Much like the first game, Hades 2 feels great to play, has nice art, a kick-ass soundtrack, and good voice acting.
The biggest issue impeding my enjoyment of the game is the sheer amount of time padding added to the game.

The game is full to the brim with so-called "anti-speedrun" mechanics to ensure that you don't beat the game too fast/ don't miss out on the all the story in-between runs. This would honestly be okay if there was any subtlety to it. In Hades 1 it felt like the "anti-speedrun" was the fact that you don't have any of your permanent upgrades, death defiance, etc. In Hades 2, the second you make meaningful progress in the game they decide to kill your run with Eris cursing you to pretty much take +20% damage per every encounter (move to a new room, now it's 40%, etc.), or the game will sometimes just a random enemy that does more damage and has as much health as a MAIN boss you just fought two rooms prior. It's asinine. Eventually as you progress and finally make it to the end boss Eris stops showing up, or shows up way less. She's literally there just to temporarily make you end runs early in the early game.

This soured my experience a lot by witnessing it first-hand and seeing many other people experience it. Let the game have natural difficulty. If they need to tell the story, then just do what Hades 1 did by having you beat the game a bunch of times before getting the real ending. That should be enough to get the dialogue you need out if you're really worried about making sure the viewer pays attention to your story.

I'm refunding for now, but I will likely purchase again once it's closer to release and has hopefully had some improvements made on these infuriating mechanics. They unfortunately sapped all of my desire to play the game currently. I recommend this game if you really like Hades and don't care about being force reset, but I'm leaving it negative for now to express my disdain for this system.

Much like the first game, Hades 2 feels great to play, has nice art, a kick-ass soundtrack, and good voice acting. The biggest issue impeding my enjoyment of the game is the sheer amount of time padding added to the game. The game is full to the brim with so-called "anti-speedrun" mechanics to ensure that you don't beat the game too fast/ don't miss out on the all the story in-between runs. This would honestly be okay if there was any subtlety to it. In Hades 1 it felt like the "anti-speedrun" was the fact that you don't have any of your permanent upgrades, death defiance, etc. In Hades 2, the second you make meaningful progress in the game they decide to kill your run with Eris cursing you to pretty much take +20% damage per every encounter (move to a new room, now it's 40%, etc.), or the game will sometimes just a random enemy that does more damage and has as much health as a MAIN boss you just fought two rooms prior. It's asinine. Eventually as you progress and finally make it to the end boss Eris stops showing up, or shows up way less. She's literally there just to temporarily make you end runs early in the early game. This soured my experience a lot by witnessing it first-hand and seeing many other people experience it. Let the game have natural difficulty. If they need to tell the story, then just do what Hades 1 did by having you beat the game a bunch of times before getting the real ending. That should be enough to get the dialogue you need out if you're really worried about making sure the viewer pays attention to your story. I'm refunding for now, but I will likely purchase again once it's closer to release and has hopefully had some improvements made on these infuriating mechanics. They unfortunately sapped all of my desire to play the game currently. I recommend this game if you really like Hades and don't care about being force reset, but I'm leaving it negative for now to express my disdain for this system.