I'm enjoying it. It claims to have about the same content as vanilla Hades did, and so far it seems so. Having played the EA of that one, I found that they held off the release of it into EA until it was plenty feature heavy to begin with and just need more time to adjust and wrap up (as EA should).
The combat is more complicated, and I'm not sure if its just the first weapon that suffers from that or an overall. Separating Sprint and Dash I don't really like, but considering Divine Dash was basically a required Boon in the first to the point that people barely touched any other I can guess why. Either way, I find myself having a lot more tools to deal with problems even completely naked relative to the first. The fact that you can only bring one "tool" per run is a bad decision that increases the grind unnecessarily that I'm sure will be at the top of the change list.
As for the wokeness, its probably worse than the first. I wasn't on the train that thought the first really was to begin with, and I know that's against the common narrative here, but now you've got whatever the fuck Haphaestus has going on and the entire theme being more "witchy" instead of regal.
Supergiant has always been that flavor of "mildly woke" though even before it was popular, so it reads far less malicious and more basic Lefty foundation. Bastion has super racism as its main theme, Transistor had the main antagonists be a lesbo, a married homo couple, and a super autist, and Pyre was clearly meant to attract blacks considering it was a literal Basketball Game.
All in all, if you liked the first one this is clearly just Hades + more. And the fanbase will continue to be insufferable, though probably grow less so as the base has less hot guys for them to obsess over and now its all women clearly meant to waifu (abs girl, tall girl, tomboy girl, gyaru type).
I won't lie, its not quite as good as Hades 1 at the moment.
Enemy armor/boss health is way too high, meaning battles drag on for way longer than they should and the chip damage adds up a lot. I had a hammer upgrade that just straight deletes armor and it was the only time I felt closer to the original's combat. Few boons give outright % increases to damage like they used to, which seems to be where the issue is. Instead they have pretty neat effects that give great synergy and make it quite fun to use, but it continues to lack actual punch to kill things.
There is also a lot more grind baked in, which is probably because the original had nearly 0 on release and people ran out of content quick (which is why the big Darkness Dump title guy was patched in). But some of it feels like its an EA thing meant to drag out the content while they finish the later stages.
And having put more time into it, it continues to be more and less woke at the same times. A handful more Gods have darker skin, but lack the facial structures to actually appear black so its in a strange limbo of not being fully black but also being a bit beyond just swarthy Mediterraneans. The only one who goes full black is a straight up Aunt Mammy, which is also hilarious.
Honestly, I'd give it a major update or so before I think its worth the price. Mostly just to fix the health issue because it makes the game feel way harder than it should from the outset.
Based on having played Hades 1 in its Early Access release and then on vanilla, I'm fairly confident it will be fixed because both are easily solved and immediately obvious to anyone from the outset. If not, it'll be laughably easy to mod regardless.
I'm enjoying it. It claims to have about the same content as vanilla Hades did, and so far it seems so. Having played the EA of that one, I found that they held off the release of it into EA until it was plenty feature heavy to begin with and just need more time to adjust and wrap up (as EA should).
The combat is more complicated, and I'm not sure if its just the first weapon that suffers from that or an overall. Separating Sprint and Dash I don't really like, but considering Divine Dash was basically a required Boon in the first to the point that people barely touched any other I can guess why. Either way, I find myself having a lot more tools to deal with problems even completely naked relative to the first. The fact that you can only bring one "tool" per run is a bad decision that increases the grind unnecessarily that I'm sure will be at the top of the change list.
As for the wokeness, its probably worse than the first. I wasn't on the train that thought the first really was to begin with, and I know that's against the common narrative here, but now you've got whatever the fuck Haphaestus has going on and the entire theme being more "witchy" instead of regal.
Supergiant has always been that flavor of "mildly woke" though even before it was popular, so it reads far less malicious and more basic Lefty foundation. Bastion has super racism as its main theme, Transistor had the main antagonists be a lesbo, a married homo couple, and a super autist, and Pyre was clearly meant to attract blacks considering it was a literal Basketball Game.
All in all, if you liked the first one this is clearly just Hades + more. And the fanbase will continue to be insufferable, though probably grow less so as the base has less hot guys for them to obsess over and now its all women clearly meant to waifu (abs girl, tall girl, tomboy girl, gyaru type).
Thanks for your write-up.
You are the only one here who is giving impressions after playing it for themselves.
I will pick it up.
I really liked Hades 1 a lot.
So you were looking for permission to buy a gay leftist game, and someone gave it to you.
Nope I wanted to hear about impressions from people here who have actually played the game.
Whether I get something or not is always going to be something I decide for myself.
I won't lie, its not quite as good as Hades 1 at the moment.
Enemy armor/boss health is way too high, meaning battles drag on for way longer than they should and the chip damage adds up a lot. I had a hammer upgrade that just straight deletes armor and it was the only time I felt closer to the original's combat. Few boons give outright % increases to damage like they used to, which seems to be where the issue is. Instead they have pretty neat effects that give great synergy and make it quite fun to use, but it continues to lack actual punch to kill things.
There is also a lot more grind baked in, which is probably because the original had nearly 0 on release and people ran out of content quick (which is why the big Darkness Dump title guy was patched in). But some of it feels like its an EA thing meant to drag out the content while they finish the later stages.
And having put more time into it, it continues to be more and less woke at the same times. A handful more Gods have darker skin, but lack the facial structures to actually appear black so its in a strange limbo of not being fully black but also being a bit beyond just swarthy Mediterraneans. The only one who goes full black is a straight up Aunt Mammy, which is also hilarious.
Honestly, I'd give it a major update or so before I think its worth the price. Mostly just to fix the health issue because it makes the game feel way harder than it should from the outset.
I saw some extended gameplay and I agree with you.
Boss health is too much and the grindy aspects seem worse in this.
I opted not to buy it at this time.
I will see if the final release is any better.
Based on having played Hades 1 in its Early Access release and then on vanilla, I'm fairly confident it will be fixed because both are easily solved and immediately obvious to anyone from the outset. If not, it'll be laughably easy to mod regardless.