Figured I should just start a new thread for this rather than keep posting comments in someone else's blog, since discussion of this game might go on for a while. Feel free to share any thoughts on the game, your progress, etc.

The first night I played for a little over three hours and made a few failed attempts at the second boss. At that point I hadn't really found a weapon or boon combination that I particularly liked.

But tonight I was able to play for an extended period, about twice as long as the night before in total, and I think I've started to settle into a preferred playstyle, at least for now. I unlocked the Moonstone Axe and immediately felt most comfortable with that. I generally preferred the ranged options in the last game, but here they feel kinda weak by comparison--not sure if the dev team is overcorrecting, or if maybe there will still be a ranged option I like when I start unlocking alternative weapon aspects, which I understand are still a thing. Anyway, I dig the Axe's big damage despite it being slow as hell.

One thing that helps is taking a freezing basic attack from Demeter. When I first saw that her effect had changed from a stacking slow effect to a short freeze on a longish cooldown (you freeze for 2 seconds, then can't freeze the same enemy again for 10 seconds), I didn't think it would be as useful, but for the Axe it's perfect: freeze your enemies and then pound them into sand, even if they're armored. Extra great if you get the passive boon that extends the freeze duration. By the time they'd be unfrozen they're usually already dead, so the slow attack speed just doesn't matter as much.

But of course anything that increases the Axe's speed also helps. Hermes can grant boons that just straight up increase attack speed, and the Daedalus Hammer can also help with that, including an upgrade that massively increases charge attack speed for the charged spin2win strategy.

Beyond that, I feel like Hestia's "Hearth Gain" (rapid magick regeneration in trade for -20% max health) is distinctly overtuned and basically top-tier for any build. Sure, -20% max health is not ideal, but with this boon you rarely have to be concerned about your magick meter at all and can just spam omega attacks about as much as you want.

As I started figuring all this out, I began making pretty good progress. I got to where I could beat the second boss consistently, but for my first two attempts in zone 3 I didn't even make it all the way to the boss. Then, funnily, I actually beat the zone 3 boss the first time I faced it... though it was by the skin of my teeth, and I died in literally the first area of zone 4. But on my next and final attempt of the night, I beat the boss of zone 3 a second time, and then made it all the way to the boss of zone 4. I suspect I won't beat that dude for a while yet, he hits like a truck and I really haven't figured out his moveset yet.

Anyway, all in all I'm definitely enjoying myself. There are a few rough edges that need to be addressed; e.g., for some reason your current gold isn't displayed when you're in a shop, which seems pretty dumb (you can see it by checking your boons, but that shouldn't be necessary). And it remains to be seen how I'll ultimately feel about this one in relation to the first game (I suspect I may end up preferring the first one). But there's plenty of time for improvements.

Thanks for starting this thread! I haven't had time to crack into the early access version yet, but I'm probably most curious about the weapons. I definitely used the bow as a crutch in the first game, so it's interesting to hear that it feels underpowered now. The two weapons during the tech test felt like they had more ranged power than Zagreus' weapons, so maybe the power of the bow has just been spread out more this time.

RE: gold not displaying in a shop - that's very weird because there were no issues with that in my tech test experience. I suspect they'll fix that in their first patch, whenever that may be.

Yeah, the bow with the aspect of Chiron was pretty hack with the tracking arrows and whatnot. That was easily the weapon I was most successful with. But I think you're right, all of the Hades II weapons seem to have some sort of ranged component, whereas the first game's weapons were more... focused? I don't want to say one-dimensional. But so far it seems harder in this sequel to put together a pure ranged build. It can be done with the right boons, but IMO none of the ranged options seem that strong out of the gate.

I've been having a great time with it but definitely feeling like I'm flying through this initial content, which to be fair is not this games fault I may have played a little bit of Hades 1 in the past to cause that situation. I feel like the only reason I haven't one-shot a lot areas/bosses is because the first time you get there you get a massive stacking debuff from Strife.

So very curious to see what the "Oh you think you're good at this game" options are when you clear a run, if any are even available in this round of EA.

Don't have a functional gaming PC right now and probably won't til next year so dealing with super jelly fomo. Hades one of my all time favs and what I've seen of this has me freaking out. God dang I wish the earky access was on xbox

I was a little late to the Hades 1 party and so its only been a couple years since I last played it. Loved the game but I have to say I was pretty thoroughly satisfied on its gameplay loop by the end and dont feel ready to jump into it all over again.

Does it feel fresh enough or is it just more Hades?

@junkerman: It's been a while since I played the first one, but it's pretty much just more Hades IMO.

Did 2 runs so far. I would say the game is tuned as Hades' 1.0 release. I died to floor boss both times just like how Meg and only Meg kept killing Zag in the first one...

Daedalus Upgrades seem a little uneventful now. Not ineffective mind you but a lot of weapon upgrades in Hades were very big changes to how the weapons worked and a lot of what I've seen are just slight modifications or bigger numbers.

@efesell: TBH the weapon aspects also feel that way. I unlocked them recently and they're less distinct than I want them to be.

Welp, I just had my first successful run on Chronos. Felt kinda flukey though, honestly. I got a Daedalus Hammer upgrade early on that shortened my special charge speed by a lot, but I didn't really build around that for most of the run. Then right at the end I ran across a Charon well that offered a couple of temp boons: something like +40% damage to all omega attacks, and +30% damage to all special attacks, for X number of encounters. On the strength of that I was able to just range Chronos down with fast charging omega specials that were hitting for like 900 damage a pop. I just kept my distance and tried to stay safe.

I'll probably do a few more runs for giggles, but I think soon I might stop and give it a little more time to cook, give them time to write the actual endings, etc., not to mention add the remaining surface world areas.

I'm curious if others have continued to play and have more thoughts. Per my last post, I thought that maybe I'd take a break and wait for more content, but actually I only paused for a day and then got drawn back in.

Game's real good. At this point I believe I've maxed out all NPCs on gifts for now, and also maxed out the levels of all the arcana cards I'm actually using (still plenty of others to upgrade). Did manage to beat a few runs on Fear 16 to unlock the second statue, but have not gone higher and after that have mostly been slumming on Fear 0, where it's now pretty hard to lose with the rogue-lite upgrades to Melinoe's kit and my own greater experience with the game. But I'm still finding it amusing.

What weapons have people gravitated to? I've played mostly Axe, as its ridiculous damage more than makes up for its slow swing speed... the slowdown for omega attacks mostly makes the slow speed a non-issue TBH. But I'm also not sure if the Axe really is as overpowered as it seems or it's just the kind of weapon I personally tend to gravitate to. Still, wouldn't be surprised to see a nerf in the first balance patch.

Eventually I went back to the Staff just to do something different, and fairly quickly discovered that it's actually pretty easy to turn it into a really powerful mana-less ranged weapon. Its "normal" (non-omega) special attack normally only does 10 damage, so %-based boons suck on it, but take Poseidon's flat damage boost (40 at Epic level) and suddenly your weak little pew-pew gun begins to hit like a truck. If you then manage to find the Hammer that changes your special so that it fires 2 tracking projectiles instead of just 1, you can pretty much just steamroll over everything for the rest of the run.

The other three weapons have not grabbed me. I dislike the extremely short range of the Sister Blades, the ammo retrieval on the Skulls is annoying, and the Torches feel underpowered. But maybe they're just not my style.

That first patch came out and fixed the gold display problem I mentioned earlier. It also made it so that the tool you pick is a "focus"--resources for the tool you pick just appear more often than other resources, but you are able to collect them all. So the game will no longer taunt you with resources you can't pick up. Probably a good change?

Besides the Axe in general, the other thing in the game that feels kinda OP to me is Zeus's Storm Ring, which blasts a single foe in your omega cast for insane damage, and pretty much always feels like the best option. In fact, if you get that and a boon that changes the cast to a projectile, you can almost ignore your primary weapon and just keep spamming your cast.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see how the game evolves. I came to the first Hades late, so I don't have a good sense of how things changed from the early days, but it seems likely that this one will change less now that SuperGiant has a formula to work from.