I think one of the worst consequences of getting older is how much harder I find it to feel surprised while playing new games. Every experience I’ve played leaves an etch, which makes it that much easier to spot a game’s influences. This, in turn, means I’m a lot less susceptible to feelings of genuine surprise even while playing what’s ostensibly a brand new video game.
To be clear, I don’t think any of this is actually a bad thing. Common tropes that reappear across several games eventually form new genres, and help to prevent the industry from coming to a creative standstill. As such, we should celebrate, and encourage this kind of iteration. Besides, if developers weren’t constantly lifting ideas from one another then the entire industry (likely) would have died out decades ago.
It’s for this reason that it was such a pleasant surprise for me when Hades 2 actually managed to surprise me. I went into it expecting it to be more of the same given it’s status as a sequel. In fact, I was hoping it would be familiar territory. That all left me totally unguarded for when the game eventually sprung its biggest departure from the original title several hours into the experience: a second type of run.
However, while Hades 2 does include a second type of run for players to engage with, it does take a bit of time to reveal its hand to the player. The sequel begins much in the same way as the original: players are introduced to the lead character, and are given a singular goal. For Melinoë that involves venturing into the depths of the Underworld to defeat Chronos. Along the way, she’ll collect a bevy of different abilities, and items which should make the task of actually slaying Chronos far more manageable.
However, shortly after reaching Chronos for the first time, I was informed that all of Mel’s relatives on Mount Olympus required aid. As such, I set to work on opening up a pathway to the surface, so Mel could leave the Underworld, and we could both see what all the fuss was about.
Imagine my surprise when I reached the dead city of Ephyra, and was greeted with this sight:
Boons? Upgrades? New enemies? This is a completely new type of run isn’t it?
As it would turn out, yes! Yes it was.
Getting to Olympus was, much like Mel’s nightly journeys to the depths of Tartarus, a 4 act journey where players would collect new abilities while fighting their way through hordes of undead baddies. Better yet, these baddies would be completely unique, and the road to Olmypus also houses a few new characters with their own unique storylines. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that Developer SuperGiant took the 2 in Hades 2 literally.
It might seem a little strange to get so excited about the inclusion of a secondary run type if you have less familiarity with Roguelikes/Roguelites, but this is a huge departure from the norm. Almost every game in this genre features a single mode that players are expected to play over, and over again with new items, or abilities. This allows developers to focus all of their effort into refining the single mode to be as polished as possible. As a result, much smaller teams are able to craft games that rival the quality of their peers within the industry by reducing the scope of their project to something that is actually manageable, while still giving players an experience with an ocean of depth.
You want to know the really crazy thing about this though? It’s that an indie did it first. It took an indie studio to push the envelope, and expand the scope of what a Roguelite could be.
I mention this because larger budget projects have been adding Roguelite modes to their games for years now, and never deemed it necessary to push the envelope in the same way. Games like Splatoon 3: Side Order, and Prey: Mooncrash feature all of the same trappings as their indie counterparts.
In fact, the only example that I could conjure up where players play through dramatically different levels in each playthrough was Hitman: World of Assassination’s Freelancer mode. Though, that’s a little different as it remixes all of Hitman’s existing levels with new goals, item placement, and side objectives. In that sense, it’s perhaps better described as a content rich Roguelite with 20 different stages, than a game with several wholly unique run types.
I dunno. The shoe kind of fit, so I figured it was worth mentioning.
Regardless, I hope this has helped to explain why Hades 2 caught me completely off-guard. Other games in the genre, regardless of budget or team size, haven’t attempted to innovate in the same way. That’s probably because it makes more financial sense to simply focus all of your time, energy, and development dollars on producing a singular, highly polished mode with different characters, classes, items, abilities, and mutators.
Now for the all important question: why does any of this actually matter? It isn’t just about having another bullet point for the store page, though that’s likely part of it.
For starters, having 2 distinct modes (Underworld, and Olympus) adds some much needed variety to Hades 2 when compared to its predecessor. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was completely burned out on the original game by the time I finished the entire (extended) story. By comparison, the greater variety of enemies, and arena types found across both run types has helped to keep each new run of Hades 2 feeling fresh.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that the different types of enemies, and configuration of foes encourage different types of builds too. For example, I tend to prioritize stronger area of effect abilities during my Olympus runs, whereas I find high single-target damage to be more effective for the Underworld. This helps to add an additional layer of variety, so players aren’t leveraging identical types of strategies with each subsequent playthrough of the game.
Both run types also have a slightly different cadence from one another. For example, Underworld runs mirror the typical 4 act structure found within the original Hades. Players clear combat encounters sequentially, and choose between 2 different rewards before entering their next encounter. This means that the long-term prospects of your build are usually left open-ended until you find the right combination of abilities, and upgrades to make things pop off.
By contrast, Olympus runs start within Ephyra where players are shown 10 different rooms, each with a reward for the player to claim upon clearing said room. In order to progress, players need to finish 6 of the 10 rooms. As such, players end up making several key decisions about the trajectory of their run right away, which removes some of the guess work that you’ll normally experience in an Underworld run. In response to this change, Olympus runs also crank up the difficulty of encounters much faster when compared to Underworld runs.
I suppose what I’ve been trying to say with this whole article is that I really appreciate the direction that SuperGiant has taken with Hades 2. They absolutely could have kept the scope of the sequel inline with the original. I’m glad that they didn’t though. The sheer amount of variety has made playing through each run an absolute blast, and I’m looking forward to the game’s full release even more so than I was before I started playing it in Early Access.
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Frostilyte Writes 