Once more with feelings.
Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark.
And there were cocoons everywhere.
Sadly, I had a swing at a few, and this turned out to be a mistake.
Mothy, woven foes emerged and I was overwhelmed.
I woke up, cursing, in a glade surrounded by standing stones.
Ahead lay a sort of tented bedroom, and the whole thing promised to start over.
It’s bound up in quite a tangled, complex way, I suspect.
So what’s changed?
From a morning’s play, it’s hard to tell.
And that’s because of those cocoons.
Hades was repetition, but it was repetition with variation.
One run gives me a grassy spell of cocoons.
Another delivers a boss.
The protagonist has changed, with Melinoe, princess of the underworld, replacing Zagreus.
And replace she does.
For the first few hours I’m just joyously hitting things.
And I still am, here.
Do you want this to explode?
Do you want a dash that deals in fire or ice?
This alone means that no two runs are the same.
What doesn’t change, however, is the haunted forest dark that the first stages take place in.
Trees bowed like old men, willows that are rotting as much as weeping.
The hub has grass underfoot and a huge cauldron at its center.
Just wait a spell, take it in, don’t be rushed into picking a door.
How many years did Hades take to get this good?
This swift and surprising and comforting and brutal and endlessly replayable?
Well that’s where Hades 2 starts from.
Just be careful around those cocoons.
