(128 hours spent through 170 Nights with the Steam Deck. Played since Early Acess.)
By the time I felt satisfied with Hade II’s 1.0 release back in early October, 2025, I had already spent more than 110 hours on almost 150 runs. By “satisfied”, I mean seen the end credits roll, reached what the game calls its epilogue and then had a feeling of “This game sure lifted a lot from Stone Ocean (aka JoJo Part 6), huh?” Ironcially enough, I did not have much to say about the game back then for I pretty much had my say on this one back in March already.
Then the final piece of the “This is Mass Effect 3 all over again!” mosaic fell into place. The game’s first post-launch patch contains what Supergiant Games called True Ending Enhancement (With an E-word just like ME3’s “Extended Cut”, no less.) and the first time the studio did a proper “new game plus” since Transistor’s Recursion. Well, it cannot be really called NG+ unless player is allowed to see end credits again now can it?
In many ways I did have my say on the game back in March when all the biomes were completed through the Warsong update. Unseen update and 1.0 release, on the other hand, feel like expansion packages to me already. So this review would just be me rambling my feeling while this blog is likely the more helpful review.
“Polished” in more than one sense of the word
In a world where physical boarders as well as virtual ones among sovereign states getting tighter near the point of “closed”, one got to treasure the things that can be still taken liberty in. Enters ancient mythology. I mean it’s not like our ancestors did not take liberty in their telling, so why should their modern day counterpart be any different.
Hades II does take many liberty just to get its ESRB T rating. One of the most notable to me is omission of the (in)famous tale known as “Saturn (Practically what the Roman called “Chronos”) devouring his own children”. Jen Zee only referred to that one in a Gameinformer interview regarding why she drew Time itself as a slender old man.
Cutting up an old god is still fine but not so much for cannibalism. Might as well since that tale of Chronos swallowing young not-yet-Olympians whole warns about the inherent vice of sovereignty. But it’s hard to imagine a piece of interactive entertainment made by a studio composed of multi-ethnic native English speakers in California would go to such dark places. Not that I want them to either, their take about family is messy enough.
Anyway onto this NG+ business. The puppeted corpse of Waypoint were among those asked “Where is my real ending, Hades II?” I didn’t think it was a thing until Supergiant Games announced on Steam patch note that the first patch would address the issues er, users have with the story. Guess with the deal with a devil to release the game in late September (Another piece akin to Mass Effect 3’s PS3 in my once console warrior thinking.), someone in the studio also felt that the story was bit rushed.
The one difference between Hades II’s “New Game Plus” and Supergiant’s first 2 outings would be it’s not accessed through the game’s main menu. It is one calduron among many to cook up. As someone who stepped in 1.0 after Early Access, I did feel a sense of deja vu. The game wipes out all the resource player gather from the 2 final bosses as an incentive for one to engage with the story.
Speak of final boss, one thing lacks from the sequel since its launch is the differentiator before end credits. The titular final boss of the first game simply steps aside in the last run before story’s ending. After the patch, the sequel has something in the same sprit yet the method heads towards a different direction: the final boss of Go Out route would bring a third life bar out of his ass (The final boss of Go Up route does not have a life bar, which is partially why it’s harder.)
Fear not, the player have infinite number of life bar by then so it is really the kind of "dev just let players get it over with" victory lap I hope more game would adapt (Why do Persona 3 and 5 have it while Metaphor does not, Atlus!). The arena art resembling [REDACATED] is of course breath taking, which does make one wonder if the game was better off as an October, 2025 release, but the deal with Nintendo compelled them to hurry up.
As someone who does not dislike the ending shipped in September, this one does feel enhanced with art showing more non-player characters of this first Hades. Though the writing does feel adjust according to feedback. Guess with the mandate to fight tutorial boss every Go Out run, I just lowered my exception for the impact this story can leave.
Evidence that “indie” is better
Calling Supergiant Game an indie studio is tricky. The staff number of 25 is in the 2-digit compared to many blokes in their lonesome sheds. The music budget alone can probably fund a handful projects on itch. All five games are on par with late 1990s’ boxed releases on PC. Yet, the i word applies if only in the sense of avoiding polygonal extravaganza’s pitfalls.
I would love to think that studio director Amir Rao brought up 2007’s God of War II for Gameinformer both as an inspiration and cautious tale. “Wannabe Empire Strikes Back” was a plauge for polygonal extravaganzas in the decade between 2004 and 2015 (Or 2018 with the mastermind before GOW2 decided to end the franchise’s 2018 soft reboot/imposter with cliffhanger.). The sickness was worsened as bold ones would drop cliffhanging endings before they earned any good will.
“Indie devs” on the other hand tend not to assume that they have enough good will with their costumers. True Ending Enhancement is part of it for better and worse. Guess the “To be continued” during Early Access is as far as Supergiant can go with cliffhangers. By 1.0, they would pat players on their backs by the time credits roll.
Probably not my final words on the Hades “franchise”
The pattern of me interacting Supergiant’s first 2 games is hauntingly similar to how I played their Hades games. I first played Bastion in 2013, almost 2 years since its Xbox 360 release while I played Transistor on its launch day in 2014. While I bought Hades Early Access on both Epic Game Shop and Steam, I didn’t play it for real until its Switch release in September, 2020. My save file of Hades II started in May, 2024. So if this pattern holds, I would first see credits roll in Supergiant’s elusive Game Six half a decade after its launch...
I jest or do I? My interest in gaming is wading by the day. Still I did edit Hades II into this site’s wiki so it would be shame if I had not written a scored yet rambling review. All in all, 2 thumbs up, highly recommend. If my cynical ass found fun in it, maybe your less jaded one can too.