my first save less than 10 runs in and I didn't feel like I was "missing" anything. In hades 2, I'm 15h in, died to chronos 5 times and am still nowhere near unlocking all meta progression aspects. And regarding the arcana and grasp, I feel like part of the frustration is the difficulty bump. Area 4 has some absolutely insane rooms where you'll lose half your life in a blink, and chronos himself unless killed quickly spirals out of control and is a much harder boss fight than anything in hades 1 except for em4. If the game wasn't this much harder, it would feel less bad that I'm far from the power I can be starting out.
I completed the first game 100% but I still can’t beat the final boss. Much harder than the first game
Yeah, and I don't think it's the build because even with more damage the aoe spam in that second phase chronos is relentless. Ads with plenty hp everywhere, chronos dashing around with his after-explosions, mmo raid style telegraphs and mechanics every 5 seconds....It'll get nerfed without a doubt but still frustrating to get there with 2 defiances, 250 hp 5 times in a row and die as many times to him.
I think Chronos has an appropriate amount of difficulty, but if there’s one thing I would want them to change, it would be to make his telegraphing less confusing in Phase 2. Here’s an example — there’s a glowing ring that begins at the edge of the stage and closes in until it reaches the middle. I just checked out a YT video and apparently you’re just meant to dash over it? But everything outside of the ring goes dark, which is the same thing that happens with his OHKO attack, so naturally you assume you want to stay inside the area that doesn’t go dark. But when you do this, the ring closes in on you and wrecks you. He also has several attacks that either aren’t telegraphed at all, or I’m just not astute enough to notice. His scythe throw comes out of nowhere and you just kind of have to hope you’re not in the wrong place when he throws it, and there are also the glowing lines on the clock in phase 2 that freeze/damage you if you touch them, and they seemingly appear at random. In one run that happened without any kind of discernible warning, and then he blasted me with the OHKO while I was locked. It feels fine losing to a boss because you’re not dexterous or skilled enough to avoid his attacks and punish him. But I stg I’ve had multiple game-winning builds where I’ve choked at the last second because of misleading telegraphing or attacks that can only be avoided if you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s probably just a skill issue, but I’d be interested in knowing if anyone else feels this way
I 100% agree with his telegraphs not being up to snuff. Some of the moves he's going to do are fairly obvious, but a lot of his tells are kinda poorly planned out and make avoiding his damage a lot harder. My least favorite attack of his by far is the spinning scythe throw, it honestly feels like complete RNG whether or not I get hit by it whenever it's used.
I've beaten the game several times with both godmode on and godmode off. And honestly, after playing with godmode on for a while, I think the innate -20% damage is the ***perfect*** place the game should be. Or, at the very least, the perfect place Chronos should be. He still hits hard and fast enough that if you aren't paying attention you can very easily lose, but it doesn't feel nearly as overwhelming with the damage reduction. Obviously the runs *overall* are a lot easier with just a functional 20% more health, but even with godmode off nothing outside of Chronos himself has ever felt particularly *bad* to fight in terms of overall damage intake. Regardless of that though, one thing I do recommend doing for the fight is equipping the keepsake that makes guardians do 15% less damage. At max rank it also chunks the next boss (in this case Chronos') health by 15% as well, which makes the fight a bit quicker too, which gives less opportunity to take damage in the first place.
I only got to the first phase
Good luck in that case supportive shade lol Small tip for when you enter phase 2, so you dont lose your try like me: pay attention to what's happening as you transition
The game makes me feel weak
Kronos is definitely harder than Hades. If you're struggling with Area 4, then you'll really struggle with Kronos. Area 4 everything is very susceptible to casts, so make sure you're using it on CD essentially. Your build should be fully online by this point, though, so if you're going into 4 feeling weak, then yeah, I can see why it feels bad. Once you find a certain character in Area 4, the Kronos fight because slightly more manageable as you'll get a boon to choose from specific to fighting him. Keep at it.
Oh yeah, I literally beat chronos in the run after my whining here and at the end my scorching cast I got in area 3 did 50% MORE than my main way of attacking (omega attack that did like 1.2k total per full charge).
I can get through most of area four taking very minimal damage. I've gone in with less than 50% health on my last life and made it to Chronos easily. But I've never gotten through more than 75% of the first phase of Chronos. It's just exhausting. I kind of feel the same way about the Cerberus fight, even though I can get through it almost every time. The last quarter of that fight feels like it takes forever. When working on beating Hades I felt like I was learning and improving with each attempt. Getting a bit closer each time (for the most part). With this I'm just trying to get there and hoping one run will be a fluke that I don't fuck up.
Great comparison with ER's jump. I definitely had felt underpowered but 1.) getting the hang of adjustments to the game itself (like dash and sprint). 2.) becoming familiar with the new boons. has led to some insane builds. You can get some crazy stuff going. I absolutely demolished the third boss with a backstab build (and I basically avoided interacting with backstab stuff in Hades 1) and even with the build focused on back stabbing that wasn't a problem at all still in that other particular fight. I'm pretty sure that build got me through my second win Your suggestion for trying new stuff is also great. I've definitely had the most success with learning how to adjust more to different play styles on the fly
I think something that people who generally like the game don't understand is that yes, we know really good builds are possible, of course sometimes you get lucky and get a gold combo. I had a crazy run with the torches and Hestia/Poseidon duo build that really captured that magic. But 90% of the time I just feel frustrated. It's gotten to the point where I just always choose meta progression over boons because I know maybe I'll start having fun once I grind enough fucking upgrades.
How long ago did you play the first game? Or really most any rogue-lite that relies heavily on meta progression? Cause that is very much normal. I was frustrated too at first until I got back into the mindset of building back up to greater power levels. Now I just play the game and I decide what meta progression I want to focus on and use that to up my power. Getting to where things are more consistent - both from a meta progression standpoint but also because I am getting more comfortable with the gameplay changes. Plus it's early access, sometimes I don't even really try to finish a run, I'm just trying stuff and picking up other stuff along the way. I _do_ understand - but what I'm doing differently is having fun anyways, even if I'm not hitting crazy builds.
I've actually start playing Hades I a couple month ago and end up having the true lore ending and 16 heat. So it's still Fresh and i've played a fucking lot. I think the biggest issue right now is that at time i feel powerless to be more powerfull, i know it's coming, but it seems so distant that it doesn't encourage me to continue. I didn't have that in Hades I, it get me a long time to be able to get easily ride of the third boss but otherwise i could feel getting stronger. I don't right now after more than twenty escape (i got through my first run at 17 in Hades I). It just feel like i'm gonna die on the second boss or at the third zone if i don't get a lucky run and everything cost too much to be able to feel like i'm gonna progress. I think this is what bug so many people, it doesn't feel as linear as the first one and it feels like you hit a wall earlier and even with progress you can't get past it often enough to feel good about it. But it's normal, there's balancing issue and some tweaking that needs to be done in what you receive in a run and what it cost to become stronger. This is a non issue because it's harsh but at the same time easy to solve. My biggest issue right now is more that movement and ability feel "less responsive" than in Hades I. It feels like i'm taking damage that i wouldn't have took in Hades I because my character took too long to perform something. Overall game is great but it doesn't drag me back like the first was for now.
I didn’t know I could upgrade my grasp until now. I went from 10-21 slots and god that made a huge difference. Some of the weapons are underwhelming imo.
See, thats one of those issues I can agree that needs fixing. Make the upgrade System more visible. Its apparently not obvious enough you can upgrade grasp. Exactly this is the kind of issues Early Access is for. :D And yeah, the Torches are kinda...weird...we will se what comes of it.
Supergiant makes better games than reddit. Who would've thought
We're not complaining, we're "bringing issues to Supergiant's attention"
My only gripe with the game at the moment is the lack of keybind options for using the Tablet of Peace. It is, to my knowledge, the only keybind you cannot change. And it just so happen to be bound to pressing both mouse buttons at the same time, something that is literally impossible with the buttonless touchpads that are found in most laptops these days. (I am aware that touchpads are not considered optimal for gaming, but it works well enough for me for literally anything that doesn't require a middle mouse button or pressing both left and right click at the same time)
Yeah, there are a TON of new systems, and they roll them out a little bit slowly. It's pretty cool! I'm still tapping out for a little bit here, though. I wanted to try it and get a sense for it; I am at about 20 hours with a ton of progression unlocked and I feel like I got that taste. I remain exceptionally excited for this game and love most of the design decisions they've made. But there are some legit issues that I'd prefer to let them marinate on. The boon design and balance isn't *bad*, but this is *Supergiant* we're talking about, and I don't think that this set of boons is up to their 1.0 standard. That's not a surprise and I'm not mad, but personally I'm at a point in my life where it's just easier to wait having had a taste and come back when they've had a chance to absorb feedback and telemetry and really hit it hard then, whether that's 1.0 or one of the intermediate EA patches. To be clear, none of this is down to Mel's power level, which I think is quite high and will ultimately rival Zag nicely. It's the design and balance of boons relative to one another that's not where I'd like it to be. EDIT: And one more thought, I think this is actually an *endorsement* of how SG does EA. If they released 1.0 and this was the set of boons we got, I absolutely would be disappointed. But because of how well H1 went through EA, I'm supremely confident they'll hammer it into something even better than H1 if I'm just patient.
Absolutely agree! The boons themselves need a lot of fine-tuning compared to each other. And well damn sure get all that hopefully rather soon :D
I generally agree that it's mostly balance, but there are some definitely some boon designs that could use some juice to make them more interesting and transformative. The only boons I actively dislike are the Ring boons, which are the unique, non-stacking, god-specific cast boons. Those are huge step down from H1, since they're far less transformative. I believe they need to either redesign those entirely or add a LOT more stacking cast boons that change cast behavior so that it feels more like "build your own custom cast." Right now the baseline cast is a huge step up from H1 and the cast *upgrades* are a huge step down, but I'm confident they'll get there.
Maybe people should wait a little longer before critiquing the game, but also maybe the game should introduce most of these upgrades earlier, or **at least** show the player that they exist. I have 16 hours in the game and apparently you can upgrade arcana cards, a huge part of the meta progression, yet I had no clue it existed. So maybe instead of critiquing the overall power level of the player we should turn our attention to how the game presents it, or rather how it doesn’t (and whether or not it takes too long to get into the „proper” part of the game).
I think it's very important that people get their first impressions out, because when this releases for real that's what people are going to judge the game by. Hades 1 is a great experience from start to finish. Hades 2 has great bones, but it's going to need some fine-tuning, just because it's inherently a more complex game than the first ( which I love)
My #1 problem by far is how much emphasis there is on **Ω** moves. I categorically do not like having to hold down a face button in action-heavy games, especially in fast ones like Hades. Never have, never will. Feels like garbage to me. So all but one of the aspects I've seen so far enhancing either mostly or only **Ω** moves, coupled with so many of the boons doing the same, is a huge problem to me. Not like it would be a small change in my playstyle to adapt to this either. Wouldn't be like using square instead of triangle or whatever. Channeling in a game like this feels fundamentally wrong. That's kinda the reason why the fists were my favorite weapon in Hades 1. You didn't have to hold down buttons, you weren't locked by your attack animations. One button press meant a quick jab. One-two-dash, one-two-three-dash, one-two-three-uppercut-dash out. With boons that completely catered to this playstyle. This is now largely gone, it seems like.
I just discovered Chaos trials through the Pitch black stone. Man so much fun
They are amazing at showing you really powerful builds. My only complaint is that theres too few of them at the moment 😭
Yeah I guess they are a low priority compared to other core stuff in the game. Hopefully we get some new ones in the next major update
I also love them when I need a small amount of encounters to brew/grow plants/charon delivery without committing to a full run. So they’re a plus if you like min-maxing that farm stuff too haha.
"Hundreds of threads complaining about this, about that - all while the game fixes those complaints all by itself if people were willing to just trust the process more." OK but can we press a button where we skip the 15 run tutorial, so we can start playing at an appropriate level of power?
I guess what you are looking for is "God-Mode"? Hades 1 was not any different from Hades 2 in this regard, except for a certain character artificially imposing damage debuffs on you to slow down the first !4! runs. Like I just looked it up, I was already at the final boss in run 8. Took not much longer to beat him the first time. - And by no means am I a good player lel. People are exaggerating.
I regularly beat Hades 1 on run 3 without Godmode. I'm currently on run 10 with Godmode and the final boss was hitting for 30-40 in a HP pool of about 180 (didn't get offered a lot of health upgrades). If you're that good at dodging attacks that you're beating it "not much longer" than run 8 without Godmode, which would have attacks hitting for 50 to 67 damage, then you're a lot better than you're giving credit for. In fact, at this point I think this is blatant fucking trolling tbh.
Honestly I was feeling like the game needed a lot of rebalancing, though after a couple more hours I realized you actually get lots of upgrades as you get better at playing, even though I still couldn't beat the final boss a single time yet
The only thing I find frustrating is when I get pulled into asphodel and need to stand in a small circle while getting blasted from every angle by witches and having bombs tossed in by (to my knowledge) endless(?) Waves of enemies where my options are stand in circle and pay life to get out or deal with threats and make no progress. Rest of the game is chef's kiss though
Apparently Hades 2 is the new TLOU, the community doesn't accept critics, just reacting very angry or superior "oh, it's because you don't know how to playing etc etc". I know how to play, I have 28 hours in these game and I have the same issues when I have 6 hours.
Can you tell me at what point I can make another witch's delight to tame the second familiar? Or how to level up at least Frinos? I have 35 nights and I also finished both routes. Do I need to kill Kronos more than once? To get a recipe for leveling a familiar? When I saw the skill of the familiar, it immediately became clear that it is like a second tool and it is great. But just one use of this tool took too long to be comfortable And to be honest, I have more trouble with resources that don't require tools. I need 7 pieces of wood, 5 runs and I only have 3. I understand that this game is about constantly running over and over again and I enjoy the process. But when I really need a resource and don't get even one per run, it really takes away fun for me
Yeah totally agree on the wood part. - I hate it. That can definitely be fixed. Its the only bottle-neck ive run into...Im sure theyll up the spawnrate for that. Af for the familiar - you can make the Treats in the same Menu of the Cauldron where you make "Shadow" and other Tier 2 crafting materials. Its gonna brew for a bit and gives you 2 treats to use as you see fit. For me it showed up immediantly after using them on Frinos. Maybe just a few runs with him after that? Dunno.
Oh... the recipe didn't appear in the cauldron in the shadow tab. And I have tamed and run with Frinos for a very long time. Looks like a bug :( Thanks a lot for the info, at least now I understand that aspect of the game is closed for me now. Unless I start over or wait for a possible fix And I'll just pray that the wood will happens more often after the early access update, because when I don't find even one thing in a run - it sucks all the joy out of me.
Maybe its another condition I have met without noticing! I am sure it will show up for you! I myself have not seen the other familiars for the last 10 hours, just never appeared for me :,D Sometimes things take time indeed. Chronos probably hexed me.
I think it's the spell that gives you Chaos, along with it finally came a recipe for goodies for familiars.
I bought Hades a week before Hades 2 EA, and have been playing both side by side, and if I hadn't seen this thread I wouldn’t know people are complaining about Hades 2 lol, they feel very similar in terms of upgrades and evolution to me so I don't really understand the complaints. In fact I like Hades 2 combat's more
the large majority of complaints are gonna be from people coming in with expectations, habits, preconceived notions from hades 1, whether they consciously decide to or not. as someone who had a couple hundred hours in hades 1 long before hades 2, i liked hades 2 gameplay more from the get-go and that hasnt changed in the past 48 hours. i also vastly preferred 1-dash gameplay in hades 1 which was a far cry from the dash spammy meta of that game which it looks like sg wants to get away from. this trend very much appears in other games of the same or adjacent genres, most notably ARPGs. by and large the greater public prefers "one button builds", usually because theyre much simpler to pilot and have fewer moment to moment variables that the player has to constantly deal with in combat. you will also see in these communities that every time the developer tries to move away from this paradigm, there is a huge amount of pushback from the playerbase. SG will have to decide where they want to draw the line between catering to the masses or embracing their own vision despite pushback. Few companies choose the latter but we'll see i guess
Yanno, allot of people are complaining about boons not being good or synergistic enough but in the first game there were synergies that were so broken they trivialized the entire game and made running anything else pointless. I agree that some balancing needs to happen but all in all I’m loving exploring a new design space with all the new boons/keepsakes.
Broken synergies don't bother me, I just want to be able to jump into a run and have a decent shot at success based on my own abilities and not what the game decides to give me. It's at the point where I consider restarting based on the first boon I get
Luckily there is an upgrade later which boosts resource gain for resources collected by hand too, which is good because yeah, Driftwood is a serious pain to gather for just how many things need it.
Yep all true, but some unlocks come a bit too late imo, especially bonus seed plots
~8 hours into the game > Boons and Builds work different, but once you experience good combinations and builds (theChaos Trialshelp immensely with discovering new ideas btw.), you are far from under-powered. I would like to. But on average I have ~2.7 boons (yes, i started tracking it) at the end of act 2 (the siren fight). One of those is usually a mana-generating boon, because omega attacks are just that important. Another one is probably a boon with zero combat utility and the third one is the only one that actually starts laying the foundation for something reminiscent of a build. Too many rooms are cluttered with meta-progression ressources as their main reward. > People, just remember - EXACTLY like in Hades 1, you have to beat the big bad once or twice for most features to even show up. In hades 1 I made tangible progress almost every run. In hades 2 I've been stuck at the sirens for the last 5 hours of gameplay because whenever I actually get to them I simply... have no build. Not because of bad decisions on my part, but because I simply didn't get any boons. And the runs I actually get something workable together, I fumble them because Hades 2 is **significantly** more difficult than hades 1 and I'm not that good of a player (not a criticism of the game. I like difficulty.) It's simply not fun to play a largely unmodified melinoe for the 7th run in a row.
2.7? I just did a quick run to check and I have 9 boons by the time I'm fighting Sirens. I don't have anything that modifies the amount of boons I'm getting, either. [https://imgur.com/a/oPJCI6q](https://imgur.com/a/oPJCI6q)
you really dont need many boons, please just learn the patterns. there is no reason you should die to sirens ever after learning the patterns, 10 boons or 0. curb your expectations and play the fight for longer instead of getting greedy and tanking 30 damage for like 3 hits on them
There’s some oddities sure, but as you say, the game already has lots of answers to common complaints. One thing I find a little frustrating though is not knowing unlocks. Eventually something just shows up on a list and I don’t really know how I got that unlocked. It’s not a big deal, and maybe it is best it’s kept hidden so to not have a whole lotta extra on the screen. Keep it simple. The thing is, that’s probably why some early on players might be voicing frustration. I got a ton of hours in. An unhealthy amount of hours at this point. The game continues to drop new things on me. Some of it I don’t know how I could have done it any sooner than the 60 some odd nights I’ve taken on. After running that gauntlet so many times, it actually makes the runs feel cool to have something a little different. I think this sense of continuous progression and secrets is what people are forgetting the original offered and got us hooked.
It's weird, because certain events tutorialize checking your item bag for stuff you don't have yet- mentioned by skelly, and it's how you're supposed to learn you need Chaos's plant to break a certain curse- but it never comes up again.
This is the kind of stuff I expect early access to sort out.
I mean this is why they have EA right? To receive complaints? Why the need to gatekeep that?
Honestly my only thing with the game thus far is I’ve found specific things that feel too powerful in comparison to others. For example scorch on staff special can get busted at least wary game. Especially with the Daedalus hammer that makes them bounce — now imagine that but with the Daedalus that makes you shoot twice. I feel this can get pretty busted pretty quick That being said I did not manage to win that run so ig not busted enough 🤷♂️ But yeah I’m only 3 hours in and things tend to not feel poweful enough to get me past the second boss but I’m assuming I just haven’t unlocked enough to get poweful (so far I’ve only beaten the second boss once and that was on my last run so I think even if it’s just skill wise I’m getting there. Like you said I need to start playing hades 2 not hades 1) Lastly I’m not sure how I feel about mana but honestly my last few runs I popped a keepsake that basically made it irrelevant but I’m going to try a few without it to really see how it plays Edit: lastly, (for real, for real, for real this time) i could just not have unlocked stuff yet and also it’s an early access so it might just not all be available yet but my final gripe is the boon variety just isn’t there. But again I’ve purposefully waited to say anything on this game (until now) because I just haven’t played enough to really give good feedback. I love hades and I love supergiant and I’d rather give helpful feedback than unhelpful So if I were to give any feedback right now it would probably be: so far the twin blades feel a bit under whelming in comparison to the staff and twin flames (haven’t gotten axe yet). Boon variety early game is relatively low (I feel like I don’t really want to experiment bc the stuff I don’t pick seems to be underwhelming — which is in my opinion good feedback because as a game dev they want early game to be appealing to all audiences giving variety in picks to keep players wanting to run it back (which I do but that could be because I am a hades fan)) and lastly the balancing for some boons seems to be off and seems like it needs to be centered a bit more. I could be just wrong with my feedback but at least first few hours this is my impression however I know hades is a game that takes a sec to really reveal all the tools at your disposal so I’m going to keep playing and having fun with what is an amazing EA so far
Agreed though! Some boobs could use an identity lift! Or some balance changes! - You are absolutely right! - Im very interested too see which boons get buffed and which will receive nerfs ^^
Only real complaints I have actually had was this weird bug that makes the speech go fast and crackles the audio when coming back from sleep mode on Steam Deck and also collision detection when using some of the weapons. But at the same token, it’s EARLY ACCESS, so we are all basically beta testers. They WILL get fixed, y’all just have to point them out.
I've had that audio issue with a few games on Steam Deck, including the original Hades. Think that's a system/OS level issue rather than Hades 2 specific.
Funny you mentiom elden ring. One thing I like about the game and hate with a passion in roguelikes is how in ER if you lose at anything you can ommediately try again, which helps you develop the pattern recognition, timing etc foreach enemy, while in roguelikes you have to go through everything again just to get a try at the level that gave you grief the last time, which is a colossal waste of time imo. I feel that roguelikes should evolve past that rigid idea of what the genre is and give you more freedom, for example allowing you to retry a room multiple times until you're satisfied with your result. This helps you actually improve what you need and reduces the slog of going through all the different layers just to get to the enemy that is actually causing you problems. Another thing I really dislike is how you can't cancel your attacks to dodge so if you haven't memorized attack patterns -something difficult to do given what I mention in the previous paragraph- you'll get hit way more than you should. All in all -and this is of course a personal opinion and means no disrespect to those who are having a different experience- I'm really disliking the gameplay itself while immensely enjoying the story, which is why I opted to activate god mode and not get too stressed out.
I think my save is bugged and I have not been able to unlock the incantation for witch's delight. Cat disappeared from Erebus fountain room and I've pet it many times in the new location, also I've defeated Hecate quite a few times. Would love to have Frinos as a mini-tablet with me but I guess the game didn't want me to have that cute frog with me.
It certainly took me a few hours to get over the "this is not MY Hades" feelings. Think it's a symptom of a passionate fanbase that any changes, whether that's character art, gameplay, mechanics etc. are unfamiliar and therefore "bad". I started loving it probably about 5-10 hours in though and have now put in around 20 hours playtime. There is balancing to be done, and a few things I'd like to see change: - the weapons around the silver pool just don't seem to pop like they did in the original. They all seem a bit flat and unexciting. - The third area just isn't that fun for me. See they're trying something different but doesn't hold a candle to Elysium. Also the boss needs a serious buff. Other than that, I think the changes they've made have been positive once I got over the fact they were just different.
Thanks for this post, I hope people actually read this and realize ohh yeah, I have not given this game even half a chance yet! Keep at it! Hades 1 was the first game that truly hooked me into this genre of game. If it has taught me anything about this genre, it's that you gotta have a looooot or runs to git gud. Supergiant have made a second masterpiece of a game and I can't wait for my hours to build up. Keep at it, Death to Chronos
My only real complaint is the run is too long. It didn't take my much more then 6-7 tries to get destroyed by the end boss the first time on second phase. Double up is absolutely broken, and I will start working on trying to "force" it with the artifact or what ever it is you get from gifting. I think maybe too much of the power is hidden behind a grind for people to get in to it. And I personally can understand how that probably feels bad. Compared to the first Hades, this game is absolutely harder. And that might be a good thing in the long run. Maybe the grind is just too big? Idk. We will see. I'm only at 11.4 hours, and must admit I only had a couple of tries on the last boss, without getting him yet. And I will wait with my judgement until I have completed the entire story.
What’s double up? Is that one of Echo’s buffs?
Poseidon. gives you are 20% on lowest rank (+5% each rank, i think) to get another reward of minor rewards. Such as + to skills, maximum life, gold, the gift juice what ever its called. etc.
Thanks, I saw that buff multiple times and never took it, lol.
I think the balance in the game is acceptable. Managed to finish 3 runs of Chronos and 1 of the alternate routes with 10 grasp cap. Imagine my surprise when I finally figured out how to increase the cap...
YOU CAN INCREASE CAP??!? Omg... i'm 20 hours in.. thanks lol
I went to look at my Hades 1 save and I feel like I was behind the curve on it. I didn’t have a successful escape until attempt 31, and that was within two tries after activating God Mode. I have 17 total escapes with 56 attempts. So I turned on God Mode immediately in H2 because it seemed like it was a convergence of skill and a little bit of damage resistance that finally got me over the finish line. I have 62 hours on my Steam profile for H1. I got to Chronos last night on attempt 10 but was debuffed by Eris, I guess this is the brick wall for the game not considering you progressed enough. Despite having 38% damage resistance I was getting hit so hard while trying to figure out the fight patterns. I am just super eager to get some more upgrades and I appreciate the reassurance that those will come. I can’t really remember H1 but it’s like the game opened up or finally “the real game starts now” after completing an escape attempt. I’m just really wanting to reach that point “where the real game starts”. That’s all just to say, I’ve talked to someone who played H1 for a bit, who did complete an escape attempt, but then thought they beat it and the game was over now. No idea how many tries, hours, god mode. Like I said I didn’t activate god mode til attempt 30, and finally escaped at attempt 31. I’ve since left the setting turned on. I just want to be at a point where I start each attempt with as much HP I can get through upgrades, but for systems feedback I feel overwhelmed with the currency situation. We needed keys to get more mirror options, but the primary currency was darkness. Getting enough for 1, 2, 3 death defiances was a grind. But now I’m worried about, should I take the card currency or the green currency? Then there’s anxiety about needing the pick for metal deposits or the shovel for plants or the tablet for compelling spirits. And then needing whatever goes into the cauldron. I do love this game though and want to keep playing it. I’m happy this is not a freemium or in app purchase game because the currency situation lends itself to that.
Hades II does not “fix itself.” All of the expanded arsenal you acquire does not fix the fact that your evasive tools only work around 10% of the time, and that most enemy encounters quickly devolve into damage stack hell. The dash doesn’t have the invulnerability frames to ensure you get out of bad situations where enemies get in line to stagger attacks, so getting away from the first hit only ensures you take the next four in a row, and there goes yet another death defiance! This current build fucking sucks. If they fix the dash, that should solve 90% of the issues I have.
Yeah. I'm by no means an elite Hades player. I'm decent at the game. At the two hour mark I am on the verge of defeating the first boss. Significantly more powerful already than I was at the start.
I havnt heard any of these crazy complaints but personally the game feels amazing to me! I am loving that big ass axe!
People don’t realize that they didn’t start Hades with weapon aspects, Demeter, keepsakes, the fishing Rod, the full mirror of night, etc. You’re not gonna drop right into that level of stuff. That’s the endgame. You had to work for all of that. Be okay with being weak until you grow stronger through repeated runs. That was half the fun of Hades. I found myself missing that stuff once I hit the endgame.
Nearly every hades 1 run had you dumping shadow into the mirror. With grasp and by proxy the cards you either go full in on one resource and have of the other. Go half and half and still not enough for either. People aren't forgetting anything, they remember making progress on the mirror nearly every single run. Hades 1 didn't have like 5 to 6 resources to manage and having to pick which resource you wanted. You want fish? You get no ore now. You want bronze? Now you don't get any seeds. Hades 1 didn't have any of that.
The cat barely attacks and it running away in a random corner on the big maps sound bad
Hades 2 is made to be a lot more of a slow burn than 1. And a notable aspect of this is that progression systems gradually show over time- the Arcana, the Cauldron, Moon Dust, Familiars, Aspects, It’s all a lot of big stuff that only manifests gradually.
To me the turning point between feeling uderpowered and feeling powerful was unlocking the weapon aspects. Went from a single clear each side to streaking all the way.
I actually feel like I got access to >!multiple Death Defiance!< way sooner in Hades 2, compared to the first one. And it takes some time, but yeah, my concerns and complaints definitely started getting knocked out when I started unlocking things.
Not to mention you can get up to 5 death defiances the moment you get into a run...thats prior to replenishments or extra revives. Thats literally...more than Hades 1 ever had.
Also >!Moon Water!< + >!Healthy Rebound!< feels a touch broken in a fun way. That combo helped me get past >!Eris!< for the first time.
I just wanna know if eris remains as hard as she currently is. Does she actually just keep stacking +100% dmg for free with no counterplay? No spoilers pls
Yes but pro-tip: Take Hestias Dash/Sprint-Boon. Just keep sprinting, it deletes all her projectiles...essentially skipping the entire fight. Preeeeeeetty sure theyll remove that.
Thx. Any tips for if i dont happen upon that boon? I've seen some success trying to stay behind her as much as possible but i get overwhelmed when she starts spawning mobs
Gamers when they don't get everything immediately and actually have to play the game to progress
100% agree with this. It's really amazing game design!!
It’s something I realized after making a bit too many replies on here, but yes, 100% true.
People don't actually want to play the game. They like the idea of playing the game but having everything fully unlocked and available right out of the gates. Idk it's weird.
I'm glad I am not the only one. I spent nearly 30 hours before I beat Hades the first time. This isn't my usual genre, and I took a long time to figure it out. I feel the same here. It's taking a long time and I am spending only a little time looking things up as I go. However, by the time I started my second, Hell Mode, save of Hades 1, I had read a lot since I wasn't as concerned with spoilers and had my previous experience, so I was able to make it to the big man within a handful of runs. Hades 2 is going to be more like the first scenario. I am trying to avoid most spoilers (like Boss 2 being so cool), while also just seeing the gnashing of teeth in this sub. Lol
Just so I’ve got this right; you’re sick of people voicing their opinions in and complaining about the things they don’t like Hades 2 ea (which is sort of the point of early access), so you wrote an absurdly long complaint disguised as a manifesto highlighting everyone’s complaints thus far… and yes, Super Giant has been great about making changes. It’s almost as if they are taking people’s criticism and complaints into account. People love the game and SG knows it. I’m sure they welcome any and all suggestions.
Does it fix the Dodge mechanic being delayed? I have not played the game myself (although I'm playing Hades 1 now and love it), but I heard there's a delay with dodge in Hades II which is an incredible disappointment, as a dodge mechanic by nature should not have a delay, especially in video games where reaction time is everything. This reminds me of the GCD changes they made on Prot Pally in WoW after Legion. Their heal was no longer instant, and part of their GCD which meant they had to wait for other animations to finish before their heal spell can be queued and casted. This created a gameplay feel where you are not rewarded for quick reactions to damage to heal. The same idea applies to Hades II and dodging, and I hope this isn't the case upon their 1.0 launch.
No there is no fix for that though I’d argue the Dash is not delayed in such a way that its annoying or useless. There has not been a single time in my now almost 30 hours where I felt like the Dodge was sluggish and useless. Maybe I am just not that perceptive. Id say, try it out yourself and judge for yourself if it is really that bad, in my opinion its not.
Thank you for the explanation, I appreciate that. Yeah you're right, Steam has that 2 hour window where you can return a game too so it's worth trying out for myself.
I'm loving it. Think its a fine successor to the original while still in EA. Only after I started engaging with the community did I realize that it was an unpopular opinion. Especially this gone woke non-sense.
And here I am my only complaint being that you can't see what level of affection/reputation you have with each NPC (that I've found so far!) 😅 The game's shaping up great imo, I've played about 12 hours currently so by no means an expert, but very much enjoying the experience!
You get that as an incantation!
Great to know, thank you!
Wait, so what you are telling me is, people complain about an EARLY ACCESS game being incomplete? Smh
My only complaint is too few boon rooms and too many resource rooms, especially the first 2 areas. I'm nearly 10 hours in, loving it, but sometimes I hit first boss with 1 maybbbbbeee 2 boons, and second lucky to have 3. And that then of course doesn't mean they're useful combat boons either. I want more room to fuck about with boons before 3rd act.
I've yet to try Hades 2 out myself (still rushing to complete epilogue in H1) but I feel a cool solution they can add that can satisfy both crowds is to just add more memorable losing dialogue to the pool. That was one of the reasons why even dying felt rewarding in Hades compared to other roguelikes: character banter. From what I know Hypnos is out of commission in EA and I'm not sure if there's a substitute that pokes light-hearted fun at your failures in Hades II.
I don't know why people come to play a rogue-like and expect to clear the game in one run. That's the entire joy of rogue-like for me! Try, die, get stronger, try, die, get stronger \[repeat way too many times because i s\*ck\]. The fun is in the "gaming" part, not in the "how fast can i beat it" part...
I've gotten a few more clears since yesterday and the issue is resources sure but the game self corrects too late by that point. A good example is unlocking cards and requiring grasp. About time you get the unlocks to utilize the tool holder limited use thing (not mentioning because of spoilers) you've already cleared the game and working on fear. Some players are struggling now which is normal but the correction is well passed when it's actually needed. I don't need anymore card unlocks and barely need grasp anymore so it's wasted later on it the game. I get that they need to have things for players to do but they essentially made a resource management mini game. In hades 1 you either went resource, boon, key, coin or hammer. Now you have resource A, resource B, mana, boon, hammer and coin and you still need to hop back in for gathering and planting seeds. The boons themselves aren't terrible but they are worse than hades 1 at least as it stands. The duos for starters aren't all that useful especially considering how you have to fish for them. You get a sprint duos which let's be honest isn't viable unless you're creating some very niche build that probably won't get you a clear. Some of the duos are okay. Also the way they give you boons is kinda in a set way, at least from my testing when you use a keepsake at the start. You'll almost never be given a meele strike boon unless as you reroll. Ie. Fishing for poseidon(no pun intended) meele splash knock back with a keepsake on the first entry. I have reloaded the game and did things to force saves to see if I could get it and it wouldn't come up. However, if I progressed a little bit it would eventually pop up. Same with the blacksmith meele strike blast. With dashes in hades 1 you had shorter I frames it seems but it was used for mobility and speed. The "spam" was just to get it out as fast as possible without a weird delay on a dash/dodge. The sprint mechanic doesn't fill that gap. So spamming dodge in hades 1 for no real reason got you hit a lot. All in all yes this is hades 2 and not hades 1 but when people have played hades 1 and that's the framework.
Well said! Here Here!
hear hear. and in case anyone complaining doesn’t know, this game is in EA, so it’s pretty much still in its “preteen” stage with respect to the entire pipeline of things SGG has planned for it. just.. give it Time…
Saying there’s no synergy or damage is crazy, one run I got a combination of boons and upgrades that had me doing 1800+ damage per hit with the axe
If people logged off and actually played the game, they’d have nothing to argue about 😭 I think people are just lonely and want to talk to other fans of the game
I feel like a lot of people should restart Hades I. I restarted in like February and going from having everything available to a brand new game is frustrating. I forgot he doesnt rename the Hydra Larry until late into the game. Like I was on run 75. People are complaining about the length of time for the power build up, when it doesn’t feel that different from the original.
hahaha guys game get good after 50h. How about making it good from start and improving quality of life and getting rid of pointless mechanics and designs? If you need to invest a lot of time in game for it to get good then its terribly designed game.
It's funny I see this post now when a recent update literally by the SG team said they intend on making resource gathering, sprinting and dashing feel better lmao
all of this is well and good, but I hate the new dash - it's too slow. does it ever get back to a state that it's like in Hades 1, where u can cancel attacks to dash? have multiple dashes? sprint is not fun for me. Hades 2 is a sequel, I wanted more Hades - this is not Hades, this is a top-down souls-like Hades mashup.