Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. Other times it can distort your memories of the thing you love. Like many, I was obsessed with Hades back in 2020. I spent well over 100 hours with it, marveling at its fast-paced gameplay and its rich storytelling. It quickly became an all-time favorite that I couldn’t get enough of. I’d get more, sort of, as a wave of roguelikes emerged having taken very clear notes from Hades in the wake of its success.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, Callisto Protocol spinoff [Redacted], Lost in Random: The Eternal Die — all of these games gave me the same top-down roguelike action with narrative twists that gave each a sense of progression. Yet none of these games, fun as they could be, fully satiated my appetite. I began to convince myself that the problem was Hades itself. Maybe I was so excited about it because it felt so new at the time, but that its formula was more shallow than I thought in 2020.
After playing Hades 2, it turns out my first instincts were correct after all. It’s just that no Hades riff I’ve played fully understands what makes the series special.
The Hades formula doesn’t sound too hard to fumble: fast action, a wealth of upgrades that can change your playstyle each run, a layer of meta progression that makes it so no loss is truly a failure, and some morsels of story in between. It’s not a McDonald’s hamburger, but the basic recipe steps are clear. You can see that replicated to the letter in something like TMNT: Splintered Fate. I start in a central hub, chatting with each turtle and spending my currency to unlock permanent upgrades. When I’m ready, I set out on a run and start hacking at enemies in room after room. I amass upgrades en route to a boss, stopping at a shop along the way, and hope that my build can make up for any of my skill shortcomings. When I die, oh well! Back to the hub to get new dialogue, unlock more stuff, and come back stronger. It’s all par for the course, but that loop doesn’t attract me the same way it did in Hades and still does in Hades 2. So what’s the difference?
I got a sense of that very quickly once I started up Hades 2. It’s easy to remember a game’s broad strokes, but sometimes the details tend to fall through the cracks — and Hades is all detail. Even when I’m simply walking around its hub area, I’m astonished by how densely illustrated it all is, leaving no inch of the canvas empty. Every character conversation is a chance to marvel at the extravagant interpretations of Greek gods, and listen to voice performances by actors who are eager to chew the scenery. It does not feel like a world pieced together by assets; the mechanical nature of game development gives way to the organic.
That philosophy isn’t just present in the artistry, but in the core gameplay too. The best example of that lies in Hades 2’s excellent combat. The countless boons — temporary powerups that last the span of a run — you can grab don’t just increase your attack power or give you more defense. They fundamentally reshape how you fight, making one attack button feel like it’s capable of doing 7,000 things.
In Hades, boons are not just basic RPG perks that are the equivalent of raising a stat. Each one needs to feel like it’s writing a story word by word. My proudest Hades 2 run so far came from a high-health build where I went all in on random dodge chances. In a pivotal choice, I took a boon that gave me a giant infusion of health but made it so I could never see how much health I had left as a result. That turned me into a daredevil, unworried about throwing myself into harm’s way because I didn’t have a red health bar staring me down. That aggressive run felt entirely different from others that were built around keeping a distance from my foes and peppering them with chain lightning blasts.
So many games that have tried to do what Hades does best slip on that nuance. I get upgrade after upgrade, but how I’m playing in each run feels the same. My weapon does what my weapon is always going to do. Maybe my bullets will inflict a status effect this time, but the act of shooting the gun will always feel the same. So few games evolve from run to run the way Hades 2 does, making each run feel so distinct and memorable.
When I think about why Hades resonates with me still, while so many games like it don’t, I think about a movie theater soda fountain. Do you know that childhood thrill of mixing seven drinks into a cup? It’s the scientific method in beverage form, letting you make and test a hypothesis that either yields delicious results or total disaster. That’s the fluid magic of Hades and its sequels, two games that make you feel like you’re running the experiment, not being experimented on.