Hades II (2025): The Review

Overview

Hades II is genuinely extraordinary. It's not a lazy sequel, but the natural evolution of everything that made the original resonate. The music, the gameplay, the writing, the raw roguelike soul, it’s all here, just sharper and stronger. It doesn’t just expand on the first game’s scope, scale, and quality; it doubles down on them without losing sight of its roots. You’d have to work overtime to oversell the sheer divinity of this thing, as it confidently carves out its place in history as one of the best ways to lose hours to a game, ever.

Score: 10 out of 10

The Positives ✅

Supergiant somehow pulled off the impossible twice. Their reinvention of Greek myth in Hades 2 feels just as bold and intoxicating as the first game, only now it’s bigger, richer, and more confident in everything it does. Even the roguelike structure is baked directly into Melinoë’s story, making every death feel purposeful instead of mechanical. Add in dialogue and character writing so sharp it’ll have you emotionally invested in gods, monsters, and literal spiders, and you’ve got a myth that genuinely earns its place among the legends it draws from.

The art direction is an immediate knockout. Hades 2 blends Art Nouveau elegance with classical Greek motifs and maximalist detail in a way that feels both familiar and freshly indulgent. It worked in the first game, and now it’s dialed up even further, letting you interact with and customize that style through gameplay systems and hub-world progression. It’s gorgeous without being noisy, ornate without being overwhelming, a rare balancing act that Supergiant makes look effortless.

Then there’s the soundtrack, which frankly has no right to go this hard. “In the Blood” set an absurdly high bar in the first Hades, yet Hades 2 clears it repeatedly with track after track. Scylla’s music alone could sell the game, and boss themes like Polyphemus’ feel appropriately mythic, bombastic, and unforgettable. Pair that with some of the best voice acting in the medium, and the game’s audio design becomes just as integral as its visuals.

Gameplay-wise, this is Hades turned up to eleven. Melinoë isn’t just Zagreus with a different coat of paint, she’s a fundamentally different hero. Her magic-based kit, mana system, chargeable attacks, reworked cast, and Selene-granted Hexes completely reshape how combat flows. Add in new Olympians, mid-run allies, and the Arcana system, which finally pushes build-crafting into truly strategic territory, and suddenly the first game’s builds feel quaint by comparison.

And yes, it’s borderline criminal how much all of this costs. For $25–30, you’re getting a massive narrative, dozens upon dozens of hours of high-skill roguelike combat, legendary weapons, romance options ranging from emo gods to spiders, and a level of polish most games triple the price still fail to hit.

The Negatives ⚠️

If there’s one real downside to Hades 2, it’s the sheer commitment it demands. This game does not respect your time, not because it wastes it, but because it happily devours all of it. With two full routes, double the bosses, and an enormous metagame, what took dozens of hours in the first game can easily balloon into triple digits here, especially if you’re even remotely completion-minded.

That scale also means progression eventually slows to a crawl in the late game. Once you’ve cleared both final bosses multiple times, runs become more targeted and resource-focused rather than discovery-driven. It’s a natural evolution of the system, but it does trade some of the early-game magic for optimization and efficiency, which won’t be everyone’s favorite phase of the experience.

There’s also the risk of burnout simply due to how good the metagame is. Because every run feeds into something meaningful, upgrades, cosmetics, story beats, currencies, it becomes dangerously easy to say “just one more run” until several hours mysteriously vanish. Again, not a flaw in execution, but definitely something to be aware of if you were hoping for a more casual experience.

Some keepsakes and late-game unlocks also feel a bit too niche to justify their grind, echoing a similar issue from the first Hades. They’re far from useless, but compared to the rest of the game’s meticulously tuned systems, a few of them feel oddly situational.

And finally, while the Crossroads hub offers fantastic customization options, it doesn’t quite match the cozy, intimate charm of the House of Hades. That’s more a matter of taste than a true criticism, but it is noticeable if you were particularly attached to the original hub.

The Experience 🎮

My time with Hades 2 has been nothing short of a journey. I still remember losing my mind when it was first announced back in 2022, instantly flashing back to my countless high-Heat runs in the original game. When the playtest dropped, I dove in immediately, savoring every glimpse of Melinoë’s world and watching the game evolve update by update in early access. Each new god, mechanic, and character felt like another reminder that Supergiant was cooking something special.

Watching the game grow in real time only made the full release hit harder. By the time I reached the end, it felt less like finishing a game and more like seeing a long-awaited myth reach its final verse. The story’s escalation, swapping intimate family drama for a cosmic war against Chronos, somehow avoids jumping the shark entirely. Instead, it expands naturally, retaining emotional grounding even as primordial forces start throwing mountains at each other.

Gameplay completely consumed me. Melinoë’s kit feels endlessly expressive, and the Arcana system kept me experimenting long after I’d unlocked most of the game’s content. Even after hours upon hours, I never felt like a run was “wasted.” Every attempt pushed me forward in some way, whether through progression, mastery, or sheer spectacle.

The dual-route structure was the moment it fully clicked for me. Realizing I wasn’t just playing more Hades, but effectively two full Hades games stitched together, was jaw-dropping. Each path feels distinct, complete, and packed with memorable bosses, ones that make even Zagreus’ final showdown feel tame by comparison.

By the end of it all, one thing was painfully clear: Hades 2 isn’t just a worthy sequel, it’s a genre-defining one. It’s rare that a follow-up doesn’t just match its predecessor but completely outgrows it, leaving that already-legendary bar somewhere back in Tartarus. For the price, for the quality, and for the sheer audacity of it all, this game feels like theft. If time is a currency, Hades 2 is happy to take every last coin.