Hades & Hades 2

Just had my first successful run with the shield, going all in on Aphrodites debuffs did the trick for me.

When in doubt, let the power of love carry you.

And also the best Call in the game by a country mile.

I feel like I only used calls occasionally, but at least that's better than the blood shard thingy that I never ever used at all.

I mainly used the calls if I ended up with a really bad run. In cases like that they can really carry, particularly Aphrodite or Artemis.

Casting can really be helpful depending on your build, as the shards get lodged into the enemy can deal damage when they exit, as well as deal extra damage when inside it. Unless you changed the cast with a hammer.

It took me a long time to learn how to use casts effectively; at first I never used them except when cornered lol. Ares' was a pretty fun one to use; I called it 'the blender.' Aspect of Hera changes casts so they load into your next attack, and with Dionysus on that I called it 'the bath bomb.'

https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Cast

Edited by lalalei2001 on Apr 25th 2023 at 7:42:18 AM

I mainly use Casts combined with the hidden Shield aspect, and particularly Dionysus' which turns into what I call the Greek Kool-Aid Man

I love the nicknames we have for certain builds. I nicknamed the bow's special 'the shotgun' cause of how it's most effective up close, and the Flurry Slash sword upgrade 'the chainsaw' cause you can just hold Attack and saw away at the enemy's health.

Some more fun ones XD

Edited by lalalei2001 on Apr 25th 2023 at 8:07:02 AM

Artemis has the best call IMO, but Aphrodite’s a close second.

Edited by Spinosegnosaurus77 on Apr 26th 2023 at 12:19:03 PM

Right, casts. That was the name of it. Yeah I'm not saying they're bad, they just never felt necessary and the best ones (to my knowledge) are boons from gods I usually don't pick.

Try Artemis since it targets automatically.

I mean, they never felt necessary or like they flowed very well.

I think I need to replay Hades once I finally finish botw.

Edited by Arha on Apr 28th 2023 at 4:44:39 AM

Depends on the cast and your build; even the basic one can be good. I went from never using them to them saving my bacon to using them frequently!

I did it, I beat Hades! Well kinda, the game is not over yet but I did make it to the credits.

Hades suddenly just letting me pass was such a huge wtf moment for me. Was oddly wholesome seeing this broken family now make a genuine effort to fix things up and even felt kinda appropriate to Greek mythology. After all, many of the stories about the Greek gods are ultimately tales about a very disfunctional family if you get down to it.

I know there is still an epilogue, though I dont know exactly what I have to do to reach it, guess I'm gonna focus now on maxing out Zagreus relationships with the whole cast now. On that topic, have I mentioned yet just how amazing the voice work in this game is? I could spend hours just listening to these characters talk.

On the gameplay front: While I have not tried all the weapon aspects yet, so far the Aspect of Talos for the fists is my clear favorite, its so much fun to just force pull enemies over and smack em in the air. And combined with the Draining Cutter update did I genuinly never run low on health outside of the main boss fights.

On the other hand I still have not managed to clear a run with the bow, putting Zeus on the special works pretty well, but that alone just couldnt make up for how unintuitive needing to charge all normal attacks feels to me.

Edited by uncertanSearcher on May 3rd 2023 at 8:46:18 PM

Oh yes, the voicework is great all around. I absolutely love Logan Cunningham as the big man himself. He's so gruff and cynical and yet at the same time you can tell Cunningham is having such fun in the role.

Anybody pick up the Zagreus Nendoroid? I bought mine a couple nights ago. I'll be keeping him in his original packaging, thank you very much. (All of my action figures are cherry.)

The problem with using Zeus on the bow (apart from Rama) is that while flat damage bonuses suit the special very well, Zeus boons have a hidden internal cooldown that keep them from proccing as much as you'd expect them to.

It's not terrible, but it's not the greatest either. Aphrodite attack and Dionysus/Demeter/Artemis special are really potent and Ares can kinda work but you need him to actually show up a lot since you need his flourish, impending doom and the curse stacking to make the most of it. And maybe Aphrodite's duo boon as well.

Though I'm assuming you're making a build based around the special since I honestly haven't played aspect of Hera or Zagreus at all and don't know if they care about it at all.

On a side note I gave the spear a try for the first time in ages and honestly it's better than I remember so long as I'm constantly spamming dash attack.

Edited by Arha on May 3rd 2023 at 4:25:29 AM

I hope that Erebus gets to show up. Of the Greek primordials that emerged from Chaos he's easily the least explored in fiction

I hope Erebus is either the Bonus Boss or the Hades 2 equivalent of Chaos.

Oh yeah that reminds me, this week I got my first heat 16 clear! And I beat 3rd phase Hades on the first try not counting the times I died on the phases before that . Ended up using a Chiron Bow with Dionysus/Approdite combo that really does an insane amount of DOT damage, especially with Priveleged Status.

Edited by CountofBleck on May 3rd 2023 at 9:35:53 AM

Erebus is in the game as the 'don't get hit' bonus areas but it'd be cool for the namesake god to show up for sure!

Aspect of Zagreus adds more bolts to your special. Getting in close is like a shotgun!

Edited by lalalei2001 on May 5th 2023 at 3:56:07 PM

And finally I made a successful run with the bow. Aspect of Hera is pretty fun, but the thing that actually made the real difference was the Flurry Shot upgrade. Amazing how suddenly all my troubles with the bow dissapeared as soon as I didnt need to charge all the normal attacks anymore.

Things keep develloping, my relationships with both Meg and Than are becomming more and more intimate and I finally reunited Eurydice and Orpheus.

Speaking of Orpheus, I loved the little plot about convincing him that Zag and Dyonisus are actually the same, a nice nod to what little we know about the mythological Zagreus. You really can tell that the devs made their homework and that the inconsistencies with classical mythology are all deliberate creative choices.

Edited by uncertanSearcher on May 7th 2023 at 1:17:13 PM

The story is actually pretty inconsistent with the myths overall. Achilles and Dionysus are pretty much nothing like their mythical selves, for example, while the way everyone relates to each other was modified to make it less icky and so on. I'm not going to criticize it on that front, especially when a lot of it was deliberate choices, but I don't think it deserves praise for anything like being particularly accurate.

Anyway, Hera is the cast based bow, right? I feel like I should try forcing a cast build at some point and it helps that I suddenly find Rama way less fun to play than I used to. I've heard the Poseidon sword aspect is better for that though but I kinda prefer the bow overall so it's tough to say.

I generally prefer using the Aspect of Hera, but that's because I prefer the Bow.

They're both very strong in different ways. I find the bow more fun to use, personally.

Edited by Perseus on May 7th 2023 at 8:38:21 PM