Hades 2 review: Reaching the heights of Olympus

In 2020, Supergiant Games’ Olympian-themed roguelite game, Hades took the world by storm with its charming art style, rewarding gameplay, and likeable cast of characters. The way that it combined storytelling and forgiving permadeath elements made it feel unlike any other game in the genre.

Hades 2 takes the solid foundation that its predecessor set and changes up the formula in smart ways to keep the sequel feeling familiar, yet wildly different, but still immensely fun. Here’s our full review breaking down what we thought about the sequel to one of the world’s best roguelite games. 

The Escapist recaps

• Hades 2 is the sequel to 2020’s Hades by Supergiant Games. It follows a new protagonist, Melinoe, who’s the sister of the previous protagonist, Zagreus.
• Hades 2 refines its predecessor’s features and mechanics to make them feel fresh in exciting new ways.
• The art direction, cast of characters, and immersive storytelling makes Hades 2 stand out compared to its contemporaries.
• While Hades 2’s story only loosely connects with the first game’s, you should at least play it before jumping into the sequel.

The princess saves the day

Hades 2 follows Melinoe, the sister of the first game’s protagonist, Zagreus. Their grandfather, Chronos, has broken out of his imprisonment and has taken over the House of Hades. Chronos has also kidnapped their father, Hades, and trapped him within a separate pocket of time. In order to prevent the continued fall of the House of Hades, Melinoe has to take a perilous journey through the Underworld to defeat Chronos.

The gameplay loop is as follows: Mel makes her way through different areas in the Underworld, facing off against enemies and picking up random boons (abilities) and upgrades along the way. If Mel dies during the middle of the run, she ends up back at her home base, the Crossroads, where she has to begin the trek back all over again.

Mel has a few differences from Zag. For starters, she doesn’t have the same whippy sarcasm that her brother does, but she’s still an incredibly likeable character. Her more prim and proper personality comes across as more considerate, which can be seen when she interacts with her familiars, magical animals that can help her out during battle, while often confiding in and feeding them. 

It’s a clever way to give Mel her own sense of identity, especially since Zag was already such a strong protagonist. I was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to live up to him, but that’s simply not the case. Mel is every bit as charming as her brother is, just in a different way.

Mel also plays much differently than Zag. Unlike her brother, she can sprint, which is helpful in escaping enemy attacks or simply just running from one point to the other. She doesn’t have nearly as many consecutive dashes as him either, which can feel a bit jarring coming from the first game, and takes a while to get used to. However, boons can augment both her sprint and her dash, giving her more maneuverability than Zag ever did during his adventure. 

For example, the goddess Hestia’s boon gives Mel the ability to leave scorching footprints behind her sprints, damaging enemies behind her, while the god Apollo’s boon enhances Mel’s dash, inflicting Daze on enemies as she passes through them, lessening the chance of their attacks hitting her. It’s so much fun to mix and match the different boons you come across to see how they can synergize with your current build.

As a witch, Mel can also fire off magical charged attacks called Omega Moves using Hades 2’s overhauled magic system. In the first game, Zag had to collect Bloodstones, which were used as ammo for his magical abilities. However, Mel has her own mechanic called Magick, which acts like a traditional MP bar you’d find in many games. By holding down the attack button, a portion of her MP will be expended launching powerful attacks. Omega moves really help change up the gameplay pacing to make it more explosive than ever. You can also upgrade and enhance her Omega moves with boons too, which further adds more depth to making your build.

The journey through hell

What made Hades as well as Hades 2 stand out, is that I never felt like I was wasting my time. Every single time I died, there was some sort of progress I made, whether it’d be to the story, lore, or gameplay. For example, late during one of my runs, I met up with Dionysus, the Olympian God of Wine and Madness, the very first time. 

While he regularly gave out boons to Zag in the previous game, he’s a rare one this time around. While Mel died before reaching Chronos during this particular run, the NPCs in the Crossroads all updated their conversations, and Mel was able to talk to them about meeting Dionysus. 

This kind of adaptive storytelling is impressive. No two players will have the same exact story progress, but the overall story ends up being similar. It kept me engaged and immersed in Hades 2’s worldbuilding in ways that other roguelite games couldn’t. 

The game’s gorgeous art style really helps too. The comic-book aesthetic makes the character portraits pop out. Every time I picked up a new boon and saw the corresponding god’s portrait appear, a smile came across my face. They’re endearing to look at and the extra visual flair gives the characters tons of personality.

Hades 2 has greatly expanded the materials and resources pool. In the previous game, Zag would mainly pick up items like gemstones and diamonds to take back with him to the House contract and create permanent upgrades that could help him on his journey, like making fountains heal more HP than usual. 

However, Mel can pick up all kinds of new materials like ore such as silver, bronze, iron, and marble, as well as a variety of different flowers and seeds. These can be used to create similar permanent upgrades, this time called Incantations.

One of the biggest quality of life changes between Hades 2 in early access and its 1.0 launch version is that originally, Mel could only pick one tool to bring along during a run, such as her pickaxe to mine ore, or her shovel to dig up seeds. 

However, this ended up making some runs feel useless if Mel didn’t come by any of the appropriate resource spots. Supergiant made the change to let Mel carry all of her tools at once, which greatly improved the game’s flow while avoiding the feeling of missing out on a valuable resource.

Resources are also needed to unlock bonuses in the new Arcana Card system. By equipping these cards, Mel can inherit certain passive effects such as restoring her Magick meter by a certain amount every few seconds or starting every run with a set number of gold. 

There’s a limit to how many Mel can equip, based on her total Grasp amount. More powerful effects require more Grasp to equip, requiring you to strategize and plan for which ones you’d like to take on a specific run.

The path forward

Even after managing to defeat Chronos for the first time, Mel’s journey doesn’t end there. While I won’t spoil anything, the story cleverly gives her reasons to continually go through the Underworld again and fight Cronos, which gives Hades 2 almost endless replayability.

It doesn’t end there. Beating him once unlocks the Testament of Night, letting you add modifiers to subsequent runs to make them harder, like giving enemies more HP or increasing the number of enemies per encounter. Stacking harder modifiers rewards Mel with Nightmare material, which is required to make Mel’s base weapons stronger. 

That’s not all! Chaos Trials force Mel to stick with a certain load out rather than having you pick for her. By defeating bosses, they’ll drop Star Dust rather than their usual resources. Star Dust can be used to power up Mel’s Arcana Cards even further or bond more with her familiars. All of these post-game options give players an incentive to keep playing and become more powerful, greatly extending Hades 2’s run time.

While it’s available before you beat Chronos for the first time, Mel can actually go to the surface instead of the Underworld. Here, she attempts to reach the top like how Zag did in the previous game, but this time around she’s trying to rally the remaining gods to help her put a stop to Chronos once and for all. There are different resources and materials on the surface than in the Underworld, along with different bosses. It’s a great way to switch up your runs every so often.

It’s been a fascinating ride to see Hades 2 go through early access since last year. Even when it was unfinished, it was easy to tell how much more ambitious it was compared to its predecessor. 

Hades 2 is an improvement in every single way. It’s hard to believe how a masterpiece like the first game could’ve been meaningfully reiterated on, but Supergiant Games somehow pulled it off. With more finely tuned mechanics like additional combat options, build crafting, and complex resource management, while simultaneously retaining its colorful charm and fun gameplay loop, Hades 2 is undoubtedly one of the best games of 2025.

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