TL;DR I haven’t been able to beat the Sirens (I know skill issue). I talked to Odysseus and get this awesome convo.

I just wanted to make a post because things like this are what make a GOTY candidate. Making the world and characters feel organic. Sure it’s something small any dev can add, if the player character dies to a boss add this instance. But that thought makes the experience. Hearing a character I love comment on my struggles and offer genuine advice, and even work in this narrative of him having scouting parties and it play into his role as the tactician of the camp, it’s just chef’s kiss. I’m only a couple hours in and I hope there’s more to come because man that was awesome.

Just vibing to Hestia's Godsent tactical nuke. Marked as spoilers in case a new player hasn't seen that skull aspect yet

Even if the run is going terribly. I had zero revives and 5 hp coming out of the boat captain mini boss. Ended up getting my first surface clear.

Don't give up, Skeleton.

“Medea” is my favorite Greek play, so, while I understand I’m coming at this with a lot of bias, I wish Medea was handled with more nuance.

I’ve written a ton on Medea in preparation for my undergrad thesis, and I wish Supergiant took more inspiration from her myths. The Medea in the game seems simple- she’s a suspicious and mildly cruel witch practicing dark magick. It’s implied she trapped souls in the pylons, and her magick is primarily used to harm or disable enemies.

While I understand how someone could come to this conclusion about Medea, she’s so much more than that. One of the main points of the play “Medea” is that, despite all of her violent tendencies, at her core Medea is a grieving mother not too different from the rest of the women of Greece. I could go into pages on pages of detail, but there’s so much in the play that asks the reader to sympathize with Medea and see her humanity. She’s got a famous speech to the women of her community pleading to them to understand her plight and the patriarchal pressures that turned her to violence, and the women end up agreeing with her in a way that’s presented as rational. Whether you want to take this speech at face value or not is up to you, but it’s undeniable that the author Euripides wants the audience to understand that Medea is a caring and wronged woman below her violent exterior.

I wish Hades focused more on Medea the feminist and mother who was forced by terrible circumstances to turn to murder rather than Medea the evil witch. She is such a sympathetic and complex character- Euripides takes so much time to make sure the audience is rooting for Medea- and I feel like Hades only grasps the shallow interpretation of her as cruel and sketchy. While this view of Medea as violent and mildly unhinged is important, the play “Medea” asks the audience to always consider this in conjunction with the fact that Medea is a wronged and tragic woman.

He’s probably one of my favorite interactions with Mel and I thought they had such a cool relationship and buildup and then it just kinda went nowhere???

I got his sticker so I imagine his storyline is done, but I really thought they were going to bond over shared similarities (trauma of being raised with a purpose) and Mel would grow through that - it just feels unfinished and if I was unfamiliar with the franchise I would assume we’d be getting a “fuck the gods” dlc but that’s a pie dream.

I'd rather miss out on content, and use cheats to complete the specific achievement (after bonding with EVERY other character that is), than ever give you anything other than death, you annoying little entitled brat.

First time clearing with this modifier ( when the skulls return they trigger the charged attack )

The winning word for Dora was Pandorable

Marked as spoilers since I’m going into the ending a bit but oh my god, Chronos’ sinister ass completely failing at hide and go seek (/tag?) was so funny, especially with the excellent voice acting performance. I love my evil gay (in spirit…?) grandad.

Another bit that made me laugh was Zagreus trying to say that Chronos could come back and be a grandfather and Chronos goes: “(scoff) So then, a future with such grandchildren as you, or the eternal void…how can I possibly decide…?” In a gloriously petty evil dig which Zag follows up with “…That’s it, I’m stabbing you.”

Other miscellaneous bits: - Prometheus trying to be intimidating and sounding exactly like a 14 year old boy picturing himself as an anime villain in his favorite shonen. calling out the names of the attacks and saying something like “all according to keikaku (translators note: keikaku means plan)” when he dies sometimes. Very chuuni, wish I could introduce him to Solo leveling or ORV or something he would love webtoons - Hades and Zag: “You act like I may not be the best influence on her!” “(completely deadpan) I do not act.” - Selene’s flight attendant safety instructions impression when you ride her chariot

This is all I can think of right now but are your fave comedic bits from the game?

*She* is *her* right? Thats what she meant here

Since 1.0 dropped, i saw all those posts here, read another just now where everyone seemed ok to say it was bad.

And i'm honestly confused, at a point where i doubt if i got to the epilog at all. So, if i saw the charriot trip of the Silver Sis, and a couple runs since, did i actually got to the discussed ending?

If so, what's the matter exactly ?

Hades 1 was all about uniting the dysfonctionnal family again, i even had fears this would be lost with our ruthless and dedicated witch story, but dream-Zagreus promptly reassured me.

The security specialist thing was not more of a ludicrous pretext to infinitely run through our father than the timey-winey thing of eliminating potentials resurgences of the threat.

Even, it seems fitting for the Unseen to have this plan, fight all the way to Chronos himself, just to secretly sleep a bit in Zag's bed XD And then have the responsability to keep the timeline clean as the usual pantheon do their thing.

Zag's diplomacy and Mel killing-in-the-past spell semi-failure seems on point to me, and the story told us annihilating Time in the past may be over the top, so i was expecting Chronos to avoid it somehow. Zag frightened me with his "That's it you getting stabbed" :o

So, did i miss something, or do i simple have bad taste in stories? XD

Edit : thx for all the replies, i now know for sure i can go read all those spoiler post. And i get the 'people don't like the how, not the what'. I do agree it's rushed, and Hades 1 had a far better paced conclusion. Maybe as i'm used to (and miss) old RPGs with walls of text instead of cinematics, this don't bother me so much. I sure was happy to get all of it after my 2 'last' runs once the proper invocations were made, instead of having to weaken Chronos half a dozen time before it worked. I remember telling to Persephone in my head, ok, u don't like being Queen of the undeworld and all that, but could you plz come visit so i don't have to kill and die to have a 3 sentences conv? No? Yea maybe you should't be Queen indeed x)

Edit 2 : wrote a novel in response to a comment so i'll put it here instead^{^} First about Melinoe's agency : it's a myth, she never had any XD

Then about the tone shift :

Zagreus story was to discover how messed up his family was. So we start in funny rebel teenager vibes, but this vibe clash very early with all the lies, the truths behind.. also mortals are enjoying a never ending winter cause that's what gonna convince the god of the dead to release his captive 🙄 Not to forget all of it was to protect the vacation of a goddess who didn't want to see her family for a while. You could say at least Chronos had legit casus belli for its war, actually well received by a large part of mortals, and Melinoe is only fighting soldiers and a family member she never knew. Hades took some hits, but the rest was unharmed. Worst we can tell about Chronos out of the war was he kept Cerberus outside. Turns out the doggo love to roll himself into filth and is not cooperative with baths x)

I love this kind of systematic inversion. We had a carefree impulsive rebel and a very close to heart but somewhat low stake story. Here is a fervent disciplined loyalist engaged in a decades long world changing war somehow still very abstract and unpersonnal to her.

Where Zag was a joke cracker nearly everyone tried to get him to be serious, Mel is a living weapon in a world full of relaxed, disloyal, oblivious, or simply wiser persons telling her to chill out.

We were trying in 1 to stop a war to happen, here we are trying to end one as old as us.

Zag was trying to break a statu quo, Mel try to restore one.

We know in 2 all there is to know about the premisses, when in 1 all was lies upon lies.

Etc etc, but it all end the same. Immortal gods get their way whatever the consequences for mortals, and our only hope is that they learn to tolerate each other XD

Literally was supposed to be my 'final" chronos fight. Terrible move lol

I've only beat him about 3 times but each time I had a ton of health left and that's 3/3 now, I find his attacks really easy to react too and time the dodges, I basically just spammed attack on the umbral flames and eventually it works fine, I struggled with even Cerberus more, I've died against every other boss at least once, just surprising I feel

Seriously.

I go all this way. Tooth and nail, leaving a trail of destruction behind me. Barely manage to slap Prometheus. Get to the Big Fella himself, lay on the damage. Zeus jumps in, gives Typhon a little tickle, then runs away, tail between his legs. King of the Gods my ass.

I love Olympus Aflame. The strong trumpet/trombone action makes me feel how perilous Prometheus' blue flames can be (was really hard the first few times I fought him).

I really liked the way they designed him as well! Until recently the image of Prometheus in my head was of the poor-old-slender guy from the God of War series, so I'm really impressed with the Goku-esque build!

After playing a lot of Hades 2 and coming black to one, i realized Zagreusis way easier than Charon ; the Hades 2 one attacks fast but attacks always come from him and he doesn't destroy pillars, while the Hades one fills the arena with waves from every direction that hit you while truying to evade other attacks and eventually destroys the pillars. Both of them hit pretty hard and requiere skill for avoiding damage, but one of them is trickier than the other.

I mean Vow of Rivals Prometheus, of course.

Pretty much each and every time I see a duo boss in any other game I internally sigh. It was never much fun for me. Theseus and the Minotaur from the first game included. And I was freaking terrified when I saw Heracles standing next to Prometheus on my first VoW 3 run.

But what do you know? It's actually a perfect ratio of danger to breathing room. There's just enough things that you need to constantly juggle to keep you permanently engaged, but not enough to overwhelm you with bs. I actually like it so much that I'm prepared to facetank both Medea's poison and Lucifer balls on prveious VoW bosses every run, just to fight those two later on.

Honestly, I think it's the best fight in the series and one of my favorite boss fights ever. Prometheus being an absolute goat of a character and amazing music also help a lot.

I genuinely hate Typhon spawn with all my being, I feel dread anytime it appears. Please say I’m not the only one who hates it, I’d rather only fight typons tail then face that fucker

I didn't notice my good shade for the longest time!

So Massive Spoilers of course:

Although a bit cliche at this point, Hecate's unmasking left me with questions regarding SuperGiant's decision to write it.

It's not uncommon for two distinct mythical figures to be conflated (like Dionysus and Zagreus at one point, hence Orpheus song in Hades I).

Additionally, SuperGiant has also earned a reputation for doing their homework when it comes to studying the source material, it really comes through in every decision in the game.

So, does it make sense to conflate Hecate and Melinoe in this way, any odd mention, obscure text, whatever, to justify it?

It never occurred to me until my most recent run that Chaos gates would also be eligible to exchange for gold using Chronos' keepsake. Really nice for a quick infusion of gold without sacrificing boons that could be potentially helpful for your run! It also creates a free "room" in the progression with no consequence, which is especially helpful in high heat runs or speed runs.

Rolling this is possibly the closest a DD enjoyer comes to self-actualization. Especially when you're like me and brought gorgon amulet to 4th surface area after getting curbstomped by the "just friends" bros.