Luckiest Tooth

As promised, a follow-up to my initial post on Hades 2!

 

I'm loving this game. I went ahead and got all the achievements for it. I almost never do that, even for games I love; with Hades, by the time I hit the epilogue I had fewer than ten achievements left to go, and I was still enjoying playing it, so I went ahead and powered through the last set. I could play the game forever, but I think this is a great pause point to set it back up on the shelf.

MINI SPOILERS

As with the original Hades, I gradually amped up the difficulty as I was pursuing Nightmares (the new Titan Blood) to fully upgrade my weapons (which I was upgrading so I could take on more Fear and earn more Nightmares...) My memory of Hades 1 is slightly fuzzy, but I feel like Hades 2 is a bit more generous with Nightmare and you don't need to run as high of difficulty for as many runs as you did for the first game. Thanks to the Bone economy and Charon's Ledger, you can earn a fair amount of Nightmare through standard runs, and many Prophecies give a good amount. My Grave Thirst was pretty uneven, but I think I hit something like 16-20 Fear on a few aspects, and just 4 Fear on others, by the time I essentially had all the Nightmare I needed for weapon upgrades.

 

 

After I hit that point, I switched over to focusing on my remaining achievements. One of the longer ones was "Bearing Dark Gifts", which requires beating a run with every weapon aspect. Once Grave Thirst came up on a weapon I needed, I would generally do a 0-Fear run with that weapon. I would pick Underworld or Overworld based on which one had the most outstanding NPC missions or other prophecies at the time. If I had clears on all of a given Grave Thirst weapon, I would switch to Chaos Trials: either the Grave Thirst weapon for an uncleared trial to get Stardust, or one of the Chaos Below ones for those achievements.

 

 

Before diving into stories and characters, some closing mechanical thoughts:

 

 

My favorite weapon type: Probably the torches.

Favorite staff: Circe (take the ferret, try for a full Omega Cast build, ideally with Apollo and Demeter)

 

 

Favorite daggers: Artemis

 

 

Favorite torches: Moros

Favorite axe: Charon

Favorite skull: Medea

Favorite coat: Nyx

Default arcana loadout: Sorceress, Wayward Son, Huntress, Eternity, Moon, Furies, Persistence, Messenger, Swift Runner, Death, Centaur, Origination, Boatman, Divinity. Lovers if I'm playing with Rivals, otherwise Artificer.

 

 

Favorite region 1 keepsake: Jeweled Pom

Favorite region 2 keepsake: Either Aromatic Phial or Calling Card

 

 

Favorite region 3 keepsake: Aromatic Phial or Calling Card or Fig Leaf

 

 

Favorite region 4 keepsake: Knuckle Bones or Luckier Tooth or maybe Blackened Fleece 

 

 

Favorite route: They're both great, I might give the edge to the Surface.

 

 

Favorite biome: Olympus

Favorite arena: Either Eris or rivaled Scylla 

 

 

Favorite status curse: Freeze

Favorite Olympian deity (personality): Hestia 

Favorite Olympian deity (boons): Hard to pick one; Apollo, Demeter and Hera are always great choices 

Favorite cast: Rapture Ring

Favorite rush: Nexus

Favorite gain: Any of Born, Lucid or Flood

(Not listing favorite Attack or Special as they are so weapon-dependent. Passion is great on slow melee weapons, Flame is great on fast weapons, Ice always comes in handy...) 

Favorite duo boon: Sun Worshiper

Favorite legendary boon: Sanguinary Savor (assuming Wounds on my main attack, otherwise Shocking Loss) 

Favorite NPC: Dionysus

Favorite NPC offering: Howling Soul 

 

 

Favorite ally: Artemis

 

 

Favorite guardian: Eris

 

 

Least favorite guardian: Rivaled Polyphemus if playing melee, otherwise Rivaled Hecate 

Favorite Vow: Time 2

Favorite romance: Eris

 

 

Favorite song: So hard to pick one! Maybe Song of the Deep?

 

 

Favorite Crossroads outing: Hot springs, but they're all pretty fun 

Favorite Crossroads activity: Gardening

 

 

Favorite upgrades: Chibi figurines

A few more details on progress:

Overall, the number of runs ("nights") I had roughly matched the number of hours of playtime in Steam. I think this makes sense - a given run is almost always less than an hour, but there's plenty to do in the Crossroads between runs.

I think I first beat Chronos probably somewhere around 15 hours into the game, hit the main ending around 60 hours in, reached the epilogue around 100 hours, and hit 100% Steam achievements at 116 hours. I wasn't gunning for any of those in particular - I wasn't focusing on the epilogue, for example, just progressing towards it when it was convenient to do so.

 

 

There's still a bit more left to do if I wanted. I haven't deepened my trust with Circe or Icarus. I have two weapons that are at Level 4 instead of 5. I have maybe 5 or so Minor Prophecies left to go: I'm missing one Chaos boon, one Dionysus boon, several Duo Boons, probably a couple of other things I'm forgetting. Slightly more than half my Keepsakes are maxed out, but I haven't done that for most of the Olympian ones, or a few like the White Antler that carry extra risks.

 

 

The third-to-the-last achievement I got, and the one I was most concerned about, was Great Chaos Below, which requires a full clear of an Underworld run with a randomly-assigned weapon, randomly-assigned Arcana, 20 points of randomly-assigned Fear, a randomly-assigned Familiar, and a random Keepsake at the start of every region. I'd failed it a few times, then finally succeeded on my third. I started with Death, then lost all 3 Death Defiances in the Rivaled Hecate fight. I rebought a Defiance in the Erebus exit well, then last that in the Rivaled Scylla battle. I was randomly assigned the Hephastus keepsake heading into the Mourning Fields, and lucked out with a nice 75 Armor boon, which let me regenerate health and make it through the Cerberus fight on my one life. Then in Tartarus I got Athena's Gorgon Amulet - suddenly, having no extra lives was a good thing! I got an Epic boon from her to become immune to damage for 2 seconds after getting hit, recharging every 9 seconds. I had nearly full health by this point. I also had the Strength arcana, which had seemed like a waste at the start of the run, but it came in handy here. In Hades' chamber, I was offered Darkness, which I usually take; but it seemed redundant with the Athena boon, so instead I opted for boosted damage from the number of times I'd used Death Defiance this night, which translated to a sweet 40% universal damage boost. I was very nervous heading into the Chronos fight, as a single bad step in the second phase could one-shot me; but my loadout ended up seeing me through. 

 

 

The last actual achievement I needed to get was "Voice and Vanity", resolving the Echo and Narcissus quest. Like everything else in the game, it mostly comes down to RNG: how often do you see the NPC chamber, and is there another doorway that's too tempting to pass up? This one required a lot more visits than I was expecting, and I kept getting Echo visits without any content while waiting for the Narcissus ones to catch up. It eventually fired, though, and it felt very satisfying to see the back-to-back grants for this one and the "All Other Achievements" achievement.

 

 

Some light-spoilery thoughts:

I like Melinoe, but she's a lot less interesting than Zagreous from the first game. Zac was defiant and sarcastic, with some deep emotional hurt that he channels through snark. He's also very funny, both with his words and his super-dry delivery. Melinoe is a dutiful daughter, raised for a mission and mostly single-minded in her pursuit of it. When Hecate attacks her at the end of Erebus, she basically says "Thank you, mistress!" Overall a yes-woman goody-two-shoes is just less interesting than a defiant rebel, even though I always choose to play as a goody-two-shoes when given the choice in a choice-and-consequences RPG.

 

 

There's a line from Chaos where he says something like, "Your brother used to visit me. I found him amusing. It is interesting to see how different siblings can be." Which is a really sick burn. Good on Chaos!

I really did love the "Silver Sisters" sense of camaraderie, and the good-natured wheels-within-wheels plots of Hermes and Artemis essentially working as double agents but for a common good. Hades 1 similarly had Hermes and Charon essentially playing this role, but there it didn't become clear for quite some time. I like how in this game Melinoe already has established relations and warm friendships with so many characters.

MEGA SPOILERS

While the protagonist was very different, the main story felt a little same-y compared to the original Hades: a scary patriarchal figure opposes you, you fight him a lot and eventually reforge a family bond. It isn't a bad story at all, I'll take it any day over "Save The World From An Ancient Unstoppable Evil," but it was less interesting the second time around.

 

 

The main ending is great. I loved spending time back at the House of Hades, including brief chats with old friends like Achilles. The custom art is incredibly rare in the context of this game and felt like a really meaningful award. The absolute highlight for me, though, was spending time with Artemis, my favorite goddess, over the closing credits. Art and music are the Supergiant crown jewels.

 

 

As with Hades 1, the epilogue (which I think is what they call the "true ending") is a lot less impactful than the main credits ending, but I had lower expectations for this after the first game so I wasn't disappointed here. It is really funny to actually meet the Three Fates in person, they're a lot different than I expected. The big-picture story they're setting up is interesting and cool, basically outlining the transition from the age of mythology into the real-world timeline in which we're playing this game. The epilogue is a lot lighter on new art and music compared to the main ending, just enough for it to feel a step above an NPC conversation.

 

 

The biggest reveal of the game comes after the epilogue. The dialogue isn't super-explicit, but as I understand it, Hecate is Melinoe. In another timeline, Melinoe attacked Chronos, and was cast far back in time. So she has spent millennia studying magic, preparing and training. She positioned herself to be a servant in the House of Hades so she could take Melinoe away when Chronos attacked, then essentially raised herself to accomplish what she wished she had been able to do herself. Learning this adds a new color to so many things we've seen throughout the game. Hecate kept emphasizing "I am not your mother" - in the moment it seems like she is mostly distinguishing herself from Persephone, but really she's distinguishing her from herself. And her trial in Erebus feels a lot more appropriate: it isn't so much a teacher testing a student as a person testing themself. She's very insistent that Melinoe not reveal her existence to Chronos, which makes all sorts of sense, as she needs to keep the possibility of her survival open. After getting to this point, I realized that the main title screen features Hecate's face looming behind Melinoe's figure, which isn't spoilery on its own but feels like a huge revelation once you know their relation.

 

 

END SPOILERS 

What a blast! The original Hades left big (fiery) shoes to fill, and Hades 2 more than fills them. Every new addition to the game is an improvement: the new resource economy, the crafting system, new combat mechanics like magic and armor. The story feels less revolutionary than the first game, but it's still a good story, and blessed with vibrant, compelling characters. It's also just fun to play: the combat feels good, the weapons are solid, the fights can be tough but always feel fair. Some games keep me playing because I want to see the ending, but the Hades games keep me playing because of how fun they are.

 

So Mote It Be

Looking back, Expedition 33 was probably my sweet spot for posting-about-a-game. It was a game that I really enjoyed, but wasn't obsessed about. I'd play for a while, hit a good story beat, take some time to collect my thoughts and jot down a post, then move on. Sometimes I just don't really click with a game and it languishes in the backlog without me ever feeling motivated enough to write about it. Or, on the opposite side, I have way too much fun with a game and would much rather play it than write about it.

 

Hades 2 falls squarely into the latter camp. I'd intended to have a good two or three posts up by now, and haven't even started writing about it, despite having put a good 60-ish hours into the game and reaching the credits. It's somehow even more addictive than the first Hades, to the point where I'll strategize to squeeze in a run before dinner or during a load of laundry.

 

 

I do wish that I'd written those earlier posts, because the game does change a good amount over the course of playing it. The early part of the game is focused more on unlocking things and mastering the basic mechanics, while the point I'm at now is more about overcoming challenges and optimizing builds. I haven't been playing by that long as the calendar goes, so I remember those earlier parts all right, but it isn't where my focus is on today.

 

 

First things first: Hades 2, like the prequel, is a modern action roguelike with strong RPG elements, much like Diablo, but blessed with a fantastic, deep, rich storyline and oozing with atmosphere from its Greek mythology setting. I blogged a lot about the original Hades, but hadn't mentioned here that I replayed it two years ago or so on the Playstation 5. I was slightly wary about picking up Hades 2 - I am getting older, and my reflexes probably aren't what they used to be - but it's been pretty smooth. I feel like I've retained a lot of my Hades skills, and recently playing a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate with my youngest brother has also helped keep my skills sharp.

 

 

Supergiant has done a fantastic job at evolving the original game. This isn't just a re-release of the original engine with new maps and monsters: they've reworked fundamental aspects of the core gameplay. It's the perfect kind of sequel: you aren't going in cold and can reuse some of your skills and learnings from the previous one, but you're also kind of in the same boat as new players in figuring out how systems work.

 

 

To pick one example nearly at random: in the original Hades, Dashes were probably the single most important skill to master. You're briefly invulnerable during a Dash, so being able to dash frequently is a huge help for survival, and prioritizing everything that helps your Dash is a smart move; Dashing also forces enemies to hesitate and re-orient to your new position, further helping you out. Hades 2 still has a Dash, but you only have a single Dash: unlike the original Hades where you could upgrade to have three or more dashes you can fire off in rapid succession, in Hades 2 you need to wait for a bit after only a single dash. But Hades 2 also adds a Sprint - or arguably upgrades it, as previously it was only an uncommon Hermes boon. You aren't invulnerable during a Sprint, but you move MUCH faster than your normal speed, can get around slow enemies, and can further upgrade your Sprint for more abilities (like leaving a flaming trail behind you, or gaining a temporary barrier that blocks incoming damage). So you no longer dash-dash-dash-dash all the time, but you still have a Dash, so... yeah. It's a learning curve, but a fun one.

 

 

The big-picture progression feels fairly similar. Each run progresses through a fixed sequence of Regions, and each Region contains a random selection of Locations for that biome, the end of each Region has a powerful Boss, and so on. In between runs you return to a home base where you can relax, chat with NPCs, upgrade equipment and so on. One major change to Hades 2 is a much more complex resource system, which I've really been loving. Hades 1 had a few basic economy currencies (gems, darkness), some rare resources (diamonds, titan blood), and very late in the game you could catch Fish as a resource to exchange for Gems. Fishing was one of my favorite parts of Hades, it's kind of just a dumb minigame but I really enjoyed it. Fishing is back in Hades 2, unlocks earlier, and is only one of a lot of new resource-gathering activities. You can also aid Lost Shades in returning home, dig up seeds, mine ore veins for metals, and so on. There are a lot more resources in Hades 2: Ashes, Psyche, Moondust, Silver, Glassrock, Lilies, Nightshade, Lotuses, Olives, Fated Fabric, Poppies, Cinders, Pearls, Golden Apples, tons and tons more. In Hades 1, the Gemstones were the core of the economy, and basically everything else upconverted from those. Hades 2 has Bones, which are kind of equivalent to Gemstones, except they aren't used for anything, just a currency for buying a few select types of things. For the most part you need various combinations of different ingredients in order to unlock things. It's complex, but I love the complexity, and it's managed really well in-game. You can clearly see the requirements, there's a handy screen for seeing where items can be sourced from (once you discover them the first time), and in-game you can set a "Reminder" that will track the items, even showing you during a run when a given chamber will have a resource you need for something you're tracking.

 

 

One side-effect of the complexity is that, once you get as late in the game as I am now, you will certainly have surpluses of some types of items and deficits of others. I could use a lot more Nectars and Stardusts and Golden Apples; but I'm drowning in a ton of Rubbish and Ashes and Psyche. Ashes and Psyche were super-useful early in the game, but not so much now. But, once you get to that point, you can recycle any items you don't want into Kudos, which are then used to unlock cosmetics at your base. In Hades 1 these were done with Gemstones, so there was a tradeoff between spending Gems on things with a mechanical reward and spending on visual/audio/story cosmetics; here, there's a clearer demarcation between currencies with mechanical rewards and the sole currency for cosmetic rewards.

 

 

One very minor niggle is finding resources. In smaller chambers you'll easily be able to see everything. You can unlock an ability fairly early in the game that will additionally notify you of nearby resources: a chime will sound, and a glowing light will float from you over to the resource (maybe a patch of dirt containing seeds or a lotus floating in a pool). But a particular late-game region has some huge areas, which look cool and have good gameplay, but can be annoying to thoroughly sweep for resources. You'll either need to spend a previous minute backtracing your steps to look for items, or press on and risk missing something you could have collected. That's really my only complaint though, and even that doesn't have a massive impact. On the whole there's so much more stuff to get than in Hades 1 and I'm really loving getting all the stuff.

 

 

As far as the actual gameplay, everything feels a little different, not just from things like the Dash/Sprint changes but the core weapons themselves. Early on I kept catching myself trying to map the Hades 2 weapons back to the Hades 1 ones, like thinking of something as "like the bow" or "like the fists", but none of them are directly comparable. For example, the skull is a little like the gun in how you load it and then shoot it, but there's much less ammo and you need to collect it back after firing. My favorite weapon in Hades 1 was probably the base Zagreus Fists; nothing in Hades 2 feels quite as fast as that, but the Flames have a somewhat similar playstyle in that you are constantly attacking the whole time, but now at mid/far range rather than melee.

 

 

Keepsakes are back, and at first glance they are the same: you get a Keepsake the first time you offer Nectar to someone, they go into your Cabinet, and you can eventually swap them in between Regions during a given run. But they all work differently this time around. The biggest collection are the "god keepsakes". In Hades 1 this would increase your odds of seeing a god and give better rarity. This time it guarantees seeing a god, but only once; and you can elect once to manually increase the rarity of a specific Boon before choosing it. Overall the game seems to much more strongly urge you to swap out Keepsakes in between Regions. Lots of them have a single-time effect (similar to Charon's Purse from Hades 1), and it will warn you in the Cabinet that the effect has expired.  

 

 

Before starting to touch on some story stuff, some general tips and thoughts to share:

 

 

Don't sweat resource prioritization too much. You'll eventually need a lot of everything. If you don't have an immediate need for something, that probably means you'll save time in the future when a new requirement pops up. That said, this is where I personally would focus for early-game items with all else being equal.

1.  Nectar. It's a lot more limited than most other items, and is critical for getting Keepsakes that will aid your runs and unlocking Prophecies that will provide more permanent resources. It's also used as an ingredient in many recipes.
2. Psyche. Increasing your Grasp lets you run with more Arcana cards, which is a huge power boost.
3. Ashes. Unlocking more Arcana cards gives access to more stuff. In particular, getting the Healing and Death Defiance abilities is huge for making it further into the run, which in turn provides more resources.
4. Bones. These will always be useful, but in the early game are less valuable than directly getting Psyche and Ashes. 

Unlocking weapons should also be a high priority, though it's slightly less important here than in Hades 1. Unlike Hades 1, you get valuable resources from Guardians no matter what weapon you beat them with. If you're going to maximize your runs and/or enjoy a challenge, you'll want to use whatever weapon has Grave Thirst, which is roughly equivalent to Dark Thirst in Hades 1. Ideally you'll want to find a weapon you like within each category, then focus on upgrading that weapon; the base weapons use standard reagents to upgrade, while the unlocked ones all require Nightmares, the new equivalent of Titan's Blood. I've found this post a useful resource for prioritizing weapons, though of course it's important to try things out and see what feels best to you.

 

 

As a general comment, like Hades 1, you don't need to worry about making bad decisions in terms of story or dialog or build or resources or anything. The story progresses as you play the game, but it isn't possible to branch in different directions or anything. You will see a bit more story for things you invest more time into, so if there's a particular person you like or are interested in, you may want to give them more Nectar and be sure to chat with them as much as you can; but doing that won't lock you out of anything else, and not doing that now won't prevent you from doing it later.

 

 

Be aware of the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, and take options that help fulfill prophecies whenever they come up, but (in my opinion) don't go out of your way to fulfill a prophecy. Like, if you just need one Demeter boon left to finish her prophecy, just wait until you naturally see her in a run, don't take her Keepsake just to try and get that prophecy. You'll eventually fulfill all of them anyways, and I think it's more fun to achieve them as a side-effect to trying to beat the game.

 

 

As is unfortunately the case for a lot of games these days, there isn't a great single resource for information. The Fandom wiki is active and relatively up-to-date, but not always current, and more importantly is Fandom and trash. I've been prefering the fextralife one, which feels a bit better, but has some very outdated data. (Hades 2 was in Early Access for years, and the wikis still talk about things that were changed or removed long ago.) I think a lot of the community is on YouTube and maybe Twitch, but I loathe watching videos for games; that said, the one time I did watch a video to try and understand how to use a particular weapon I found it far more helpful than any amount of reading I could do. The r/HadesTheGame subreddit is probably my favorite overall resource, but again, it's important to look for information that's relatively recent, since older posts may have obsolete advice.

MINI SPOILERS

Some notes on my current loadout and preferences:

 

 

I always run Grave Thirst. I'm kind of all over the map when it comes to Fear (the new equivalent of Heat); I need to run 12+ Fear on some weapons, while others only need 2.

 

 

I usually take whatever run is lit up for my Grave Thirst weapon. There are a couple of points where I might really want to do an Underworld or a Surface run in particular, and if GT is going in the wrong direction, I'll instead do a Chaos Trial. This resets the GT weapon and gives me another shot at a target. This is also kind of a soft reset of the Crossroads. You can talk to everyone again, but they only have very brief canned responses. But you can give Gifts again, and may see some people who weren't there previously, which can be nice for advancing relations. You might be able to grow some plants, get a quick delivery or finish a quick recipe while in the Chaos Trial, so it's worth setting any of that up before popping in there.

 

This took me way too long to figure out, but Grave Thirst also applies to Chaos Trials! So it, say, the current GT weapon is the Staff, doing a Chaos Trial with any Staff will give you the bones and gems for completing it.

 

 

My current favorite weapons are:

 

 

Circe Staff. I like to run with Gale, which stays very close. This means I don't get much use out of the Soul Link thing, but it does mean it's pretty easy to lay a double Cast down on someone. I'll try and get as strong a Cast as possible, ideally including some Apollo and Demeter.

 

 

Artemis Daggers. This feels a little like the Zag Fists in that I end up zipping all around the battlefield, punching bad guys. I don't intentionally try to get hit to trigger Riposte, it's more like a freebie bubble that saves some health when it procs but I'm happiest if it doesn't proc. I prioritize everything that speeds up my Omegas, then stack Attacks.

 

 

Melinoe Torches. I want to try some other torches, but so far these have been super-fun. I'll usually trigger my Special, then just spam Attack nonstop, firing off a lot of Omegas. Getting a good Selene ability is great since I'll be burning through a ton of magic; the time-slowing one is usually my favorite, but anything besides Health is good. Getting something like Zeus or Hestia on attack is great, then some status curse on my Special. This is my one build that doesn't use Cast very much.

 

 

Charon Axe. Kind of the opposite of the last two, this build is slow but very powerful. At first I would run in, cast, run out, and detonate; these days I try to stay in the cast circle but still back away. As with Circe, stacking Cast boons is great, though here I prefer the one-time-damage casts like Poseidon over the DOT casts like Demeter and Hestia. This weapon rocks against Typhon.

 

 

Medea Skulls. Probably my least-used weapon. It's another zip-around build like Artemis Daggers, doesn't need nearly as much Magic, is a little squishier but seems to take enemies down quicker. I mostly just load up the Attack as much as I can.

 

 

Nyx Coat. Another one I haven't used very much, my first full clear was with Poseidon on attack, but I realized afterwards that this was kind of a waste since he doesn't proc on the split attack. I need to play with this some more. On the various aspects I often end up using the Specials, which are probably the best kiting attack in the game, a little like the Chiron Bow from Hades 1: you can line up some attacks, fire off, and then run away while they chase the enemy.

For keepsakes:

 

 

Like with Hades 1, I almost never bring god keepsakes. I head into a run with an idea of what type of god I want to see, and usually will find someone I can work with during the first region: I might prefer Aphrodite, but Demeter is totally fine, for example. If I somehow got through the first region without getting my primary boon I might take a god to fill it, but that's very rare.

I currently have my default/favorite keepsake set to Circe's Crystal Figurine. This is kind of a lottery ticket. If I'm very lucky, I will get Judgement after the first Guardian, which means that I'll get all of the Arcana by the end of the game. I'll often end up with mediocre or irrelevant arcana for my build, which is also okay.

 

 

I'll situationally take the Aromatic Phial from Narcissus after the first or second boss, if I'm low on Health and have a common Boon. It can actually be great if I have exactly one common Boon that I really want to rarify. I discovered that it doesn't work on Chaos Boons, but if you don't have any eligible boons when you first get it, you can still use it on the following Fountain and it can rarify one you've picked up in the meantime. Remember to equip the Phial before drinking from the first fountain and unequip it after drinking from the second one.

 

 

Early in my campaign, I really liked using Arachne's outfit if I was running low on health after a Guardian. The first few locations in a region tend to be easy, so I could get a lot of health refills from entering locations while keeping my armor intact. It's still a good keepsake, but I have better ones to use these days.

 

 

Echo's Concave Stone is another fantastic one. I'll try and take this after I have a boon from a god I really like. I did once shoot myself in the foot though, when the stone triggered on a Zeus boon and made me take the ranged Cast ability. This totally threw off my style and led to a Typhon defeat. Since then, I've spent rerolls if I have an unexpired Stone and see a Boon I definitely don't want.

 

 

Charon's Purse is always a great choice. In the past I would start a run with it. These days I don't, but I will grab it if I have Chaos and/or Hermes boons to boost Gold, as those will apply to the purse and can lead to 300+ gold.

 

 

For the final region, I'll usually take one of the Luckiest Tooth for the free revive, the Evil Eye if it applies to Chaos/Typhon, or the Knuckle Bones.

I've just recently picked up the Jeweled Pom but haven't used it yet, and I think there are a few other Keepsake slots, so I may have to revisit this list in the future.

Moving on to Arcana:

 

 

My must-have cards for every run include:

• Health when leaving a location
• Increase max health and magic at start
• Increase max health and magic as you progress
• Death Defiance
• 50% damage to enemies with 2 curses

Lately I've started taking the lower-left corner for more rerolls and starting gold. It's been making a bigger difference than I thought it would. That does mean giving up some things I would otherwise want, though. I'll consider my weapon playstyle and decide what I can best live without: some Cast benefits or faster Omegas or something else. 

I've had all my cards unlocked for a while. I've prioritized upgrading the ones I use the most, but it will probably be a while until I have everything fully upgraded. Moon dust is expensive!

 

 

Moving on to story:

It's pretty cool to be in uncharted mythological territory. Hades 1 is a new story, but feels like it is woven in the space between existing tales. Hades 2 is completely new, though: the idea of the Titans returning and overthrowing the gods is really shocking and as far as I know has no precedence in the literature. But once again, the story is focused on the characters, and the characters are fresh and believable interpretations of their recognizable mythological origins.

 

 

Having Chronos as the main antagonist is a brilliant move. Hades 1 was great for a roguelike because of the in-universe explanation of why you keep coming back after dying. Hades 2 has a great explanation in its pocket for the alternate question, why enemies keep coming back after you kill them. So much can be hand-waved away with a being who can control the flow of time, and fortunately the Greeks already had one of those!

 

 

I like how the returning characters seem like evolutions of their previous appearance, or seeing different sides of them. Artemis in particular stands out: in the first game she was the most standoffish and reserved of all the Olympian deities, and it took a really long time for her to begin to warm up to Zagreus. But here, she and Melinoe are friendly and warm from the very start. But that makes a lot of sense, both from what we already know about Artemis and the kind of people she likes, and the "Silver Sisters" backstory to this particular game.

 

 

It was pretty fun to eventually see all of the original Olympians. I think Ares was the last one I made contact with. Dionysus might be my favorite here, just the perfect embodiment of who he is and what he would be doing in this situation.

 

 

Random note: the omniscient narrator seems to be the same voice actor as the original Hades. In an early flashback sequence Melinoe directly addresses the narrator as Homer and I went "Oh..... duh!" I don't recall him ever being identified in the first game, but it's perfect.

END SPOILERS

No mega spoilers this time, I do have some (positive) thoughts on the overall storyline, but I'll probably save those for the next post. If this is like the first game, I'll probably keep jamming on this game until I reach the epilogue; plenty of people keep playing for fun after that, but for me that will likely be a good point to pause and wind things down.