Hades 2 didn’t make it onto our Game of the Year ranking—falling short of being our Best Roguelike in lieu of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. Despite my best efforts, mind, so I am once again forced to make it my personal pick for the second year in a row. The main thing that set it apart, for the worse, was its saminess. Generally speaking we try to value novelty here at PC Gamer.
Personal Pick
In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2025, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We’ll post new personal picks each day throughout the rest of the month. You can find them all here.
Well, perhaps novelty’s the wrong word. It’s maybe even a little judgmental—but in fairness, we live in a gaming ecosystem absolutely flooded with sequels. Call of Duty has had, to date, 22 whole games. Some of them even share a title! Why is there a Modern Warfare 2 and a Modern Warfare II? Shut up, eat your gunslop.
So I can understand the cynicism when Supergiant, an indie studio that was until now known for making indie action RPGs each with a distinct, potent vibe—Bastion, Transistor, Pyre—went ahead, rolled its sleeves up, and decided to do a sequel.
Not just a sequel, but a sequel that took the framework of the first game, which was already very good and complete, and didn’t really change up the formula. Consider the following:
- It’s still a roguelike.
- You still pick one of three godly boons whenever you interact with a glowy orb.
- You still have a (genuinely impressive, from a technical standpoint) persistent story told through repeat conversations.
- You still have an optional postgame with the rest of the story in it.
- Said story is about overcoming inherited familial trauma. Again.
- You can still upgrade your homebase with materials gathered during your run.
- There’s still a bunch of progression systems to grind through.
- Darren Korb is still popping the hell off; what’re they feeding him?
- Its roster of smoking hot gods and shades is still pure distilled bait for bisexuals.
- (It’s me, I am bisexuals).
There are some differences, mind. Having charged Omega versions of all your spells is new. The Hexes add another layer of upgrade paths to runs. Familiars are a neat addition, even if it becomes clear pretty fast which one’s the best (it’s Gale). Godly boons are a mixture of the familiar and the new. Dionysus is showing bulge, now. It’s twice as big (the game, not the bulge) with two different paths to conquer.
But if you’ve played Hades 1? Aside from a new story to gnaw on, there’s nothing exactly new to be found. It’s the most “just more X” videogame I think I’ve played in recent memory—it certainly builds on the original, but it doesn’t reinvent it.
And you know what? Good. If you don’t like it, more for me!
I get sequel fatigue, but it’s not like Supergiant’s rehashing a Call of Duty game for the nth time—this is literally the studio’s first ever proper sequel, and Supergiant chose to make a sequel to, oh, I don’t know, only one of the best roguelikes ever made? The Hades? The game that quite literally set the template for roguelikes with persistent stories? The game that’s at the top of every recommendation list? The game that we scored number 34 in our top 100 this very goddamn year?
“It’s just the same!” Oh, boo-hoo! Waiter, waiter, my steak is too juicy!
– me, absolutely not upset this didn’t get a spot for a second year in a row.
“It’s just the same!” Oh, boo-hoo! Waiter, waiter, my steak is too juicy! My cup runneth over just a little too much! I know we’re all exhausted, but I cannot help but be a little grumpy that my co-workers turned up their nose at two luxury cakes simply based on the fact that there are two of them. Usually I only have kind words for my fellows here at PC Gamer, but today I say: You’re all spoiled rotten, and I will only forget this sleight when I am dead and buried in the ground.
In all seriousness: Yes, Hades 2 is a lot like Hades 1: But it’s bigger and better in almost every way, only wobbling a bit on the story front. Maybe it should be punished for snagging its heel inches away from the finish line, but in the last year I can conceivably make Hades 2 my personal pick, I will say this: Sometimes familiarity is good and fine; Sometimes doing the same trick twice rules, actually, and sometimes a game that allows Darren Korb to invite Louis Cole to absolutely shred on drums is worth the trade-off.
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