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Hades II
(aka: Hades 2)

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All spoilers for the original game will be unmarked.

Hades II (Video Game)
Go kill time.note 

"Few tales are told of Hades, whose reign as grim lord of the dead came to a sudden end when, all at once, his past caught up with him. But gods do not go quietly, and history repeats. So this tale was only a matter of Time..."
The Narrator, opening sequence

Hades II is the sequel to Hades, the 2020 isometric Roguelike based on Classical Mythology by Supergiant Games. It is Supergiant's first-ever sequel.

Set some time after the original game, the game follows Melinoƫ, the daughter of Hades and Persephone, student of witch-goddess Hecate, and younger sister of previous protagonist Zagreus. Not long after her birth, the Titan of Time, Chronos, escaped his Underworld prison, captured Hades and the rest of his house, and declared war on Mount Olympus. Melinoƫ, having trained under Hecate, attempts to kill Chronos and free her family... which of course involves fighting, and dying, through a series of procedurally-generated encounters on her way to Chronos.

Just like the first game, each night you set off as the Princess of the Underworld, going from room to room, killing enemies to open the next chamber and finding Perks along the way. As you fight, die, and sometimes win, you'll gain Macro Game resources to gradually strengthen yourself. There are weapons to apply different playstyles, keepsakes for upgrade powers, various incantations to invoke your will, and — of course — a who's-who of Classical Mythology to interact with on the way.

Atop the mechanics of the first game, old things have been tweaked and new things have been added:

  • MelinoĆ«'s Cast drops a magic circle instead of throwing Bloodstone like Zagreus did. This is arguably the single biggest difference between the characters: Even without an equipped Boon, Zagreus's Cast did damage, and the Bloodstone needed to be retrieved after use. MelinoĆ«'s Cast is dropped around her, cannot be aimed, and does not do damage unless you have a Boon (or unless you charge it; more on that in a moment), but instead immobilizes any enemy inside it.
  • An Ī© Charge Attack is now available on Attack, Special and Cast, and holding down the Dash button causes MelinoĆ« to sprint. All of these abilities can be modified with Boons separately from standard button-presses.
  • The Ī© attacks (but not the sprint) consume a Magick Meter which is automatically refilled at the beginning of each encounter; you can also collect Boons that refill it mid-fight. Like your HP, the Magick Meter can be extended via Heart Containers; like your HP, some Boons lower your maximum Magick for the duration of the run.
  • Limit Breaks are no longer provided via the Twelve Olympians but rather via a separate goddess, Selene, and the charging meter is replaced by the need to expend a certain amount of Magick before the Limit Break is ready.
  • MelinoĆ« upgrades herself using Arcana cards instead of the Mirror of Night. She can unlock as many cards as she wants, but she must expend consumables to raise the cap of how many she can "Grasp" at one time.
  • There is a comparatively larger number of consumable reagents to collect, and a larger number of specialized collecting tools where Zagreus just had his fishing rod. Where Zagreus spent undifferentiated Gems to unlock things, MelinoĆ« tosses the reagents into a crafting cauldron and/or trades them in for "Kudos" to unlock similar stuff.

The game launched for Early Access on May 6, 2024, with some elements unfinished. After several major updates, the full game was released on September 25, 2025, with a physical Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 release on November 20, 2025. An extensive post-launch patch was released October 31, 2025, making substantial changes to the ending.

Previews: Reveal Trailer, Early Access Showcase, The Olympic Update Trailer, The Warsong Update Trailer, The Unseen Update Trailer, v1.0 Launch Trailer, Official Website.


Death to Chronos. May the tropes guide you.

    open/close all folders 
    Tropes #-B 
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: At the end of an Underworld run, you can receive a boon from none other than Hades himself as a prisoner in Tartarus if you choose to visit them. Some of these boons are tailor-made to make the Final Boss fight with Chronos easier, including cutting the number of Mooks he summons in half, or making him lose twenty percent of his max HP when the fight starts.
  • 13 Is Unlucky: After the June 4, 2024 patch, the Mortality buff granted by Thanatos aspect on the Moonstone Axe granted, when capped, a +13% critical hit chance on Omega damage. Since buffed to 20%.
  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Commented upon by Medea—if Polyphemus fights MelinoĆ« while Vow of Rivals is active, she'll boast that MelinoĆ« will never develop an immunity to her poisons no matter how many times she's poisoned.
  • Action Bomb: As a rule, effects of boons are Friendly Fireproof.
    • Hippos from Oceanus puff up and detonate after their health is drained.
    • Tiny Eidolons from Ephyra and Lanthorns which assist the Master-Slicer miniboss self-destruct as their only mode of attack.
    • The living hourglasses from Chronos-occupied Tartarus leave behind a time-stalling bubble, which holds those caught in it for a precious few seconds. This time-stopping bubble can also be found from armored enemies with the Stopper perk when the Vow of Fangs is active.
    • Before Early Access patch 11, volatile power cores of Auto-Seekers from Mount Olympus exploded after the machines were destroyed.
    • One type of sheep helping out Polyphemus seek MelinoĆ« out and try to blow themselves up with a rather short fuse when they get close to the player.
    • The Headstone enemies encountered in the battle against the Twins of Typhon normally drift around slowly, connecting each other with dangerous beams. If one is raised as a servant via Sun Worshiper or Night Bloom, it'll instead head toward an enemy and explode.
    • The Eye of Typhon spawns huge eyes which roll around seeking to crush MelinoĆ« and, after a delay once they time out or are destroyed, blow up in a shockwave.
    • Hestia's "Flash Fry" boon makes vanquished enemies explode, which can result in impressive chain reactions with mobs of more numerous but individually weaker enemies.
    • Selene provides "Night Bloom", which if empowered with "Extinction" makes Morphed enemies deal damage to other enemies when they die.
    • One of the curses from Chaos is "Caustic" that makes all defeated enemies toss an explosive jar at MelinoĆ«.
  • Action Girl:
    • MelinoĆ«, like her brother before her, can wield a variety of weapons, including a staff or a pair of blades. She also knows magic, using it to empower her attacks or stop foes in their place.
    • Hecate taught MelinoĆ« how to fight and use magic so her protege could someday kill Chronos; she's also the first area's boss, testing whether MelinoĆ« is ready for her task ahead.
  • Adapted Out: Hera claims to only have Ares and Hephaestus as her children, lamenting that she never had daughters. However, in Greek mythology, Hera had Hebe, the goddess of youth, and Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, as her children as well.
  • Adaptational Context Change: In Classical mythology, Scylla is a sea monster with multiple heads (usually dogs around her waist), which in the Odyssey, she uses to snatch six of Odysseus' crewmen all at once. In the game, Scylla only has one head, but Odysseus tells MelinoĆ« that she caught his men so quickly that it looked like she had a head full of teeth for each one of them; thus, turning Scylla's literal description into a hyperbolic one.
  • Adaptational Modesty:
    • Zeus is wearing a chestplate. In the first game, he was bare-chested.
    • Aphrodite, while still nearly naked, wears a little bit of armour here (but not over any crucial areas).
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
    • Aphrodite and Hephaestus seem to be Happily Married, whereas in the Homeric epics, it is implied that they divorced after Hephaestus caught Aphrodite having an affair with Ares, as he asks for his marriage gifts back and is married to the Charite Aglaea in the Iliad.
    • In mythology, Typhon is the son of Gaia and Tartarus, or, in less common versions, of Hera alone or of Chronos' seed planted on the ground. In the game, he was created by Chaos as part of a failed experiment with life Gone Horribly Right.
    • Like Demeter in the first game, Hestia and Hera are daughters of Hyperion (making them sisters of Selene, Helios, and Eos) rather than Chronos.
  • Alien Blood:
    • The description for the Zodiac Sand states that what what flows through the Titan of Time is "remnants of aeons past".
    • Regular enemies bleed black, contrasting with red blood that spills from MelinoĆ« when she gets hit, as if marking the player's mistakes.
    • Inverted by Typhon and his spawn, who bleed red despite their monstrous nature.
  • All Part of the Show: The boss fight against Scylla takes place during one of her concerts. The Shades in the audience think the battle is just part of the show.
    Scylla: Come to heckle us some more, lady? Well it won't work! No matter what you do, this crowd thinks it's all part of the act. They're not just here for the music, but the full experience!
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: After taking over the Underworld, Chronos had corrupted it to a personal shrine and paradise where Tartarus is little more than a gold storage and he takes over the House of Hades by freezing its occupants in time while the man himself is enslaved. The battle against Chronos even takes place in the central hall of the House where the entire west wing has collapsed, the giant blood bath is full of grains of gold and the giant mural of Hades is mostly in disrepair.
  • Alternate Timeline: In the True Ending, a still-imprisoned Chronos from the past is convinced by MelinoĆ« and Zagreus to view a timeline where he was a loving grandfather, not a vengeful tyrant. The main timeline's Chronos is so stunned at how happy this version of him is that he's wracked by guilt and surrenders immediately.
  • Anachronism Stew:
    • Like in the first game, MelinoĆ« can regain health by picking up food items that look like gyros and french fries, the latter of which still has a rather modern appearance by virtue of a paper cup.
    • The existence of Scylla and The Sirens as a rock band — complete with a modern drum set and even a keytar — in a time several centuries before that kind of band or music would exist.
    • Eris's incursions into the Crossroads are accompanied by her tossing cyclops jerky wrappers everywhere, and the shore where she likes to hang out is littered with the same wrappers. They're described as "slow-decomposing waste" in the inventory — that is to say plastic.
    • In the Rift of Thessaly, the armies of Chronos travel on ships which more resemble galleons from post-Medieval Europe than the oar-powered triremes from Ancient Greek periods.
    • The art and architecture in the Field of Mourning and Chronos' renovated underworld are distinctly Gothic.
    • The Ghost Pirate enemy from the Rift of Thessaly, the Yargonaut, takes much more inspiration from Pirate Tropes of The Golden Age of Piracy than anything resembling Ancient Greek piracy: he has a skeletal parrot on his shoulder, a reference to the "yar" pirate interjection in his Punny Name, and even a a modern pistol alongside his fish-sword.
    • Hades II continues a trend started by the Adamant Rail of the gods having extremely advanced technology compared to mortals, this time going all the way into the realms of science fiction. Mount Olympus's defense force consists of robotic automatons with rapid-fire laser cannons and energy shields, and one of the new Nocturnal Arms is the Black Coat, a combination jetpack, Power Fists, and back-mounted missile launchers with lock-on targeting.
    • Hermes' official portrait shows him making a peace sign, when they were only began to be used in such a manner in the 1960's.
    • Chaos' portrait shows the primordial wearing a modern suit. Tropes Are Tools: it makes the character look timeless and otherworldly.
    • The goddess of witchcraft Hecate wears a classic tall, pointy, wide black hat. Although the origins of the connection between witches and these hats is complex, it's agreed they only began to be associated with each other after the Middle Ages, with Hecate herself never wearing such a hat in Ancient Greek depictions. Ancient Greece had pointy hats (the Pilos and the Phrygian cap) and wide-brimmed hats (the Petasos), but no pointy wide-brimmed hats.
    • MelinoĆ« can use Arcana Cards to improve her skills, but playing cards were only invented in China around the 9th century AD, the Major Arcana appeared in the 15th century, and their use for fortune-telling began only in the 18th century.
    • Dionysus' party in Mount Olympus has a disco ball. Dionysus himself also wears modern swim briefs.
    • Oceanus is inspired by ancient bathhouses and pools and is filled with pipes full of scalding-hot steam. Although piping systems are quite old, metal pipes carrying steaming water are more associated with steam engines of the modern age.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different:
    • One of MelinoĆ«'s dream sequences has you controlling Hades. Given that this dream sequence shows the moment Chronos attacked the House of Hades, though, there's little you get to do as him.
    • Towards the end of the game, you play a different flashback as another character in the House of Hades. This time, it's Chronos. You're playing as him in the timeline where Zagreus decided to show the Titan of Time what would happen if he tried to be a good grandparent instead of a conquering tyrant, playing hide-and-seek with MelinoĆ«. However, Hades is a very poor sport about it because he just instantly tells Chronos where MelinoĆ« is hiding.
  • And Then What?: Comes up often in the storyline. Characters ask either what they plan to do after succeeding in their goal of killing Chronos permanently, and thus removing time as they know it from existence, or what Chronos plans to do after securing power, especially since he's unleashed an uncontrollable Typhon to do it. In both cases everyone's plans are vague and are being made up as they go along. In another angle, the immortal or post-mortal characters can have interactions about what they plan to do for literal eternity, with most usually answering they'll take it moment by moment, probably acting on whatever whim they come across.
  • And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Finishing the main storyline rewards you with a family portrait of Hades, Persephone, Zagreus, MelinoĆ«, and Cerberus that takes the place of the unfinished painting, and a sculpture of a smiling sun and moon in the garden area.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • You're momentarily invincible every time you enter a room, allowing you to orient yourself to the layout without getting hit by an attack that you couldn't possibly have seen coming.
    • The first encounter of any run will always feature a tablet that allows you to endlessly refill your mana so you can get the hang of the controls for a specific weapon before going on a deeper run with it. There's another such tablet near Schelemeus for the same reason.
    • Chambers where you have to fight a mini-boss will be marked with a skull icon on the room's entrance, so you know what you're getting into before you enter the room. It also comes with a list icon if that upcoming mini-boss is required for any of the Minor Prophecies.
    • The first game attempted to promote weapon variety by putting a buff on a randomly-selected weapon which would increase the amount of the most basic resource in the game — in Zag's case, Darkness — but still required players to actively choose Darkness rooms and potentially turn away from other, better, more useful rewards. MelinoĆ« has a similar system which increases her Bones intake, but it simply gives her a few at the end of each chamber and therefore doesn't affect her overall strategy.
    • Whenever you get a Hex from Selene, you're allowed one free cast of the Hex immediately so you can learn how it works in a safe environment before you need to use it in combat.
    • Originally, if you tried to pause while fighting Chronos, he mocked you for thinking that you were a better Time Master than him, and forcibly unpaused the game. You could eventually unlock an incantation so that pausing worked, but it was still an annoyance since it's impossible to "improve" at not stepping away when needed, especially for health and/or family reasons. Plus, it was impossible to change options or quit the game if necessary. As a result, this got removed in the Olympic Update to the game's Early Access; after that update, pausing on Chronos always works, but Chronos mocks you for pausing the game instead, even if he complies with it. The Unseen update would bring this "no pausing" feature back, but only when fighting Chronos or Typhon with the Vow of Rivals active, and even still there is an incantation that permits the player to pause normally under that condition.
    • If you're using the Arcana that slows down time while charging an Omega move, and you try to charge one while you lack the mana to do so, the game will still enter the charging state and slow down time briefly. That way, you won't get killed if you were counting on the slowdown to give you the time to react to something and didn't realize you lacked the mana.
    • Your first excursion to the surface is Unwinnable by Design, as MelinoĆ« has the same problem that her brother Zagreus has — she's tied to the Underworld, and can't survive in the land of the living. When MelinoĆ« reaches the surface, she suffers an unavoidable Damage Over Time effect that gradually increases in severity, to the point that it will kill her as the damage outpaces any healing you could find. Running out of HP from this curse also ignores how many Death Defiances you have, so you aren't just sitting around waiting to go back.
    • The first update in Early Access made it so that all gathering tools could be used, regardless of whether or not they had been selected for the current run; selecting a particular tool just makes that gathering node much more likely to appear. Later updates did away with choosing the gathering tool as part of the loadout, and moved the gathering node likelihood function to the animal familiars.
    • After a few nights, you'll be thrown into a flashback sequence where you'll play as someone other than MelinoĆ« for a moment as Hades sends MelinoĆ« away with Hecate after Chronos invades the House of Hades and takes it over. If you haven't moved for a few moments after the cutscene ends, the game assumes you haven't figured out that you're in control and prompts you with a quick message.
    • Whenever an ally joins an encounter, many more waves of enemies will spawn than is normal so that the character has more time to interact and show off their moveset. If you have the time limit Oath active when this happens, the timer will be frozen until you enter the next chamber to compensate.
    • The Forget-Me-Not function lets the player mark any upgrade, and its required ingredients will be marked during a run or in a shop. This also helps a player identify if the next room has a resource-gathering point of interest. Once the player has enough ingredients to fulfill all the marked upgrades, the icon turns green to indicate that they have enough of that resource and can direct their attention elsewhere. This can be extended to Boons later, where it marks requirements for desired Boons.
    • You can sell any resources you no longer need for Kudos, which is used to unlock various cosmetic items around the Crossroads. In addition, you can press and hold a button to keep selling items, or just press a different button to sell all of an item. If the item is still needed for other upgrade (even ones you haven't unlocked yet), they will be marked and placed lower down the sell list to encourage you to hold on to them for now.
    • On a surface run, you can order items from Hermes, which will be delivered after you clear a certain number of rooms. When you make it to the shop before the Final Boss of a surface run, any deliveries you're still waiting for will be brought to you instantly, regardless of how much time was left.
    • Keepsakes with effects which last for multiple regions like the Fig Leaf will not take away their effects when swapped out, allowing players to switch to another Keepsake upon completing a region instead of needing to keep hanging on to it until it fully expires.
    • For the players doing runs reliant on the Fates' Whim mechanic for their buffs, the various mechanics that can grant reward or boon altering buffs will not activate the related Arcana cards by chance, which would cause the player to lose the buffs by sheer bad luck.
    • The first post-launch update added and revised events leading up to the ending. It also adds a function to return to earlier points in the plot so that players who have already completed the story can experience those events without needing to start a new save file.
    • An incantation reduces the number of encounters needed to level up keepsakes, making it much easier to max them all out.
    • Once the ability to view your relationship status is unlocked the player will be able to see the next item that is required or the next condition that must be met to advance their bond with each character.
    • Key items including relationship-advancing items like Nectar and Ambrosia are available for purchase from the Broker once per run.
    • Obtaining Nightmare, the primary weapon upgrade material has been made easier than its equivalent from the first game:
      • You no longer need to defeat the final boss to unlock the next level of bounties — earlier Testaments of Night focus on bosses of earlier regions so players who have yet to defeat the final boss can keep upgrading their weapons.
      • In addition to the Testament of Night system, Nightmares can also be obtained through Charon's loyalty reward programme, or later on simply bought with bones.
    • Chaos Trials, single-region challenges with a preset loadout, offer many advantages:
      • The preset loadouts introduce players to builds they may not have considered and help unlock Duo and Legendary Boons.
      • They advance time, allowing you to shuffle who appears in the Crossroads, grow short-duration crops and buy more items (e.g. nectar) from the broker.
      • They allow players to encounter NP Cs from later in the game without completing a full run, helping them cycle through their dialogue or progress their relationships.
      • They rotate which weapon has Grave Thirst should the player not wish to complete a run with the current one.
      • The reward for completing them, Star Dust, can be brewed into all manner of useful items, most notably Beast-Loved Morsels to rank up familiars, but also nectar, ambrosia or moon dust.
  • Anti-Wastage Features: Healing items cannot be purchased from Charon's shop or his Well if MelinoĆ« is at full health.
  • Aquatic Mook: Encountered in Oceanus, Pinheads are an enemy that resembles a swordfish. They burst out of the water in large schools, and although they're fairly weak individually a swarm of these can quickly overwhelm players with sheer numbers — casts are essential to slow them down or inflict damage at a distance.
  • Arc Words:
    • In response to the original game's "There is no escape", "Time cannot be stopped" is used whenever MelinoĆ« falls in battle. It's also got a double meaning, since time literally can't be stopped (since it always moves forward), as well as the Titan of Time being the Big Bad. As with its progenitor, completing either route (the Underworld or the Surface) to its end, sudden or not, changes this to "Can time not be stopped?" Completing either route after the true ending gives the more uplifting "Time flows freely forth," to highlight how another possibility, more grim than the first, is sheared away.
    • "Death to Chronos" is used by the heroes as a rallying cry.
    • MelinoĆ« and Hecate share "So mote it be," whenever the former performs a new incantation. Used by other witches as well.
  • Arrange Mode: The Pitch-Black Stone grants access to special missions after Chaos instructs how to perform an incantation to activate it. During these "experiments" many elements are preset, such as what weapons and Arcana the player will use, region to fight through, conditions on the Oath of the Unseen and even pre-picked boons. Difficulty of each of them is indicated by a number of red eyes ranging from one to five, with many of the earlier trials being more of a power trip, such as the "Trial of Origin" which beefs one up with hugely inflated health, mana pool, and free damage on all types of attacks. After successfully beating the Guardian in the region, the player is rewarded with a unique resource and snapped back to reality.
  • Art Evolution: The second game adds to the original's already gorgeous art by making the character portraits more detailed, intricate, and sometimes even more grandiose. The in-game models are also much better animated and detailed than the originals. It might be a bit jarring fighting Cerberus's corrupted self, only for him to transition to his lower fidelity model from the first game once he's defeated.
  • Artificial Stupidity:
    • One of Toula's Assist Character abilities is to pounce on an enemy, dealing damage to them. The AI will gladly throw attacks on a currently-invulnerable target instead of focusing on another target that can receive damage.
    • Usually, Nemesis leaves for one of the exits in a Location after she and MelinoĆ« complete a Body-Count Competition. Her pathfinding got clunky in the wide-open Mourning Fields, causing her to walk endlessly back and forth as she searches for an exit. This was changed in the full release, where Nemesis just jumps off-screen instead.
  • Artistic License – Geography: MelinoĆ«'s path to Mount Olympus on the surface has her emerge from the City of Ephyra and then crossing a vast sea known as the Rift of Thessaly by hijacking Chronos' naval fleet. Both Ephyra and Olympus are real-world places... that aren't separated by sea like in the game and are within mainland Greece. This is all justified however: Homer's narration as well as info from the Book of Shadows indicates that the Rift of Thessaly is the real-world region of Thessaly, having been flooded by Poseidon in an attempt to forestall Chronos' forces from reaching Olympus (as well as giving the developers the excuse to have MelinoĆ« sail through the seas like in The Odyssey and other Greek myths).note 
  • Artistic License – History: A minor case. Odysseus refers to the Trojan War as the "Ilium" War, in reference to Troy's other name Ilium. This would be a case of Shown Their Work, except that Ilium is the Roman spelling of Ilion (Ίλιον), the actual name Troy would have been known by during Odysseus' lifetime.
  • Ascended Extra: The Olympians in general are far more involved in the plot than in the first game. The first game focused solely on the House of Hades, and with the exceptions of Zeus, Demeter, and to a lesser extent Hermes and Athena, the Olympians were mainly seen sending messages and power to Zagreus as he quests to resolve his family issues. The second game's greater scope, involving a siege upon Olympus, means that they're interacted with far more directly and do more than just provide boons. Several Olympians have been promoted from being just an Olympian boon-giver to being much more relevant to the plot, appearing in person to MelinoĆ« and directly affecting the narrative rather than just being one of an ensemble of background characters.
  • Ascended Glitch: During development, it was discovered that if Nemesis spawns in a room with a Chaos Gate, there's no programming that stops her from jumping into it, even though lore-wise she shouldn't be able to do that. Instead of making her not be able to jump into Chaos Gates, dialogue for Nemesis, Chaos, and Mel was added to justify it.
  • Ask a Stupid Question...: At one point, MelinoĆ« asks Eris — the goddess of strife and discord — if she truly wants to live in a world of chaos without rules or systems. Eris answers that MelinoĆ« hit the nail on the head.
  • Atypical Attack Scaling:
    • Zeus and Hera have a mirrored set of Duo Boons, King's Ransom and Queen's Ransom. Rather than scale off of something like attack, elemental infusions, or the amount of enemies in the room, King's Ransom strips away all of your Hera boons but levels up each Zeus Boon by the amount stripped away, and vice-versa for Queen's Ransom.
    • Heavy Metal from Hephaestus grants bonus damage to regular and special attacks based on accumulated Armor.
  • Autobots, Rock Out!: While you fight Scylla and the Sirens, they play the rock songs "Coral Crown", or, once you've defeated once then talked enough for a bit of animosity to build up, "I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death)", or, upon encountering them with Vow of Rivals 2 active, "Rock and a Hard Place". The instrumentation changes through the fight since the guitars, vocals, and drums will all be knocked out of the mix after the respective band member is beaten. Whenever Scylla hides in her shell, the vocals are appropriately muffled as well.
  • Baa-Bomb: Assisting Polyphemus are various types of sheep. Black-fleeced ones are explosive and attempt to detonate near MelinoĆ«.
  • Bathtub Bonding: One unlockable feature for the Crossroads is a hot spring, and MelinoĆ« can invite another ally to take a bath with her depending how deep their relationship is. Doing so also advances time forward a bit for concoctions, deliveries, and plant growth.
  • Beat the Curse Out of Him: Cerberus is turned into a monster by the miasma and despair of the Mourning Fields. Besting him in battle purges him of the corruption, and he reverts to his usual form.
  • Beef Gate: Hecate invokes this on MelinoĆ«, acting as an in-universe Warm-Up Boss. The logic is that if MelinoĆ« can't defeat Hecate, then defeating Chronos is out of the question. As such, Hecate deliberately stands in MelinoĆ«'s way and challenges her to combat to prove she's capable of winning.
  • Blatant Lies: After enough encounters, Chronos can ask MelinoĆ« how she's able to No-Sell his control over time when the rest of the House of Hades was powerless against it. MelinoĆ« "confesses" that she is a time traveler and that the future Chronos repented for his deeds and told her the secrets to defeating his past self. Chronos laughs at this "imaginative tale" for how comically outrageous it is, then goes on to declare that traveling back in time is impossible because he is time; he alone decides the rate it passes as it marches ever forward. Amusingly, this ends up becoming reality following the ending; after Zagreus manages to convince Chronos to redeem himself, the Titan is so struck by remorse after living through a much more fulfilling life as a loving grandfather rather than the ruthless tyrant that defiled the House of Hades, that he spends the post-game cleaning up after the forces he unleashed upon the world as well as removing any remaining possibilities in time where he and Typhon still oppose Olympus with the help of MelinoĆ«.
  • Bleak Level: MelinoĆ« passes through the Fields of Mourning on her way down to Tartarus, a place where the dead go both to purge themselves of sorrow and drown in it. Standing in pockets of Miasma can even temporarily cripple MelinoĆ« with doubts and fears of her own, though she's quick to shake them off each time.
  • Blow You Away:
    • Some boons from Demeter create gusts of wind that damage and slow down enemies and their ranged attacks.
    • Harpy enemies can create spinning gusts of wind that travel a short distance and damage MelinoĆ« if she comes in contact with them.
  • Body Armor as Hit Points: Armor appears as a meter over your health, and most sources of damage will hit your armor first.
  • Body-Count Competition:
    • Similar to Thanatos in the previous game, Nemesis will occasionally challenge MelinoĆ« to see who can kill the most enemies in a given time limit. The main difference is that there's money on the line; the loser has to pay the winner 100 gold.
    • Heracles will sometimes challenge MelinoĆ« to a competition on the surface. You're competing with him for specifically marked opponents and receive a reward in gold for each mark destroyed.
  • Bomb Whistle: Whenever Polyphemus throws a boulder during an encounter in Ephyra, a descending whistle note plays until the boulder hits the targeted area.
  • Boring, but Practical: Hephaestus' defensive boons: Security System (formerly Mint Condition), Trusty Shield, and Heavy Metal. They do little more than reduce the amount of health you lose over the course of a run. Yet these boons are highly favored, especially in high fear runs, as preserving health is extremely valuable considering the limited availability (and, with the Vow of Scars, effectiveness) of healing effects.
  • Boss-Altering Consequence: In the final area of the Underworld, you can find an NPC who can give you Boons, some of which affect your battle with Chronos. These effects include making Chronos summon only half the normal amount of Mooks, or making him take twenty percent of his max HP in damage when the fight starts. This NPC is Hades himself, using MelinoĆ« as a measure of revenge against the Titan.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The second message for Hera getting her second Nectar, talks about Melinoe being two things at once:
    Hera: Unbound by wedlock yet you praise me thus? I must say you are full of surprises, my dear. Or potentially just very ignorant. Or both!
  • Brick Joke: In the first game, Zagreus asks what a calling card is when Persephone tells him that she was able to contact Charon through his. Come the epilogue, It would seem he finally figured it out given that one becomes his Keepsake.
  • Bullet Time:
  • Breakable Power-Up:
    • Apollo's "Perfect Image" buffs up all damage output, but stops working when any hit is taken, and re-enables itself if MelinoĆ« goes untouched for a period of time.
    • Hephaestus' "Heavy Metal" grants more damage the more armor MelinoĆ« has, so once she loses all armor points the boon provides no effect.

    Tropes C-D 
  • Call-Back: In the first game, Skelly the training dummy has a keepsake called "Lucky Tooth," which gives you a "Death Defiance" Extra Life and restores 50 HP. In this game, Schelemeus the training dummy has a keepsake called "Luckier Tooth," which gives you a Death Defiance and restores 51 HP.
  • Calling Your Attacks:
    • Hecate announces the names of her hexes while battling MelinoĆ«, which happen to be the same lunar hexes that MelinoĆ« can access with Selene's gifts.
    • Prometheus occasionally yells out "Fire!", "Conflagration!", or "Phoenix Flame!" when he uses a fire-based attack.
  • Cap Raiser: The maximum Grasp size can be expanded from the initial 10 all the way to 30.
  • Cardboard Pal: On Olympus, Charon is replaced with wooden board version of him beside his wares, since he can't get there himself. There's a note telling MelinoĆ« to use the honor system while exchanging gold for goods.
  • Catching Some Z's: Upon defeat, Polyphemus collapses and falls asleep, snoring a little trail of Z's.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Arachne offers a selection of buff-granting dresses, which MelinoĆ« can put on instantly. A dress is broken when Mel takes enough damage to lose all her armor points and even in the middle of the fight she instantly regains her regular saffron-colored dress.
  • Charged Attack: Omega Attacks must be held for a second and drain your Mana Meter when used, but have enhanced properties. Each weapon has an Omega version of its basic and special attack, and MelinoĆ«'s Cast can also be charged, causing it to deal damage upon expiring.
  • Chekhov's Gun: During an early run, Hecate will remind MelinoĆ« of an incantation before one of their sparring sessions: "To the abyss of the subconscious I descend. Night and Darkness, guide me to my blood beyond the grasp of Time," but notes that it isn't useful quite yet. After completing a run, the spell is revealed to be a way for MelinoĆ« to contact Zagreus in the past through his dreams. Can be subverted depending on how quickly the player beats Chronos for the first time (which results in the gun firing before the player learns about it).
  • Comically Missing the Point: Aphrodite mentions to MelinoĆ« that while Hades not contacting Olympus was not out of the ordinary, she often chatted with Zagreus via messages. When he suddenly stopped responding, she thought perhaps she did something to wrong him. She was relieved to find out it's because he was kidnapped instead.
  • Consolation Prize: The onion heals a single hit point when consumed and is offered in place of better prizes under some circumstances—one of them involves failing to deal enough damage to Nemesis in five seconds, after which you get the onion from her instead of the room's usual boon.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • During her boss fight, Hecate is supported by witch shades who are identical to the witch enemies from the first game.
    • In the previous game, the Stygian Blade can be imbued with the Aspect of Nemesis, turning it into a single-edged blade with red plates, a bronze skull on the handle, and a blue-bottomed hilt. Nemesis wields this exact sword at all times.
    • Similarly, the Adamant Rail has the Aspect of Eris, the eponym of which wields the weapon in her likeness. During her boss fight, she even uses her Aspect's special ability to hit herself with the weapon's grenade launcher to buff her damage. Likewise, setting the Vow of Rivals rank for Eris changes the Adamant Rail's Aspect from her own to the Aspect of Lucifer, the hidden aspect from the first game.
    • In the first game, Zagreus couldn't survive for very long on the surface, because those tied to the House of Hades are also tied to the Underworld, and thus can't survive in the land of the living. When MelinoĆ« tries to ascend to the surface in this game, she gets the same result; it's impossible to progress beyond a few rooms before she suffers an unavoidable death. That is, until she learns an incantation to briefly suppress this problem and ascend to the surface without the curse.
    • Like in the original game, one of the gods who you receive a Boon from only appears after you've reached the final area; in the first game, it was Demeter, who appeared once Zagreus reached the surface. In this game, at least before the Olympic Update, Hera will only grant boons to MelinoĆ« after she's fought Chronos at least once. By the full release, MelinoĆ« must reach the surface to begin receiving Boons from Hera, then reach Typhon to begin encountering Ares.
    • Some of the Boons added to this game reference a particular boss battle from the first: Hades can give MelinoĆ« the ability to use certain attacks from his battle with Zagreus, with the Howling Soul boon granting the green skull projectile, the Cinerary Circle boon unlocking the Soul Urns that explode when struck, and the Gigaros Dash boon utilizes a version of his spin attack whenever MelinoĆ« dashes. The Unseen Ire boon can also grant MelinoĆ« a version of Hades' Darkness technique (which was previously available to Zagreus via Keepsake); albeit one that only activates upon taking damage.
    • Scylla's song "I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death)" mentions fish from the first game, namely the Charp, Scuffer, Knucklehead and Slavug.
    • The red shade spectator in Elysium can be found at the end of the Fields of Mourning.
    • If MelinoĆ« uses an Infernal Contract that transports her into the Elysium arena, she has to duel Zagreus himself. Zagreus fights using Gigaros (Aspect of Hades for his spear), using most of his weapon's base moveset in addition to his own Casts, and reuses Hades' battle theme from the first game. He even has a Death Defiance of his own.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Guardians and Wardens are immune to several moves that could render a boss fight trivial—they can't be turned into sheep and are greatly resistant to the hold effect of a Cast. One exception is that Scylla's bandmates can be revived to fight on MelinoĆ«'s behalf, which grants the player an achievement.
  • Contrasting Replacement Character:
    • Dusa's role as a cute, small, green-colored female friend is replaced by Dora. But, where Dusa was incredibly hard-working and never took a break, Dora is so lazy that she doesn't even understand they're in a war and never leaves Mel's tent.
    • Achilles's role as a mentor and veteran is replaced by Odysseus. While Achilles was essentially just a guard for Hades, Odysseus takes an active tactician role, and is noted for playing escaping his own doom several times while Achilles died as prophesied.
  • Contrasting Sequel Setting: Many of the areas are thematically opposite to the corresponding area of the previous game:
    • Hades began in Tartarus, a dungeon in the deepest part of the Underworld. The first level here is Erebus, a forest that is the outermost area of the afterlife.
    • The fiery Asphodel is contrasted with the watery Oceanus.
    • The third area in both games is a field, but in the first game, it was Elysium, a place of eternal reward, while here it's the Fields of Mourning, a place of eternal solitude and sadness.
    • Zagreus escape attempts involved brute forcing his way through the main areas of the Underworld and leaving through the main entrance. Melinƶe's infiltration attempts involves finding an alternate route through a less known path and eventually into the inner workings of the Underworld.
  • Control Freak:
    • Zigzagged with the Fates. They can control every aspect of life with their weaving, making sometimes-arbitrary decisions that even gods and titans are beholden to. However, it's also suggested by some characters that individuals' choices do matter because the Fates don't manage everything. When they finally meet MelinoĆ«, they tell her that they didn't enjoy this part of their job and rather liked that their banishment by Chronos gave them a break from weaving.
    • Hades remains particular about how the Underworld should operate. Post-game, part of the reason Tartarus remains dusty, golden, and rife with clockwork is that Hades is meticulous and insistent on rebuilding it exactly as it was before, so renovations are taking a long time.
  • Cosmetic Award:
    • Completing an Underworld and Surface run at ever increasing Fear thresholds using the Oath of the Unseen will award statues of MelinoĆ« flexing heroically, which (aside from conferring "eternal glory") are purely cosmetic.
    • Once the epilogue is reached, Kudos and resources can be spent at the Spirit Mixer to declare a rank. The badge is displayed on the inventory and victory screens. It's just there if the player feels resources burning a hole in their pocket.
  • Costume Evolution: The gods from the first game who return all sport armor and weapons now (except for Aphrodite and Dionysus, who are somehow wearing even less). Skelly, now "Schelemeus" meanwhile has a Chest of Medals, a cape, and armor skirting. And somehow, a beard.
  • Could Say It, But...: Defied. After Moros surreptitiously gives MelinoĆ« a secret incantation to allow her to suppress the Fates' curse and survive on the surface, she can attempt to ask him for advice in a roundabout way, wondering if such an incantation would theoretically cause any problems she ought to avoid. Moros politely-but-firmly refuses to engage, noting that giving her any more information on the matter, even as a hypothetical, would be overstepping his bounds.
  • Counter-Attack: With the Aspect of Artemis for the Twin Blades, MelinoĆ« can block one hit every few seconds while charging her Omega Attack. After blocking, your next few attacks will have a high chance to inflict a Critical Hit; considering how by the time you've triggered this buff, you've just charged your Omega Attack, which is a single, high-damage strike with an Area of Effect, this can be very powerful.
  • Crystal Ball: The Learned Sage has a crystal ball, through which MelinoĆ« can look to review the results of previous runs. In the player's view, the location where MelinoĆ« prevailed or fell (and the enemy that defeated her, in the latter case) is shown in the ball, while statistics are shown below and to the right.
  • Cue the Sun: The entire game takes place at night, with each descent into the Underworld or ascent to the surface taking up a night. The farther she gets, the longer she is gone. This is taken to its natural conclusion when MelinoĆ« finally liberates Mount Olympus of its biggest threat, the Father of Monsters Typhon, and she arrives at the summit, the Home of the Gods, basking in the warm, morning sun.
  • Cutting the Knot: During the fight with Prometheus, he will use a series of flame attacks that move across the arena in one to two of three rows which deal massive damage. The player is expected to memorize the sequence of rows which do not have the flames... or the player could simply dash through each wave of flames, although this does require good timing.
  • Dance Party Ending: Discussed in one of Homer's ending narrations after defeating Chronos, where he describes MelinoĆ« breaking out into such a joyous dance that all her friends and even foes joined in with her.
  • Darker and Edgier: The first game was a largely comic affair mostly focused on the troubled relationships of the House of Hades, with Zagreus being all too used to his current situation to a degree where all he can do is joke about it right from the start. By contrast, this game immediately deals with a much more dramatic premise where MelinoĆ« has lost her entire family - to the point she wasn't even able to be raised among them - and her quest is far more directly to take revenge on Chronos and free them. Even the visual style is far darker, and nearly every new NPC deals with at least some gothic characterization and styling, while many of the encounters one can find in individual runs have an almost surreal and disturbing bent to them. Fittingly, MelinoĆ« is rather serious, if also cute and endearing, compared to the endlessly sardonic and free-spirited Zagreus. Rather amusingly, the game's ending stretch ends up downplaying this, coinciding with Zagreus being reintroduced to the story and bringing his wit and All-Loving Hero energy, resulting in a much brighter ending than the initial setup would've led players to believe.
  • Death from Above:
    • The Wolf Howl Hex has MelinoĆ« jump up into the air, then crash back down at a chosen location, dealing damage to all enemies in the area.
    • Icarus' assistance is preceded by the words "Death from above" appearing on the screen. He then proceeds to unleash a bombing run onto the enemies below as he flies by.
    • Athena's entrance is heralded by a rain of spears taking out every enemy in the room.
    • Certain paths in Olympus involve MelinoĆ« taking a long leap into the air and crash down into the next room. Any enemies she lands on this way are instantly killed (or their armor immediately broken).
  • Death of a Child: Implied by the Book of Shadows entry for Spindles, which notes that death comes too soon for some.
  • Death Takes a Holiday: Albeit an unwilling one. Both Thanatos, death himself, and Hades, whose responsibility it is to keep the Underworld sealed, have been captured by Chronos, meaning that the surface is is being subjected to a Zombie Apocalypse as Chronos forces the undead to march on Olympus.
  • Degraded Boss: Satyr Raiders on Mount Olympus, which are weaker versions of the Satyr Champion who can potentially appear as a Warden in the city of Ephyra.
  • Demoted to Extra: Some characters who were already once-per-night encounters, like Theseus or the Furies, are only mentioned in the Arcana.
  • Despair Event Horizon: The Mourning Fields inflict this on anyone who stays there for too long. The monsters there are all enemies who have essentially given up hope, and intend to inflict their pain on anyone who crosses their path. There's also roaming pockets of gaseous Miasma that will cause MelinoĆ« to disparage herself before she shakes it off, temporarily slowing her movement speed if she gets caught in one of them.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • Guardians have lines reacting to things occurring during their fight with MelinoĆ«, such as her familiars hampering them and MelinoĆ« procuring resources from the battlefield. They also comment when she manages to vanquish them without taking damage.
    • Used during the Final Boss fight against Chronos. He's a Time Master, as is to be expected of the Titan of Time. So your effects that slow down time, including Selene's time-slowing Limit Break, won't work on him. Even attempting to pause the game will have Chronos be unaffected, and he'll mock you for thinking you can control time better than he can in his own domain before humouring your time out. If you keep doing this over and over, Chronos will gradually get more and more annoyed at you, and his responses will get more curt and insulting.spoilers
    • One of Selene's Moon Hexes allows you to resurrect a defeated enemy in a room to temporarily fight for you instead. If you use this during the Sirens boss fight, Scylla will be incredulous that one of her bandmates has suddenly turned against her. The full game even added an achievement for doing this.
    • All of the guardian and miniboss fights in the game have regular Mooks that show up so that MelinoĆ« can always use the Night Bloom Hex — which revives and mind controls an enemy she's slain previously to fight for you — after a certain point.
    • Just like its predecessor, there is unique dialogue if you manage to make it to the Final Boss on your first try. The game assumes that you're going to die a few times before you reach Chronos, so he reveals himself on the nights beforehand to figure out who MelinoĆ« is and what she wants. If you make it to Chronos in only one try, these conversations will naturally not have happened, and Chronos will put the pieces together on his own once MelinoĆ« shows up in front of him.
    • Arachne is the only ally who can have enemies spawn in her room after her interaction has concluded. As such, she has reactions to MelinoĆ«'s behavior, including expending Death Defiances, getting a Game Over, and even losing her dress without leaving her room.
    • Much like the first game, using an Olympian's Godsent Hex against them after angering them in a Family Dispute will garner special dialogue from said god.
    • Hecate is a Warm-Up Boss (both in-universe and in a meta sense). As such, she'll compliment you for doing particularly well against her, such as if you get a No-Damage Run against Hecate or enter the arena with full health and then leave with full health. Hecate will also have unique reactions to MelinoĆ«'s pet toad Frinos blocking her Hex projectile.
    • If you trigger the conditions to find the Fates before you're supposed to, they'll comment that you're early and shoo you off.
    • If you enter the Sirens' boss battle with the game's music muted, Scylla will get especially angry at you for disabling her singing. MelinoĆ« counters that she'll use whatever tactics she sees fit to win.
      Scylla: I don't know what you did, lady, but lately, I can barely hear myself think... much less sing! I hate you, you witch! You better make it right!
    • There are unique reactions when certain pairs of Olympians are chosen and spurned in a Family Dispute, such as with Zeus and Hera, Zeus and Poseidon, Aphrodite and Hephaestus, and Demeter and Hestia.
    • There are unique dialogue lines if MelinoĆ« returns loses all of her health while in the presence of allies, i.e. Artemis, Heracles, Icarus, and Nemesis.
  • Devious Daggers: Lim and Oros, the Sister Blades, are dual-wielded daggers that are best used with an agile playstyle. They have a short range, but a fast attack speed, and their Omega Attack has you Flash Step behind the target before unleashing a devastating sneak attack. The Aspect of MelinoĆ«, when upgraded, as well as its Skulking Slice hammer upgrade, give it bonus Back Stab damage. The Aspect of Artemis, meanwhile, turns the daggers into a Critical Hit Class, letting you parry an attack every few seconds while charging your Omega Attack, and once you do, you gain a high critical chance for your next several hits.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
    • Like its predecessor, the endgame boss is one of the most powerful beings in Greek Mythology. Although this time, it's not the eponymous God of the Dead but rather his own father, who exceeds Hades in power. However, you are most definitely capable of defeating Chronos all the same.
    • This trope is subverted like the last game as the final boss's "death" is not enough to put them down permanently. For Chronos, being a fundamental concept of the universe itself (ie. the concept of time) makes him essentially immortal. He will proclaim how futile it is to stop him as he will always return, not that it will stop MelinoĆ« (and by extension, the player) from trying anyways. Progression into the game reveals that there is an incantation named "Dissolution of Time" that Meli can use to put down her grandfather for good. It ends up subverted once more however, as while Zagreus has Chronos dead to rights he instead chooses to see if there's a more peaceful option, which leads to Chronos pulling a Heel–Face Turn and the House of Hades and Mt. Olympus giving him a second chance. Chronos and Mel then go about culling other possibilities of Chronos from time, ones who don't make a Heel–Face Turn and have a fatal finishing blow put upon them by our Chronos.
    • The final boss on Olympus is Typhon, father of all monsters, whose head dwarfs Mel by a considerable margin. Chronos himself admits he has no actual control over Typhon; he just let him loose to go after the gods. Even with an assist from Zeus, making him retreat temporarily is quite the accomplishment... yet like with Chronos, eventually an incantation can put him down too. Typhon isn't as lucky as Chronos as he's put down completely in the main timeline, MelinoĆ« using the Entropy from his remains to activate Dissolution of Time.
  • The Diss Track: "I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death)" is one from Scylla and the Sirens to MelinoĆ«, which shows up after a few runs. Scylla's lyrics accuse MelinoĆ« of being obsessed with the Sirens, says that her dress looks like it's from the garbage, and that MelinoĆ«'s hair looks like something died in it.
  • Distant Sequel: The game is set decades after the first Hades, following the adult daughter of Hades and Persephone after Zagreus reunited them.
  • Divine Conflict: The story is set around the return of Chronos, former king of cosmos, and his war against the Olympian gods in revenge. The godly war has two sides: in the Underworld, Chronos rules his former prison and holds cthonic gods prisoners; in the Surface, his army and a freed Typhon make a siege against Mount Olympus. Such a conflict has devastated a huge portion of Greece and interrupted the natural cycle of the afterlife.
  • Double Entendre: The Tagline, "Go Kill Time", refers to the mission of defeating Chronos, the Titan and embodiment of Time, as well as how it's probably going to take you a lot of tries before that happens. It's also a nice meta-joke about players spending time on the game.
  • Double Unlock:
    • It's possible to discover an upgrade only to realize that it requires an ingredient that you haven't discovered yet.
    • The Dissolution of Time and Disintegration of Monstrosity incantations get revealed after MelinoĆ« first defeats either Final Boss for the first time, but they each have an ingredient that's shrouded in mystery until MelinoĆ« learns what she needs.
    • At one point, MelinoĆ« decides to lend her aid to Olympus directly rather than just trying at defeating Chronos at Hermes' behest. Upon completing the incantation, she is allowed to pass through the gate to the city of Ephyra... only to very quickly start dying, thanks to the Fates' curse tying her and her brother to the Underworld. To actually play through the Surface, Moros has to give MelinoĆ« another incantation to break the curse.
    • With certain NPCs or Olympian Gods, their Relationship Values are halted midway until you've triggered a "Bond Deepened" dialogue flag. However, by triggering that dialogue, you lose the chance to give them a gift to further the bond in that instance and have to encounter them again, either later in the run or in a separate run entirely.
  • A Dog Named "Perro":
    • Four of MelinoĆ«'s animal familiars follow this naming scheme: Frinos the toad matches "frýnos", Greek for "toad"; Toula the cat is based off "gatoĆŗla", Greek for "kitty"; Raki the bird is based off "korĆ”ki", Greek for "crow/raven"; Gale the weasel matches "galĆŖ", Greek for "weasel".
    • Prometheus's Eagle is named "Aetos", which is literally just Greek for "Eagle".
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Early into MelinoĆ«'s journey, if Eris thinks a particular run is going "too well" for her, she'll show up to give MelinoĆ« a "blessing" of making enemies deal more damage to her.
  • Down the Drain: Oceanus, the game's second zone - in sharp contrast to the original game's Asphodel. It's home to easily-burst pipes full of scalding-hot steam, as well as a great many hungry sea monsters - including an entire rock band made up of sirens.
  • Dragged Off to Hell: When Eris and Zagreus are defeated in their boss fights, green spectral hands rise from the ground and drag them down.
  • Dueling Player Characters: In the post-game, MelinoĆ« may find an Infernal Contract in Charon's shop. Agreeing to its terms teleports her to a stadium in Elysium where she faces Zagreus in an "exhibition match" (fight to the death). Whoever wins is declared Elysium's Champion.
  • Dynamic Entry: Multiple characters on Olympus runs make their presence known with massive diving strikes that eliminate enemies underneath them. Heracles smashes down a single enemy with a banner proclaiming that "Blood Shall Spill", while Athena's "Divine Intervention" has her drop down alongside a rain of spears that completely wipe out the current room. MelinoĆ« gets to join in on the fun on Mount Olympus with the help of various mechanisms that launch her between rooms; when she arrives, enemies at her landing point are instantly killed.

    Tropes E-J 
  • Early-Bird Cameo: The first night at the Crossroads, MelinoĆ« greets two of Hecate's animal companions, Hecuba the hound and Gale the polecat. At least six more runs are required before familiars become available via incantation, and Hecuba and Gale are the last two unlocked, meaning it'll be some time before they're encountered and recruitable.
  • Ear Worm: MelinoĆ« considers Scylla and the Sirens' act "ridiculous" and doesn't care for their music, though she does grant that they are catchy. If she's defeated in the fight against them, upon waking up the next night, she grumbles that the song is still in her head. Odysseus heard it only once and still has it in his head.
  • Elemental Powers: Boons from Olympian Gods are associated with one of five Natural Elements: water, fire, earth, air, and aether. While some gods are heavily associated with one element, others such as Hermes or Aphrodite have their boons spread around many different elements. These elements are used for Infusions, a special type of boon that depends on the number of accumulated essences, usually by activating their benefits once the requirement is passed or scaling their benefits with how many you've collected. For instance, Zeus has an Infusion that forces your hits to do a minimum of 50 damage if you have at least five Air elements, having no effect if you have any less, while Poseidon's Infusion grants +15 max health for every Water element you've collected.
  • End of an Age:
    • Discussed. Hestia wonders if the Olympians' time has come and gone in the midst of the current crisis and whether the gods are more like mortals than they care to admit. Either way, she welcomes whatever doom comes.
    • Played straight in the epilogue. The Fates, tired of being asked to control everything and blamed for every catastrophe decide to retire, letting the Gods control their destiny for the time being. They note however, that while this is the end of the Fates' era, the end of the era of gods will inevitably come, and mortals will be free to decide their own fate. Something the former will not take lying down...
  • Enemy Mine: Chronos's servants and Olympus's automatons fight one another, but as soon as they spot MelinoĆ«, they target her instead.
  • Expospeak Gag: Melinoe can perform the "Rite of Social Solidarity" and "Rite of Vapor Cleansing", which conjure up a tavern and bath, respectively.
  • Fauns and Satyrs: Satyrs are some of the main forces in Chronos' army, acting as his Mooks in multiple areas and even being implied to help his return. They are quite more aggressive than the debaucherous Nature Spirits from Greek mythology, being portrayed as goat-footed and -horned magicians and soldiers — although neutral ones appear as Dionysus' retinue.
  • Filthy Fun: While Cerberus was forcibly cast into the Fields of Mourning during the story, post-game, he's taken to running around the Fields on his own accord and getting covered in Shades and miasma, much like a dog playing in the mud. Battles with Infernal Cerberus are treated as giving the dog a bath.
  • Final Boss: The game makes no secret that Chronos is the final opponent that MelinoĆ« has to defeat, with "Death to Chronos!" as a rallying cry among the heroes and her task being explicitly to slay him. And while Chronos is indeed the last boss in an Underworld run, the fact that he can just bring himself back from the dead every time means death is little more than an annoyance for him, which he even lampshades multiple times. After slaying Chronos, his essence will remain, but you can't do anything to actually hurt him in this state. The only way to render him Killed Off for Real is the "Dissolution of Time" incantation, though it will take a lot of effort before this incantation is complete and Chronos can be defeated for good. Though the fatality gets subverted, as Chronos is instead talked down once he realizes he'd rather be a loving grandfather, the evil possibilities of Chronos from other timelines remains a threat alongside Typhon that MelinoĆ« and Chronos are working to destroy.
  • Final Boss, New Dimension: For his second phase, Chronos transports MelinoĆ« from Tartarus to a realm resembling a cross between an orrery and the face of a clock, suspended against an ethereal background of broken glass and golden geometry.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: The area immediately before where you fight the Infernal Beast is filled with huge prints in the grass, hinting at the identity of the area's boss. Since they're large dog paws, you might be able to guess it's Cerberus.
  • Flunky Boss:
    • During Guardian battles, there are points where the boss summons ordinary mobs to join them in the fight. Some Wardens such as Queen Lamia are also fought with their mooks.
    • The Oath of the Unseen includes a vow that adds one or more "Shadow Servants" to warden encounters. For example, the encounter with Queen Lamia will add a shadow Holeheart along with the usual Lamia.
  • Forced Transformation:
    • The Twilight Curse Hex launches a homing projectile that turns enemies into harmless sheep. Hecate also opens the last phase of her boss fight with this, and if MelinoĆ« is hit by it, she'll become a sheep/pig/rat for a considerable duration, removing her ability to sprint, reducing the length of her dash, and replacing her attacks with a single very weak charge.
    • The boss of the Mourning Fields is under one of these. It's Cerberus, having been transformed by Chronos into an infernal form. Defeating him in this state will have him turn back to normal.
    • The Unrivaled Typhon fight starts its final phase with Chronos forcibly de-aging MelinoĆ«. She'll have to stay in a moving magic circle while dodging around Typhon's and Chronos's attacks to revert to her adult form and finish the fight.
  • Foreshadowing: After repeated encounters with Chronos, MelinoĆ« resorts to saying that she is from the future to make him see the error of his ways. He laughs off the idea despite being the personification of time itself, but this is, in a roundabout way, exactly how he's dealt with. The very last reveal of the game also shows Hecate, an alternate version of MelinoĆ« from the future, did the exact same thing by accident.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: It's implied Chaos' Art Shift is the result of them learning that the gods often take on different forms to interact with mortals on their level, and is trying it out for themselves.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Attempting to pause the game during Chronos' boss fight with Vow of Rivals active will have him unpause it due to his Time Master status and mock the player for thinking they can control time in his realm. However, there is an incantation that disrupts his control over time and lets the player pause normally.
  • Friendship Trinket: As goddesses associated with the moon, MelinoĆ«, Hecate, Artemis, and Selene occasionally refer to themselves as the "Silver Sisters". Each one wears a cord made of four colors somewhere on her person that symbolizes their bond: orange for MelinoĆ«, purple for Hecate, green for Artemis, and black for Selene.
  • Full-Boar Action: One of the Wardens in Ephyra is the Erymanthian Boar, a giant zombie boar that attacks with charges, Ground Pounds, and powerful kicks. The Book of Shadows remarks on its rage overtaking it in death.
  • Full Health Bonus:
    • Aphrodite's Shameless Attitude boon buffs all sources of damage, and the buff is twice as strong when MelinoĆ« is above 80% health.
    • Downplayed — Apollo's Perfect Image boon gives MelinoĆ« a damage buff as long as MelinoĆ« hasn't taken any damage yet during the Encounter. It shuts off if she's hit, and she will need to go untouched for a few seconds before it is enabled again.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • You might run into another character browsing Charon's wares during a run. This isn't just for atmosphere - they very much can and will buy that boon or Centaur Heart you've been eyeing if you don't hurry and make your purchases before they do.
    • When Nemesis leaves a chamber, she picks one of the routes to go through. Whichever one she goes through will prevent you from going through it, since Nem is already going to claim that reward. Go fast enough and MelinoĆ« will happily claim dibs when she pass through the gate ahead of Nemesis.
    • Chronos is a Time Master as the Titan of Time. Attacks that slow down time for the world around you don't slow him down at all, unless broken with an Incantation. Early Access versions of his boss fight also mocked you for pausing the game before he forcibly resumes it, though by the full release he'll begrudgingly allow it.note 
    • MelinoĆ« is bound to the Underworld like her brother and father, who could only last so long on the surface before being dragged back to the House of Hades by the Styx itself. MelinoĆ« even mentions this when she's asked about trying to get to Mount Olympus, saying that she's pretty sure she can't. MelinoĆ« can safely exist in Erebus, but that's it. At Hermes' asking, MelinoĆ« may eventually gain access to a surface route to Olympus... one that immediately shreds her health to ribbons and forces her back to the camp. She has to get another incantation from Moros, one specifically noted to feature ingredients that can defy the Fates' curses, before being able to make any meaningful progress towards Olympus.
    • Mount Olympus's defense systems are designed to repel any intruders, which unfortunately includes MelinoĆ«. However, this also includes Chronos' forces, and the two factions can attack each other if not distracted by MelinoĆ« herself.
    • In the boss fight with Scylla and the sirens, the trio are playing a song. Killing one of them will remove their part from the soundtrack.
    • The player can find Daedalus Hammers even on the Surface, even though the first game established that these items were left by Daedalus in his labyrinthic constructions in the Underworld. It is eventually revealed that those Hammers were left not by Daedalus, but by Icarus — who, unlike his father, has exited the Underworld and can fly across the Surface to help MelinoĆ« on her journey.
  • Geometric Magic:
    • MelinoĆ«'s Cast causes a magical circle to appear on the ground around her, full of intricate shapes and runes. Enemies that step into it are slowed to a crawl, and its Omega version damages enemies upon expiry.
    • During her boss fight, Hecate can use Casts of her own, which similarly take the form of intricate runic circles. Some appear on the ground, following MelinoĆ«'s path before exploding; another, more common attack has an expanding circle of runes as a shockwave.
  • Ghost Pirate: The Yargonaut is an undead captain enemy in the Rift of Thessaly. He has a skeletal parrot on his shoulder, a pistol, a ghostly-green beard, a saber sword made out of a fish-spine, and even his title is a Punny Name joining the Argonauts with the pirate interjection "yar".
  • Ghost Ship: In the Rift of Thessaly, a fleet of Chronos' ships, which give off a Sickly Green Glow and are manned by undead monsters, sails towards Olympus. MelinoĆ« progresses through this area by commandeering a ship after taking out its ghostly crew.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser:
    • Eris, Strife Incarnate, just can't stop herself from impeding MelinoĆ«'s efforts to oppose Chronos and/or save Olympus. And thanks to a pact made by Hecate that all of Nyx's children would be safe within the Crossroads, Eris is able to return there whenever she wants, even after it's made clear she's causing trouble and being a pest basically for the sake of being a jerk. She even leaves her trash laying around. What's more, you can continue to give her gifts of Nectar and even bathe with her as if she never tried to fill you with bullets.
    • Satyrs and nymphs are foes in both routes; however, neutral members of both races are seen chilling with Dionysius in his party on Mt. Olympus. Whether this is because he's plied them with booze or because they are his natural worshipers and consorts is unknown.
  • Gothic Horror: This game has a lot of common imagery and themes of the classic Gothic Horror literary genre. First and foremost, our main protagonist MelinoĆ« is a princess of the fallen royal Chthonic family who was trained as a witch under Hecate, the titaness of witchcraft with wizard hat on top, and brews using a large cauldron. She is destined to overthrow her tyrannical titan grandfather who took over the Underworld. Her friend is a shade who likes to act like a Vengeful Ghost for fun. Her Hex is lunar themed, granted by the Titaness Selene. The enemies she faces along the way are werewolves, banshees, sirens, ghosts, living plants, or any monsters you would expect from classic Hammer Horror.
  • Ground-Shattering Landing: Encounters with Heracles always begin with a single mook getting squashed by the demigod as ground below craters slightly.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • It can be difficult trying to figure out how to increase MelinoĆ«'s Relationship Values with Echo. Unlike other characters where MelinoĆ« can gift Nectar before speaking with them, the option to gift Echo only appears after speaking with her.
    • Getting the Godsent Hex with Ares works differently than any other hex in the game—instead of being tied to a specific hex and god, it's tied to the Aspect of Selene, which grants a hidden hex.
  • HA HA HA—No: With the Vow of Rivals maxed, pausing the game during Chronos's boss fight will prompt him to quip, "Hahaha! No. You do not control the flow of Time" before he forcibly unpauses.
  • Happy Ending Override: At some point between games, Chronos takes over the Underworld, resulting in Hades imprisoned, Zagreus, Nyx, Persephone and their closest allies frozen in time, and the souls of the dead now scattered across the world. To make matters worse, this happened shortly after MelinoĆ«'s birth, resulting in her growing up separated from her family.
  • Hates Baths: When MelinoĆ« explains to Schelemeus that she encountered a monstrous Cerberus in the Fields of Mourning that she soothed by fighting through the grime on him, Schelemeus comments that Cerberus never did like baths. After the restoration of the House of Hades, he runs through the Fields by choice. Infernal Cerberus hasn't changed in appearance or demeanor, though MelinoĆ« regards the ensuing battle as giving a reluctant dog a bath.
  • Healing Boss:
    • The Phantom miniboss in the Fields of Mourning can heal itself for a lot of health if it hits Meli.
    • Chronos summons a special variant of Tempi during the second phase's second half of his boss fight. They emit a green healing beam at Chronos, healing him.
  • The Hecate Sisters: The Silver Sisters, sans MelinoĆ«, play this straight of course. Artemis is the Maiden, being a peer to Mel and running into her in the midst of her hunts to give her generalist, but still regularly powered boons. Selene is the Mother, acting kind and graceful to all she communes with, giving Mel Limit Breaks. Hecate is the Crone, as a tough but still caring mother figure and the oldest sounding, acting as the first boss who merely tests if MelinoĆ« is strong enough to pass and isn't using her full strength against her.
  • "Help! Help! Trapped in Title Factory!": A far more dire example than most uses of this trope. The Fated List of Minor Prophecies returns with several side quests along the lines one would expect. What you may not be expecting is one entitled "MelinoĆ«, Help Us", which isn't a prophecy, but a desperate plea from the Fates themselves.
  • History Repeats: Finding the Fates leads to them revealing to MelinoĆ« that they basically plan on taking a break and letting people decide their own destiny for a while - but both they and Homer make it clear that eventually, mortalkind will find a way to decide their own fate themselves, and while many will rejoice as the news breaks, the divine pantheons' history of Disproportionate Retribution on any mortal that even remotely challenges them means this transfer of power will not be taken peacefully.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The "Infernal Beast" boss is truly Cerberus, having been warped into a monstrous abomination by the despair and Miasma of the Fields of Mourning, after being chased off by Chronos. Defeating him does thankfully revert him back to his usual form, if only temporarily.
  • Immortal Breaker:
    • The "Dissolution of Time" and "Disintegration of Monstrosity" Incantations are meant to prevent the Final Bosses of the game's two routes from coming back after being defeated, allowing MelinoĆ« to permanently destroy them. She eventually makes good on them by using Gigaros, the spear that belongs to Hades, by enchanting it through the Mirror of Night so that Zagreus can Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Too bad that Zag proves to be a Spanner in the Works by showing mercy to Chronos instead.
    • In the post-game, Chronos himself becomes this to his Evil Counterparts. With MelinoĆ« using her version of Gigaros to slay Typhon on top of Mount Olympus, Chronos does his part by using his scythe to render the evil versions of Chronos Killed Off for Real. However, since both of these methods only kill the evil incarnations one at a time, MelinoĆ« has to keep up her dark work night after night.
  • Implausible Deniability: MelinoĆ« points out that "I Am Gonna Claw" and "Bewitching Eyes" are a diss track and love ballad, respectively, about her, and that the latter appears to be a love confession from Scylla. Scylla denies that the songs are about Mel despite the lyrics mentioning her hair, dress, red and green eyes, and witchcraft, and hastily adds that Jetty wrote most of "Bewitching Eyes".
  • In a Single Bound: Nemesis and Heracles reach their battles with Ground Shattering Landings and leave MelinoĆ« performing leaps that befit gods.
  • In Medias Res: The main conflict at the heart of the story, Chronos' war on Olympus, began just after MelinoĆ«'s birth. The game opens on MelinoĆ« as a young woman, about to undertake her mission to end the war by assassinating Chronos.
  • Instant Runes:
    • The Staff and MelinoĆ«'s Cast generate fancy patterns with every strike.
    • Finished incantations at the cauldron emit a faint red magic circle.
    • Satyrs are encircled with a red shape when summoning rats.
  • Interactive Narrator: Homer returns from Hades to narrate events. An early cutscene has young MelinoĆ« shushing him while she's playing hide and seek, and in present-day, MelinoĆ« occasionally addresses him with a "What say you, Homer?" or similar after tough encounters or impressive finishes to prompt him to comment.
  • Interface Screw:
    • The Final Boss of the Surface route is Typhon, the Father of All Monsters, who starts with a roar of such horrific force that he shatters his own boss healthbar.
    • Very Downplayed variant: When you look out from the vantage point of the Summit, raindrops from Typhon's storm will hit your screen occasionally.
  • Internal Reveal: Post-game, Zagreus learns that the "old man" who abandoned narrating for him in favor of his sister is named Homer, and quips that it's a silly name.
  • Invincible Minor Minion:
    • MelinoĆ« can take along one of her animal companions on a run. Each provides her with small buffs such as Toula the cat fishing on her behalf or Frinos the toad raising her maximum health. Her familiars are protected by spells that make them completely invulnerable to damage or any other harmful effect.
    • Polyphemus's sheep walk around unbothered during his boss fight. Depending on sheep type, they either just wander around or approach MelinoĆ«. They can be knocked around by attacks, but they cannot be killed unless Polyphemus decides to dine on them.
    • Prometheus is accompanied by Aetos the eagle, who occasionally attacks MelinoĆ« during her climb up Mt. Olympus and when she's battling his master. He's immune to all attacks—hexes don't even consider him a target.
  • Invocation: The invocation "Darkness!" returns from the first game, which turns the user invisible for a few seconds. MelinoĆ« can use the ability if she selects the Unseen Ire boon offered by Hades or randomly picks it via her parents' keepsake, and Zagreus periodically becomes invisible at will during bouts with him in Elysium.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: Everyone refers to the sea monster Charybdis as "it", except for Circe, who uses "she" — a nod to versions of the myths that describe Charybdis as a daughter of Poseidon.
  • "Just Frame" Bonus: Present under the "Power Shot" keyword, currently only used by one of the Daedalus Hammer upgrades to the Staff. When the charged special attack is released right as it's ready, it deals even more damage than usual and grants a portion of Focus points.

    Tropes K-O 
  • Kaizo Trap: The Eagle Aetos can attack and potentially kill MelinoĆ« even after Prometheus is beaten during the frames it takes him to kneel in defeat.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: The Lunar Ray Hex has MelinoĆ« fire a powerful beam of energy that does a large amount of damage. However, she's immobile and vulnerable during this time, so it's quite risky to use.
  • Keystone Army: After defeating Chronos for the first time, when encountering Icarus he mentions that the other night Chronos's fleet suddenly sank, MelinoĆ« replies that it was because she temporarily killed Chronos.
  • Kick Them While They Are Down: After besting him in a fight, MelinoĆ« can give a couple stress-relieving whacks to the orbicular remnant of Chronos' existence left inside the main hall of House of Hades. It's invulnerable but it prompts her to express her satisfaction from success.
  • Kill Enemies to Open: Much as in the first game, the most common objective is to defeat every enemy in a chamber in order to advance to the next one. The game also won't let you leave a chamber without collecting the room's reward. That being said, this can be averted in a few specific cases.
    • After a while, you can invoke an invocation to find fountains, which restore some of your hit points. These rooms feature no enemies or combat.
    • The third area, the Fields of Mourning, plays with this. The rooms mostly consist of large plains with multiple different rewards in them, including a few minor rewards like smaller versions of Centaur Hearts and Magick Pots which are optional to obtain. In these areas, you have to collect all of the major rewards and fight the enemies which guard them in order for the next chamber to open, but the minor rewards can be claimed without a fight.
    • If Nemesis shows up, she'll occasionally challenge MelinoĆ« to deal one thousand points of damage to her in five seconds. If this occurs, the room will already have been cleared of regular opponents. Failing to deal enough damage will have Nemesis give you a Red Onion instead of the room's normal reward, which only heals a single hit point.
    • In the second area, Chronos will occasionally catch MelinoĆ« and send her to Asphodel. When this happens, enemies will endlessly respawn in a Lethal Lava Land. The only way to escape is to remain in a moving golden circle long enough for MelinoĆ« to break the spell and create her own way out.
  • Killing Your Alternate Self: After the True Ending, Chronos gains an ability to view other timelines, including those where still-evil versions of him can threaten the main one. MelinoĆ«'s tasked with retracing her steps precisely enough to reach and battle the alternate-timeline Chronos, after which Chronos uses his scythe to permanently kill that version.
  • La RĆ©sistance: "The Unseen" is the broad name given to the Chthonic gods, friendly shades, and other entities fighting on the Underworld front of the war against Chronos. They're hidden within the Crossroads, a forest within Erebus that brushes against the border of the Underworld and the Surface (taking the form of a forested valley where the moonlight can be seen). The Crossroads cannot be entered unless you are specifically welcomed there, making a perfect hiding spot.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Hades II makes no attempt to hide the fact that Zagreus and Hades reconciled in the first game, or that Persephone and Hades were reunited. It also refers to Skelly by his true name, Schelemeus.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    • When the game was still in Early Access, if you reached the end of the game's Surface route, the conversation held with Hecate afterward heavily lampshaded the fact that the follow up doesn't actually exist yet, and that their (and the players', by extension) only recourse is to wait until they do.
    • If MelinoĆ« encounters Athena and selects her Divine Dash Boon, she may remark that it was "your brother's favourite." Divine Dash was regarded as one of the best boons to pick up in the first game simply due to how it trivialised the issue of enemy projectiles.
    • Entering the fight against Scylla with the music muted in the options will have her remark that she hasn't been able to hear herself think or sing, and then she immediately accuses MelinoĆ« of foul play.
      Scylla: I don't know what you did, lady, but lately, I can barely hear myself think... much less sing! I hate you, you witch! You better make it right!
    • Hermes will react if you skip his dialogue, shocked that his fast talking still isn't quick enough for you.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Asphodel makes a brief appearance in this game, the same barren area with rock platforms among bubbling lava, when Chronos catches and traps MelinoĆ« in the past.
  • Limit Break: A boon of Selene grants you a Hex, a powerful ability that must first be charged by using enough Magick during the encounter. These include Dark Side (an invulnerable Super Mode), Total Eclipse (which causes a huge meteor to crash and cause massive damage after a few seconds), and Night Bloom (which summons a defeated enemy to fight for you). Further Selene boons let you progress down the Path of Stars, a skill tree that upgrades your Hex. You also eventually unlock the ability to upgrade your Hex to Godsent: if you have a Boon from the appropriate deity, you will unlock a new node on the Path of Stars which adds an improved effect to your first use of the Hex in each encounter (or first two uses with the Lineage upgrade during Guardian battles).
  • Locked Out of the Loop: With the exception of Artemis and Hermes, the gods of Olympus were completely unaware of MelinoĆ«'s existence as well as the state of the Underworld until just before the events of the game started to unfold. This is largely the result of Hecate deliberately keeping Mel secret until she was strong enough to take on Chronos, and the fact that Hades refusing to contact Olympus for long periods of time is nothing out of the ordinary.
  • Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
    • The Olympian-summoning Keepsakes guarantee the next Boon you find is tied to the god/goddess of your choice.
    • The Enchantress, Champions, and Fates Arcanas each give you "Change of Fate", which is a chance to reroll the Boons on offer (while Champions is enabled) or the rewards of the next Location (while Enchantress is enabled).
    • The Artificer lets you exchange an Ashes/Bones/Nectar reward to anything else, like a Pom, Centaur Heart, Tonic, Boon, or Gold.
  • Lunacy: The moon's association with witchcraft in Greek myth is shown in full, with spells being themed around the phases of the moon, MelinoĆ« and Hecate incorporating moon imagery into their outfits and weapons, and a Limit Break ability that can only be granted by Selene, Titan of the moon.
  • Magic Antidote: When Vow of Rivals is activated, Medea will honor a bargain with Polyphemus and provide support during his boss battle by adding poison to his attacks. Though she boasts that no amount of repeated exposure will build up an immunity in MelinoĆ«, she expresses annoyance that the pools forming in mandrake roots around the altered arena provide an equally effective antidote.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • None of Selene's hexes are particularly powerful when first received. However, if you manage to max out the Path of Stars bonuses, most can provide a massive advantage in surviving your runs.
    • The Judgement Arcana requires no more than three other Arcana to be equipped when you begin a run, but grants up to five more after defeating a Guardian at the end of a Region. With the right combination of starting cards and Circe's Keepsake, you can finish a run with most or even all of the Arcana active, regardless of MelinoĆ«'s Grasp.
    • On its own, Ares' Gain boon is arguably the worst mana regen in the game: in order to regen your magick, you have to collect tiny dots of plasma which scatter around the battlefield (usually out of your way), only restore a measly 15MP each, and Grisly Gain spawns plasma at a pathetic rate (even with Heroic rarity and several pomme levels, it only spawns on about 1 in every 5 attacks). However, Ares has two other boons which ALSO generate plasma, both of which stack with Grisly Gain, and in combination with his Zeus duo boon, you can flood the entire area with mana-regenerating plasma. Combined with his Legendary boon (which automatically draws all plasma towards you), you can gain mana at a faster rate than you could ever possibly spend it.
  • Malevolent Mugshot: Throughout Tartarus and the House of Hades are decorated banners and flags with Chronos's face, along with the many statues of him.
  • Mana Meter: New to this game is a magick meter. It can be spent to unleash Charged Attacks, some boons require a small amount to activate, and others require a portion of the meter to be primed, reducing your maximum Focus, in exchange.
  • MĆŖlĆ©e Ć  Trois: In Olympus, you arrive while the forces of Chronos are fighting against the guardian automatons stationed in Olympus; while the Chronos forces fight you as usual, the automatons also attack you despite you being on Olympus' side. During encounters, the Chronos enemies can damage the automatons, and vice-versa.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: The Total Eclipse Hex causes a huge meteor to crash into the ground after a few seconds, dealing huge damage to anyone in the area. This leaves a crater on the ground where it landed.
  • Mighty Glacier: Zorephet, the Moonstone Axe, gives MelinoĆ« a slow attacking speed, but makes up for it with its huge damage. A single Omega Special could instantly wipe out an entire room's worth of enemies if aimed right, but its slow charging time and animation mean that you risk taking a ton of damage if you time it wrong. Its Omega Attack is a powerful Spin Attack that can hit multiple times depending on how long you charge it for, but getting to the maximum charge level is the slowest-charging Omega move in the game and you can't dash without cancelling the spin, limiting your mobility (though one hammer boon increases both the attack's charge speed and movement speed).
  • Mini-Boss: While Guardians are the final boss of a region, Wardens can be encountered throughout the region in certain rooms, indicated with a white skull above the prize's icon. Wardens are armored enemies with their own set of attacks and often their own minions. Some Warden encounters display their name and health bar at the top of the screen similar to Guardians.
  • Missing Steps Plan: This is essentially what the plan MelinoĆ« comes up with to stop Chronos boils down to. She might kill the Titan of Time, but he'll always come back a short while later. The challenge is to find a way to permanently put him down, and she's having a hell of a time figuring out how to do that. Even when MelinoĆ« manages to convince Zagreus to Set Right What Once Went Wrong through the Mirror of Night, it takes a while before they can even come up with anything concrete as to how to do it. The first time she brings up the idea of killing Chronos before he can do anything, MelinoĆ« admits that she doesn't know where Chronos is in Zag's time, nor how to actually stop him. Zagreus even lampshades that MelinoĆ« has supposedly been preparing for this her whole life, yet now that it's time to actually put things into motion, she's got very little nailed down.
  • Mook Maker: The immobile Tombstone enemy in Ephyra has no attack but ever so often launches red magic balls that cause Shamblers to rise from the earth.
  • Mundane Solution: One sidequest is resolved in such a way, the point that it's built up only to come to an intentional Anti-Climax. After spending all manner of arcana and witchery to try and wake Hypnos from his slumber, nothing's worked. On the third and final dive, MelinoĆ« finds a note deep in the depths of the subconscious of Hypnos that reveals the actual way to rouse him: tell him to wake up. And sure enough, when MelinoĆ« does that, Hypnos awakens. Then, realizing he's late for work, Hypnos immediately teleports away to the House of Hades, leaving an incredulous MelinoĆ« behind.
  • Mundane Utility: Turns out the gods use Boons as more than just gameplay mechanics; they can also serve as a means of remote communication (like a cellphone) or travel [[spoiler:(which is how MelinoĆ« is sent back to the Crossroads from Zeus' Temple)].]
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups:
    • The Arcana cards in general function this way. You can use Essence in order to increase your Grasp, which allows you to use more of the cards at once. Even so, your maximum Grasp is capped at thirty points, which is not enough to activate every card at once. So, some picking and choosing must inevitably occur.
    • The Centaur arcana, which requires at least five cards with different Grasp costs to be active and buffs MelionĆ«'s health and mana every few rooms, can't be active at the same time as Judgement arcana, which requires you activate no more than three Arcana at a time but gives you random inactive Arcana every time you beat a guardian. However, Judgement can activate The Centaur at random after a Guardian is defeated, ignoring its usual requirements.
    • Can be invoked by taking the Vow of Denial from the Oath of Shadows. Picking a Boon renders the other two selections unavailable for the rest of the run.
  • My Friends... and Zoidberg: After Nyx is freed from imprisonment, she comments that each of her children was a valuable asset to Hecate. She follows up that Hypnos was there as well.
  • My Name Is ???:
    • When first talking to Dora, her name is listed as "???".
    • When first talking to Echo for the first and second times, her name is listed as "???" until she reveals it in the second.
    • Every enemy on the surface route's final region has their name listed as "???" until you reach the boss and discover that they are all spawns and appendages of Typhon, the Father of All Monsters.
    • Before they confirm their identity, the Three Fates have "???" in their dialogue box.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • In The Odyssey, the Sea Monsters Scylla and Charybdis live in the opposite ends of a narrow strait, meaning one inevitably has to choose to sail closer to one or to the other. In the game, the two monsters are the boss and mini-boss of the second regions of the Underworld and Surface routes, respectively. This means that the player quite literally needs to choose fighting either Scylla or Charybdis at the start of every run.
    • When Hades asks Chronos what did he do to his family in the flashback sequence showing his conquest of Tartarus, Chronos says that he didn't "eat them or anything", referencing how he devoured his children in fear of usurpation before his wife hid Zeus away.
    • Hera comments on Heracles being named in her honor, his name literally meaning "Hera's glory", before dismissing him as just another mouth to feed. Not only is that first part true, but the latter is an indirect reference to the source of Heracles' immense strength being Athena tricking Hera into breastfeeding him once as a baby.
    • Apollo will comment on Descura's Aspect of Momus if it's equipped while receiving his boon, which is a single serpent on a staff. This is a reference to Apollo's demigod son turned God of Medicine and Healing, Asclepius, who is associated with a single serpent coiled around a staff.
    • Hermes' keepsake in this game is a vial of what is described as a metallic liquid. This is implicitly the substance named for his equivalent in the Roman pantheon, Mercury.
    • One of the items available in the Well of Charon is the Nail of Talos, which allows the player to deal increased damage to armor. The impenetrable bronze automaton Talos's only weak spot was the nail in his ankle that sealed the vein carrying his ichor blood, which, once removed by Medea, caused the robot to bleed to death; hence why this item allows MelinoĆ« to penetrate enemy armor.
    • It is mentioned that Heracles goes to Medea to heal his wounds. One of the accounts of Medea's history specifically mentions her doing that when she met him on her journeys.
    • Referencing how different versions of the Twelve Olympians may omit Hestia, Zeus comments in one boon message that the family had become so accustomed to his sister-in-law's absence that they stopped saving a seat for her at the palace.
    • Chronos is a Composite Character of Cronus (leader of the Titans) and Chronos (personification of Time). In one interaction, he scornfully mentions that some people think of him as just a Titan child of Gaia and Uranus without being the embodiment of Time.
  • Named in the Sequel: While the Narrator's identity is hinted at in an interaction during the first game, Zagreus only ever addresses him as "old man". Come Hades II, and MelinoĆ« finally addresses him by given name. During a flashback, MelinoĆ« specifically addresses the narrator as Homer, the famous Greek poet, because she's playing hide-and-seek and she doesn't want him giving hints to her target.
    Narrator: Uhhh erm-erm-erm, I, I, I've no idea to whom you refer... to whom the Princess of the Dead refers!
  • Named Weapons:
    • Keeping in series tradition, the playable weapons in-game all have names and epithets to go with them:
      • Descura, the Witch's Staff
      • Lim and Oros, the Sister Blades
      • Ygnium, the Umbral Flames
      • Zorephet, the Moonstone Axe
      • Revaal, the Argent Skull
      • Xinth, the Black Coat
    • Chronos's scythe is named Hrodreptus.
  • Nazi Gold: All of the gold coins in this game have the hourglass-stamp of Chronos on it rather than the coin of Hades. MelinoĆ« refers to it as "tainted" gold that she gives to Charon "to dispose of," so him relieving you of it when you die isn't just because he wants it all. Hephaestus says he then receives the gold, melts it all down and dumps it back into the earth. Charon's updated artwork also shows him melting some coins in his hand.
  • Nerd Hoard: If MelinoĆ« buys all the Chthonic Chid figurines to display at the Training Grounds, Dora razzes on her for hoarding "a bunch of useless stuff", and she reacts defensively about her collection.
    Melinoƫ: They are not useless! I enjoyed collecting them all, and have them neatly organized. And they'll likely grow even more valuable with time!
    Dora: What, you planning to sell 'em for profit? I don't see who's gonna take them off your hands! But... I wasn't trying to be mean. I think it's cute you got a bunch of children's toys.
    Melinoƫ: They're not suitable for children!
  • No Ending: Like in the previous game's Early Access, Hades II didn't have its story completed. Before the third and the last fourth regions of the surface route were added, Hecate lampshaded how there isn't an ending yet, but alluded that it'll simply be a matter of patience (i.e. the game's full release) until they can reach their goal.
  • Noodle Incident: In a conversation between MelinoĆ« and Odysseus, Odysseus compliments her proficiency in many weapons, although not the bow, and offers to train her in wielding one. MelinoĆ« declines with a "We don't discuss the bow", adding that she's still "recovering from the last time" she was given pointers with it.
  • Not Quite Dead: Played for Laughs, one of the Early Access lines for beating Chronos has him get back up and attack MelinoĆ« from behind as the narrator nonchalantly tries to warn her.
  • Nostalgia Level:
    • Occasionally, Chronos will catch MelinoĆ« and send her into the Underworld, using a room from the original Hades game (such as a lava-filled room in Asphodel). In these rooms, MelinoĆ« must stay inside a golden circle to fill a meter in order to escape, while leaving this circle will cause the meter to drop. All the while, she'll be under assault from enemies from the original Hades game.
    • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon when heading down into the Underworld plays with this. It's Tartarus from the first game, but it's also been revamped in the image of Chronos. In addition, the enemies from the first game's opening are also there, but they've all taken a level in badass and are much more difficult than the original game's versions.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: In the original game, Athena's Deflect buff was the Game-Breaker, allowing Zagreus to get through the game basically unscathed while dealing massive damage to Mooks and guardians alike. As a result, Deflect effects became incredibly rare and their effectiveness was nerfed: Athena herself can only appear once in a run under specific circumstances (you either need to use up one of your runs potential Keepsakes while having no Death Defiances or having a random chance for her to appear on the surface, and the relatively more common Deflect replacements added to the sequel have a limited number of uses per room.invoked
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Nemesis has long boasted that she should be the one taking the fight to Chronos, not the comparatively untested MelinoĆ«. In the post-game, Chronos relays to MelinoĆ« that Nemesis triumphed over a past incarnation of himself through means too grisly for him to want to bring up in polite conversation. He remarks that this was only possible because she was so near to the paths MelinoĆ« herself had taken on her latest run, but she defeated the Titan of Time all the same.
  • Oh, Crap!: In MelinoĆ«'s first encounter with the King Vermin, she utters an "uh-oh" upon hearing it roar. It's even called Uh-Oh during the battle.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: The battle music playing while MelinoĆ« is fighting her way through Olympus include a chanting choir, courtesy of the London Voices Choir.
  • Our Sirens Are Different: Scylla and the Sirens are the bosses of the Oceanus region, a rock band that lures sailors with their songs to drown them, but who nonetheless consider themselves beloved musicians. The Sirens are portrayed as mermaids with hair covering their faces, but Scylla is a pale woman with tentacles instead of hair, connected to a giant oyster at her legs. Despite leading the band, Scylla herself is ironically not a siren, but rather an unrelated sea monster.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Phantoms are said to drink the blood of the living at night and lurk in the Underworld at day, who are fought by MelinoĆ« as mini-bosses in the Fields of Mourning. To complement their vampiric image, they have long fangs, bloody claws, red eyes, a scrawny appearance, and recover their own health by taking MelinoĆ«'s. They appear to be based on blood-sucking Underworld spirits from classical mythology, such as the seductive Empusae and Lamias.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: Lycaons are savage enemies of the Fields of Mourning with the appearance of anthropomorphic wolves. The codex implies they are descendants of Lycaon, the Arcadian king who was transformed into a wolf by Zeus for trying to feed the god a child.
  • Our Witches Are Different: Witchcraft is a huge theme in the game, as many witches are central members of the Unseen in their crusade against Chronos, including the protagonist. They are associated with silver and the Moon and revere the darkness, although Circe, daughter of the Sun, is a colorful and cheerful witch.
  • Overhead Interaction Indicator: A spiky speech balloon with a yellow exclamation mark appears above characters with story- or quest-relevant new dialogue.

    Tropes P-Z 
  • Papa Wolf: The only reason MelinoĆ« wasn’t frozen in time along with the rest of her family was because of her father, Hades, ensuring that Hecate took her away and keep her safe from Chronos before he took complete control of the Underwolrd.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The King Vermin from the previous game returns as a mini-boss in Oceanus, newly christened "Uh-Oh" (at least until much later), which is precisely what MelinoĆ« speaks when she hears the thing roar the first time.
  • Please Kill Me If It Satisfies You: The ending has Chronos, filled with sudden remorse after experiencing a dream of a life where instead of a hated tyrant he was a doting grandfather and beloved by the House of Hades, begging to be killed as atonement and not wishing to live in a world where he was so despised.
  • Poor Communication Kills: According to Poseidon, the fact that Hades almost never contacts Olympus in the first place resulted in them being completely unaware that he and his family were captured by Chronos until fairly recently, with them initially brushing things off of Hades simply being in another one of his usual moods.
  • Post-End Game Content: After getting to the ending and rolling the credits, there's still a fair bit of content to go through. Notably, MelinoĆ« gets to forge strong bonds with her companions, unlock ways to make her runs even more challenging, discover new sidequests to do, and track down the Fates based on the instructions they issue through the List of Minor Prophecies.
  • Power at a Price: The White Antler Keepsake, at Rank 3, gives MelinoĆ« a 30% chance to deal critical damage for a region, but locks her max health to 30 while the effect is active. For comparison, a typical Hades II run often ends up with MelinoĆ« in triple-digit HP count, and later regions have enemies deal enough damage to make a 30 HP MelinoĆ« effectively a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
  • The Power of Love: Zagreus, with the help of MelinoĆ«, gets their father's spear to such a point that it can permanently kill Chronos. But rather than go through with it, Zagreus instead opts to spare Chronos, knowing from his trials in the first game that all the family infighting just makes things worse. Sure enough, it works, and Chronos becomes "Father Time" to the House of Hades, much more polite and not antagonistic.
  • The Problem with Fighting Death:
    • Not just death itself, the whole process of what comes before, during, and after death is disrupted thanks to all the senior staff of the Underworld being incapacitated. Souls can't find their proper home in the Underworld and aren't escorted properly from their bodies on the surface. The shades are warped and ghastly even compared to the wretches of before, and the surface world fares no better, with dead bodies becoming zombies and other undead abominations.
    • Moros brings up a similar problem with killing the literal representation of Time. MelinoĆ« is willing to give it a shot: Gods existed before time, so some form of existence must be possible.
  • Prolonged Video Game Sequel: Hades II's Early Access launch already featured more levels, characters, boons, and overall content than the entire final version of the first game. A major contributor to this is the fact that there are two separate paths this time, one for the Underworld and one for the surface, each with their own different areas and bosses.
  • Put on a Bus: Zigzagged. Several gods who gave Boons in the first game — Athena, Artemis and Dionysus — are no longer in the standard selection, with the Watsonian excuse being that they are actively participating in the fight against Chronos (or in Dionysus' case, hiding from the conflict). This means you actually can encounter them — by running into them in person — and gain Boons from them, but at significantly lower frequency than the ones who are up on Olympus. Meanwhile, Apollo, Hephaestus, Hera and Hestia take their place in the standard selection, giving MelinoĆ« something Zagreus never had: the favor of all thirteen of the twelve Olympians.note 
  • Randomized Damage Attack:
    • One of Medea's curses, Suffering on Sight, randomly inflicts 1 to 999 damage to MelinoĆ«'s enemies as they enter the encounter.
    • The Reckless Abandon boon makes MelinoĆ«'s attacks randomly deal exactly 5, 55, or 555 damage whenever she strikes.
  • Record Needle Scratch:
    • During the Hide-and-Seek flashback, the sound of a record needle stopping is played when MelinoĆ« breaks the fourth wall to shush the narrator.
    • When the Fig Leaf from Dionysus procs and one of the fights is skipped, the theme track of his feast plays and a disco ball descends from nowhere. If MelinoĆ« is in a location where she has to trigger multiple Encounters in the same room, triggering the next fight will cause the music to cut out and the disco ball to retract.
  • Reforged into a Minion: The Night Bloom hex and the duo boon Sun Worshiper both allow MelinoĆ« to raise the last enemy she killed as a servant to fight for her. They can function simultaneously if both are obtained in a run.
  • Regional Redecoration: The Rift of Thessaly was flooded by Poseidon to slow the approach of Chronos' forces. Assuming this refers to the real life region of Thessaly, that would take a large chunk out of the Greek mainland.
  • Relationship Values: Similar to the first game, MelinoĆ« can deepen her relationship with some of her allies at the Crossroads by gifting Nectar as well as fishing or bathing with them.
  • Resized Vocals: Two of the boons offered by Circe in the Rift of Thessaly can affect MelinoĆ«'s size and voice lines. "Word of Smaller Stature" makes her shorter for greater speed and dodge chance, plus it gives the effect of Helium Speech; "Word of Greater Girth" makes her larger to deal extra damage and speak with a lower voice. This vocal effect carries over into any dialog later, where other characters will take note of this.
  • Resources Management Gameplay:
    • Your MP functions this way. Your MP completely refills when you enter a new chamber, "The Unseen" Arcana grants a bit of Focus regeneration, and there's a dedicated slot for Boons that make MP recover in various fashions. However, without these Boons or Arcana, you're limited by what you have available. Magic can also be Primed, which functions as reducing your max MP in exchange for a passive buff. For instance, Aphrodite has a Boon which Primes twenty MP in exchange for increasing your attack power.
    • There's multiple different tools for gathering resources you find in the world—a spade for seeds, a pickax for minerals, a tablet for compelling Shades (which gives you Psyche), and a fishing rod for fish, which can be sold for bones for trading with the Broker. These resources are used for purchasing various upgrades between runs. Early Access versions had restrictions on the acquisition of these resources as you could only pick one tool per run; in the full release, MelinoĆ« has all unlocked tools at her disposal, but it's her animal companions that instead influence the appearance rate of resource nodes.
  • Revised Ending: The first major patch for the game post-release added significant context and entirely new content to the ending, expanding the number of required underworld runs from 5 to 7 and deepening character interactions while fleshing out Chronos' Heel–Face Turn.
  • Reviving Enemy: With the Vow of Return active, slain enemies may become Revenants, which rise to fight again if not collected in time.
  • Royal Blood: One of the reasons MelinoĆ« was chosen for the task is her authority over the House of Hades, permitting her access to special routes only available to rulers of the Underworld. The Service Entrance unseals and the shifting chambers of Tartarus, ordinarily intentionally winding to confuse and tire out any potential escapees, rearrange into the Express Route by her command. Only the main doors to the House proper do not respond to her anymore, forcing her to take an alternate route through the gold-polluted River Styx.
  • Rule of Funny: Despite the otherwise accurate setting in Ancient Greece, many modern elements are used for comedy. For example, like in the first game, the player gains health by eating gyros with fries, Hypnos wears a sleeping mask, and sirens are a rock band with microphones, electric guitars, and drums who act just like modern popstars (the juxtaposition of sailor-drowning monsters interested in their audience being a great source of comedy).
  • The Sacred Darkness: Night and the moon are both presented as forces of good throughout the game. The good guys use the power of the moon in various different ways, the Titaness of the Moon Selene is presented as one the strongest forces poised against Chronos, Selene's boons are treated as Limit Breaks, the heroes say "moonlight guide you" as a rallying cry to one another, MelinoĆ« always sets out on her tasks at night and treats the Oath of the Unseen with reverence as the Will of Night.
  • Sadly Mythtaken:
    • A minor case with the sea-themed level Oceanus. In the game, the area is said to be the intersection between Poseidon's domain and the edge of the Underworld, which is true to how the Underworld can be accessed beyond Oceanus in mythology. However, Oceanus in Greek mythology did not refer to the ocean, but rather, to a mythical earth-encircling fresh-water stream from which all rivers would have come from, making it distinct from the actual sea.
    • Hera mentions in her dialogue to not have daughters, but in mythology, she has Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, and Hebe, goddess of youth. Furthermore, Hera was also the foster mother of the nymph Thetis in the Iliad.
  • Scenery Censor: The statue of Dionysus at the doorstep of Zeus' Palace is nude, though the positioning of the goblet of wine blocks the player's view of its crotch.
  • Schmuck Bait: Post-game, an Infernal Contract sometimes appears in Charon's shop. It's on fire, adorned with a large skull, and floating over a fancy base with candles. The game warns the player that "Terms apply..." in the Accept? prompt. The first time MelinoĆ« interacts with the Contract, she doesn't bother to read it, and she's surprised to discover she's signed on to a fight to the death.
  • Sensual Sweets: This game reveals that Nectar and Ambrosia are both a type of cider made from golden apples; however, it's Downplayed compared to the first game, as to progress the relationships with those at the Crossroads, MelinoĆ« needs to give other gifts.
  • Sexy Discretion Shot:
    • Whenever MelinoĆ« and another character engage in Bathtub Bonding, they have to strip naked before they get into the water. The camera pans up before this happens so the player can't see anyone disrobing.
    • After a player progresses the relationship between MelinoĆ« and any of her romance options (Nemesis, Moros, Eris, Icarus), there will eventually be a dialogue option to spend time with them (marked with "follow your heart"). Accept, and the two engage in what is heavily implied to be sex. In any case, there's a Fade to Black with some soft giggling between them over a black screen; nothing racy is ever shown to the player.
  • Shield-Bearing Mook: The Satyr Raiders attacking Mt. Olympus carry a shield and crossbow. Attacking them from the front makes them block, emitting a Sound of No Damage.
  • Shoulders-Up Nudity: During the Bathtub Bonding sequences at the Crossroads, MelinoĆ« and whomever she invited to the bath will be nude, but their portraits will only show them from above their shoulders. The only exception is Dora, who is always naked since she's a wandering ghost, so Dora has a towel on her head when she's in the bath.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The Mourning Fields have a giant head split in half, in the middle of a pool of what is possibly blood, bringing to mind The End of Evangelion.
    • When leaving the last ship in the Rift of Thessaly, one line MelinoĆ« could say is "time to abandon ship".
    • Developers again take inspiration from Dota 2:
      • Hera's damage spreading "Hitch" debuff is Warlock's Fatal Bonds.
      • The expanding and contracting ring of dark fire used by Hecate and Dark Side empowered MelinoĆ« is Razor's Plasma Field. One of the Path of Stars upgrades even grants bonus damage against enemies hit with the ring expanded near max size, in a rough similarity to Plasma Field mechanics which also makes it deal the most damage at maximum range.
      • Selene's aspect of the Black Coat comes with an unique Hex, a barrage of damaging lunar rays that greatly resembles Luna calling upon her goddess Selemene with Eclipse.
      • Demeter's "Winter Harvest" legendary boon does not change from the first game: it still shatters frozen enemies when they drop below a HP threshold, so it remains a reference to Ancient Apparition's Ice Blast.
    • The inverted crescent moon glyph on Eris's forehead may be a reference to the Black Moon Clan from Sailor Moon, who also antagonize the moon-themed female protagonist of their work.
    • One of your familiars is Frinos, whose name comes from the Greek word for "toad", that can hypnotize shades into providing you with resources and coming to the Crossroads. Why does that sound familiar...?
    • Ares' design, with legs and arms soaked in blood, brings to mind his design from Brian Azzarello's Wonder Woman (2011), where he is portrayed with legs perpetually stained with blood.
    • In the credits, Selene's pegasus, much like the Pegasus in Hercules (1997), has a blue mohawk-esque mane.
    • "Bewitching Eyes" is inspired by Queen's "The Show Must Go On", sharing a tempo, similar melody, and Power Ballad structure. The battle with Scylla and the Sirens also opens with an MTV-like stack of text on the lower left corner of the screen, showing song title, artist, album, and label.
    • The portrait of Ares shows him sitting among weapons with hands on one knee in the same manner as the Ludovisi Ares.
  • Shown Their Work:
    • Scylla's name is properly pronounced as "Skylla" here instead of "Silla".
    • Upon progressing through Dora's questline to the point where her memories get restored, it's revealed that as Pandora, the container of evils she opened was indeed a pithos as opposed to a box, as is commonly believed.
    • The "Askion kataski" Magical Incantation MelinoĆ« performs at the Crossroads cauldron is lifted from a set of magical words written in the Ephesia Grammata.
    • Hecate as a stern teacher but at the same time caring for MelinoĆ« is based on how she's often seen in Neo-Paganism.
  • The Siege: How Chronos is waging his war against Olympus. In control of the Underworld and its gates wide open, any defeated troops will simply walk out again and try to climb Mount Olympus, creating a long-lasting stalemate between the two forces.
  • Sigil Spam: In addition to the symbol of Hades from Hades, the sequel includes additional symbol imagery:
    • The strophalos (or Hecate's Wheel) appears in places associated with witchcraft, as seen on Hecate's hat/belt, MelinoĆ«'s kidney belt, and the Crossroads cauldron.
    • Moon symbols appear on the designs of characters related to the, well, moon. Most characters are outfitted with crescent moon symbols, though Hecate, MelinoĆ«, Selene's steeds, etc. also don an emblem depicting multiple phases of the moon. Even the game's UI menus are ornamented with moons!
    • Hourglass symbols appear in plenty on elements associated with Chronos/time. Chronos's design incorporate multiple hourglasses. Shades that have turned to Chronos's side have hourglass symbols marking them as such. In addition, the NPC encounter in the fourth area of the Underworld Hades is found with hourglass symbols on him. Also, the gold crowns produced after he took over the Underworld bear the hourglass instead of the sigil of Hades.
  • Sirens Are Mermaids: Scylla and her Sirens are a band of merfolk whose crooning tunes lead MelinoĆ« Down the Drain through Oceanus, although Scylla herself has a somewhat different design to the more typical mermaids that accompany her, which is likely a nod to her origins as an entirely distinct sea monster.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: Frinos is the first animal familiar that MelinoĆ« can employ on her runs once that function is unlocked, and just having it around grants her a bonus to her health. Even though Frinos won't do any damage until it's upgraded, the extra health gives a buffer that can let MelinoĆ« survive early bosses and push further in a run.
  • Snake People: The Fields of Mourning's Lamiai and Queen Lamia are magic-wielding enemies that have the head and torso of women and serpentine lower bodies.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: The Lamia encountered throughout the Fields of Mourning are as violent as any other baddie, to MelinoĆ«'s, an animal lover fond of snakes otherwise, great chagrin.
  • Strong Family Resemblance:
    • Nemesis's face looks almost identical to that of her mother Nyx.
    • Dialogue with Demeter has her claim this about MelinoĆ« and Persephone.
    • Moros - another child of Nyx - bears a strong resemblance to his brothers, Thanatos and Hypnos.
  • Spanner in the Works: Zagreus proves to be this to the plans of both the Unseen and Chronos. MelinoĆ« manages to convince her big brother to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, using their father's spear Gigaros by turning it into an Immortal Breaker that can render Chronos permanently dead. But once Zagreus actually gets to Chronos in his own time, Zagreus doesn't kill Chronos — as The Heart of the House of Hades, Zagreus already learned that the family's infighting can never end well after the events of the first game. Instead, Zag convinces his grandfather to try living with the rest of the family peacefully in the House of Hades. It works, and Chronos becomes "Father Time" to the House of Hades and a doting grandparent to MelinoĆ«. By doing so, Zagreus technically does what MelinoĆ« wants in that he neutralizes that threat of the Titan of Time, just in a roundabout way. However, Hecate (and Melinoe herself in the initial 1.0 release) is more than a little angry that she didn't get to exact her vengeance on the Titan.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: A side objective MelinoĆ« can tackle involves waking Hypnos from his Deep Sleep. MelinoĆ« tries rousing him from his slumber with numerous magical concoctions, going so far as to dive deeper and deeper into his subconscious in an effort to find some part of him alert and awake for her to interact with. But she's frustrated as Hypnos seems to be trapped in an unshakable slumber no matter how deep she goes. MelinoĆ« eventually grows frustrated with how he's asleep even in the deepest, most abstract depths of his mind. That's when she sees a paper scrawled with, "Have you tried saying wake up?" MelinoĆ« is shocked that this simple thing succeeds where all of her laborious attempts failed.
  • Super-Deformed: The "Cthonic Chid" items that can be purchased as decor are chibi versions of various members of the Unseen. The game description calls them "oddly proportioned collectable figure[s]".
  • Super Mode: The Dark Side Hex transforms MelinoĆ« into a form that's impervious to damage, rapidly shoots fireballs with each attack, and can create an expanding then contracting ring of energy to attack. This form only lasts for a few seconds.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Some of the boons offered in this game are similar if not identical to ones from the original. Zeus stands out, as his Blitz effect in this game has many similarities to Ares' Doom effect in the first, including a secondary boon that makes them function identically outside of how long it takes to trigger, and his new Duo with Aphrodite functioning very similarly to Athena's and Ares' Duo in the first. In addition, Hestia's Scorch replaces Dionysus' Hangover as the main Damage Over Time effect.
  • Tangible Darkness: Similar to the first game, Darkness is (apparently) a solid material. This time it's far less common due to Chronos' meddling with the Underworld, yet can be plucked from the realm of Chaos.
  • Tech Tree: After getting a Hex, subsequent encounters with Selene let you upgrade it via the Path of Stars. The upgrades include reducing the amount of magic needed to charge the Hex, increasing its effectiveness, and more.
  • Tell Me About My Father: MelinoĆ«, having never known her family as a result of Chronos' invasion, has a natural curiosity about her parents and brother, and often asks about them when she encounters deities who knew them.
  • This Cannot Be!: Chronos reacts with disbelief when MelinoĆ« demonstrates an ability to evade his time-freezing powers. His first defeat at her hands provokes a similar response as he fades.
  • This Song Goes Out to TV Tropes: Some of Scylla's pre-battle greetings include a shout-out to her fans:
    "We'd like to dedicate this next song to all our fans! Especially you, lady."
  • Time Keeps On Ticking: In the boss fight against Chronos while the Vow of Rivals is active, the game will forcefully unpause shortly after the player tries to pause it. Eventually, the player learns an Incantation to remove this restriction.
  • Time-Passage Beard: Bouldy shows up again, keeping Hades company, with a short "beard" made of moss.
  • Time Stands Still: This is shown to be the fate of Zagreus, Megaera, Thanatos, Nyx, Persephone, Achilles, and Dusa, all of whom were frozen in time by Chronos during his takeover.
  • Titanomachy, Round Two: The Inciting Incident of the plot is the titan Chronos escaping from Tartarus and capturing Hades, his former captor. Hades' daughter MelinoĆ« is trying to kill Chronos and save her father and the rest of her family. Later, Chronos adds the monster Typhon to the mix and unleashes him on Olympus.
  • Title-Only Chorus: "I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death)" is a diss track against MelinoĆ«, but the chorus is a few lines of the title threat and nothing else.
  • Too Awesome to Use: Averted with Magick and Hexes. Trying to conserve these resources for important battles is pointless and impossible:
    • Magick refills itself after leaving a location, and unless you deliberately avoid the Boons for it, is easy to recharge during a battle, so you don't have to worry about wasting anything that uses it.
    • Hexes need to be slowly charged up by expending Magick (further discouraging you from conserving it), but the progress towards it resets after leaving a room, so charging it up against normal enemies and saving it for another room's boss is impossible, much like the previous game's God Gauge.
  • Truck Driver's Gear Change: The Power Ballad "Bewitching Eyes" jumps from A flat to C for the final chorus.
  • Uncommon Time: The game's soundtrack features unusual time signatures in spades. This serves to emphasize the effect Chronos—and by extension, the manipulation of time—has on the game's narrative.
    • The title theme remixes the original Hades title theme in 7/4.
    • "Into Tartarus" (and its battle mix) starts in 4/4. It's 21 beats a phrase after that, and the "chorus" alternates 4/4 and 7/4.
    • The final boss theme alternates between a large number of time signatures. The first half of the theme starts in 6/8, jumps to 4/4, includes a measure of 2/4, then continues on in 7/8, 6/8, and 4/4. The second half of the theme repeats four measures of 6/8 + 1/8 (~25/8) and then switches to 6/8 during the bridge. It's only in the final segment (when you beat the boss) does the piece return to 4/4. Considering who the final boss is, this is very fitting indeed.
    • Hecate's battle theme "Crossed Flames" jumps freely between 4/4 and 6/4, then adds 15/8 to the mix as her health gets low.
    • "The Risen Fleet" is mainly in 11/8.
    • The verses in "I Am Gonna Claw (Out Your Eyes then Drown You to Death)" alternate between 3/4 and 2/4, ultimately adding up to 11 beats per phrase.
  • Underground Monkey: Some enemy types have clear equivalents across regions, for example Shamblers simply have variants with extra hit points and damage and Sop-Spindles are just Spindles with longer beams but slower rotation.
  • The Unintelligible: A conversation between MelinoĆ« and Artemis reveals that while Charon speaks with growls and whispers that most everyone cannot understand, he's the Intelligible Unintelligible to Cthonic gods, who hold genuine conversations with him. Post-game, MelinoĆ« meets the Fates, and Atropos's single line in the conversation consists of groaning. After MelinoĆ« tells Charon that he reminds her of Atropos, he reacts to this comment with apparent offense.
  • Unseen No More:
    • In the first game, Apollo is only briefly mentioned in some of Artemis's quotes, while the trailer shows he's a fully seen god.
    • Initially only hinted at through one of the previous wielders of Stygius, Nemesis has been elevated to one of the Gods that aids MelinoĆ« in her quest. Appropriately, her art depicts her with Stygius as it appears when using her aspect in the previous game.
    • Hestia is now a proper boon-granting deity, whereas she was only hinted at in the first game as an aspect of the Adamant Rail.
    • Hephaestus, having been only mentioned as having built the statue of Olympus gifted to the House of Hades in the first game's epilogue, finally appears as a boon-granting god. His absence in the previous installment is explained as him initially dismissing Zagreus' plight as more family drama, something that he regrets and wishes to rectify here.
    • Eris, the Goddess of Strife, appears wielding Exagryph and giving blessings of dubious help in MelinoĆ«'s incursions.
    • Hera was mentioned as one of the previous wielders of Coronacht in the first game. Here, she'll start granting her boons after your first proper run in the surface.
    • In the post-game, the Three Fates can show up in the epilogue, making their first and only appearance onscreen. They tell MelinoĆ« in so many words that they'll be taking a break from spinning fates anymore, leaving mortals and gods to their own devices.
  • Unwinnable by Design: MelinoĆ« trying to survive on the surface is doomed to fail, as she suffers an unavoidable, rapidly-scaling source of damage that no amount of healing can stop from killing her within the first few rooms. Only after that initial death does Moros give her an incantation that allows her a fighting chance up there.
  • Variable Mix:
    • Much as in the previous game, the background music changes as the player moves in and out of battle.
    • Throughout Oceanus, the song Song of the Sirens can be heard; since it's sung by Scylla and her Sirens, the boss of the area, the closer you get to the boss, the louder the vocals become. The same happens with their other songs once you've progressed the game enough for them to debut new singles.
    • During the actual boss fight, as Scylla and her Sirens are playing their own boss music, taking out different members of the band results in the track changing to reflect the loss of vocals or instruments. In addition, Scylla sometimes retreats into her shell, which causes the vocals to be muffled.
  • V-Sign:
    • When interacted with, happy Shades in the Crossroads may display a victory sign below their speech balloons.
    • Once the main story is finished and the stakes for further victories are lower, MelinoĆ« gives a victory sign while performing her "Return to shadow, now" cast.
  • Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: While the game adds four new Olympians to get Boons from— Apollo, Hephaestus, Hera, and Hestia— three of the Gods from the original game were conspicuously absent in the original early access release. Dialogue from Apollo confirmed that Athena is engaged in the defense of Olympus, and Zeus confirmed Dionysus has holed himself off somewhere far away from the war to get drunk; both of them were added in the Olympic Update, with Athena clearing rooms and giving boons similar to Artemis in the Underworld Path, and Dionysus giving boons to MelinoĆ« in an NPC encounter. Ares, the final absent Olympian, was then added with the Warsong Update, and only appears in the full release after Typhon is defeated.
  • When Dimensions Collide: The level Oceanus is described as the encounter between the sea depths and the outer edges of the Underworld. This means that the region is filled with pipes, pools, and sea monsters, but also shades of the dead, such as Narcissus.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: MelinoĆ« reacts in disbelief to Hypnos anticlimactically teleporting away after all the work she put into waking him up.
    Melinoƫ: What in blazes happened, he... that's it?
  • Zero-Effort Boss: The third phase of the storyline battle against Chronos is impossible to lose. Chronos's attacks can still hurt MelinoĆ«, but she has infinite uses of Death Defiance.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Chronos revives legions of the undead to fight for him on the surface, as both Thanatos and Hades are imprisoned.

Narrator: Having now reached the end of the page, trope-listing Melinoƫ believes her task thoroughly completed, every detail of her incantations, attempts, and adversaries meticulously catalogued and understood. Unfortunately, the time spent in so cataloguing has left her fate open to a horrid end, one best left only in imagination.

Melinoƫ: No! Return to shadow, now!

TIME CANNOT BE STOPPED

 
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Alternative Title(s): Hades 2

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The Crossroads Hotspring

Once certain requirements are met and the Hot Springs feature is unlocked for the Crossroads, Melinoë can invite her allies to take a bath with her, provided their relationship is deep enough.

How well does it match the trope?

4.33 (6 votes)

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Main / BathtubBonding

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