Supergiant expanded on Hades in almost every direction and still ended up with a game that's just as hard to put down.
I put 140 hours into the first Hades and then spent a year and a half deliberately not touching this one in early access, because I wanted to meet it finished. Hades set the bar for what a roguelike could do with story, and the pressure on the sequel was always going to be proving that wasn't a one-time trick. Melinoë, Zagreus's sister, is fighting through the underworld and out past it to take down Chronos, the Titan of Time, and the run-based machine underneath her is the best version Supergiant has built.
I like Melinoë more than Zagreus, which I'm aware is not the popular position. Zagreus was charm on legs and his kit was fundamentally a sprint, where Melinoë is a witch and fights like one. Her Omega abilities, hold-to-charge versions of every attack that spend a magick meter, build a rhythm question into every weapon: commit to the channel or stay mobile. The Sister Blades want you point-blank and impatient about it. The Moonstone Axe wants you greedy in exactly the moments you shouldn't be. Two hundred-odd runs into this genre, a new resource that made me rethink when to stand still is a bigger deal than any individual boon, and stacking a build around one specific Omega move with the right gods behind it is the best thing this genre has produced since the first game.
“Stacking a build around the right Omega move is one of the best feelings this genre has produced in years.”
Hecate, her mentor, is the best character Supergiant has written, a boss you fight at the end of the first region who is still teaching you something with the way she fights. Returning gods carry new dialogue reflecting a different relationship, because Melinoë grew up in hiding and they all know it, and Nemesis walks off with about half the scenes she's in. A few old favorites get noticeably less screen time than fans are going to want, and the new cast mostly covers the difference without ever quite replacing them.
Surface runs, the second path that opens up partway through, trade the underworld's tight chambers for something more open, and they're the right sort of detour, a palate cleanser rather than a second full game bolted on the side.
One structural problem survived early access completely intact. A few major story beats take so many runs to trigger naturally that I eventually looked one up, felt bad about it for roughly a minute, and got over it, which means the pacing had already failed by the time I went looking. The genre's math here is hard and Supergiant hasn't solved it twice, and neither the sliders nor the extra content quite papers over that.
Difficulty is sliders now instead of a single heat toggle, so my partner cleared Chronos with the pressure tuned down and the story fully intact while I cranked fear levels until the game stopped being polite to me. Both of us were playing the version we wanted, which isn't something the first game could offer either of us.
Darren Korb's score drifts from moody underworld tracks into something closer to folk music once you're up on the surface, and I've had the Ephyra region theme stuck in my head for a week now. The hand-painted range across this many locations is Supergiant showing off, and they've earned the right to.
I restarted more runs on purpose in this game than in any roguelike I've played, purely to chase one specific opening boon, which is definately not how the mode is meant to work.
Whether Melinoë ends up as beloved as her brother is going to take a few years to settle and I couldn't tell you which way it lands. As a thing to play, run after run after run, this is the better game and I don't think it's especially close. I've still never beaten Chronos at the top two fear levels, and I've stopped pretending that's a scheduling problem.