Last month, Hades 2 blessed the world with a hefty update that included new weapons, more story beats, expanded romantic options, and the major reveal of Narcissus’ true face. A couple of weeks later, the godly roguelike is receiving yet another update with a host of gameplay adjustments focused on core aspects, like weapons and power-ups. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this patch, however, is developer Supergiant Games’ announcement that the early access version of the game has reached the end of the road after a year of patches and polish.
“We’ll keep monitoring your feedback, though this will likely be our final patch before our v1.0 launch, whenever that will be!“ reads the blog post that outlines all of the new changes. ”We’re very grateful for your support throughout Early Access!“
Perhaps this isn’t surprising after the last update, when Supergiant said that Hades 2 wouldn’t see any more additions for regions, encounters, or abilities as the focus shifted toward finishing the ending of the game. There’s still no set release date, but based on where the game is at now, we may soon have an answer to how one goes about killing time.
So, what’s in the new patch? There’s a barrage of bullet points you can peruse here, but one noteworthy detail here is that a decent portion of these changes are a direct response to community feedback, Supergiant says. These include crucial adjustments, like making sure that Melinoe greets Frinos when her frog pal is hanging out in the training grounds. Hades 2 was completely unplayable before that, in my opinion.
Overall, the tweaks seem to nerf a variety of things, the most noteworthy of which might be Hestia, the flame goddess. One boon no longer deals critical damage, while a couple of other abilities have seen reduced Scorch damage. Players don’t seem too happy about this, especially since the last update made Hestia a more viable gameplay option to begin with.
Other changes, like faster enemies for Vow of Frenzy and smaller life recovery for Vow of Scars, make what were already difficult aspects of the game even harder. After all, the Unseen update introduced a mode with “ultimate” versions of Guardians where, in addition to having better move sets and new abilities, players could stack on additional challenges like increased damage or larger hordes. Woof.
But hey, it’s something to keep you busy until the full game comes out.