Hades II

First game of the year 

Game no: 566

Genre: Action (Roguelike)
Platform: PC
Release Date: 2025

A game that took me forever to finish due to not having that much time to play it everyday. The sequel to the one of my best games of the year Hades returns with an all new story as well as better mechanics that we love and also some new features as well. Hades II tells the story far into the future. You play as Melinoe, the daughter of Hades and sister to Zagreus who is curse to the underworld and needs to stop her Grandfather chronos in order to save everyone. That is basically the story in a nutshell. Of course the story is a bit more complext than that but I am not a big fan of the story that much. I mean I do listen to it but the reason why we play Hades II is obviously the kick ass gameplay. 

The gameplay like the first game is the same. You start at the hub, choose your weapon of choice and start your journey. There are 4 different biomes to navigate. In each biome there are multiple gates. Defeating the enemies from each gate will grant you a boon (powerup), resources or a story to move the plot forward. The boons that you use upgrade your attacks, specials, defend and also health and magic. The key of surviving each run is to deicde which upgrades are important that can help you defeat Chronos. At the end of gate you will face a boss. Beat it and you will go to next biome. There are 4 stages until the final boss. Die halfway you have to restart again. I played in the god mode option where for everytime I die Melinoe gets stronger which is great since you can see the progression made while playing this game. There is also the hub world where you craft spells and plant items to aid you in your quest (this is very important in progressing the story) since you need to gather resources to upgrade weapons and make new spells for you. I can say that this is a very meaty game. If you only have one game to play this year, you would not be disspointed. 

What I love about Hades II. Everything. It seems like the perfect game. Combat, gameplay, progression is great. Even if you think you are failing you are actually getting something new that will help you with the next run. There are a lot of characters to interact with and there is a lot of dialogue. The only gripe I have is that after a while I got bored of the story.. It is just too much story and I just wanted to kill more demons. After a playing this game for a good 40 hours I decided to switch on cheatengine to make my game goes faster. A normal run will take like 1 hour but a cheatengine will take like 10 minutes. You know what they say... If you are still enjoying yourself after cheats that means it is a great game

There is a second part of Hades II that I didn't mention in the review but basically is a new story with new biomes, weapons and resources (there is even a mech suit) but I will say that it makes game so deep. So in the end I am going to say this is the best game that I played this year. This year I think it is going to be hard to get 10 games in. But I will try my best. If I play one game this year (which won't happen) this will be thet top 3. Hades II is a deserving S-Rank