Recent reviews by AlekVen

When I saw that the sequel to Hades has gone into Early Access, I immediately bought it. I knew it would be worth the purchase, and I was proven right immediately. It's basically Hades, But Better - every aspect of the original has been refined and tuned to be its better version. The combat feels crispier, the areas are prettier, the Boons have generally more impact.

At least that's what my initial impressions were. As I kept playing, I realised that the game also has much more depth than the original. Its progression is more in-depth, with more things initially defining your run other than your weapon, Keepsake, and upgrades. Later in the game you unlock a Familiar system, which allows you to recruit animal companions to your side, and they actually provide sizeable benefits to your runs. The Gathering Tools allow you to set secondary objectives to your run other than defeating the final boss, and the resources you gather with them allow you to further unlock new game mechanics.

The Cauldron is your main pathway to unlocking these game mechanics, and there are a lot of them. You've got returning upgrades, such as Aspects of weapons, the Mirror alternative - the Altar and the Arcana, Wells of Charon, Treasure Troves, the Scroll of Minor Prophecies, etc., but there also are a ton of fully-new ones. These include the aforementioned Familiars, seedbeds, and many others, naming which would definitely go into spoiler territory, and I definitely think that it's worth to omit those so as to not ruin anyone's playthrough experience. I'm 20 hours in as of writing of this review, and I'm STILL unlocking new game mechanics, which were never seen in the original.

What baffles me the most is that this game is - by every single metric imaginable - larger than the original Hades, while only being a fraction of its size in terms of data. And it's still in Early Access. And better, too - many aspects of the game have gotten better, while others remained at the same level of quality. I cannot name a single thing that Hades 2 does worse than the original, and that's a damn high praise for any game.

If you've played Hades and enjoyed it, you'll definitely get a lot out of enjoyment out of Hades 2. And if you haven't played the original, don't worry - you don't really need to in order to dive into the sequel, although I also do recommend you play it.

This game is the best RPG I've played in a long time. Taking what's currently the most popular tabletop RPG system - DnD 5e, incorporating it into a videogame, and making sure it works must have been a monumental task. The dialogue, the story (not the ending, which was kind of a letdown), the combat, the exploration, the graphics, the voice acting - everything was done at a level beyond what I expected, and my expectations for this game were already pretty high.

For those familiar with DnD 5e, you will find some key differences in this game - you can't Hold your Action, Spellcasting is not limited in any way, some spells were severely nerfed (such as Hypnotic Pattern or Banishment), some were buffed (like Haste), Shove is a Bonus Action instead of an Action, but overall it's a very respectable adaptation of the system. You will find yourself getting the grasp of the game extremely quickly, basically needing next to no tutorials on how to play it.

For those unfamiliar with DnD 5e - the game kind of eases you into its systems, but you may have a hard time figuring out where all the numbers are coming from. Thankfully, the game provides tooltips to pretty much everything (when hovering over anything you wish to expect, press T for detailed explanation and hover over any highlighted word to see exactly what it means), and I've found nothing in the game that hasn't been explained by a tooltip or a pop-up window.

There are some negatives that I've found during my playthrough (at the time of the review I have beaten the game), such as Larian thinking that a 4v20 encounter is fair since you're a couple levels over the average level of the 20 enemies you're facing. While this might be the consequence of my playthrough, the particualr encounter in the House of Grief, I did not enjoy. The action economy is stacked against you so much that it feels like there's nothing you can do. I ended up just obliterating the boss of that encounter with overpowered Eldritch Blasts and the Harm Cleric spell before the fight even began, and, thankfully, the encounter ended right then and there. Maybe the fight would've ended if I attacked and defeated the boss during the "fair" fight as well, but it still was not an enjoyable encounter. And that's only one example of like three that I've faced, although the other two were much more fair in that there were things that you can do to make it much more tolerable (the final push in particular, where you can abuse the map to stall enemies and pick them off one by one, so even though there are like 20-30 of them, you never actually feel threatened).

There are some questionable moments in terms of AI as well. Sometimes enemies would just trigger Attack of Opportunity on them for absolutely no reason, sometimes they'd walk into AoE spells like Spirit Guardians or Moonbeam multiple times in one turn of their own volition (these spells deal damage every time a creature enters their area, not just "the first time a creature enters the area or starts its turn in it" like the standard DnD 5e does it). Sometimes enemies would take literal tens of seconds to decide what to do, stalling the fights, especially the 4v20 ones. Sometimes they would do absolutely nothing even though there absolutely are options. Sometimes they would choose the absolute dumbest Action to take, and that's not just enemies - that relates to your computer-controlled allies as well.

In terms of optimisation, my PC would start dropping a lot of FPS when played extensively, which may be caused by a small memory leak somewhere, but overall, it's pretty damn well-polished.

But if you've read up until this point, you'd have probably noticed that the complaints that I have about the game are EXTREMELY minor - a testament to how damn good the game is. I cannot recommend it enough - it's truly the new standard for RPGs for me, no matter what some "game developers" say.

The bosses in this game are actually less dangerous than normal enemies.

Even a boss of the third level, which got its own intro cutscene and a death splash screen, was absolutely trivial compared to regular enemies before it (Yes, I'm talking about you, ball boy). For a soulslike game, this is not acceptable. You should NOT be able to right-click your way through literally E V E R Y boss that the game throws at you. The reason for that is that the bosses were just not built with quick cooling mechanic in mind, and they get absolutely BODIED by constant heavy attacks that you unleash while they are unable to retaliate because they're too slow and too clunky.
The normal enemies are somewhat dangerous though, so that's something, right?

The optimisation is probably the worst I've seen in a long while.

I know it says RTX 2060 in its minimal requirements, but the game's got nothing – NOTHING – that would justify that. The game is stuttering, FPS is inconsistent, and it absolutely devours my computer's resources just to run that poorly.

Cutscenes are cringe.

Facial animations in cutscenes are dogwater. It's 2022, you require RTX 2060 for your game, yet your facial animations are worse than that of a 2009's (I think?) Assassin's Creed II.
It wouldn't be such a big deal if rhe game didn't shove the camera right UP INTO their face. I am not talking about robots here, these are human beings, and I swear Aegis's face is animated better than theirs.

Movement is jank

Jumping kills all momentum you have, parkour sections feel really unbalanced in that you're never quite sure if you're gonna make it or not. To be fair, most of those times you DO make it.
Ledge grabbing works fine, and it's probably why the parkour sections end up working. Because jumping sure is out to get you every time you do it.

Bonfires are really useful

Introduction of a shop and a blacksmith into this game's bonfires is much appreciated. It's convenient and easy to use.

Quick cooling is neat

While playing the beta, I thought quick cooling was way too punishing. I still think the punishment for sinking heat tol early is very harsh – locking you at 0 Endurance for like two seconds – but you definitely get used to the mechanic and mess up less and less as you go. It's a really nice way to promote aggressive gameplay, but sadly, that is the entire readon you can right-click any boss to death with absolutely no regsrd for your own safety. Because bosses were not built to punish you if you're constantly in their face.

Overall, it's about a 4/10. The game is too easy to be a true soulslike, many things it does, it does poorly, the optimisation is absolute garbage. It gets some points for some QoL and quick cooling, and I guess the weapon designs are cool, but as a soulslike, it's a definite failure.

Badge review.