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moonvoiceI've reached the point in Hades II where I'm very bad at everything even with Godmode at max (this game is actually not accesible at all, though it Tried, it's both harder than the first Hades, and less forgiving, and the Godmode is like...ehhhh. On the one hand I get that like, it's very cool for people to get very hard achievements when a game is very challenging, and on the other hand, for those of us who have pretty big motor dysfunction etc. who want the game to be accessible, the game is like phenomenally hard even with their 'accessibility' options, and that's frustrating.
I don't want to have to use mods, mostly because they can be finicky and sometimes break saves etc., but I honestly can't see some ways forward through the game without them. Massive props to the people who can play without Godmode in a game that is so much harder. I consider myself lucky that I can beat the vanilla game, but everything else (Chaos challenges, etc.) is like...welp. We'll see. Some are fine, some are not. The game is very beautiful but the pacing feels weird. I know I played it in early access so I've done a lot, though I had a lot to catch up on, but right now the main character feels in a more miserable situation than she was before, and it's been that way for about 20 hours of playtime, and I have literally no idea how to fix it, or even if it's meant to be fixed.
Like, I've defeated Typhon "properly" and Chronos "properly" and now I'm stuck in an endless grind defeating both bosses in alternative timelines in a way that doesn't give Melinoe a chance to really explore other aspects of her life, or grieve any particular trauma, or even visit the House of Hades again or Olympus again, and I think I've now defeated 'fake timeline' Chronos and Typhon around 6+ times each, and...nothing. I'm trying to progress the Arachne etc. storylines, but it's slow. I've visited Circe with Knucklebones approximately 5 times, and nothing (despite being able to call Odysseus for Scylla and the first instance that I forget). The Dora storyline is incredibly slow. I can't tell if everything's just stalled behind a really badly queued system, or if I'm doing something wrong, or what. And it's feeling very pointless and frustrating, because the game isn't really clear about what happens now, except that we're stuck in perpetual renovations. (And I awakened Hypnos aaaaand...nothing).
It does sort of inspire the fic I initially wanted to write for this game (just a gen one), because ironically it contributes heavily to the themes I wanted to explore. I was just...not expecting to be grinding so much, because I don't recall grinding this much between 'ending part one' and 'ending part two' in Hades and I also felt like the objectives were much clearer?
There's a random minor niggle I have, which is that sure, the Wretched Broker will highlight things you can't sell because you still need them for Cauldron recipes, but so far what I can't see, is like, if he also says that for things that you spend re: Dora for cosmetic changes, and for songs, I don't think he flags those at all, which means that you can't really trust what he says to keep because you'll need it and sell because you don't, because, until you have all the cosmetics and songs, it's totally misleading.
I cannot stand the Scythe, it just makes me feel constantly terrible at the game no matter what I'm doing. I know it's people's faves, I'm assuming, but in all its aspects I just want to put myself in a blender. Playing with the Scythe today had Glen actively tell me to stop playing and "do something fun" so that's a good idea of how awful I feel when I'm playing with it.
I also hate Typhon. I can defeat Typhon, I just hate him. Something about not being able to see the health bar, I think, really fucks me up.
I'm tired of the Schelemeus storyline, it was like a cute callback initially and then got really tired like 200+ hours into the game. I don't know what they're going to fix at this point but the aimlessness of being this far into the game with no idea if Mel is just in 'perpetual limbo forever now except Chronos isn't bad' is like...um, would actually prefer a Major Character Death ending over that, honestly. Give her some fucking peace. I don't buy the upbeat stoicism and running all over the place while gods are like 'oh you're still doing that huh?' is like... okay what.
Things I've liked so far are all the familiars. Pretty much all the other weapons (sort of, I can take or leave the torches but I feel more able to win a run with them either way). Some of the boons, though it also seems much harder to get fun synergies. I feel much more at the mercy of RNG (case in point, despite taking Hestia's keepsake tons of times in a row, I still cannot get her Legendary, likewise, despite taking the right Keepsake for Selene's God Paths there are two I just cannot seem to get (Hestia, Demeter). I literally only take Knuckle Bones and Hestia's keepsake these days trying to move achievements along only for like...nothing to happen.
Wait good things, I was meant to be focusing on good things lmao. I liked the end credits, and enjoyed the song and the art. I've liked Mel and Artemis singing together, and hearing Apollo sing. I like the soundtrack/music a great deal. I actually have really grown to love Tartarus and Chronos as a final battle. I also really like Ephysus? (The one with the collonade where you're raiding different buildings and can choose your own 'starter build' which seems fun and different, along with the random small rooms that can open.
Okay, I'm done.
I don't want to have to use mods, mostly because they can be finicky and sometimes break saves etc., but I honestly can't see some ways forward through the game without them. Massive props to the people who can play without Godmode in a game that is so much harder. I consider myself lucky that I can beat the vanilla game, but everything else (Chaos challenges, etc.) is like...welp. We'll see. Some are fine, some are not. The game is very beautiful but the pacing feels weird. I know I played it in early access so I've done a lot, though I had a lot to catch up on, but right now the main character feels in a more miserable situation than she was before, and it's been that way for about 20 hours of playtime, and I have literally no idea how to fix it, or even if it's meant to be fixed.
Like, I've defeated Typhon "properly" and Chronos "properly" and now I'm stuck in an endless grind defeating both bosses in alternative timelines in a way that doesn't give Melinoe a chance to really explore other aspects of her life, or grieve any particular trauma, or even visit the House of Hades again or Olympus again, and I think I've now defeated 'fake timeline' Chronos and Typhon around 6+ times each, and...nothing. I'm trying to progress the Arachne etc. storylines, but it's slow. I've visited Circe with Knucklebones approximately 5 times, and nothing (despite being able to call Odysseus for Scylla and the first instance that I forget). The Dora storyline is incredibly slow. I can't tell if everything's just stalled behind a really badly queued system, or if I'm doing something wrong, or what. And it's feeling very pointless and frustrating, because the game isn't really clear about what happens now, except that we're stuck in perpetual renovations. (And I awakened Hypnos aaaaand...nothing).
It does sort of inspire the fic I initially wanted to write for this game (just a gen one), because ironically it contributes heavily to the themes I wanted to explore. I was just...not expecting to be grinding so much, because I don't recall grinding this much between 'ending part one' and 'ending part two' in Hades and I also felt like the objectives were much clearer?
There's a random minor niggle I have, which is that sure, the Wretched Broker will highlight things you can't sell because you still need them for Cauldron recipes, but so far what I can't see, is like, if he also says that for things that you spend re: Dora for cosmetic changes, and for songs, I don't think he flags those at all, which means that you can't really trust what he says to keep because you'll need it and sell because you don't, because, until you have all the cosmetics and songs, it's totally misleading.
I cannot stand the Scythe, it just makes me feel constantly terrible at the game no matter what I'm doing. I know it's people's faves, I'm assuming, but in all its aspects I just want to put myself in a blender. Playing with the Scythe today had Glen actively tell me to stop playing and "do something fun" so that's a good idea of how awful I feel when I'm playing with it.
I also hate Typhon. I can defeat Typhon, I just hate him. Something about not being able to see the health bar, I think, really fucks me up.
I'm tired of the Schelemeus storyline, it was like a cute callback initially and then got really tired like 200+ hours into the game. I don't know what they're going to fix at this point but the aimlessness of being this far into the game with no idea if Mel is just in 'perpetual limbo forever now except Chronos isn't bad' is like...um, would actually prefer a Major Character Death ending over that, honestly. Give her some fucking peace. I don't buy the upbeat stoicism and running all over the place while gods are like 'oh you're still doing that huh?' is like... okay what.
Things I've liked so far are all the familiars. Pretty much all the other weapons (sort of, I can take or leave the torches but I feel more able to win a run with them either way). Some of the boons, though it also seems much harder to get fun synergies. I feel much more at the mercy of RNG (case in point, despite taking Hestia's keepsake tons of times in a row, I still cannot get her Legendary, likewise, despite taking the right Keepsake for Selene's God Paths there are two I just cannot seem to get (Hestia, Demeter). I literally only take Knuckle Bones and Hestia's keepsake these days trying to move achievements along only for like...nothing to happen.
Wait good things, I was meant to be focusing on good things lmao. I liked the end credits, and enjoyed the song and the art. I've liked Mel and Artemis singing together, and hearing Apollo sing. I like the soundtrack/music a great deal. I actually have really grown to love Tartarus and Chronos as a final battle. I also really like Ephysus? (The one with the collonade where you're raiding different buildings and can choose your own 'starter build' which seems fun and different, along with the random small rooms that can open.
Okay, I'm done.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 01:47 am (UTC)Ygnium is fun but can be frustrating because it's so weak if you're not using it right, so I end up in a lot of runs in fights that take forever because it does damage so lowly and it's very easy to get a bad build. Supay is great (imo, the best of the torch aspects, and great for someone like me, who is bad at game lol), and I like Eos, but it's still pretty frustrating.
Honestly since I completed the Dark Gifts prophecy I've just been doing nonstop Xinth runs. I like staff fine and Ygnium as a back-up, and I can manage Morrigan, but knives, skull, and axe are all exasperating to varying degrees, even if Medea skull eats minibosses and Hel skull is kind of entertaining.
The Arachne storyline is exasperating, especially because it's so heavily reliant on random encounters that get buried beneath so much other dialogue. I've currently stuck in the third and I assume they're still busy with post-canon dialogue, but it's also hard to get to them. And another prophecy is a random encounter with someone who has way too much generic post-canon dialogue pushing back their prophecy and it's honestly pissing me off. It truly is just lots of grinding. My only other bond is also a random encounter who refuses to spawn after several runs and I had to quit the game when I was getting too pissed off about it.
Honestly I think the annoyance with Typhon's non-health bar is fair. Especially because it's so silly to me? I think initially it's fine but once you do beat him and just grind it feels like a waste of time. Like oh this enemy is so big and strong he defies health bars but also... I can kill him in 3 minutes.
I love-hate that Demeter has annoying legendaries across two both games. I forgot if I struggled as much with her this game as I did with Winter Harvest last game, but I know other folks also struggled with her and I'm not sure why. If you'd like advice on how to get legendaries, I know a trick that works pretty well, so just let me know! I think a definite issue this game is all the extra gods create lots of variety - which is good for players who want that - but it really does make you a victim of RNG a lot more. And synergies imo mattered a lot more in H1 than H2. I can mix and match gods more this game (I usually go for Aphrodite, Zeus, and Hera boons, with Poseidon and Ares on Xinth), but it's not same as like... "okay Zeus and Poseidon are always great together" and "Ares and Artemis are good for sword".
Ephyra is such a pretty and neat set-up. I love the concept. All open and wandering around. Kind of like an inverse of Hades' temple in game 1, but without all the poison lol (Unless you do buffed Polyphemus I guess lol). And the little rooms are cute. I love their little animations. Similarly (sorta) I love Scylla's shell sound. It's very satisfying. There's a lot of little things to appreciate, whether it's the cats or dogs lounging, the flower and lantern designs, the voice acting (for all it's confusing why so many characters are unnecessarily British). But yeah the writing is a struggle. It feels like Mel's lot is just the forever soldier. Even when she talks about what her future might look like, she's combative and set in her ways, and it's hard to tell if that's just her inability to see past doing what she's been doing for so long, fear, acceptance, or I don't know. I guess I'll just relisten to Bewitching Eyes and Song of the Isles and try to forget about it.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 02:07 am (UTC)I love Xinth. I was terrible with the Rail in H1, but Xinth just generally feels really nice and is generally the nicest weapon to do Typhon runs with, at least for me. I did like what they've at least made many of Selene's choices more powerful, I've found some decent success with a beefed up Beam re: Typhon and some of the Olympus heavy hitters.
And yeah I think because this game generally tries to force you to at least have 4 gods represented, makes it additionally harder to force legendaries comparatively.
I just got the cats and dogs yesterday and I love them. And yeah, Mel definitely does read as the 'forever soldier.' In a way the narrative of H2 seems to be 'she was raised to be a perfect weapon and now that's all she knows how to be and so that's all she's happy doing' which seems a bit...cop out-y to me. Because that's also really not where most people would take a character arc if they weren't Grimdark by nature, it'd be like 'she was raised to be a weapon, and that's all she knows how to be so she struggled to find different things, but she tried and learned how to be a person with wants and desires (aside from those she accepted to save her family).'
Either way, I still have stuff to complete! So I'll see where we end up. The soundtrack is baller, and I have a lot to learn with the weapons. I haven't unlocked all the hidden aspects yet, I have three I think (Anubis, Nergal, Morrigan), but I'm also very slow playing this game so runs take me a while, even if the final run time is like 19-26 miuntes (slow), all the padding around it makes them much longer by comparison! I do feel this will be more of a timesink than H1. And on that front, it feels a bit less replayable for me, maybe because of sunk cost, I don't know. In H1 I did a God Mode and no-God-Mode once I felt I was good enough to try it, but I know that will never be an option for H2.