Episode 17: Hades 2

The early access for Supergiant's hit series is over and 1.0 released. Somehow we made it through the entire episode without a "hey deez nuts" joke.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Hello friends, and welcome back to the Adventure Starts Here
podcast. This week we played Hades 2,
Super Giant sequel to its hit predecessor.
Released to Early Access in May 2024, the game followed a
development cycle for over a year before being released in
September 2025. While Jordan and Tom played very

(00:33):
little or none of it during Early Access, Ben played it on
and off and I was the only one to consistently play patch to
patch. For our discussion, all of us
finished the game and got the true ending that was added on
one point O launch. Naturally, we'll be discussing
the ending, so be wary of spoilers.
Also be warned, because even though we liked this game quite

(00:55):
a bit, there's a lot to dislike that we talked about thoroughly.
All of that being said, enjoy the episode.
Let's kick us off. Who would be the most fun Hades
character to get blackout drunk with?
I feel like the Skelly and Odysseus would have like the
best stories and probably be themost entertaining.

(01:18):
Unlike a I'm an adult now level,but if I were like in my youth
and I just wanted to get into some fucked up adventures, it's
got to be Zeus. I'm surprised that Dionysus
wasn't in any of those. Like dude is literally throwing
a party at the end of the world.I purposely chose not to pick

(01:39):
Dionysus because I thought that was the obvious one.
Yeah. In any case, I actually chose
Hera because I imagine that if she got turned up, I could
convince her to pinch my cheeks and she could tell me that I'm a
good boy. Damn, that's like the least been
answer I've ever heard. That's awesome.

(02:00):
I don't even think Dynaz's is the right answer.
I don't know, I didn't like him,like at all.
He was fucking annoying. That's how I felt.
I felt like it'd be like partying with a bunch of frat
Bros. I'm good.
Is that toxic positivity? Like what would you call that?
What, He was ambivalent to the world.
Yeah, basically. Borderline.

(02:20):
Not necrophic. What the fuck's the word narc
Snow. Oh, I.
Know what you're thinking of? I'm almost saying
hermaphroditic. Hedonistic works, not
hermaphroditic. So I was swallowing my last bite
of pizza else what I answered earlier.
Yeah, I think I picked Karen just because he would just go
and pass out and then you don't have to deal with him anymore.

(02:42):
Not a bad. Answer I think Hephaestus would
be an underrated one because I think that dude could put down
the fucking gallons but at the same time be responsible about
it. Yeah, I could.
I could see that. I feel that way about.
No, I changed my mind. I was going to say Poseidon but

(03:03):
no I I recant that. I think that guys would try to
walk and it'd be like terrifying.
Beside him to be trying to like,convince you to fuck a whale or
something. I think echo would be fun
because you'd be able to see if it's like a if it's all an act
or not, shouldn't be able to keep it together.
I would like what I would do is I would make her try to echo

(03:23):
progressively more complicated syllables as she got more and
more drunk until she just couldn't do it.
Anymore, I would make her sing. I would make her sing what
Sharma sings from Silk Song. I don't remember.
What he's saying like I. Only remember, like, OK, so

(03:46):
we've determined everyone's blackout drunk friend who would
be the best roommate. Or there is there is such an
obvious answer for who the best roommate is that I'm not going
to go first, just to make sure that you guys are paying
attention. All right, it's a festive so I
can park in handicapped spaces when I go places.
Is it Aphrodite? I picked chaos because they just

(04:10):
seem like they're above everything and don't give a fuck
and they would just let me do what I want.
Chaos sounds, yeah. I'm not.
I don't think I would actually say Aphrodite to be.
The best, no doubt about it, is Hestia.
If you say otherwise, you don't know shit about shit because you
already know. She is keeping a clean home.
She's doing her dishes. She's like cooking dinner for

(04:31):
two even though she doesn't haveto.
She's the goddess of the fuckinghearth.
I feel like they leaned into like like the fiery component of
the hearth. Like what about Hestia is
screaming she's going to keep everything clean in game?
She looks like a fat mom. She's good to go.
Is Demeter. So is Hestia.

(04:55):
Yeah, but like if you have Demeter as your roommate then
everything is just going to smell like those old caramel
candies that have been in a boatfor like 6 months.
I'm pretty sure that if you everin any way cross Hestia it would
be the worst. And the only reason I say it is
because when you get those like dual blessings, the ones where
you choose one and the other onegets shitty with you, Hestia is

(05:16):
one of the worst ones to get madat you because her like arena
mechanic to avoid is so annoying.
Dude I actually feel the opposite.
I actually feel like hers was the easiest.
The the hardest for sure. The one that almost killed me
from 100% health to 0 was fucking Hera.
Hera's a psycho. Oh, that one is pretty brutal,
but I don't know. I was actually going to say

(05:38):
Aries because I feel like his pop so quickly.
You know, it's kind of funny. Like if we start talking about
the difficulty of the game, I feel like this game, at least
for me, maybe I'm a poop sock, poop sock noob and like, it's
kind of hard because the difficulty of this game came in
so many waves throughout the patch cycle of early access.

(05:59):
But once I figured out the good boons, each run basically just
became am I getting those boons?No.
OK, restart, run. OK, now I have those boons.
Cool, I win the run. I think my win rate for runs
after I turned a corner in the meta progression.
I'm not sure when that point was.
It just kind of happened where all of a sudden I just never

(06:22):
lost runs anymore. Like it it just didn't happen.
Now granted, I never went higherthan 10 FEAR, and once I
realized that fear doesn't do anything, I just turned it off
so that I could finish the game.But yeah, like once I got to a
certain point I could just basically slap my cock against
my controller and I was going towin.
Doing a slightly push back 'cause like this was popping up

(06:44):
in our Discord chat. Like doing the fear, I forget
what it's called, there's a namefor it.
It's like bounties based on how much fear you have.
That resource that you get is required for upgrading most of
the weapons to Max. So here's what happened.
I'm I'm going to I'm going to befully upfront with this right as
we get into this. Once I got the credits, I

(07:07):
cheated every resource to 50K and just unlocked everything
because I was not going to fucking do that shitty ass
grind. Just just to be clear, I got up
to the credits and cheated everything in.
I didn't even play after the credits.
Once I got the credits, I was just like, all right, I'm.
Done. Yeah, that's also what I did.
Well, no, that's not true. I looked up specifically how to

(07:29):
get the three last remaining keepsakes, which were it's who
is it? It's like Zagarius, Hades and
Kronos, and then I just used AI over you to figure out how to
unlock it. So it's like something called
like the Fates win. And I was like, that sounds kind
of cool because like they could bring up the Fates all the time.
It'd be nice to see them. And I do think you see them.

(07:50):
The only problems that I never did because I looked up what do
you have to do to unlock it? And it required you to like bond
up all these characters in the hub.
And I'll say I don't want to fucking do this.
So that's literally all they didafter the credits was just check
that out and then close the game.
Yeah, I just knew that there were weapons with alternate move
sets and so I just wanted to seethose, but the grind to get them

(08:12):
is fucking ludicrous. So yeah, I wasn't.
I wasn't even going to bother todo that shit.
And that's kind of like an issueI had with the game overalls
that I wasn't sure like what I did like actually unlocked
things. Like I got aspects, like I
unlocked a couple different aspects for each weapon, but I
have no idea like how I got those unlocks.

(08:35):
They just kind of were there oneday.
I think some of it is the cauldron I think.
I'm not 100% sure but I do. I think the cauldron controls
some of it, but what puts it in the cauldron that I have no
idea. I.
Think it's all just like hidden trees in the cauldron.
Like you unlock shit in the cauldron which unlocks more shit
and then there's certain like story proc mocks that also

(08:55):
unlock shit in there. You guys are saying that the
alternate move set aspects were unlocked in the cauldron?
So I'm not sure. Do you do you happen to know
more about this stuff? Because that's because my
impression was either it was that or it was from like bonding
up with the person whose name was part of the aspect like

(09:18):
aspect of morose. You had to like maybe bond up
with him to like up to two, maybe because that was part of
like the like the faded, you know, like the scrolls where
like you need to get at least two nectar with each person to
like unlock the prophecy. So I was wondering if it was
just like a part of that or something, but I have no idea
because there's almost no feedback related to that stuff

(09:39):
with like within the game itself.
Yeah, I mean, that's like part of my problem approaching some
of the things like the grind in the game, because like playing
consistently patch to patch meant that if I had to do any of
that, I did it months ago and like in an almost like MMO style
like piece meal release cycle rather than having to do it all

(10:00):
on launch in a week or two for this.
So like I didn't have as much ofa negative experience.
I remember well to specifically talk about the weapon aspects,
all I remember about having to unlock the weapon aspects is you
you had to talk to the person associated with the name.
Like I think it's oh God I can'teven remember.

(10:23):
Like I know you get the aspect of hell from Medea.
I want to say like specific people would have dialogue
triggers that unlock it. I don't even remember having to
do it in the cauldron and now I don't.
I don't even know what they changed online.
I have a question then because I've never have never even seen
the aspect of hell I have. I have seen the aspect of Madea
though, so I assume that's like what you unlock when you talked

(10:45):
to her. But I guess there's just a bunch
of aspects I haven't even seen yet.
Maybe I've only gotten like a Max of three per weapon.
Yeah, like the the ones I've been talking about that have
alternate move sets like they are they are functionally
different weapons just tied to that weapon as an aspect.
So like if if you guys had the ones that I'm talking about, you

(11:06):
would probably know because they're pretty obvious.
It's like the 4th 1:00 that shows up in the aspect column.
You guys might not have. Even gotten far enough to see
these, I don't know. No I don't think so.
Sounds like some post game like super post game unlock maybe?
Yeah, like I, I like, I, I just fucking love them though.
Because like for me playing it patch to patch like I did, it
meant that on launch I just still got to have a completely

(11:30):
unique play style. Like I have a clip in there that
I uploaded that turns the torches into like a vampire
survivors dash build instead. Like it does the primary fire
without you having to press anything.
Yeah, those are the best weaponsin the game, by the way.
Yeah, it was awesome. What were you trying to?
Say the way you unlock them, it starts with a cauldron

(11:51):
incantation to unlock the three like base aspect upgrades.
And once you once you level up the three base aspects to at
least level 1, then you have to go talk to somebody and it will
give you access to the other like the hidden aspect or
whatever. I don't remember doing that
because like I said, I just cheated all the resources in

(12:13):
after I beat the game and literally all I had to do was I
did the cauldron and then I could just upgrade all of the
maybe because I had all of the resources you needed or whatever
and the game didn't check to seeif you had to talk to the person
or whatever. But yeah, I could just sit there
and upgrade everything to like level legendary or whatever the
hell it is. Well, let me ask you the same

(12:35):
question that I asked Ben last week.
What was the tipping point for you deciding to mod the game to
get all the resources? This game has the worst meta
progression system in video games ever and is basically
poisoned meta progression in rogue lights going forward.
Probably forever for me, but we'll talk about that later.
But basically, I finished the game.
I didn't want to interface with the grind in such a way that I

(12:57):
had to pour 150 extra hours intoplaying the same shit over and
over and over and over and over again ad infinitum.
And I just wanted to see what the new stuff was before we met
today. And I never launched the game
again. So I beat the game first and
then I was like Nope, I'm good. Yeah, so I guess it's a little
different than being Silk Song, where it's pretty early on that

(13:20):
I modded the game. Yeah.
Yeah, like I, I guess I'm just trying to understand like, like
what was it that made you feel like you needed to get those
into the game? Like you'd already beat in the
game? What was the point I guess is
what I'm asking. Because I had watched a YouTube
video of like the Max fear runs,a lot of people actually have

(13:44):
not cleared. Like there's very few clears of
Max fear. It's actually fucking hard and I
saw them using the alternate weapons and I wanted to try them
because I thought they looked really cool, but in order to
grind them out it was going to be just a ridiculous amount of
time input on my part. So I just circumvented the time
input of literally playing the same game over and over for an

(14:07):
extra again, like probably 50 hours I would assume somewhere
in there, and just just unlockedthem so I could play them.
There's really nothing more complex than I beat the game.
Nothing about the game was goingto change other than I was going
to have to do the same shit overand over again, and I was
already sick of that, but I wanted to try the last vestige

(14:29):
of new content that the game hadto offer me.
Thomas has given his hot take. I'm kind of curious where Jordan
is sitting on this. Yeah, I mean, I think so I think
of this game is like a value proposition in terms of like the
amount of time it's asking you to put in.
And I don't think that the run to run fun is as high as Binding

(14:52):
of Isaac, which is like obviously the peak of like
roguelikes. And I also don't think like the
run to run character progressionis as good as like Path of
Exile, which is what, like a biggameplay inspiration for the
game. So I think it's just kind of in
this weird space in between those two games of like, why
would I play 82 for 80 hours when I think that those two
games offer superior experiencesto this one?

(15:13):
Agreed. So it's basically just like a
case of other games are doing itbetter.
So this game isn't really earning it.
Is that kind of what you said? Yeah, exactly.
Like it. It puts cool stuff behind too
much of A wall where it's like Isaac is just cool stuff or more
cool stuff keeps coming in. And then, yeah, like Path of
Exile is like the world's your oyster basically of, of grinding

(15:33):
and, and play your choice and difficulty and all of that.
Yeah, so I have like a a dam holding me back from talking
about this meta progression. So whenever when I jump into it,
it's fine. But for me really what it is, is
that the game's difficulty neverincreases between runs.

(15:55):
Like the game is the most difficult in the 1st 10 nights
when the stupid ass fucking gamecasts heiress curse on you.
And then after that it's the same thing every time.
Unless you want to like, artificially inflate the
difficulty via fear, which isn'trequired to beat the game or do
anything. The fact that it wants you to
climb these huge grindy hurdles while at the same time not

(16:19):
testing my mastery via increasing the difficulty unless
I decide I want to turn the knobmyself just feels wrong and kind
of bad. Yeah, and this is kind of like a
director been thing that I like wrote up a bit about this
subject specifically where I just feel like it wouldn't be

(16:41):
too much of an ask of like the the audience to have to at least
raise your fear. Like up to like 8, which I think
is the number you need to unlockthe first thinly veiled muscle
girl fetish statue. And the reason why I choose that
number specifically is because it's like a nice bar to set for

(17:02):
all players. Because it's like there's like
this sweet spot maybe where likeGod gamers can just clear with
mechanical execution and lesser gamers can compensate using like
a smarter and slightly more min Max keepsake and boon
selections. Just like learning more about
like the game system to overcomethat challenge.
But the reason why I bring that up is not not just to increase

(17:24):
the difficulty of the game, because I do think the game, the
overall is pretty easy. It's that if you did something
like that there could be a tradeoff where instead of having to
beat the each final boss four times, you just maybe require
only one of those materials fromeach boss.
But they wouldn't drop the material until he had 6 fear for

(17:45):
the surface and eight fear for the underworld.
So and or some mixture of that'sor some like calibration of
those knobs. But like literally anything that
would like require more than just the literal bare minimum
from the player. I do want to without spoiling

(18:06):
any of your guys's overall opinions on this based on our
discord chats just for those listening.
I do want to say before we go into the meta progression and
the grindy components of this game, all of us really like this
game. This is a very good game.
Like I think all of us are pretty unanimous than that.
But we are going to shit on the meta progression pretty hardly,
myself included, even though it didn't affect me the same as it
affected everyone else for me. And tell me if you guys agree

(18:30):
with this. I felt like the biggest issue
with the meta progression is maybe like, you could succinctly
say it by just saying they're a bit stingy with what they give
you. But like more specifically, I
feel like #1 the fact that thereare so many different resources

(18:50):
that you need to do so many different things is a problem.
And that's also related to the fact that with pretty much all
those resources, you can only get them from one place.
I like started levelling up my late game aspects on different
weapons and the only way I couldunlock or upgrade these was
Mount Olympus summon surface runs.

(19:13):
So I have to have a run good enough to get to Mount Olympus,
and then I also have to rememberto farm there because by the
time I get to Mount Olympus I'm like, I'm done with the game.
I'm zooming through everything, I'm going to forget the fucking
loot, the actual things before Igo to the next area.
And I feel like the combination of those two things makes the
grind feel even worse than it kind of already is.

(19:35):
Yeah. So here's my take.
Jordan, if you want to go first,that's fine.
Now you can go. So the way that I tend to think
about these games like this is you can have one of two systems
at play for your meta progression.
You can either have upgrades that operate laterally or

(19:57):
vertically. So laterally that would be
things like Sleigh the Spire, Monster Train, and.
Binding of Isaac, I think, I haven't played much Isaac, but
basically you're not really getting these raw number buff
upgrades. You're just getting like
additional tools. And the reason to do that is
because while some of those tools may be better than what

(20:20):
you have on the outset of the game, it's really just there to
kind of slow drip feed you is sothat you don't get overwhelmed
right when you start the game. So like card unlocks and Slay
the Spire, relic unlocks and Slay the Spire, all that stuff.
They don't just dump it on you the first time you play because
that would feel overwhelming. But the degree of choice that
that gives you the more you playthe game does end up making you

(20:42):
better by virtue of just having more options.
Whether or not those options arestronger, I mean, could be
debatable I guess, but and then vertical would be something more
like Vampire Survivors where every single time that you play
you are accruing some resource that will just give you those
like raw number buffs. I know Vampire Survivors has
like the different classes and stuff too but which are more

(21:04):
lateral? But really the meta progression
of that game is predicated on those raw number buffs O.
The reason why that works for both of those games is because
as you progress through that unlocked system, the game itself
is getting harder. So like Sleigh the Spires got
ascensions, Vampire Survivors gets harder every like new level
that you upgrade and all that shit.

(21:25):
So when you get those upgrades, they feel meaningful because now
you can go through and maybe beat a level that you were
struggling with before, you can beat an ascension you were
struggling with before, all in the name of exhibiting more
mastery over the game and its systems.
So my problem with Hades too is that it gives you both lateral

(21:49):
and vertical upgrades, but it never increases the
difficulties. So like while having that power
fantasy that I was talking aboutwhere once I turned the corner
in the meta progression and I just never lost another run ever
again is kind of nice. The problem is how much it asks
me to play the game in order to like get the ending that I want

(22:13):
or get the upgrades that I want,but it it's not rewarding.
It's just so shallow and hollow because nothing's getting
harder. I'm just becoming progressively
more powerful. And in order to like reach those
peaks, the amount that I have toplay is just fucking absurd.
So I agree with what Ben was saying earlier.

(22:34):
I actually wrote it down in my manifesto that I think this game
would have been so much better for me if they cut the grind.
Like literally, I'm, I'm not even gonna, I'm just gonna make
up a number that sounds right inmy head by like 75% if not more.
But they required you to progress in fear in order to

(22:58):
progress the narrative, progressyour meta progression, whatever.
Like progress something. Cut down on the amount of stupid
bullshit I have to loot during the runs, but make me increase
my fear so that you're cutting down on the extremely tedious,
boring grind but asking me to get better at the game.
And I think that that would thatwould have served this game so
much better than just mindless, tedious, easy stuff.

(23:21):
Yeah, I think a big, a big issuethat I have is that the fear
system is optional and they don't give any presets for what
difficulties would be. So I think it should be like
easy, normal, hard God like something like that.
And then there should be custom fear runs where you can do
whatever you want. But the fact that they leave it
all up to the player and don't scale the game at all off of

(23:43):
base is like a serious issue because they balance the game
off of base but you never have areason to go higher other than
the statues that don't do anything.
Just to clarify your opinion, are you saying that like the
reward structure should scale off of the difficulties that
you're describing? I mean, I think that would help,

(24:05):
but I think I, I don't like the fear system at all because a 15
fear run for me and a 15 fear run from you could be your fear.
15 FEAR run could be 40 times harder than my 15 FEAR run
because I found the fear slidersthat don't really affect my run
that much where you're doing thereally hard ones.
So it you can't even really talkabout like what a fear run is

(24:26):
until you get the Max fear because everything up until then
is like arbitrary because there's no checkpoints of like,
I beat the game on easy. I beat the game on normal, I
beat the game on hard, I beat the game on expert.
It's like I beat the game on 9 fear.
It's like, what does that mean? Does that what 9 fear did you
get? Did you do the one that you have
to do a run in 5 minutes? That's that gives you like 9
FEAR, I think. But like what's where's the
normalization and the difficulties there?

(24:47):
And so I saw in our notes that you felt that this game was very
well balanced, Correct me if I'mwrong, that that's my
remembering of what you wrote down in our notes.
How do you balance that with what you just said about the
fear? You, you could just have like
checkpoints, right? So like as a developer, you can
play it and you can go like, OK,so something that's nice to do
is you can. So first I, I, if it's me, I

(25:10):
erase the whole fear system and it's it's gone.
And it's going to be like an Isaac style progression system.
Because I think that's the way that you go when you first beat
the first boss, then there's a variation of that boss and then
there's a boss after that and you keep stacking.
Like I don't think the vow of rivals should even be an option.
I think that's how it was in Hades one, but I don't remember
of where you just beat the bosses amount of times and then
they just just get these variants that are mixed in with

(25:31):
the bosses, which I think is just how it should be.
It was it was both in Hades one,but I remember from the first
boss in Hades 1 is that you get to Megara and you can either
fight her or her two sisters. And like there would be aspects
of her fight that progressed themore times you fought her.

(25:53):
I think there might have been some other bosses like that too.
But then the vow vow of rivals, like the vow of rivals I guess
is always a separate thing. But there is still like boss
progression isolated per boss aswell.
Yeah, I think something like that because that also makes
like the runs more interesting to do more runs.
Like that's why I think Isaac isso sick, because you, you beat a

(26:15):
boss and then when you do the run again, you get to that boss,
but like something's different or like it's, it's a different
area that you're in and you're like, what the Hell's going on?
And then it's just constantly giving you like this, this drip
of like, OK, something's different and I'll deal with it.
Instead of like, once you beat Kronos once, beating Kronos the
sixth time, if you don't up yourfear is the same thing.
And it doesn't feel good for that.
Yeah, exactly. 100% agreed. There's one thing I will say

(26:39):
about at least about the Vow of Rivals.
I'm actually fine with that being optional.
My issue with it is that like ifit's going to be optional and I
feel like that's the right choice because it can be pretty
difficult and frustrating to have to fight specifically like
Prometheus and Medea. Like that should actually
enrages me that one fight, specifically that pairing.

(26:59):
So it's nice to be able to turn it off and actually get some
reactivity because they actuallymocked me for turning it off,
which I liked. But it I like it being optional,
but I think there should be a reward tied to using it.
Same thing with anything that could change be changed to be
optional in this game like FEAR.The whole FEAR system could just
be more rewarding and then I would be able to more like

(27:23):
defend and justify its like implementation.
Yeah, I think like some of the unfortunate things about that
too, is that some of the fear stuff is like really cool.
Like there's the one fear that adds modifiers to the enemies.
So like elite enemies will get like a suck in thing that they
do, which can really screw you over.

(27:44):
Some of them get like a little beam that goes around them.
And obviously the like Valve Rivals bosses are just, they're
like, they're just different bosses entirely, like 100% just
different bosses. And so it's unfortunate that all
this optional content is optional, because it is good.
Yeah, I mean, I think it should be like, here's the story

(28:04):
difficulty, which is a progressing difficulty that
progresses towards, I don't know, make up a #31 fear.
That's like cater for the developers.
And then there's a custom difficulty where you can turn on
whatever you want and then just do it that way.
Because, yeah, like, while Ben said, like you should be able to
turn it off if you want to see the end of the narrative, I
don't think you should be able to turn off the alternate

(28:25):
fights. I think you should have to kill
Typhoon with vowel rivals on. I think you should have to be
able to kill Kronos with vowel rivals on because like, it makes
it so much more interesting for when?
Because when I fought Kronos thelast time, I was like, oh, maybe
he'll have a third phase. And no, that's locked behind
vowel rivals. So it just feels really shitty
if you don't have that on. I didn't even know Val rivals
went that high. I just I couldn't get unlock

(28:47):
anymore past like the second fight of each route.
Yeah, I mean that's the other thing cuz it's behind stupid
bullshit, but I'm not even talking about that.
I guess I didn't even grind enough apparently.
Yeah, exactly. Furnace's third phase is pretty
sweet though. It's actually pretty fun.
I agree with what you guys are saying though, but I think that
there's one of two ways they could have gone with Fear 1 is

(29:08):
forcing you to do it via the narrative, kind of like what you
were saying Jordan. And I think the other way that
they could have done it is just just turn it into like Poe maps,
like the higher like for let's say every, I don't know, for
fear I get some percentage of extra resources or the resources
show up like more frequently in each encounter or like whatever,

(29:33):
right? Like just make it so that if I
crank up that fear, the grind gets a little bit easier.
And I think every issue I would have had with the game would
have fucking evaporated into thin air.
But the fact that fear is just actually nothing other than a
Dick measuring contest. Just it just, it's so, so

(29:53):
slowly. It seems like home run to do
just crank up resources and I think it should be like a like a
crank. I think it should be like 25%
per one fear. So like if you do a Max fear on,
you're getting like the equivalent of what that'd be
like 14 times of what you would with a No Fear run, which I
think that that's a good trade off.
I just feel like, and this is just like leaning more into like

(30:16):
the optional aspect of fear, butthere are just so many
underutilized like cozy systems in the hub that I feel like they
could have just added unlockablerewards through fear.
Like the more fear runs you do, you can like accrue some
currency that lets you buy furniture, like new cooler
furniture that door can put around the hub.

(30:36):
Like just more like, and that's just how I feel about like the
cozy things in general, where itfeels like it's just a bunch of
features that they added becausethey knew people liked cozy
games. But unfortunately for at least
for me, like whenever I see the word cozy, I think boring.
So like stapling some rewards toit through fear I felt like
would have gotten me to actuallyinteract with it because I I

(30:58):
didn't even put down a piece of furniture at all.
Just like I did. Wait, you could put that on
furniture? Yeah, oh dude, it's it's the
best thing ever making fun of them.
It's so shit. It's such a shitty mechanic,
honestly. Like I put down all the
furniture that I could because again, I cheated all the
resources in and it's like it's,it's not even cool.
Like even the maxed out stuff ofwhat you can unlock is just kind

(31:21):
of, I don't know, it left me tasting like my breath was
farts. I remember talking to one person
and I put down like a rug in front of hypnose and it still
looked so shitty that I never wanted to interact with.
Yeah, like you're fucking the beds that you can unlock.
I unlocked the cheapest 1 and itwas just like a little like

(31:42):
tatami mat on the floor. And I was like, I want something
nicer than this. So I unlocked the like super
expensive special 1 and it was just a different colored tatami
mat. OK.
Cool. And I guess just like bring
something more. So what I was suggesting, like
let's say you beat Vow of rivalsCerberus, then you can unlock

(32:03):
like like an avatar Cerberus that can like folly around in
the hub or like you beat vow of rivals, let's say like a like
typhoon and you get like a special typhoon bed to replace
your tatami man. Like, they're not the greatest
rewards, but it's something. It's something.
Literally something. Yeah, that's the.

(32:24):
It's the whole problem. It's like the the MMO theory of
rewards. Like you just beat this sick ass
boss that had this sick ass weapon and now you get that
weapon. Or like Dark Souls, whatever.
Yeah, like just literally anything that would reward some
degree of player agency, right? Because there's there's this
game has a real player agency problem and that is a huge one.

(32:46):
I also feel like do you guys actually remember what you have
to spend to get that cosmetic stuff?
I don't remember off the top man.
Oh, fame I never. Interact with that system?
Oh, is that what it is? I didn't even know what they
were called. I only.
The only reason I know what theywere called because I saw a
bunch of people had an achievement called like acquired
10,000 fame and I was like, I don't even know what fame is.
And yeah, I never. Did it once.

(33:07):
Wait, now I know what that shit is.
It's it's, it's what you can getfrom selling the trash that airs
throws on the ground, right? Yeah, yeah, it's kudos.
Kudos. That's what it is, not fame.
Yeah, and I feel like like part of this too is that like, some
of this might not seem as bad asit really is until you look at

(33:28):
it in the context of the rest ofthe systems that are in the
game. Because like, you spend all this
time unlocking the weapons, unlocking the aspects, like
unlocking your arcana, like, Oh my God, I could mention like 5
more systems right there. And then you get to the cosmetic
stuff and it's like, Oh my God, another resource.
Yeah, I I think something that'sreally bad for the game design

(33:50):
as well that I think the games that do this really well don't
do it at all, is putting meta progression rewards as a
substitute for power progressionin runs like Imagine and Slay
the Spire. If you get to pick 2 cards or a
new card to add to your like your meta card pool like that
would feel fucking terrible. And that's what this game does
like all over the place. Like you want to use re rolls to

(34:11):
re roll. I don't remember what the
currency's called bones and the stupid ashes and all of that
shit. And then it rolls into another
meta progression currency and you're like, oh, so the node is
just a meta progression node. I'm wasting my time.
And you can like get like a small chance.
Boom, shit. I wasn't.
I wasn't sure if I was just getting unlucky or if it was.
Like that I'm pretty sure it's all coded to where like every so

(34:31):
like every X amount of rooms caneither only be ashes of the bone
shit or the nectar. That's what it felt like,
anyway. I think that I think that is
true and that's what was true inHades 1.
I think there are like small exceptions.
Like I, I think there are three categories which are like the

(34:52):
meta progression stuff like the bones.
There are resources like magic and health and I think like
Hermes is tied to those as well,but for whatever.
And the third category is spoonsand for whatever reason,
sometimes the second category can roll into the third
category. Exactly.
Yep, I will say like a. Really small percentage chance.

(35:13):
It's like, not often. Yeah, and I will say that they
do kind of alleviate the pain that I felt whenever I was
forced into one of those rooms by the Cauldron upgrade that
makes it so ashes give you plus five health, like Max health,
and the other one gives you +5 MP.
Like I felt like that that was like a satisfactory way of

(35:38):
powering up runs with resources that I didn't want or need
anymore. But it's so fucking deep into
the Cauldron too. And it's still not as good as if
I was just like popping off and every single thing I got is
good. Like again, like I think all of
these games that have like the the dopamine feedback like
vampires, survivors and stuff like that.
If you introduce meta progression into the power

(35:58):
progression, it just makes it feel so much worse.
Like it's like a forever game mechanic, like it's an MMO style
mechanic. It's a game.
Like they the Hades want you to play 200 hours of the Hades too.
But if you're like I'm not goingto play 200 hours of the 80s
too. It just everything just feels
asinine. Yeah, dude, it's like, it's like
having to donate a portion of your check to your 4O1K.
Like you don't like having to doit, but you got to do it.

(36:18):
And you know that in like 40 years it'll feel good.
But when I'm playing a fucking game that is just like
predicated on constant dopamine release, I just want to keep
that going. I don't want to have to play
this fucking long term risk reward game.
It just feels really stupid. For yeah, just going to get.
A new job? Yeah, exactly.

(36:39):
I also want to mention like as someone that has almost 200
hours played in Hades too and. Not.
As much in Hades one, but like aa decent chunk of time played
into Hades 1 and like I bought it twice once for my switch.
I I only view what you were describing with like getting
magic or health or whatever fromthe meta progression resources

(36:59):
like that is just it. It feels like more of a slap in
the face than anything else Like, oh wow, five health great.
And yeah, over the course of a run.
Does it add up? Sure, but it still doesn't feel
good. And I don't know, there's
something that bothers me in a lot of roguelikes where they
feel a little bit afraid to liketruly let you be powerful.
And in a game like this, if it'sgoing to, if it's going to like

(37:20):
be that forever game style thingwhere it wants you to put all
this time into it, why not just make it so there's a cauldron
upgrade that completely removes the rooms where I get the meta
progression? Just turn them into boom, turn
them into health, turn them intomagic like.
Why are you making them weak shit?
Or turn them into like infinite rewards where I can like
continually sink resources into some never ending upgrade that

(37:42):
will make it so that it starts at 5 Max health.
But if I grind for 300 hours nowevery time I loot ashes I'm
getting like 25 Max health or something you know?
Yeah, it it feels like when it comes to the meta progression,
this game is going in two different directions.
And I think if there's anything that's true for me over the
games we've discussed, I can't stand it when people try to go

(38:03):
both directions, like with one thing, have a vision, make it
work. Yeah, I think.
This game was just super super quantity over quality big time
IMO. Sorry, Jordan.
No, you're good, I think. I think Seth brings up a really
good point of like Super Giant definitely feels afraid to let
you become super powerful in thegame because the reason why like

(38:26):
Isaac is sick because like you, the runs get so unhinged and
they get unhinged like from the beginning of the game and they
only get more unhinged as they put more items in the pool.
And it's like same thing with like path of exile.
Like path of exile you can see insane like screen clearing
builds where like they shoot 1 arrow and then like they just
run through the map and then everything just blows up.
But like this game is like everything is kind of like
blinders on and it's like what the developers developed is what

(38:48):
you are going to play with. And it's also like vampire
survivors is another game where like people want to do do dope
shit. They don't want to be like
narrowed into these like Dark Souls style limited builds where
like you can't do dope shit. And so that's why I think it's
it's kind of weird where they don't, they never really let you
kind of open up and breathe. Yeah, and to that point as well,
I feel like that, like, philosophy of theirs leads to a
real balance issue because we kind of touched on this already,

(39:14):
but I felt like the balance of the game just gets fucked
because of the fact that you're not incentivized to add any
fear. So if you're just trying to get
to the credits, you're just playing zero fear and it becomes
very apparent what boons you should always pick and what
boons you should never pick. Yeah.
So like that system of like not wanting to allow things to go to

(39:38):
fucking hog wild, just like basically creates this
atmosphere of always going for the same few things because you
know it's going to lead to like the highest power spikes
basically. Yeah.
So I, I want to, we don't have to totally stop at the meta
progression. I think we have a lot more to
say about this. But I do want to take a brief
intermezzo to talk about some ofthose required boons that you

(40:00):
mentioned here and in the chat earlier.
What are some of the required boons that you guys felt as
you're playing? Because I'm really wondering if
we are all going to say the sameones or not.
And. Sight and gain.
And I'm, I'm, I'm also gonna wonder if any of those, like, if
they don't match up, then are they really required?

(40:21):
Because I've never thought of Poseidon as a required boon.
Poseidon gain, if you are playing a build that wants to
spend MP, is the most broken thing on planet earth because
you have now with the cost of one boon giving yourself
infinite MP. Which one's but I feel?
Like, so to be, I guess, to pushback a little bit, I feel like

(40:43):
there are so many different boons that are essentially
infinite. Yeah, it's not just Poseidon.
Yeah, like that, but that. That one is good, but the Hestia
one's even better that. I think the Poseidon 1 is just
brocco as fucko because like there's you may have like a few
seconds where you don't have infinite MP and then you just

(41:04):
dash around for a little bit andwait 3 seconds and then you have
infinite MP again. Like any time I was playing the
wands weapon that was like I I had the Poseidon keepsake
because I was going to pick thatevery time no matter what.
Just to clarify, the Poseidon 1 is the one where like you spend
MP and you gain that back slowlyon a cooldown right?

(41:27):
You no the way it works is you spend MP and it recharges all
the MP that you spend over the next X seconds and then it has I
think an 8 second built in cooldown.
So basically you you're just going to use it to pop your
Omega spells and then you have infinite MP to just spam attack

(41:49):
for the next 567, whatever seconds.
You wait a few seconds for the cooldown to come back up and you
have infinite MP all over again.So basically you'll just never
run out because it's just constantly regenerating
everything that you spend. I I thought that whenever I got
that one, I was like, I guess I'll take it like I thought the
Hestia one that Seth said, because I only use igneum like
that's that's the only one. I used all the other weapons

(42:11):
like once or twice and then I was like, Igneum's just the
best. And I feel like I'm playing Path
of Exile where I'm just trying to find like a good build and I
can progress to the game. So I just use igneum the whole
time. And then the Hestia one where
when you do damage, you restore MP felt like it was truly
infinite MP. Like I could not spend all my MP
no matter what because of just how much you build back.
But beside one had too much of like the use all your MP, wait,

(42:31):
run around, do nothing. Usually your MP like I even like
the when you cast you restore MPlike I think that there was a
you need a MP restoration boom. But that's that's as far as I
think what was necessary. I don't know, I just know that I
had the Poseidon keepsake maxed out.
I would re roll until Poseidon gain showed up in my first boon.
I would rarefy it or whatever and I never had to think about

(42:51):
MP ever again outside of times where my damage was too low and
boss fights would run really long.
Then I would like get down to sections where I had to think
about it. But other than that it's.
I mean, I thought that that thing was broken as fuck.
So I don't want to like belabor specifically the MP ones for too
long, but like I, I do just wantto like say this more broadly,

(43:14):
where like there are a lot of boons that provide you infinite
MP in different ways, but they're definitely not all born
equal. And that's probably true for the
rest of the boon. So is is that kind of the
component you were describing, Thomas, where like some of them
feel required because they're not born equal?

(43:36):
Pretty much because again like Isaid for the and it depends on
the weapons right? Because like if I'm playing the
daggers I don't give a shit about MP.
So I'm not really going to like bother trying to find any sort
of game boon. But for builds where I know I am
going to be spending MP, that was the first thing I picked
every time and I never regrettedit.

(43:57):
Yeah, and I mean, like, I don't know, I feel like like so much
of my understanding of the different boons waxed and waned
through the different patch cycles, especially because like
obviously a lot of balancing updates as they're doing it.
But like, for example, I don't think in my first like 50 hours
of playing the game, I don't think I picked a cast boon once,

(44:18):
not a single time. But in the my last 50 hours,
those started to become a priority because casting is
really good once you take the 30% damage amp Arcana.
And and so I feel like it's really easy to think that like
the broken bill that you found is the broken one, like like
Thomas, you wouldn't have found this one.

(44:38):
But there's a Aries boon where if you're under 40 health, if
you're under 40 health, you regen one health every time you
attack. And if if you're not getting one
shot, it means it's just infinite health.
But yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so like under your popcorn
section in the Haiti's two itinerary, that is what I wrote

(44:58):
down as my favorite boon. Well, it's actually kind of a
combination where it's that one,the, the 40 health one, the the
vampire drain, plus the one thatis also Aries that says you have
an increased chance to deal 200%damage and that chance goes up
the lower your your current health is.
So for me it was like playing Final Fantasy 8 where I just

(45:20):
wanted to keep my health at 40 at all times basically and just
keep healing myself up to 40 andjust do like way too much
damage. Yeah, I mean it makes sense for
like caspoons to be insane because that is the one button
that no matter what you are doing, you are going to be
pressing that button all the time.
Yeah, but honestly I think even though Poseidon gain is probably

(45:47):
my most picked boon by far, I think the actual best boons are
probably Aphrodites. Like Aphrodites, if you're close
to them, deal 80% extra damage. That's.
Fucking ridiculous bro. Aphrodite with the daggers is
ludicrous. It's absurd.
It is nutso fucko. If you get both what's it

(46:10):
called? Flutter strike and flutter
strike but for specials, I forget what it's called.
It's it's just ridiculous. It's absolutely insane damage.
I don't know if you guys did thesame thing I did, but like I
prioritized boons that didn't take up one of those primary
slots on the left because it always felt like it was just

(46:32):
like a + 1 where it's like I could take my time figuring out
which one which like main boon Iwanted for my attack special and
cast. But then they're just like the
ones that don't take up those spots that you don't have to
sacrifice. That would just also modify this
attacks. That just seems really good.
I think there's. Like 2 things that go into it #1
is like, how desperate are you to have that?

(46:55):
Like if I'm playing the daggers,I want the Artemis melee 1.
I don't care what rarity it is, just give it to me.
And it also kind of depends. Like I feel like I used to have
that view more. But once I started like always
doing the fear that puts you on a timer.
Like there is kind of a, a valuejudgement you have to make.
Like, am I going to have enough damage to beat this zone if I
wait to pick a primary, you know?

(47:23):
Yeah, for sure. There's another one I'm trying
to think of. Oh man, it's going to bug me.
I think a lot of the saloon hexes are fucking crazy as hell
too. And also another big reason why
I picked the sighting game so often is because it just allows
you to always cast your fucking hex no matter what the limit is.

(47:45):
It's crazy the difference between the good saloon boons
and the bad ones. They're either game breaking or
useless. There's one last thing about,
well, this is like slightly tangential.
I don't want to like derail us too much, but like the voice
actors or voice actors in general in this game either say

(48:07):
Selene or Seleni. Did you guys notice that?
Like it was driving me crazy when I was playing.
The IT says Selene. I thought it was weird that all
of them say Seleni. Are there people that say
Selene? Some of them for sure, I know I
heard it. And then I know that Molenoi
says Celini and then like otherssay Celine.
And it's like which one is? There is another example of that

(48:29):
too, where where characters pronounce someone's name
differently. I can't think of who it is off
the top of my head, but that that is not the only example of
that. There's a lot of typhoons versus
typhoon. Yeah, that's weird to me.
Well, speaking on the like some of their performances, though,
how did you guys feel about them?
I think we were pretty high on them in the chat, but I think

(48:52):
they're all pretty good. Like it's it's pretty hard to
say there's a bad one. There is something like
universal about the performancesthat I kind of dislike though,
and it was true and Hades one aswell.
These motherfuckers talk fast. Like they do not stop.
They do not stop talking once they.
I feel like they have to though,because, and this is like a
criticism that I wrote down where there's just like, I don't

(49:13):
actually mind like the overwhelming amount of dialogue.
I feel like that's just grandfathered into the DNA of
this game where you kind of justexpected there's going to be a
fuck ton of dialogue. But I wish that they could like
decrease the average length of each dialogue where it's not
like like a whole paragraph every time.
Yeah, I definitely stopped listening to what those fuckers

(49:35):
reapping on about at some point.I like the in run dialogue.
I don't like the in between run dialogue.
Yeah, and that goes you're talking about like the cozy hub
section? That's the dialogue I don't
like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I, I feel like a part of that is because it's in that
section where like when I was like getting into the zone of
playing this game and like I just really wanted to slay him

(49:57):
run after run after run, kind oflike Slay the Spire style.
But the reason why it'll never be at that tier for me is
because of that hub section where you do your run and then
you when your run's over, you know that you're going to have
to do some chore. And because if you don't do your
chore and you might miss out on the meta progression that lets
you unlock the next. Cool thing that's that's my

(50:18):
other major criticism of this game is how much narrative is
baked into the part of the game that I just want to blaze
through to get to my next run, rather than the narrative being
in the run. Yeah, it's kind of weird too,
because I thought that Hades onehad like maybe it didn't do it
that much throughout. It did it with like the first

(50:39):
boss Megara and the last boss, especially with Hades.
And like what I really liked about how the story in the first
game was baked into the narrative or baked into the runs
rather, was like how you would get to the surface in Hades 1
and like every time you got there, you would get a little
farther before you would die andget back, get sent back to the
underworld. Like it was a cool way of like

(51:00):
showing you are physically doingsomething.
Whereas in this game, the only version of that is like
literally just different dialogue with Zacarias, which
like, I guess narratively, like,yeah, you're doing stuff, but it
doesn't have that like visceral punch like the first game had.
Yeah, that's. Like one that's.
One of my big problems with thisgame is that it doesn't really

(51:21):
feel like it has any narrative moment that does feel like a
punch. Like there's nothing punchy
about the story in this game. The sole exception to that is
maybe when Hecate gets kidnappedor whatever, when you're doing
the last Chronos run before he dies or yeah, whatever that gets

(51:43):
fucking datified. But I really think that this
game needed something punchy inside of the runs rather than
just being a bunch of dialogue boxes in between runs because it
just, it just makes everything fall so flat for me.
And I think in general, I think I just liked the story from the
first game more just just kind of holistically in general.

(52:06):
I felt like it was just a littlemore compelling than this one,
which is weird because the stories are basically the same
thing really. Like there's not much of a
difference between them. But something about the first
one just worked a lot better forme.
Well, I want to talk about the ending.
Do you guys want to mention anything else about what we've

(52:26):
talked about so far before we jump into that?
Because my God do I want to do Iwant to say some things about
the end. I guess one thing where it's
like a like the the cozy hub dialogues, we kind of have like
the inverse issue of the like actual combat game playing that
like a lot of the difficulty modifiers and stuff feel

(52:46):
optional. But your chorn that you do in
between runs, that does not feeloptional.
It feels like you have to do it or you're fucking up.
Or at least that's how I felt about it, yeah.
I mean, they, that's such a great gameplay focus with like
all the shit you get in the runsand everything and like you need
to constantly be filling up yourgarden and all this nonsense.
And it's just, it's not good. And like you said, that also

(53:08):
takes away from kind of like oldschool style game design, which
is like, get the player playing the game, just have them playing
the game. Like when you press play, you
play. When you die, you want to press
play again, Like put in two quarters, press the start
button, you're playing again. You don't have to put in two
quarters, press the start buttonand then go outside and fucking
farm a little bit of grass before you can play again.

(53:29):
I feel like some of my issue with that.
Too. I feel like some of my issue
with that too is that a bunch ofthe stuff in the hub area is
just so spread out. Like I'm thinking specifically
how the garden is so far away from the little like delivery
guy that can give you something specific.
Like they're so far away for no reason and like that, that might

(53:49):
sound like a small thing, but you know, you play the game for
190 nights and. I'd say I would say my biggest
annoyance with the hubworld Charon is how fucking long it
took to unlock every incantation.
Like I will literally start tying A noose if I hear the
phrase so mote it be ever again I swear to fucking God.

(54:12):
Also kind of a small thing, but I really hated how when you use
the cauldron to like make an item and it does the like, you
have to do a run thing. You can't do any other
incantations while it's cooking.Oh yeah.
Yep, very frustrating. I didn't mind that that much
because that felt like a little like incremental optimization

(54:34):
you could do where you just do all your regular invocations and
then before you go into your runyou just pop one of those like
cauldron locking ones. I guess the the level of good
that I feel when I remember to do that versus the level of bad
that I feel now that I can't do it is unequal.

(54:55):
That's fair. I think anything that's time
gated was like just terrible. I think the the worst part of
all of the collectibles out in the world was the seeds, because
you have to like get a seed to get a thing, to use that thing
to unlock a thing. It's too many steps in the way
and you don't even know like you, you get like a poppy seed

(55:16):
and you're like, what the fuck is that, dude?
You get a cattail seed, You're like, what the fuck is that?
Like nothing means anything. Yeah, one thing that drove me
crazy was because there's such alike myriad of Cauldron
upgrades, at some point my eyes just started kind of glazing
over what they did because I felt like 9095% of them really

(55:38):
just didn't do much that I caredabout.
So I just kind of got to the point where I was like,
highlight the green thing, pressX, move on with my fucking life.
So at some point I unlocked the ability to craft those shadow
things or whatever. Like when you go into the
Cauldron you press RB but it took me forever to realize that
and so I'm like sitting there wondering how the fuck do I get
this resource? Like because it gates you on

(56:01):
major progression and it took meforever to realize oh I have to
press RB here. And then as soon as I did that
and it said I had to wait like 9encounters, I almost threw my
controller across the room. I was so fucking mad.
Like why not just give me the thing?
I paid the resources. Why not just give me the thing?
Just you're making me pay the resources and then go play a run

(56:22):
and then come back to this bullshit fucking chorn again so
that I can continue on the progression.
Just Just really, really. I cannot state enough how much I
hate the progression in this game.
You know what, what you just said about that and what Jordan
just said earlier made me realize maybe this is obvious,
but why the fuck do you have to pick up the seeds in the runs

(56:46):
and then plant the seeds? Why doesn't it just give you the
item like like? What's the point of that?
So a lot of these things, it ties back into the cozy thing.
And I'll give them a little bit of credit here because like some
of the things that they created for like the bathing scenes are
actually pretty cool. Like, like one of my favorite
portraits in this whole game is when you get Nemesis to take off

(57:09):
her armor and she lets her hair down and she looks really great.
And like, you could just get to talk to her, like real candidly.
And it gives you like these weird, these, like, different
narrative threads that I think are way more interesting than
the main story. Like also doing the same thing
with Eris, like just letting hertalk to you, like, real candidly
and just outside of like the waythat you interact with her

(57:30):
normally, just looking like she's like more vulnerable.
I think that stuff's pretty cool.
And I feel like if you didn't engage with that stuff and you
because like the whole purpose of that, those mechanics of like
going to the bass with the NPCS is to pass time so you don't
have to go into a run and do encounters to, to let those

(57:51):
things progress. But that's also like still a
negative because if you don't like that stuff, which a lot of
people probably don't, then you kind of just get fucked in the
ass. I mean, I I think that that
stuff is still equally as great if I'm not planting seeds.
Like I don't. I don't think that the planting
seed system benefits from havinga way to skip it via cool things

(58:11):
in the game. Just have the cool things in the
game be the benefit for the interacting with the cool things
in the game. Yeah, like, like I'll put it
this way cuz again, if they, if they want to commit to the cozy
feel, go for it. And like make me actually have
to like plant the seeds in my garden and I have to fertilize
them and I have to like water them and like, like make it an
actual process of like tending to my plants, like the witch

(58:33):
that I am. But instead it's just OK, I go
there, I press X, then I press Y, then I leave, then I come
back, then I press X. Like that.
That's just so much less interesting and evocative.
They'd be sick if it was like plants versus zombies or every
time you had to plant a seed andthen you had to play a tower
defence. Make it into like a like a World

(58:55):
of Warcraft. Like the I don't know if you
guys know this but they made like basically an idol game
where you sent your followers out on missions and there was
like combat that you could watchthem do and stuff like.
There you go. That's perfect.
Hey, Nemesis, go kill this thing.
When you come back, we'll take abath together.
At least Nemesis does something.What is Morris doing?
He's not pulling his weights andhis ass out there.
He's actually useless. He's mysterious.

(59:19):
He's. An aspect of Doom just being a
fucking doomer loser. But.
Will that might be a little too harsh, I'm sorry.
It might be too hard. I think another thing about the
performance is really quick is Ithink that whoever made the
decision to put a little bit of reverb and a filter on all the
performances, like kind of ruined a lot of them.

(59:41):
I think they should have done that for the gods and probably
no one else. I think it's OK for the gods.
It gives them that like epic, ethereal, godly, authoritative
quality to them. I don't.
So I don't mind it with them. But another thing for me too is
I feel like, and I was sitting here having this thought as we
were talking, so it's not reallyfleshed out, but I feel like you

(01:00:02):
could take any of the charactersand move them to a different
character and the voice would still be fine.
By and large, Like every single voice acting performance with
the exception of maybe Arachne is like interchangeable
completely, maybe hot take and not very well thought through.
But that is how I was thinking about it for the last probably

(01:00:24):
10 minutes. I think it's more true for the
women than the men. I mean can you OK the other one
that you couldn't do that with Iguess is Hermes.
But if you just took Hermes voice lines and put like a
fucking speak at 75% speed filter then it's fine.

(01:00:46):
I'm having trouble balancing that idea with the fact that I
think the voice for each character is very fitting.
Like Scylla, for example. Could you throw Scylla on like
Aphrodite I? I guess you could, but.
I. Don't think yeah, that's true.
I I will say Scylla is probably another example.
I guess I was more thinking about the gods and goddesses for

(01:01:07):
the most part, but like even like Nemesis could go on like
one of the meaner goddesses, forexample.
I don't know they just they don't they don't feel like they
have a whole lot of variation. Are they bad?
No, but are they like super stand out?
Also kinda know I. Think there's a couple that
stand out like like the Zeus is an obvious one, but especially

(01:01:30):
Hephaestus like and not Hermes. Obviously all those stand out
very nicely, I think. I think the best one for me is.
Oh yeah, Prometheus is fucking goaded.
Yeah, we're talking about bosses.
Too. Yeah, it's partially Ben Star.
Yeah, but also, I don't know, I just think he's like the only
actual cool character. I don't think anyone else plays

(01:01:52):
it cool. How do you guys feel about
Kronos Kronos's performance? He sucks and the the reason why
I hated part of his performance is because I don't know if you
guys had this but when he would talk to you in runs his volume
was 80% louder than anything else in the game.
Pop up on the screen and say shit.
Like for me it was just so fucking loud.

(01:02:14):
And so you had the go ahead. I was gonna say, I really, I
had, I did have a real problem with the, like, volume levels in
this game. I really had to, like, play with
them. And I think it led to me, like,
missing out on a lot of music while I was actually playing
because of the way that I had to, like, fuck around with the
volume bars because it felt likeI could never get things like,

(01:02:36):
where I wanted them. Yeah.
The mixing felt really off to toto to say that I hated Chronos.
I think it's just that I was annoyed by the fact that he
talks loud. But to me from Herc's great
adventure for PS1, Hades and that game kind of has like a
like a little wisp we kind of getting down here thing.

(01:02:57):
And I feel like Chronos is doingthat, but just loud.
It didn't feel like a good performance.
He felt kind of like a weird mouse kind of style performance
for a dude that should be like the commander of time.
I feel like he's just kind of got that like arrogant, cold,
like sort of elegant nobility performance to him.
And I don't know, I think, I think Kronos worked for me

(01:03:19):
personally. Yeah, I think I thought it was
fine as well. Like I grew to like hate him in
like a loving way where like it's I actually didn't have too
many problems with this performance.
And that's because I usually never have a problem with
performance unless it's like really egregiously bad.
But like I grew to hate him because he would just pop in
randomly like after I lose a runand mock me and it would

(01:03:41):
actually really piss me off. I think, like I think his
performance might not fit the character, but I think that the
sound editing for his performance did a lot of the
rest of the work that was neededto make it fit.
Because I hear it, and I mean this positively, I don't think

(01:04:01):
you guys will see it this way, but I hear it.
And I kind of think Cazador fromBaldur's Gate 3, where he's just
this like kind of pompous, like you can't take him seriously,
but you have to because he's really powerful.
Like, I like that kind of archetype and I think the voice
fits, but the fact that he's like this godly figure, I think
the sound editing brings it the rest of the way there for me.
Here's a fun fact, Kronos and Karen have the same voice actor.

(01:04:27):
That's funny. That's that is funny.
And it makes sense. It's actually awesome.
All right guys, I hated the fucking ending.
I hated it. It was so bad.
I hated the. I agree.
I agree. It was.
It was hard garbage. Yeah, it felt like a way to
like, really, it was like them ham fistedly trying to force in

(01:04:50):
like a happy ending when it was need to be.
Yeah, it was way too far, Fantasy 14.
And I say that it's probably theonly person here that really
loves. Yeah.
That's. Funny the feeling I got like
because like again, this is one of those things where I feel
like playing it through pre patch has kind of like shaped my
view on this. Like literally every single run

(01:05:11):
it's like death to Kronos and fucking time to kill time.
Like all of that shit is really cool and it makes me feel like
I'm like a warrior witch adventurer.
Like I have a goal, I am going to do this.
And for some reason, like at theend of the game, it it almost
feels like there was this imbalance between what they were

(01:05:32):
going for and what they expectedthe end product to be, because
the ending of this game is the ending of Hades 1.
Like, you know, you had Hades, who was the bad guy of Hades 1
and you like kind of befriend him and it's not found family,
but like family reuniting. And that was like the whole
purpose of Hades 1. So it all worked really well.
And for whatever reason, they didn't want to commit to the

(01:05:54):
fact that you're killing your fucking grand or uncle grandpa.
Grandpa. Yeah, Grandpa, Grandpa.
That you're killing your fuckinggrandpa and they just had to
commit to it being like that family reunification again.
Like why it was so cool up untilthat point?
So I'm not going to hold water for it too hard, but I will say
that Milenoe does feel very strongly about death to Kronos

(01:06:17):
and it's Zagreus that kind of pokes a hole in that whole
thing. So that's true.
I'm not. I'm not advocating for the story
beat itself. But I will say Milenowe
definitely still wanted to kill the fuck out of Kronos at the
end. Then again, what am I going to
say? Because I like it when people
commit to an idea. Do that and have Milenowe

(01:06:39):
fucking break off from the family and be the new witch of
the crossroads. Like, let that disagreement that
she has stand out narratively and it would have worked, I
think. Yeah, they're way.
Too pussy to do that? I don't.
I don't know if you would have. Yeah, 'cause I don't think that
would have gone over with the normies.
Way too pussy. Really hate it.
That would be way too sick. That would be fucking sweet

(01:07:00):
though. That would be like a perfect
lead into Hades 3, yeah. Exactly.
I think even having like a turn for Malinui at the end would be
sick like like because blueprints I like still I'm
getting goosebumps even thinkingabout the ending, the blueprints
where they just read the fuckingreal story, like when you find
room 46 and then they read what like the real story of like the
the blueprints is like that's sosick.

(01:07:21):
So even for her to just be like life to Kronos and then that's
like play credits or something like I don't know, like I think
it could have still been done inthe same shitty way that they
did, but kind of have like this better turn for into it.
Like I said, the the the narrative of this game is a hot
fucking mess and pretty much every way I can think of.
And again, not having any sort of like narrative punchiness or

(01:07:43):
like high emotional peaks in anyof the narrative moments, like
God, it really just it really makes everything fall flat.
Like even if they had done that with Melena way where I don't
know, she had like a heel turn or something, who knows.
It's still, it still would have fallen flat because everything

(01:08:05):
for me up to that point was justlike a huge nothing burger.
I would have been like oh OK well I guess this is the DLC or
the sequel now. I, I felt like although a lot of
the stuff that I did like narratively was the optional
stuff where you'd like give people nectars and other things.
You give them stuff like unlock those cutscenes in the different

(01:08:27):
areas you muck in the hub. I actually like those a lot.
The issue obviously is that they're staple to those those
idle game mechanics that are notenjoyable to interact with.
Yeah. And for for me at least, it kind
of had like a similar a similar quality to Silksong where in

(01:08:47):
Silksong I regretted it, which was me just wanted to play the
fucking game. So me skipping through all the
dialogue. But the difference is A,
Silksong had a fraction of the amount of dialogue that Hades 2
has, and B, the story was actually kind of neat once I
like, stopped to smell the flowers a little bit.
Whereas I felt like this game, like the only part of this game

(01:09:10):
that I liked was actually playing it.
Because even though I feel like we've kind of spent about an
hour and change now kind of shitting on the game, playing
the game is a lot of fun. It's everything else that
fucking sucks and that ties intoall of the narrative stuff in
the camp. Because like, I just, I felt
like it was almost punitive for me to give someone nectar and

(01:09:32):
have to sit through a cutscene because it's just like, well
maybe this will give me something.
I'm going to press fucking righttrigger now and hopefully I see
keepsake unlocked. Oh I didn't?
OK, mash through this bullshit again.
But yeah, I mean, going back to what Thomas said, like there is
absolutely a lot positive to sayabout this.
Like despite and everything we criticized with regards to the

(01:09:54):
narrative, I actually really like the setting of this game.
It's kind of cheating for me, and I don't expect you guys to
share this opinion, but you put me in a time loop.
I'm going to be happy. Some of my favorite games,
Majora's Mask and Outer Wilds, Ilike time loops, that's it.
But something I mentioned in thechat earlier is that I feel like
with all of this, like when it comes to all of this grindy

(01:10:16):
stuff, that's just, it gets in the way of the game more than
anything, It's still important to consider the ratio of time
that you spent doing that versusactually playing the game.
And while it might feel like you're doing the grindy stuff
for a lot longer than you actually are, it's still a bad
thing because my God does like talking to all the people and

(01:10:40):
farming your garden feel like itjust takes God damn forever.
But like, then you do like 1/2 hour run and realize you only
spent like 5 or 10 minutes in the hub.
So I, I feel like for me that ratio meant that I was still
pretty happy, you know? I felt like I spent a lot of
time in the hub because I, and maybe this is just kind of

(01:11:01):
autistic, but I would change outall of my loadout based on the
weapon. I would change all my arcana, I
would change all my keepsakes. And like, that shit takes a
little bit of time when you tackon the fact that you're also
fucking having to do all this other bullshit too.
I only used 1 weapon so I didn'thave to do that.
I don't think you had to. Like, I think I would have been

(01:11:22):
like, at some point I just arrived on an Arcana loadout
that I was just never going to change.
But like before, I got to meta progression levels that were
like powerful enough that it didn't fucking matter.
I was doing that every run. I think for me, like the issue
with the hub is like, and you'reright, Seth, like in comparison
to like the total amount of timeyou spend playing the game, it

(01:11:44):
is a much, much smaller piece ofthat pie.
I but what I feel is like every time I saw like an exclamation
mark over an NBC, like I had to talk to them because like there
was the possibility that it wouldn't unlock a new
incantation for the cauldron or something.
But like when I would actually read the dialogue and it wasn't
that important. I just wish that like maybe an

(01:12:06):
easy fix is just to make less ofthem exclamation marks.
There's like those dialogues just appear if you felt like
talking to them, and the exclamation marks should just be
reserved specifically for the dialogues that unlock something.
Yeah, I, I feel like especially going into this game after Hades
won, they could have done that because the expectation would be

(01:12:27):
OK, there's going to be new dialogue with all these guys
after every run. So just make the exclamation
mark pop up if they're gonna give me an item or some shit, or
if it's important, right? And that's definitely not true.
Yeah, I think maybe one of my bigger points of contention that
could have been easily solved isjust how totally irrelevant and
useless so many of those exclamation marks felt.

(01:12:50):
Like if they really sliced down the amount of them and only
saved them for things that were really important and not just
Odysseus saying I got a report from up here on the surface that
blah blah blah blah blah. Like shit that just does not
matter in any way shape or form.I think my experience in the Hub
would have been so much better. Also just want to say as a big

(01:13:12):
Odyssey fan, I think Odysseus was done dirty in this game.
And the fact that he sucks. What do you mean?
Yeah, he does nothing, not a single thing.
He doesn't like blast cannons and during the Silla fight or
something like that. Like he he's just there and for
some reason he's an outside observer and for some reason
they made him into like a commander instead of like a

(01:13:36):
duplicitous like tricky dude that he is in the Odyssey.
I don't know. I don't get it.
I don't, I do not see that vision that they had for.
I mean, I agree with you and I also I think it's not just
limited to him. I think a lot of characters are
lacking character. I think it would have been cool.
I know that like on the outside of this, they said that their
goal was never to create some kind of like accurate

(01:13:56):
representation of characters from the Greek myth.
But I think if they had leaned into that a lot more with some
of them, there would have been alot more personality bleeding
out of some of the characters. Yeah.
And I think that's a fair criticism too, because if you're
going to rely on like a Greek mythology in that way, like you
have a lot of wiggle room to like be true to that and make it

(01:14:18):
interesting. I don't know.
I also think it's easy mode for writing.
I think if you want people to like characters, literally just
pick characters from the things that people like.
It's why like Sonic fan games and Pokémon fan games will do so
much more numbers than if you made that same game but used
like an original IP. It's like you, you did the easy
mode part, like you took the shit.
Now all you need to do is have alittle bit of fun with it and
then you're going to have a homerun.

(01:14:39):
And then they took they did the easy part and then just skip the
home run part. Yeah, and you're you're 10,000%
true. And it's even more true in like
commercial games like this. But like my home brew tabletop
campaigns for Dungeons and Dragons, all of my favorite
characters are just ones that I ripped out of a game or a movie
or whatever. Yeah, that is universe.

(01:14:59):
Yeah. You know, what's crazy is like,
you would think that like so much of Greek myth is like,
since it's kind of religious adjacent, like maybe some of
those stores would be like watching paint dry.
But literally the fucking the Greek myth books, I think I say
books, plural. I think there's two that Stephen

(01:15:20):
Fry wrote for Greek mythology are so much better than anything
in this game. And all he's doing is just
rewriting Greek myth into something like a little more
charismatic, maybe, I guess would be a word.
Where's this game? Oh no, he keeps all the

(01:15:43):
problematic aspects. Oh boy.
He relishes it a little bit. He makes them fun.
Like he takes a story that mightbe a little bit boring and kind
of just punches it up a little bit or looks for a philosopher
who talked about it in like maybe a little more provocative
way. And then that's the one that he
would use. Yeah.
So like, he doesn't, he doesn't shy away from details, but he
embellishes in a way that makes it so much more entertaining.

(01:16:03):
Whereas in Hades, it's like you have actual personifications of
these characters and you've taken creative liberties with
them, and you've given them all unique performances and scripts,
but somehow you made them more boring.
Yeah. Way more boring.
What the fuck? I've more we talk about it, the
more I'm like, wow, Hades is split fiction.
That's crazy. Oh shit, I have to change my

(01:16:23):
guess. Guys, my guys, guys, my guesses
are going to be so. Fucking wrong.
Every single one. I think the gameplay makes up
for like the gameplay is really good.
I think the music is solid. I think the performances are
good, even though I think they're ruined by the Reaper and
the filtering that they do. Like there's definitely good
things about it. I think the narrative is just so
bad and I think it's it's weird that it's bad because it's not.

(01:16:45):
It's like it's not an original story.
Like again, you, you had the framework there.
Just punch it up. All you need to do is add tags
to everything. It's so easy.
I don't understand. I don't understand.
Yeah. And I will say, like, we've
basically just spent this entireconversation talking about the
things I don't like rather than the things I do like.
Yeah, I, I absolutely. Now that OK, have we gotten all

(01:17:06):
of the negativity out, can we start talking about how good the
combat is? Combat and music.
The music in this game is fucking incredible.
If it were not for Expedition 33, this would be a shoo in for
the best soundtrack of this yearand maybe the last couple of
years to be honest with you. What?
Was your favorite song? God, I knew you're going to ask.

(01:17:28):
That's so hard. I have a few songs that I wrote
down that I really liked all three Skilla songs, although I
did like the second and third song more than the first song,
so maybe just those two. But really any song with lyrics,
like the song that Artemis and Melinaway sing in the village is

(01:17:48):
cool. The credits song is really good.
I think that's Echo and Narcissus, I forget.
It's Artemis and Apollo. OK well shit I was way the fuck
off. But as far as songs without
lyrics, I think that my favoritesong and one that I didn't
realize was so fucking good until I went to listen to it
while I was listening to the whole soundtrack because again,

(01:18:08):
the mixing was so fucked up and I had the music volume really
low. Is Cronus's song the first phase
specifically? That song is a fucking bibbity
bop. Yeah, that guitar riff is great.
I think for me, I have two different answers.
I have one for my favorite song to listen to, like when I'm at
work or whatever, and then one for actually like while I'm

(01:18:29):
playing the game. My favorite to listen to outside
of what Thomas already mentionedis the Polyphemus song.
I think that song is fucking great myself, and my favorite
one while I'm playing is the onethat plays in Tartarus.
Dude, that song gets me fucking going.
Like my build is fully running, I'm dashing all over the place,

(01:18:49):
there's a million laser beams like following after me.
I'm dashing behind the shield guy to hit him and the the is
going off like fuck you. Yeah, that song is also fucking
dope. My favorite song is the second
Skill of song. I like it more than the first
and the 3rd. And I'm also just a huge sucker
for lyrics in video game boss fight songs in journal because

(01:19:10):
of Final Fantasy 14 where they have like three of them every
expansion, so more of those is always a plus for me.
Yeah, gun to my head, the secondskill of song is my favorite for
sure. It's so, so good.
I've been listening to that shiton repeat in the car, like while
Mary and I are like going out todinner or whatever.

(01:19:30):
Yeah, I think I'm not as high onthe soundtrack as you guys are.
Like I think it's solid. I think this little one is the
most memorable. I don't know if it's if it's my
favorite. I don't really know if I have a
favorite. There was a lot of songs where I
felt like they were almost there.
Like the part the TARDIS one that you said Seth, I think is
like it has good parts and then it kind of it like there's only
a few songs to me that feels like they're consistently good.
One of them is the one that Tom said like the Chrono song is
really good. The Silla songs are really good.

(01:19:51):
But then like other songs feel like they have good parts, but
then they're like the Olympus song is like really good for
like 1/3 of it. There's like 1 section that's
sick and then it just kind of fades into the background like
so it's inconsistent for me. I was about to say cuz like, I
mean I'm glad that you mentionedit, but the Mount Olympus song
is just one that I just didn't like at all.
Or maybe I just didn't hear the one good part.
I think, yeah, I think there's like 8085% of the song that's

(01:20:13):
like whatever. And like there's a lot of songs
also that are layered. They do like the video game
theory layering where like when nothing's going on, only the
bass line plays and shit like that.
So they're designed like that. So you have to do something for
it to become interesting. Like when you kill all the
enemies, it's all the instruments drop and then the
bass line just going like the doom boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom. And then when you go into a room
of combat, then all the instruments kick back in.
So it's doing that kind of like layering.

(01:20:36):
So like that's that's really cool from like a design aspect.
But yeah, like for me, I think that kind of creates like
inconsistencies in sections. Yeah, I can agree with that
actually. It does surprise me a little bit
that you're not higher on the soundtrack after what you
mentioned about I forget what you called it last episode,
Orchestral fatigue. Yeah, I think this this game is
a rock music fatigue. I think it just kind of took

(01:20:56):
like what rock music did like 40years ago and then just brought
it back. And then it was like, Oh yeah,
rock music is cool. Like, this is where rock music
should be now. It should be in like, epic
moments rather than just French horns and, and tubas and shit.
But yeah, I, I, I think it definitely has like good, good
songs in it for sure. Yeah, I think, I think for me,
this soundtrack was always like destined to be a hit because if

(01:21:17):
you go and read like Darren Korb's influences, he's got like
I think I mentioned this in the Discord channel, but like
fucking Ozma, this like stupid Weezer clone band from like the
early 2000s that I loved when I was like 12.
He mentions fucking Wolf Peck. Like there, there was no way I
wasn't going to love this soundtrack just because of the

(01:21:39):
music that this dude likes. I also just want to mention, I
think that what this game does with the Sila boss where like a
certain component of the music will be emphasized and as you
kill different bosses, they'll drop out of the song and like by
the end it'll just be Silla singing really loudly because
you killed the other two. Players, I think, yeah.
Reactivity like that in this game is really.

(01:22:00):
Yeah, that dynamism is really cool.
My favorite reactivity? My favorite reactivity there.
It's pretty similar to that where I don't, I don't know how
many times it takes you to beat her, but at some point she'll be
like, I'm working on a new song and it's called I'm going to
claw out your eyes then drown you to death.
And it's like, haha, that's kindof a funny throwaway line.
And then the next time you go and find her, they're actually
singing that fucking song. I actually thought that was

(01:22:22):
awesome. I also think like as the sirens
they are, it's really cool how you hear their song through
Oceanis and it's just like, yeah, closer.
Come close, it's. Really cool.
Yeah, that stuff's awesome. Yeah, they know that for sure.
I mean, I think, I think a reason why I'm not as high on
the soundtrack for this game is because I think there's not an

(01:22:44):
emotional tie into the soundtrack like there is for
Expedition 33 or even for Blueprints.
Like I think Blueprints soundtrack is fucking simple but
it's just like fucking beautifulto listen to.
Yeah, I feel like the biggest miss there was the hit that
Hades One had where you reunite or if you ascend your odyssey
and you get that great song. In the right.
Exactly this. Game, this game felt like it
needed to do that. And you get Artemis and Apollo

(01:23:08):
for some reason. Yeah, yeah, like I think, I
think that's a big thing that keeps me from like being like,
holy shit, I'm infatuated with like Expedition 33.
Cuz there's a lot of songs therethat like just have such good
narrative tie insurance and suchgood like emotional hits that
the song is an emotional song, but also like how it's used as
an emotional moment. So it's just like perfection.
Yeah, I would. I agree with what you guys are

(01:23:28):
saying. I do think I think on the
average Hades 2 as a soundtrack is is fucking amazing.
And again, on average it's better than the first game.
But I think Hades 2 really was missing a good riddance.
The song from the first game that the song you're talking
about with Eurydice, that song is, is a is a fucking modern

(01:23:49):
video game classic. It is so good I.
Thought you're talking about thewhat is it the Green Day song?
Something unpredictable that's going.
To be the next song that Silla sings when you fight, and it'll
start with that branded Dand Damp, banded Dand Damp.
Fuck. You know, I think, I think you

(01:24:09):
guys are right that the, I thinkthe Silla world tie and stuff is
super sick. Like, I didn't really kind of
give it the credit that it deserves until you kind of
mentioned it of like, Oh yeah, like, the whole theming of that
area is fucking awesome. Yeah, I would actually fucking
love like I would, I guarantee you, if they had did like a full
concept album with all of the band members or whatever from

(01:24:31):
the Skilla boss fight, I would fucking listen to that shit
forever. That would be on the Spotify
playlist for the rest of my life.
Really. I think that she, I think Sila
has the most character out of any character in the game, Yeah.
I agree. I think it's Sila and Dora are
like the two most like characterfilled characters.
And her I like her acne. Yeah, she's good.

(01:24:53):
I think she feels unutilized. She doesn't stick out as much.
She's really inconsequential, but I do.
Like her I I agree I can. I can definitely see that for a
lot of them too. Like I like, I like Hermes.
I think Hermes is fun. I think he could have been more
fun, but I think he's like fine for what he is, but like,
inconsequential is the right word.
Like that doesn't feel like theyreally have like a hit.
Yeah, I really didn't like a lotof the like interstitial like

(01:25:16):
encounter characters like your Echoes, Narcissus, like a lot of
those, again, outside of Arachneobviously, which I've already
mentioned, kind of fell flat forme.
Kind of surprises me you guys don't like Narcissus.
I thought at least in terms of his performance, it was really
good. I didn't dislike Narcissus.
Or let me to be clear, it's it'sreally good in like a, an A

(01:25:40):
noir, an A noir spider man kind of way.
That's funny, I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah, where it's like, like, it's a little ham.
Seriously. Yeah, it's very hammy.
He knows the character he's playing.
He's kind of just having fun with it.
Everyone knows who Narcissus is,so it's just kind of fun to see
that interpretation. Yeah, I think I didn't like the

(01:26:02):
hamminess of it. I think it depends on the
character because like Sillimouse or whatever, the guy
that you really hate, Jordan, I actually like.
I actually like him a lot. I mean.
I didn't want to bring it out because I don't, I don't think
it's productive for me to just to, to, to shit on it.
But yeah, like I, I can understand liking characters
like that. I don't like, I think it's air

(01:26:23):
quotes immersion breaking to putin a real life meme sound every
time you talk to a character. I think that that's a terrible
decision almost abductively. But past that, I think it's
totally valid to like that character.
Can that fucking like I don't even the symbol crash that would
happen, Yeah man, that shit was so annoying.
Yeah. It'd be like if you heard the

(01:26:45):
vine boom like if you talk to Hecate and it was just like boom
every time that you talk to her,it'd be like why this is so
weird? So we've established that Jordan
fucking hates every character voiced by Darren Korb.
It's not true 'cause I think he did really well as Zagrez in the
first game. I.
Was gonna quiz you and see if you realize that that was him or

(01:27:06):
if it was just him. Fucking Narcissus and and
fucking Skelly. Yeah, his performance is really
good for Zagarius. I think the other two are just
hammy. I think that's why I don't like
them because it sounds like he'sbeing hammy.
I think Narcissus is too He he cares too much about you.
Being there is another thing that bothers me.

(01:27:27):
Like actual Narcissus wouldn't give a fuck that you're there.
Like some of the interactions should just be like you
shouldn't be able to talk to him.
Too enamored with himself. Exactly, that's what that like.
It bothered me that he cared so much about you being there.
It would be kind of a funny interaction if like sometimes
you tried to get a boon from himand you just didn't get anything
because he's so obsessed. That would be.

(01:27:47):
Character. I think that that would have
pissed me. Off.
That's what I mean. He's supposed to piss you off.
He's so that's very. No, Yeah.
Like, this was so long ago, so Idon't remember how it plays out
in the first run. But like the first time you get
there, he's so obsessed that he doesn't give you anything.
It's like, well, what the fuck, This was useless.
But if you give him a nectar, then he'll start giving you

(01:28:08):
stuff because like, oh you, you gave the narcissist something,
right? So I guess I missed that because
I always gave a nectar to like someone that I saw for the first
time just to get the keepsake. No, but I'm saying that's how
like I think that's how it should be.
To Oh, I thought you were sayingthat that is how no.
No, no, no, no. OK.
Yeah, no, I would have liked that.

(01:28:28):
I thought that would have been cool.
So that's what I think like that's why I don't think it's a
good idea to take the lineage ofthese characters and then not
like try to do something with it, 'cause I think you took, if
you took that part, then that's the fun part, to do something
with it. Yeah, I will.
I will say that like in that specific instance for what
you're talking about with Narcissus, it would not flow

(01:28:49):
well with the rest of the game at fucking all and kind of what
their core philosophy is. But I think in a vacuums like
stuff like that, where maybe some of that reactivity from the
characters is kind of hidden behind some sort of like
additional layer of shit to do, like the pseudo puzzle almost to

(01:29:12):
help like lean into their character a little bit, I think
that would have been cool. I'm not gonna, like, rewrite
this game 'cause there's alreadya shit ton of content in it, but
I think that would have been neat.
Like Hades one did that with Orpheus and your Odyssey.
So like they know they can't do it and that it.
Works. I don't.
See why they didn't do? It true.
Yeah, I mean, I, I think it, it breaks up the monotony of see
character give character thing, never give character thing again

(01:29:35):
because you don't care about theadditional dialogue they're
going to give you because all you want to do is get all the
keepsakes. Like if you had to do different
things and like, let's say to get narcissist thing, you had to
push him into the water and thenyou and then he dropped the
thing out of his pocket or something.
Like it doesn't need to just be these consistent interactions
with every character. Yeah, I think there's a lot of
things they could have done to really make the personalities of

(01:29:55):
their characters pop a little bit more.
Yeah. Like I said, I think they're
really riding on the fact that they took the lineage rather
than writing characters that have a lineage.
Yeah. On the other hand, I do wanna
say when it comes to the boons from the different gods, I think
all of those would do a really good job of like representing

(01:30:18):
that God in their boons. Like how Aphrodites make you
want to be close to all of your targets.
Or you know, like obviously the more like elemental ones, like
Poseidon, you're just blasting waves all over the place as fast
as you're blowing shit up with the hammer.
Anvil sound effects like all that's really, really cool.
I agree for sure. Yeah, they did do a good job
with that, although there are some exceptions.

(01:30:41):
If anything, I would say there'snot enough crazy identity with
those things. Like if everything feels kind of
incremental, like to compare to Isaac sometime and Isaac if you
get one item, like the game justexplodes.
Like I feel like this game didn't really have that kind of
like, oh shit, I got the Hephaestus legendary one.
Now I'm in a wheelchair and I go800% move speed or something,
you know? Now I'm in a wheelchair so I go

(01:31:06):
800. Percent move speed.
Yeah, exactly. Like that's crazy.
You would never forget that. You would keep that with you for
the rest of your life. Me and Tom had a game called
like Monster Party. I don't remember what the game's
fucking called, but I remember that you can get a toilet
familiar that auto shoots around.
For you like I don't. Remember what the game's called?
Apocalypse Party. That's what it's.
Called and sweet if you fucking get some legendary Aphrodite
thing and it just fucking like strips off all of your clothes.

(01:31:28):
Exactly, you should just ride her around like those are the
craziest things that they shouldhave done.
That's I agree. Like I think that that's like
for a legendary boon specifically, that's the kind of
ideas that you should have. It shouldn't just be like the
white boon, but the numbers are higher.
Like I didn't like that. I do, I want you to say.
I can understand that though because I mean that's like some

(01:31:49):
scope creep shit to try. Yeah, that.
Yeah, it would be cool novel, but like, yeah.
It's 82 1/2, like at least $400 million.
I don't care. Apocalypse party, give me a
toilet. I see where you're coming from,
but at the same, regardless of scope creep, I think that what
they do have in the game looks fucking great.

(01:32:10):
Like I think all of the Aries effects, how it changes the look
of your weapons or whatever. I don't even remember if Haiti's
one did that. I think there were effects but
not as severe as this game. But all of them look amazing.
They look so good. I know you know what I will say
that they did an amazing job with as well with the upgrades
or like in game upgrades is the weapon upgrades like the the

(01:32:34):
hammers or whatever the hell I forget what they're called, but
every single one of. Those, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, those. Like I was always excited to
loot one of those things becauseI knew my entire build was about
to fucking turn on its head. Yeah, exactly.
Those those types of boons like the Hammers and to a lesser
extent Celine, like those are those boons that I would

(01:32:55):
consider like the must haves. Not that I need a specific one,
but I felt like I needed any of them because you didn't have one
of them. You you felt like you had like
you're playing Street Fighter, but like with two less buns and
the other guy, I mean. That's exactly what Celine or
Celine, what are you going to say?
It is. That's exactly what that was
like. You're you're missing your
ultimate. Like you don't have supers like
so give me my super, please. Really.

(01:33:16):
I never felt like Celine was that important, like to where I
felt like I couldn't win if I didn't find her, you know, I.
Mean in the same way that JustinWong could beat my ass without a
jam button, but like you still want.
The jam button. OK, fair enough.
I will say although I agreed like the Daedalus hammers are

(01:33:38):
awesome, they were great in Hades 1, they're even better in
this game. Same goes with the Salini
upgrades. I might have been the only one
to see much of this, but the alternate move set aspects do
not feel like they were the Daedalus hammer upgrades of them
do not feel like they were designed with the alternate.
Move sets in mind I was leaving them out because I don't know if

(01:33:58):
you noticed this, but actually with the majority of those
alternate move sets, they keep the same upgrades except some of
them just get removed because they don't work with the move
set. Like there's there's one for
sure with the the the aspect of Pan Panoppy or whatever, the
igneum hidden upgrade and I forget what it is, but it says

(01:34:22):
something like your specials last two seconds longer and gain
more damage with duration, something along those lines.
But obviously that would not work with that weapon move set.
So it's just straight up not an option.
They just fucking deleted it from that move set.
I think that's kind of whack. Yeah, and there's like like some

(01:34:42):
of the ones for the the clip that I mentioned it like it auto
fires your primary with the torches, right.
So you just have these balls flying around you constantly,
but you, you still have this weird Omega move where it just
does like a Kamehameha for some reason.
And like half of the Daedalus upgrades only upgrade that

(01:35:03):
Kamehameha, even though you're like never doing it because the
entire idea with that weapon is that you're like dashing around
hitting people with the balls like you're fucking Irelian soul
from League of Legends. And yeah, I, I, I don't like
criticizing it because the alternate weapons are really
cool and they're all I started using in the late game.
But it it just sucks that the Daedalus hammer upgrades weren't

(01:35:25):
really built with those in mind to feel like.
Yeah. Yeah, I do agree with that, even
though they still did feel like obscenely powerful most of the
time. That being said, because I
didn't I didn't grind enough to unlock these alternate move
sets. But like I thought that the
variety even with the base aspects were actually pretty
good. Like when I first got that new

(01:35:47):
aspect, I forgot what the weaponwas, but but it like humbled
with which animal familiar you had.
I thought stuff like that was like really cool.
Speaking of animals familiars, was there a reason to not pick
the cat? I felt like the cat was just the
best one because it was the onlyone that lets you do ignore some
something that was a mechanical challenge, which is timing the
fishing. Where's where's all the other
ones? Just like let you skip an

(01:36:08):
animation. I like all of them have the
frog. The frog gives you more Max
health. Wait, what?
All of them have? All of them have like actual
mechanical components, Yeah. Oh, I didn't know.
I didn't. Know can it make you attack
faster or something? Oh, is that written somewhere?
I didn't know they did any of that.
All I thought they did was let you gather stuff more
efficiently. Like the the cat for example

(01:36:30):
gives you crit chance. The frog will like block
projectiles. I actually really like having
the frog for the first boss in the underworld because he can
block the polymorph from the first boss and you just don't
have to worry about. Quick correction, it's the Raven
that gives you crit. The cat only makes it so that
when your death defiance procs you get 20 extra health from it,

(01:36:54):
which is a big old fart noise. I would have never noticed any
of these things unless you told me the only.
Reason why I even noticed the cat had anything because it had
an aura beneath its feet and I'mlike Diablo 2 pilled so I was
like what the fuck and it has the same aura beneath its feet
as uh O does but I don't know what that means like I just knew
I like I know it's doing something but I don't know what
the fuck it was. Wait, you can upgrade them?

(01:37:20):
Yeah, I didn't even know that I'm looking.
At them until my final run. Yeah, I'm looking at, I'm
looking at the wiki, and there'ssome that I didn't even know
existed. There were some that I saw in in
my runs, but I could never recruit them even though I made
like a million of those biscuits.
Like there was one in the upper path.
It was like a ferret or something.
And I'm like, can I please just send you to my hub?

(01:37:41):
But it would, I basically could only pet it and then it just
goes away. And I was just like, I don't
even know how to unlock these animals.
Like is there something I'm missing?
I don't know, animal familiars felt like they were cool but
unnecessary and only put in the game because you're with.
Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of them, like they were fine, but

(01:38:01):
yeah, it's kind of unnecessary. I love things like that from the
flavour perspective, but I hate how they handled like we talked
about for an hour and a half, the unlocking of them.
Basically like what Ben said of like if you ran into the cap but
you didn't have the concoction unlocked and you pet the cat,
doesn't matter. You need to have the
unconcoction unlocked and then you got to go find the cat and
then when you pet the cat it goes back to your camp.

(01:38:22):
Like why can't they just have them all queue up so when you
unlock it now you have a CACAF. Any fucking animals to pick
from? I don't know.
Yeah, that system, I'm going to rate it mid out of 10.
I love it. Forgettable.
Yeah, when I brought it up, I really only really like in the
context of that one aspect that uses them with the weapon move

(01:38:43):
set where it like creates like alittle laser in between you 2
and you can like kind of like run into enemies and have them
run into that laser and die. Yeah, yeah, that is pretty cool.
And I do agree with what you were saying on the outset, which
is that the weapon aspects do feel cool.
Like I actually I really wanted to like the axe, but it felt so

(01:39:04):
dog shit. But I did really like the aspect
of Thanatos, the like fucking scythe axe.
The scythe axe. I thought that one was actually
a lot of fun. Yeah, that's the one I use the
most. I used all of the axe ones
except that base one, which I agree with you is just like it
feels. It's kind of like the base
daggers where like I'd never want to use these weapons.

(01:39:26):
But the other aspects are actually pretty cool.
I actually loved the bass daggers.
Really. Yeah, I thought they're great,
but I also like the back. I like the backstab things, and
I also like taking things that proc on attack.
Like it was awesome with like Zeus chain lightning or like
Hestia's scorch on hit and like shit like that.
Bro bro the one of the late game, I can't remember what the

(01:39:48):
weapon is called the skull, one of the late game alternate move
sets just turns that thing into a fucking machine gun.
And Oh my God it makes it so much fun with like the Zeus
procs and stuff. Like you get the Zeus proc plus
the Artemis proc plus a bunch ofcurses.
Oh, it's fun. Yeah, something that detects
really fast is awesome. And hearing you talk about it,
Seth, it's definitely like a game that's designed for like

(01:40:11):
you to play only Haiti's two forlike 200 hours because it feels
like there's a lot of like love in the design that's behind a
lot, a lot of time that's set in.
Yeah, but the problem, the problem is that like all of that
stuff, like it's like it, there's no reason for it to be
hidden behind the, like, mountain of shit that it is.

(01:40:32):
Like, there's just absolutely nosolid reason why I could justify
why that is. I just didn't want to.
I just wanted to kind of it is cool that if you put the time
in, they are like, here's the reward for the time that that
you've. You've contributed to us I
guess, but I feel like I felt just as rewarded playing it by

(01:40:54):
fucking cheat engineering every goddamn resource into into it
that I did, having to fucking play the game for an extra 150
hours. Yeah, no evidence.
No God. Yeah, and I think you, I forget
if you already mentioned this ornot, Seth, but like there was
also like the whole aspect abouthow you played the game
originally were like you played a lot more of the early Axis,

(01:41:16):
probably like all of it, right. So you experienced everything as
it was added per patch. So you got to progress in all
that meta progression kind of like if you're playing something
like World of Warcraft. So it's it's a lot different
when someone just buys the game when it actually comes out and
then has to do all the grind in like 1 like play through

(01:41:36):
essentially like one big, big ass chunk.
Yeah, and this is one of the really weird things because
there were so, so like every single Reddit thread talking
about this game was like, oh, I got the early access for Hades
1. And so when the game came out, I
just, it just didn't feel very good.
So I'm going to wait to buy thisgame until it actually comes
out. And I feel like for this game, I

(01:41:59):
like, it sounds like from you guys, that's just going to
create a worse experience because now you feel like you
just have this slog of shit thatyou need to wade through in
order to get to the good stuff. Whereas like I was able to
spread out my experience of the game piece meal over like, how
long was the development of thisgame?
Over a year. Yeah, actually, I think, I think

(01:42:22):
if I had to play this game like you, I would have had a much
better experience because like Ibought it day one of early
Access I think. And I played it for five hours
or something and I was like, I'mgoing to put this down until it
one point O's because like I just want to play it as a
finished product. And then when one point O came
out, I actually just deleted my save because I was like, I'm

(01:42:45):
going to start over and I wish Ihadn't done that.
And yeah, I think, I think if I had played a piece meal like
that rather than trying to cram everything into two weeks or
whatever, I might have enjoyed it more.
But I feel like my opinion of the mountainous fucking climb

(01:43:05):
that is the grind in this game probably wouldn't have changed
very much. I also just want to say quickly
that I think it was really cool that to like wait for one point
O was baked into the narrative because you would get to the end
of the run and it's like, well, we just need more time or go
kill some time, And it's like, oh, time theme, that's cool.
Yeah, I think like to build on what set set.

(01:43:27):
I think like the coolest character part of the game is
like where you pause in the Kronos fight and he's like
you're pausing whatever. I'll allow it to like that
reactivity I had. To shit on that a little bit so
I I can't remember it was like the last Tash we were talking
about like games respecting yourtime, you, the things that were
piece mealed into his incantation and lots of

(01:43:48):
ridiculous like specifically related to what you're talking
about. You were not allowed to pause in
that fight until you unlock the invocation that let you pause.
Otherwise Chronos would still attack you when you were paused.
But he does that too. Yeah.
Yeah. That's I OK, so so I knew that
that invocation he would still move at full speed if you use

(01:44:11):
the slow time buff from Cellini.I thought that's all that
incantation did. I didn't know he did shit while
you were paused. That's great.
Any game that doesn't have a hard pause in it can go fuck
itself full stop across the board for me.
Yeah, that actually pissed me off because I was fighting

(01:44:33):
Kronos, like maybe for the firsttime.
And Mary got home from work and she like came in and was trying
to talk to me. And I pressed pause and I was
like, wait, what the fuck? Wait, hang on, Mary, shut the
fuck up. I think that's, I think that's
the kind of committal to a themethat I really like, even if it's
annoying. It is cool, it the idea is cool,
but the anger that it incites inme is infinite.

(01:44:55):
Yeah, I did. I didn't.
I didn't hate it once I realizedwhat was going on, but it it
like, 'cause I I do like when games catch me off guard and do
things that like, I'm just not going to expect them to do.
And that was definitely one of those times, and I actually did
like it. And it would also be, like,
completely different if it was like, you know, some, like, like

(01:45:17):
if it was like fucking Silk Songor like, if it was just some
game where there was no thematictie to why he's doing that.
Like, it's just being bullshit to be bullshit.
I like the fact that they do it for a thematic purpose.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I didn't mean to sound too negative because it is a really
cool idea. It's just can be very, very
inconvenient. I'm with you, Ben.

(01:45:37):
I think it's I think it's unforgivable.
I think it would be like puttinga rainbow in a boss fight and
like we're not putting colour blind options because it's part
of the narrative. Deal with it.
And it's like, no dude, that's not.
It's not how pausing works. I because I think it was fine
that like he mocked you when youpaused.
I thought that was. Cool, Exactly.
And I felt like that could have been enough by itself.
That's way more than enough for him to be like what?

(01:45:58):
What you could do this too, or like any like anything that he
says or anything like to have actual gameplay implications of
you can't pause. It means you can go fuck
yourself. Yeah, I could.
I can. I can see that side of it too.
Like if you just pause and he talks shit to you, I think that
probably would have been overallbetter than just disabling pause
and. I mean, if I was like a like a

(01:46:19):
middle-aged dad and got disrupted by my kid and had to
pause the game and died for it, and I can only play like this
one run every night, I would definitely be pissed.
Exactly. But I still think it's cool.
Yeah, I won't defend it too hard, but I will just say that I
think I do. I do think it's cool.

(01:46:40):
Before we talk about like best portrait and worst portrait, I
figured out there's certain portraits that do this thing
that like bugs the shit out of me and feel they all feel really
uncanny and I finally figured itout after like 3 days of
thinking about it. Certain portraits have weird
lighting on their eyes and nose that make it look really
uncanny. Like the light source is really
weird so that only their nose isilluminated.

(01:47:00):
Like Salini's one where she looks super fucking weird.
I can go look at the list. Celini's definitely one.
But yeah, I don't know if you guys had this experience, but
there was like a couple portraits that just had weird
lighting on them that like just completely broke them for.
Me, I see exactly what you're talking about.
I'm looking at thumbnails of allof them and all of them look
like they have like fucking sunscreen on there and it's
really. Weird like because the the

(01:47:21):
lighting source for all these portraits changes and but like
whatever ones have that like topdown and for some reason their
nose, it's like they have like aPinocchio nose and the light
only hits their nose and it looks so weird.
I can. I can see what you're saying.
Oh. My God, look at the one for
Odysseus. Yeah, Odysseus is crazy, Celine
is crazy, Nemesis is crazy. Oh my God.

(01:47:45):
Dude am I the only person I'm? Upset that you said this.
I don't know, I'm looking at them.
I don't really see. Maybe it's because I'm not
seeing them in game. I'm just seeing like this the
straight up jpegs on the wiki. I don't see a problem with any
of these. It's just the nose.
It's literally just. The back of the nose.
Look at it's melanui, Salini, Odysseus, morose kind of, but

(01:48:07):
the color doesn't really matter because like the shading is good
on top of his head with the samecolor so it's not as jarring as
the other ones. Nemesis, I think she has really
good facial structure so it doesn't matter that much that
she also has that problem. Like I think Nemesis is a super
sick design. That being said, with Nemesis,
the light source on her portraitlooks a little fucky.
That's. The thing, that's the thing,

(01:48:27):
like I think the light source islike it's all over the place and
it's strange because like it's clearly a professional artist.
So like they clearly think of this, but like, I don't
understand how like, this happened basically.
Yeah, I will. I will.
Say, this is not like detractingtoo much from my overall like
opinion of the art and the portraits in this game, but that
is like a really fucking funny thing to point out.

(01:48:49):
It took me a while to figure outwhy there were certain portraits
that I didn't like either. And it's like, oh, This is why.
Because like, they have like thehighlights on their nose and
it's weird. Yeah, it's like, it's like they
all stood for like their fuckingschool, like class photos and
the photographer was just like moving the fucking light around
like in a 360 at like some arbitrary angle before they took

(01:49:11):
their picture. And somehow it only illuminated
their nose, like they're wearinglike a hat or something.
Yeah, like it's either like it'slike 45° to their right or their
left or some shit. It's it's fucking strange.
All of that being said, these portraits, they're works of art.
Oh my. Yeah.
They look. So good, Every single.
Once I nailed that down, I was like, Oh yeah, they're fucking.

(01:49:32):
They're so sick. And like when I can look past
that, I'm like, they're so good.Yeah, I love all the portraits.
I all go to war for them. I actually did a little bit on
the Steam forms. There was a thread, fucking
dude, that said like, are these AI generated?
I went off on that dude. Oh, that's funny.
I will say the portraits are really good, but I also feel

(01:49:54):
like they don't necessarily likemeaningfully differentiate
themselves from Hades one too much.
Like the style stayed the exact same, which is not a bad thing,
but at the same time I wish theywould have, I don't know, tried
something new? I disagree.
I don't. Disagree.
I disagree in the sense of I think Hades one had better
portraits for most of the characters.

(01:50:15):
Specifically for Artemis and Demeter, I think they got worse.
I think I would agree with those.
And I think Artemis was like a full redesign, which is crazy.
Demeter still looks the same butshe looks like battle ready
Demeter now like Artemis looks like a different character and I
don't understand if there's I don't know if there's a lower
reason or if he was the artist was just like let's draw him
different. I mean, I'm only speaking from

(01:50:36):
the main gods right now, like the moon gods, but I just really
like that they went with the idea like like the way it
differentiates itself from Hades.
One for me is that idea of like they are at war, they are being
besieged and so all of them likelike fucking bro, we were
talking about how naked Aphrodite is, but she actually
put clothes on compared to the first game.
She got some armor, she got a spear.

(01:50:56):
And like all of them have that like kind of more armored
quality to them that I think help makes it stand out compared
to Hades one for. That means sure, Hades 1 was so
long ago for me I don't even remember what the differences
are. I had to go look.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's just the thing, right?
Like I agree that the thematics of the portraits do line up fine

(01:51:21):
or like better even. It's just that like the overall
fidelity and style is just like it's kind of samey.
I mean, this game does have kindof a sameyness problem, I'm
going to be honest. And but I mean, let's be real,
the portraits for Hades one are so fucking good that even if
they did decide to basically crib the same style for Hades 2,

(01:51:43):
it's not really a problem. It's just more like AI.
Wish they would have gone a little more ham maybe, I don't
know. Yeah, I don't have a style
problem at all. I I like that it's a style.
I don't like that there's like redesigns of established
characters like Artemis having acomplete change is kind of
weird. I think Chaos is complete change
is cool because like that's whatthe character is.

(01:52:03):
I also think that Chaos might bemy favorite portrait in the
game, but. Yeah, chaos is awesome.
The one that really bothered me is Artemis, and I think it's
just because I like Hades 1. Artemis is probably my favorite
portrait. So then for it to be kind of
like this, like to me, reductiveversion of what was the Hades
one one I was disappointed, but I think I overall it's sick.

(01:52:23):
I think Persephone is fucking awesome too.
I feel like with Artemis, to me it's less of like an artistic
thing and it's more of a characterization and that drove
the like how they decided to design the portrait because
she's much more like close to Malenaway in this game than
Zagrea. So she has that kind of sister
ish relationship to her, like especially you see that.

(01:52:45):
And so her portrait just feels like like literally feels a lot
closer, a lot more human compared to the first game,
which makes it less like stylistic, I guess.
I think I, I, I agree with what you're saying, but then I think
that that clashes with the thematics that you said, because
I would think that the goddess of the hunt would be the one
that's most ready to fuck thingsup.
So the fact that they switched her to kind of like this more

(01:53:06):
familiar role when she should bethe one who's like the frontline
fucker, I think that that kind of makes it like thematically
clash even more than before. I brought that up.
Yeah, that that's kind of what I'm saying.
Like I don't agree with that characterization.
Yeah, fair enough. And yeah, chaos is a really good
shout. I'm looking at the chaos
portrait for Haiti's two right now.

(01:53:26):
It's fucking awesome. Reminds me of like a it's like a
cross between Delirium and Desire from Sandman.
Looks fucking sweet, yeah. And chaos from 80s one was also
sick. I just think that this was a
redesign in a way that also likekept the essence of sickness
with it. Like servers too.
But servers is like the same thing.
Like yeah, they all they all fucking rule though.

(01:53:51):
Like I have no issues with any of them.
I also just want to give out a quick art shout out to
everything about Prometheus. Like at least in his portrait.
At least in his portrait. I just think that like the the
blue flame fist that he have is fucking awesome.
He's one of the few bosses that has the like oh I'm dying and I
get a portrait thing and that one looks really cool.

(01:54:12):
And then like the actual animations of his attacks are
beautiful. Oh yeah, I think.
I think Prometheus is my favorite boss top to bottom
design. Like I think Cilla has like the
the charm of the song. So I think that's kind of what's
big for her. But I like, I think between like
Ben Star doing the voice and thevisuals of it, and then like
when you beat them in and they're dead, and then just what

(01:54:33):
like Prometheus is and kind of the characterization of them, I
think he's the best package. Yeah, Skilla and Prometheus are
my favorite. Skilla is a fucking nightmare
when you get into like higher fear stuff.
I felt like she was like the fucking hardest boss in the
fucking game almost. Pretty nothing touches the first
boss if of the second run with the Valve rivals, who is it the

(01:54:56):
the giant idea? Polyphemus and Medea.
Polyphemus and Medea, that was the hardest in the game for me,
way harder than anything else. I my favorite boss is probably
Prometheus as well, but I have to balance that with the fact
that I think he's the worst Valve rivals boss so.

(01:55:18):
Why do you say that? I mean like let me put it this
way, I think the best Valve of rivals bosses are the ones that
like kind of transform it into acompletely different boss.
So like Hades won the first bosson Valve of Rivals.
Fucking awesome. Turns one boss into 3 bosses.
It combines all the mechanics you saw before then sick first
boss of the underworld in this game.
Hikate literally just turns her into an actual boss compared to

(01:55:41):
the fucking tutorial boss that she is without Valve of Rivals.
But Prometheus, it's the same boss, like identical and you
just have Heracles being an annoying whirlwind bitch.
Like it's it's just not really it.
It turns the fight into like what feels like a one-on-one
duel with the fucking Titan of foresight into just a

(01:56:03):
clusterfuck mess where like I'm not even going to try to dodge
anything anymore. It I'm either killing you or
you're killing me. Let's find out.
Yeah, that was, that was the same problem I had with like
Kronos, because I felt like all of my fucking underworld runs,
whatever the hell it's called. Like I was basically taking no
damage up until I got to Kronos and then it was well shit, I

(01:56:25):
hope I have like 250 health because otherwise I'm just going
to fucking die. I also do still want to give a
shout out to the Narcissus portrait, because I think that
one's also really pretty. In.
My opinion, there are no bad ones, I think they're all really
good. I like fucking heiresses
portrait a lot. I could say.
The only one that may be a step below the rest, and I think it's

(01:56:48):
kind of supposed to be maybe, isDoris.
And that's not even I'm not evensaying it's bad.
She was like a pretty I love buddy though.
Like when she turns into like her her like haunting mood.
I thought that was pretty. Yeah.
Yeah, I do. I do like the like oscillation
between her like going Super Saiyan Ghost on you, but the

(01:57:11):
portrait itself in comparison tothe rest I don't think kind of
holds up as. Well, to me, I just like the
more like kind of intentionally minimalist design that she has
that helps her kind of stand out.
She's a little bit more animated.
Like in contrast to that, I feellike some of my least favorite
are probably Echo. Like I just kind of expected

(01:57:32):
more from Echo and obviously Skelemaeus meme character,
whatever. Echo as a portrait.
Yeah, yeah. It's just like a, it's like very
monochrome, right? Because she's like, kind of like
a statue is kind of Hugh. I like kind.
Of like it's grey she's. Got like kind of weird.
Balancing like rocks and shit onher head.

(01:57:53):
From a goonery angle, I do want to give a shout out while we're
on the portraits of all the bestones because I'm a, I'm a real
sucker for like letting your hair down.
And also I'm a sucker for like really defined collarbone.
So like stuff like Nemesis is like.
The goaded. Shit screen buddy, you are so.
Rude. That's very funny.

(01:58:15):
That's good stuff. Yeah, I have two weird Nick Nick
picks with portraits. 1 is Medea's cleavage.
Makes no sense. It looks like she has like a
bump on her chest. Like a uniboob.
Yeah, like, I don't understand what that is.
It looks like her, like she got punched in the sternum and now
it's like swoll up. It doesn't look like that's
weird. And I says his Dick doesn't look
like a Dick. He looked like he just shoved
three rocks into his fucking into his underwear.

(01:58:38):
Like there's no Dick in there. It just looks like it's a
boulder. It doesn't make any sense.
The dude does have hella bulge. But it's not, it's not, it's not
a Dick. It's my problem.
Here's what it is. He's got massive balls.
Tiny Dick. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I hate that it bothers. Me it is.
It is strange. When I looked at it, it was

(01:59:00):
like, I wish it just looked likea snake.
I wish it was just like a snake design or something in there and
it wrapped. Around like a poopy.
To be fair to them, I think theygot it.
They they drew it the way they did to like, allowed them to get
away with it basically. Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I look at like a straight up fucking banana
hammock on this dude. I look at Aphrodite and they're

(01:59:21):
drawing. What do we call it?
The like thigh pussy. What did somebody call it had a
word. Mound pussy.
When are you guys? I call it the mound, the pussy.
Yeah, pussy mound, like the top of the thigh, like Aphrodite
like is basically as much as youcould show.
So why can't Dionysis just have his fucking Dick just wrapping
around his leg basically? It would sell too many copies.

(01:59:44):
They can't do it. They would.
ESRB, although this game was released on Steam so who really
gives a fuck? I mean with all the visa stuff
though, you kind of have to givea little bit of a fuck.
Yeah, that is true. Listen, I I will follow through
what I've been saying all night.Commit to your vision.

(02:00:06):
If you make a horny game, make it a horny game.
I'll make. Exactly.
I also think Typhoon sucked. I figured we're not talking
about portraits, so I might as well just say like I think as
the God of monsters, I think thethe design of the fight was
sucked and boring and the character sucked and boring and

(02:00:27):
like I didn't like almost anything about that in whole
experience. Yeah, I think there's a reason
we haven't even mentioned him like once.
After this. Point.
I was disappointed that they went with Typhoon instead of TMA
and I don't know if that's like a different mythology or not,
but I'd prefer the mother of allmonsters over the father for
memory. Reasons.
That's not a Greek myth, but yeah.
Yeah, my bad. I get they're they're all the

(02:00:48):
same to me. I'm sorry.
I just think that it's dumb looking at Typhoon, like
especially when he spawns he just looks like a like a
shrugging kid that is like keeping his arms to his side.
Like he just never raises them for some reason when he could
just like punch the fucking section of the mountain that
you're on and crush it. Like bro, what are you doing?
I think they do a really cool thing with Typhoon which is he

(02:01:11):
destroys his health bar but thenlike to no end because the boss
is like the biggest joke in the game at least to me and the boss
is also. Easy after you like figured out
how the game works. Yeah, I mean you're.
Basically, that's also every boss.
Yeah, none of the bosses in thisgame are hard.
I think Typhoon especially is not hard though because he

(02:01:31):
really only has like 1 attack and it's.
Just going which is the. Worst sound effect for a fucking
attack. Never used.
Something like that. He's he's definitely the most
egregious due to his placement in this story.
Like he should be the hardest shit ever.
He should have like 4 phases. And the only the he should have
4 phases not fucking ad bullshitspawns that like are just

(02:01:54):
annoying like I think they did. It's everything about like what
you shouldn't do in AD fights. Like ads should feel like
respite. They felt like the hardest part
of the fight was when he would have his tail come in and shit
and he didn't do anything. I guess the the only reason I
have positive views of that bossis only because by the time I'm
actually killing him I have a not so fuck O build so I'm just
having fun anyway. Yeah, I think the bot, like I

(02:02:16):
think Kronos is awesome, but I think Kronos is also just an
amalgamation of POV mechanics. And I think Typhoon is not
awesome because he's not that. I think for sure Kronos is a
better design boss. I think that's objective.
And I think Kronos, for the record, is basically just Maven
from Path of Exile. Like it's the basically the same
boss with it's, it's like a boiled down version of Maven.

(02:02:39):
Maven is more like mechanically ridiculous, including like a
memory game that you need to do in the middle of the fight.
Kind of like Prometheus's, but instead it's like in a circle
and you have to run to the spotson the floor.
Yeah, I'm with you guys for the most part, I think, I don't
know, I think the bosses just suffer from the whole game's
sort of difficulty curve issue, or lack thereof.

(02:03:04):
So like, after you've done them all 50 times, like what's the
51st, you know? Yeah, and I wish that the only
reason to like up your fear wasn't just unlock those statues
because I'd actually like to do it because like I did do one run
on 24 and I didn't even come close to beating it, but like I
felt really, really engaged in that.

(02:03:25):
Like I felt like it'd be pretty rewarding if I actually jump
back in. I might just do that just to
like beat it on the Max fear that unlock something.
Regardless, I wish there was just more of a reason to do
that, which is kind of like drudging up a previous criticism
that we we'd be like 1000 times oversold drop.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's that's the probably the whole crux of

(02:03:47):
this game is they should have incentivized fear for sure,
because it it is, it is really fun to play on like no mid fear
runs. I I think it's actually a blast.
Yeah, like I said before, I think it's a real shame when
like especially roguelikes, I think it happens the most often
when they design all of these mechanics for additional

(02:04:07):
difficulty modifiers and they never bake them into the main
run in some way. It just feels like kind of a
waste of design space. Agreed.
Yeah, honestly, we've pretty much already talked on like
every topic including our kind of zooming out things.
So do you guys just want to go into rating?
Which for? Me.

(02:04:28):
All right. Why do we start with Jordan?
Sure. So yeah, so I've I've seen a lot
of reviews specifically mention how Hades 2 is just more Hades.
And I think that that's I think it's a good thing and I agree
with that. But I also only agree with it on
like the gameplay front because I like, as we mentioned, like I

(02:04:49):
think the narrative and the men of progression are just like
straight out of Uranus. Like it's just fucking terrible.
Like the the biggest fan of the narrative as we like went over
where like Mel was talking aboutlike death to Chronos and
everything and she says it like 100 times throughout the game.
And then the motherfucker never even dies.
And then instead of like instead, he just completely
changes his fucking mind just because he had like a little
outing with his grandkids for a little bit.

(02:05:09):
Like fuck off, dude. Like I'm the Princess of the
fucking underworld. Like let me turn Kronos into
like a fucking basketball and I do crossover.
It's like a love crafting and 1 mixtape and then don't get bitch
ass into Zeus porcelain hoop. Like what the fuck, dude?
Like, come on. Like it's it's it's despite all
of that, though, like it's not bad.
It's definitely not like a bad game.
Like it's it's very solid. Like the gameplay is definitely
like the sunshine here. But like I and like the

(02:05:30):
characters that we all went over, like I really like Fino
Santora and Hermes and like there's a lot of cool shit
that's going on. But like with everything
together, like I, I got to say like this bitch is A7.
Like it's a solid game and I thank Super Giant for making it
and I like I Good luck on your next one and I'm looking forward
to play whatever it is. All of us guessing.

(02:05:51):
Overshot that same amount. That's funny.
Oh my God, every single one. We all missed a point by .5.
Yeah, this one was tough becauseI felt like Jordan was like very
tight lipped about this game in the Discord channel, so I had a
hard time reading what his. Bro all you said was like this
game is insane and stuff. Like what the?

(02:06:12):
Fuck, I can also say like because the game peaks super
quick. Like I didn't, I didn't mention
that the game is like a six hourpeak.
So everyone thinks it's game of the year because you played
three fucking runs. Like play the fucking game and
then tell me that this game is better than any of the other
fucking games this year. Please like play 20 hours of
this game and come back to me with that same energy.
Oh my God bro. It's like an and 1/2.

(02:06:33):
Oh crushed it dude. Fucking 100% agreed.
Oh, that's funny. Well, Thomas, why don't you go
next? All right, so Hades 2 is a real
fucking predicament for me because the core game loop is
extremely enjoyable, but there are three main issues with this
game that I find extremely difficult to ignore.

(02:06:53):
So obviously we talked about themeta progression and the
narrative, but again, and and I sort of briefly mentioned it,
but like too much saminess with the original game, I think kind
of hampers it to some degree as well.
Like is the music outstanding? Yes.
Is the art outstanding? Yes.
Is the gameplay injection of theBoom Boone system enjoyable?

(02:07:15):
Yes. But it's all stuff I played five
years ago without what feels like, to me, any sort of
meaningful iteration or like, truly any real reason to think
more fondly on it now than I've been.
I'm going to be honest, I didn'teven love it back then.
I just thought it was a pretty fun little rogue light with

(02:07:35):
like, super Immaculate presentation.
And that's what this game is. This game is a decent little
rogue light with just 10 out of 10 presentation.
But at the end of the day, my true problem with this game lies
with the meta progression over anything.
Like this game proved to me thatyou could staple someone's nuts
to their thigh and as long as you told them that all they had

(02:07:56):
to do was connect collect 69 black lotuses on their next
playthrough to get a staple remover, they'd still think that
this was game was like a nine out of 10 minimum.
So I think if they'd have pulledback on the grind and forced me
to unlock meaningful upgrades tomy abilities or the narrative
through the FEAR mechanic, I would think insanely more fondly
of this game. But as is, the myth of Echo

(02:08:18):
included in this game serves as something bordering on
prophetic, because this game just feels like being stuck in a
torturous Groundhog Day loop that provides me with very
little genuine satisfaction outside of the most lizard like
sections of my brain. But everything else was pretty
fucking good, so it's 7 out of 10.
Oh my God, my guesses were terrible.

(02:08:40):
Yeah, my guesses are horrible. Wait, nevermind, I guess I.
Still got it. Oh nevermind, I actually forgot
what. I guess that's why.
I did too. I thought.
I was worried. I thought.
Tom. There's a chance Tom could have
been like a 8 1/2 despite what he hated.
Nod. I think if if this was Hades 1
and it had the same problems I think I would have been more

(02:09:02):
like 8 or 8 1/2. Oh, for sure.
I'm just curious, did all of us lower our ratings after what
Thomas said in the chat earlier?Did anyone stick to their guns?
No, I didn't change anything. I kept the.
Same, I definitely changed it bya full point value.
Up or down? Down for sure.
That's funny. That was a good call.

(02:09:26):
Go ahead, Ben. Yeah, so for what it's worth, I
did a lot less grind than you guys did, I think because I did
keep my early access progress, so I didn't have to unlock any
of the weapons except for the last one, which is actually my
favorite weapon in the game. So even then, I still felt like
there was a lot of grind, which is I don't know it it definitely

(02:09:50):
like taints the overall experience.
I did love the combat and I did mention this before briefly that
I this game is so close, like slate aspire tier for me.
And I bet it could get there if I grind out everything so that I
never have to talk to an NPC again.
And I could just press load saveon the game and then just go

(02:10:12):
into a run. And after that run is done, I
can just play another run because that's what I actually
want to do. But because I it would take a
long time to get to that point. I just have to rate it what I
experienced and even then I I still think that I I get the
impression I like this game a lot more than you guys did.
I will say that I rate this gamean 8.5 out of 10.

(02:10:37):
Fuck. Nailed it.
Oh my God. Give me my 2 points.
I would have never guessed 8.5. I would have never guessed God.
Damn, I'm about to be a 0 pointer tonight.
So something I want to say that I think Ben highlighted really
well though, is that I think once you the the more you play
the game, the more you disconnect yourself from the
fucking horseshit, the better the game gets.

(02:10:57):
But I think that's. Deep I was going to say the most
fun I had with this game was after I cheated all of the
everything and I could play the game and try all the new weapons
and do some broken building shit.
That was the most fun I had by far.
Once. Once I fucking alleviated myself
of the bullshit, this game became a lot more fun.

(02:11:17):
When you could focus on the game, that's when the game will
shine the most. But I feel like that takes a lot
of gameplay hours to get to, butI think the payoff is there,
especially if you like those systems that they put in like if
that's something for you, then Icould see this fucking year is
crazy when it like when you guyssaw my opinions in the discord
channel, that's like with three to five hours of experience with
it. But then like as I played more,

(02:11:38):
it was just kind of like, oh, it's that but less, it's that,
but less you're. Just you're just doing the same
thing over and over again. All right, well.
Take us home. My score for me has been very
difficult to settle on because I've had to balance playing it

(02:11:58):
on one point O playing it at thebeginning of early access and
playing it through a patch. And then also balancing that
with, you know, like our talk and like everything that's been
said in the channel, some of thestuff that's been pointed out to
me that I, I do consider like, like I said with Tears of the
Kingdom, I, I lowered that game a full point value because of

(02:12:19):
Thomas's experience with it, just because if certain things
like that are possible, it's a, a worse game, unfortunately.
But I think I am going to lean into my experience a little bit
more because I, I mean, hold on.I just updated my game to see I
have 178 hours in this game. I don't feel like I can put that
much time into a game and not rate it pretty goddamn highly.

(02:12:42):
I think this game is just like ludicrously fun.
And some of what I've heard fromyou guys is like, you know, I
don't want to criticize your ratings and my rating or
anything, but to me, if a game is asking you to play the game
more in order to see more of itscontent, I don't necessarily see

(02:13:04):
that as a bad thing if the core game is good.
I'm not saying you guys were saying any of that.
That's just kind of how I interpreted it.
And the fact is I enjoy the gameplay loop of this game a
lot, 178 hours worth of a lot, and I think that my experience
of really access is great or wasgreat and I had a lot of fun on

(02:13:24):
one point. OI think that on one point O for
the most part, my experience of the game only increased because
I thought that the new build that I was doing with the new
weapon move sets was fucking awesome.
I don't know if those are released on 1.0, but you know
what I mean. This game was close to a 10 out
of 10. I might have rated it a 10 out
of 10 if it wasn't for that trash ending that trash ending
that that ending was God fuckingawful.

(02:13:45):
It was so bad, so, so bad and inaddition to some of the stuff
we've talked about tonight, I have to bring it down a little
bit further. So I'm going to give it a nine
out of 10. Yes, 5/2.
Pointers. Bullshit fucking ending.
Goddammit, I thought it was. Not yes ending was.

(02:14:06):
It was so bad. No, that's crazy.
It was. Really bad.
It was really fucking bad. And I will say, I feel like,
even like I feel like we hated on this game a lot more than our
scores really reflect. But at the same time I was
thinking about it. And so I mentioned earlier how I
played this game right after it came out in early access last

(02:14:30):
year or whatever. And I played it for like 5
hours, right? I'm going to be honest, if we
weren't playing this for Tash, Idon't think I ever would have
launched the game again. So, so now I'm thinking about, I
was like maybe 7 out of 10 is maybe a little too generous, but
but I felt the same way about the first game.
So I think maybe these games just aren't aren't my shit.

(02:14:51):
Yeah, I mean, I didn't expect this game to be like as divisive
as it was, honestly. But in any case, that was our
Hades 2 discussion. Jordan, what are we playing next
week? Yeah, next week we're playing
who's Lila, which is fucked up and if I knew how fucked up it
was I might not have picked it, but what now?
So for. What it's worth, I'm glad you

(02:15:12):
picked it. It's fucking great.
It is, and I say this as someonewho did.
I'm not going to like, talk about it too much, please.
Be mindful I have not opened thegame yet.
OK, I'm just going to shut the fuck up.
Ben is the one I was the most concerned about, so the fact
that he likes it means that you guys are going to have a great
time. I will say I played the first
1520 minutes and my interest is piqued and I download that DLC

(02:15:37):
too and also that thing looks really fucking bizarre.
Yeah, one of the big inspirations, which isn't like a
surprise, is David Lynch. Yeah, I got that vibe for sure.
It's it's it's all over the place.
It's on the store page like it'syeah, it's not, it's not hidden.
So expect David Lynch style shit.
I've I've gotten hate from this from a couple of my friends and

(02:16:00):
probably from Thomas, if not more than.
Now I've never been able. I've never been able to sit
through a David Lynch film. Cringe.
I change my worry from from Ben to Seth.
Related to Hades 2, throw Hades 2 on the pile of corpses
underneath the majesty that is Mimic Logic, which continues to

(02:16:24):
outrake all of these other fucking games.
If Mimic Logic came out this year, it would be our game.
Of the I still have it installed.
That's saying a lot. Well in any case, we got 1
horror game coming up with Who'sLila and then the week after
that we're playing Signal, so wegot a whole Spooktober lined up.
Stay tuned for more.