Hades II Early Access Discussion

Figured I should just start a new thread for this rather than keep posting comments in someone else's blog, since discussion of this game might go on for a while. Feel free to share any thoughts on the game, your progress, etc.

The first night I played for a little over three hours and made a few failed attempts at the second boss. At that point I hadn't really found a weapon or boon combination that I particularly liked.

But tonight I was able to play for an extended period, about twice as long as the night before in total, and I think I've started to settle into a preferred playstyle, at least for now. I unlocked the Moonstone Axe and immediately felt most comfortable with that. I generally preferred the ranged options in the last game, but here they feel kinda weak by comparison--not sure if the dev team is overcorrecting, or if maybe there will still be a ranged option I like when I start unlocking alternative weapon aspects, which I understand are still a thing. Anyway, I dig the Axe's big damage despite it being slow as hell.

One thing that helps is taking a freezing basic attack from Demeter. When I first saw that her effect had changed from a stacking slow effect to a short freeze on a longish cooldown (you freeze for 2 seconds, then can't freeze the same enemy again for 10 seconds), I didn't think it would be as useful, but for the Axe it's perfect: freeze your enemies and then pound them into sand, even if they're armored. Extra great if you get the passive boon that extends the freeze duration. By the time they'd be unfrozen they're usually already dead, so the slow attack speed just doesn't matter as much.

But of course anything that increases the Axe's speed also helps. Hermes can grant boons that just straight up increase attack speed, and the Daedalus Hammer can also help with that, including an upgrade that massively increases charge attack speed for the charged spin2win strategy.

Beyond that, I feel like Hestia's "Hearth Gain" (rapid magick regeneration in trade for -20% max health) is distinctly overtuned and basically top-tier for any build. Sure, -20% max health is not ideal, but with this boon you rarely have to be concerned about your magick meter at all and can just spam omega attacks about as much as you want.

As I started figuring all this out, I began making pretty good progress. I got to where I could beat the second boss consistently, but for my first two attempts in zone 3 I didn't even make it all the way to the boss. Then, funnily, I actually beat the zone 3 boss the first time I faced it... though it was by the skin of my teeth, and I died in literally the first area of zone 4. But on my next and final attempt of the night, I beat the boss of zone 3 a second time, and then made it all the way to the boss of zone 4. I suspect I won't beat that dude for a while yet, he hits like a truck and I really haven't figured out his moveset yet.

Anyway, all in all I'm definitely enjoying myself. There are a few rough edges that need to be addressed; e.g., for some reason your current gold isn't displayed when you're in a shop, which seems pretty dumb (you can see it by checking your boons, but that shouldn't be necessary). And it remains to be seen how I'll ultimately feel about this one in relation to the first game (I suspect I may end up preferring the first one). But there's plenty of time for improvements.

Thanks for starting this thread! I haven't had time to crack into the early access version yet, but I'm probably most curious about the weapons. I definitely used the bow as a crutch in the first game, so it's interesting to hear that it feels underpowered now. The two weapons during the tech test felt like they had more ranged power than Zagreus' weapons, so maybe the power of the bow has just been spread out more this time.

RE: gold not displaying in a shop - that's very weird because there were no issues with that in my tech test experience. I suspect they'll fix that in their first patch, whenever that may be.

Yeah, the bow with the aspect of Chiron was pretty hack with the tracking arrows and whatnot. That was easily the weapon I was most successful with. But I think you're right, all of the Hades II weapons seem to have some sort of ranged component, whereas the first game's weapons were more... focused? I don't want to say one-dimensional. But so far it seems harder in this sequel to put together a pure ranged build. It can be done with the right boons, but IMO none of the ranged options seem that strong out of the gate.

I've been having a great time with it but definitely feeling like I'm flying through this initial content, which to be fair is not this games fault I may have played a little bit of Hades 1 in the past to cause that situation. I feel like the only reason I haven't one-shot a lot areas/bosses is because the first time you get there you get a massive stacking debuff from Strife.

So very curious to see what the "Oh you think you're good at this game" options are when you clear a run, if any are even available in this round of EA.

Don't have a functional gaming PC right now and probably won't til next year so dealing with super jelly fomo. Hades one of my all time favs and what I've seen of this has me freaking out. God dang I wish the earky access was on xbox

I was a little late to the Hades 1 party and so its only been a couple years since I last played it. Loved the game but I have to say I was pretty thoroughly satisfied on its gameplay loop by the end and dont feel ready to jump into it all over again.

Does it feel fresh enough or is it just more Hades?

@junkerman: It's been a while since I played the first one, but it's pretty much just more Hades IMO.

Did 2 runs so far. I would say the game is tuned as Hades' 1.0 release. I died to floor boss both times just like how Meg and only Meg kept killing Zag in the first one...

Daedalus Upgrades seem a little uneventful now. Not ineffective mind you but a lot of weapon upgrades in Hades were very big changes to how the weapons worked and a lot of what I've seen are just slight modifications or bigger numbers.

@efesell: TBH the weapon aspects also feel that way. I unlocked them recently and they're less distinct than I want them to be.

Welp, I just had my first successful run on Chronos. Felt kinda flukey though, honestly. I got a Daedalus Hammer upgrade early on that shortened my special charge speed by a lot, but I didn't really build around that for most of the run. Then right at the end I ran across a Charon well that offered a couple of temp boons: something like +40% damage to all omega attacks, and +30% damage to all special attacks, for X number of encounters. On the strength of that I was able to just range Chronos down with fast charging omega specials that were hitting for like 900 damage a pop. I just kept my distance and tried to stay safe.

I'll probably do a few more runs for giggles, but I think soon I might stop and give it a little more time to cook, give them time to write the actual endings, etc., not to mention add the remaining surface world areas.

I'm curious if others have continued to play and have more thoughts. Per my last post, I thought that maybe I'd take a break and wait for more content, but actually I only paused for a day and then got drawn back in.

Game's real good. At this point I believe I've maxed out all NPCs on gifts for now, and also maxed out the levels of all the arcana cards I'm actually using (still plenty of others to upgrade). Did manage to beat a few runs on Fear 16 to unlock the second statue, but have not gone higher and after that have mostly been slumming on Fear 0, where it's now pretty hard to lose with the rogue-lite upgrades to Melinoe's kit and my own greater experience with the game. But I'm still finding it amusing.

What weapons have people gravitated to? I've played mostly Axe, as its ridiculous damage more than makes up for its slow swing speed... the slowdown for omega attacks mostly makes the slow speed a non-issue TBH. But I'm also not sure if the Axe really is as overpowered as it seems or it's just the kind of weapon I personally tend to gravitate to. Still, wouldn't be surprised to see a nerf in the first balance patch.

Eventually I went back to the Staff just to do something different, and fairly quickly discovered that it's actually pretty easy to turn it into a really powerful mana-less ranged weapon. Its "normal" (non-omega) special attack normally only does 10 damage, so %-based boons suck on it, but take Poseidon's flat damage boost (40 at Epic level) and suddenly your weak little pew-pew gun begins to hit like a truck. If you then manage to find the Hammer that changes your special so that it fires 2 tracking projectiles instead of just 1, you can pretty much just steamroll over everything for the rest of the run.

The other three weapons have not grabbed me. I dislike the extremely short range of the Sister Blades, the ammo retrieval on the Skulls is annoying, and the Torches feel underpowered. But maybe they're just not my style.

That first patch came out and fixed the gold display problem I mentioned earlier. It also made it so that the tool you pick is a "focus"--resources for the tool you pick just appear more often than other resources, but you are able to collect them all. So the game will no longer taunt you with resources you can't pick up. Probably a good change?

Besides the Axe in general, the other thing in the game that feels kinda OP to me is Zeus's Storm Ring, which blasts a single foe in your omega cast for insane damage, and pretty much always feels like the best option. In fact, if you get that and a boon that changes the cast to a projectile, you can almost ignore your primary weapon and just keep spamming your cast.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see how the game evolves. I came to the first Hades late, so I don't have a good sense of how things changed from the early days, but it seems likely that this one will change less now that SuperGiant has a formula to work from.

I'm playing regularly and having a fantastic time. I started the first Hades when early access arrived on Steam and continued to do at least 1 run a week up until last month. So it took a little time to get used to omega charging, magic management, and sprinting. But after adjusting to the new flow, I'm finding reliable builds and strategies.

For weapons, I feel that the Witch's Staff is well balanced; decent at both close and long range. I like to use the Aspect of Circe, which grants a burst of magic regen after a number of strikes. This lets me worry less about getting a good boon for that. The Sister Blades are not as good for me, but I do enjoy the Aspect of Pan. It makes the specials track to enemies inside the cast, similar to the Chiron Bow. This is greatly benefited with the hammer upgrade that causes specials to rebound with a chance to crit on return, and the one that makes omega specials generate more blades that shoot in all directions. This carved off huge chunks of Chronos's life the first time I defeated him. The Moonstone Axe is the strongest weapon with massive damage and area of attack. The blocking is less useful than the Aegis Shield since it can't be held for long, but it's still nice to have the option. I recently unlocked the Aspect of Thanatos, which seems even more busted by increasing crit chance after omega hits. The Argent Skull is a downgrade from the Adamant Rail. The attack damage is not enough to offset the delay from needing to collecting ammo, even at point blank. However, the omega special is quite nice, hitting almost everything on screen. The Umbral Flames feel like the weakest by far. The attacks are as ineffectual as they look and the specials are spray and pray. But there is one excellent hammer upgrade that makes the special just shoot forward and melt armor.

For boons, Demeter has become the favorite that I can fall back on, like Athena used to be. Not only is freeze is highly effective crowd control, but cyclone counts as a separate curse. With proper boons, the cast alone can trigger the Origination arcana card to greatly increase damage output. I wonder if that gets patched out because it seems overpowered. The Coarse Grit infusion allows you to tank high damage hits and greatly boosts survivability. It can be tricky to accrue 6 earth elements, but well worth the investment.

There are tons of other neat touches. Nemesis showing up to mess with my run was a fun surprise and highly appropriate. Same for Eris cursing with the strife debuff to slow progress. The Fields of Mourning and City of Ephyra great ways to switch up the level structure. I just got my first familiar, which seem to replace companions. I'll miss being able to summon the ever-faithful Bouldy, but am curious to see how they change things up. I'm still excited to discover new things and see how patches continue to make improvements.

Whereas I've been going for the Aspect of Momus, which goes all in on the Special spam, since at max upgrades it gives a flat increase to Special damage of +30. Considering that default Special damage is 10 and this bumps it 40, thrown in Poseidon and you're pretty well flattening things, even without that x2 tracking Hammer.

The effect definitely sounds good, but I've been seeing reports that it's bugged with a lot of things right now. E.g., if you pick up the Hammer that throws the spinning omega attack forward and adds +80% damage, each individual hit of the spin not longer counts as a hit for the Thanatos buff, instead it's only +1 for the entire spin duration. I'm sure that stuff will be fixed, but it sounds like it's less reliable in practice than it should be right now.

Funnily enough, for Axe I've lately been using Charon even though the unique interaction it offers between the standard cast and omega specials is not something I ever use. Instead, I use it simply because of the extended cast time (+3 seconds, which I think is actually double or almost double the normal length?). This does a few things I like. First, it makes more relevant the arcana card that increases damage to enemies inside your cast, since it actually gives you time enough to fully charge and unleash your omega attack before the cast wears off. Second, it makes Zeus's Storm Ring--which already seemed like the best cast in the game--even better, as it traps and damages enemies for that much longer.

I do like Demeter a lot and for my early runs I would take her attack boon for my axe every damned time, because the freeze (especially if you get the extended duration) really helped mitigate the slow swing speed... by the time enemies were unfrozen they were either dead, or at least their armor was all gone so that they could be safely stunlocked. Also, her "Weed Killer" is a must for the axe since it relies so heavily on its omega attack. However, in more recent runs I've discovered I prefer the Aphrodite attack boon for the axe even more... it just does that much more raw damage.

My bet is that the devs are fine with that Origination interaction. Personally I haven't even been using that card at all, it generally seems a little harder to take advantage of in this game without giving up something of equal strength (whereas in the first game I was constantly using/proccing that mirror effect with the Chiron Bow, with Aphrodite causing weak with the main shot, and Demeter inflicting chill with the tracking arrows). My sense is that they want to encourage the use of these types of combos, and will focus on nerfs on boons or weapons that are stand-alone OP, at least on the first tuning pass. Though, hell, what do I know? I guess we'll find out soonish.

I had my first crash today while using the skull with Hera's boon on special. While in Tartarus, I used the omega special to hit a room filled with tons of enemies and hitch triggering at all once was apparently too much. Unfortunately, I lost the entire run.

I remember get crashes during early access of the first one. I would need to quit between levels to save progress. Crashes would happen much less frequently as time went on and almost never happened after the full release. But at this time, I may need to start manual saving again.

@gyratyne: Ouch, that sucks. I haven't experienced any crashes myself. All I've run into is minor bugs with boon interactions etc not working quite correctly.

BTW, I thought it was funny that I found that Staff of Momus + Poseidon Special build independently, and then in looking for recommendations for builds to beat Fear 32 (to get Skelly's last statue), I found a Steam thread in which everyone was pretty much agreeing that that was the easiest and safest build in the game. The icing on the cake is that the Momus Aspect can also heal you back to half using its Omega Specials after every encounter. God forbid you get Aphrodite's "Healthy Rebound" at 50%, then you can just heal to full after every encounter. It definitely feels brokenly strong right now, especially since it requires basically no mana. I think they're going to have to nerf it at some point. So I'm glad I've already exploited it to complete that pair of Fear 32 runs before that happens, and can go back to something more reasonable. Now that I'm done with that, there's no gameplay reason to go higher than Fear 20, so far as I know, which is a lot more doable.

Whereas, speaking to your earlier post, I feel like the biggest consensus balance-wise in the community is that the Torches really do need a buff, or need to be redesigned completely. I've seen almost no one saying they like the Torches right now.