Hades II in early access: more of a good thing, and that is mostly fine

I have 60 hours in early-access Hades II and I still can't decide if it's a sequel or a very confident expansion. That's not the insult it sounds like. The first game was so tight that 'more of it, sharper' is a legitimately exciting pitch, and for long stretches the sequel delivers exactly that.

Melinoë moves differently from Zagreus — her sprint is a directional dash with a longer commit, and once it clicked I couldn't go back. The Omega-move system, where holding an attack charges a heavier version, sounds fiddly on paper. In practice it gives every fight a little rhythm-game texture: tap to clear chaff, hold to delete the thing that actually matters.

The arcana cards are the real sequel

If you want the single thing that justifies a '2' in the title, it's the arcana. Between runs you spend a currency to slot tarot-style cards into a grid, and the grid has a power budget. Suddenly meta-progression is a build of its own — do I run the card that buffs my cast, or the one that lets me carry more, knowing I can't afford both? It's the kind of system the first game gestured at and this one commits to.

Boon variety is up, the cast is up, and the music is — obviously — absurd. I will not be the millionth person to gush about the soundtrack, except to say that the first time a mini-boss theme dropped I stopped fighting for a second, which is a bad habit and a real compliment.

Still under construction

It is early access and it shows in honest ways. Two of the weapons — I won't spoil which — feel like they're waiting for a balance pass; one I never want to touch, one is so strong it flattens the challenge. The surface campaign, the genuinely new structural idea, is the thinnest part: a couple of regions still read as greybox with art on top.

None of that is alarming for a game openly mid-development. Supergiant patched the first Hades into a masterpiece in public, and the cadence here is the same. I'm reviewing a work in progress and grading it kindly because the foundation is that strong.

It doesn't reinvent the studio's formula so much as prove the formula had another full game in it.

If you loved the first one, you already know. If you bounced off roguelikes generally, this won't convert you. But as a thing to play 40 minutes of every night while it grows, I can't think of a better one in early access right now.