This post contains mechanical spoilers and boss names for Hades II.

I wasn't just hoping to like Hades II, I was fully expecting to. I generally think there are two possible failure states to a sequel to a game like Hades where much of the fun is encounter and build design that can be expanded on almost indefinitely: either it turns out to be more of the same, which may be a bit uninspiring but can't be too bad if I liked the original (think Dark Souls III); or it takes the game in a wildly different direction that doesn't quite work, which may not be as fun as such but is almost always interesting (think Tears of the Kingdom). And at first it looked like Hades II was going to be more of the same, and I was content with that. But the more I played, the more it seemed to have an issue at the heart of its combat that just wasn't there in the original.

The game has a legibility problem, and not just in terms of the density and chaos of on-screen interactions (although that certainly doesn't help). This problem is structural: it pervades the game's design sensibilities. Whether it's a consequence of the game's wildly popular early access period or a result of the studio's anxiety about their first-ever sequel to their only massive hit, it pushes the player into a mode of play that's less fun and more frustrating. Legibility isn't just about being able to keep track of what's going on, it has far-reaching consequences for what types of play are safe in practice and thus which builds are viable. In a game whose primary mechanical driver is the joy of assembling new and interesting builds, that's critical.

Some of this springs from the new boss design philosophy in Hades II. In the original, bosses were generally built around melee attacks that did damage in some hitbox around the boss and ranged attacks that flew outwards from the boss. There were occasional situations—most notably when fighting Theseus after vanquishing Asterius—where large AOEs^[1] appeared that the player had to avoid, but these were very much the exception. The result is fights that are focused on the player establishing a rhythm where they dive in, hit the boss, position themselves to evade the boss's next attack, and repeat.

With the exception of some minibosses and Hecate (the first true boss), Hades II doesn't work this way. Bosses in the sequel are much more focused on two types of attacks that rarely appeared in the original: AOEs that are telegraphed by regions of the arena turning red usually independently of the boss's positions, and "waves" of damage that the player is expected to avoid using the invulnerability frames. When melee attacks do appear they tend to come out very quickly and often have their own AOEs, while ranged attacks come in one of two flavors: they're either very fast (often…

While this blog post does contain specific mechanical spoilers about Hollow Knight: Silksong, they're only at the very end, clearly marked, and hidden by default. Most of the post is spoiler-free.

Many games, video and otherwise, are structured in a way that presents the player with both challenges tools they can use to address those challenges. In video games specifically, much hay is made online of the challenges themselves: everyone talks about Ornstein and Smough, Absolute Radiance, or Balteus. But to the player in the moment, the shape of the tools they use determines as much or more about their actual experience.

Tools aren't just in-game items. They're anything that aids the player or allows them to engage with the game, from their character's stats to movement mechanics to the very concept of "make your character not be where the attack is". In sports, the players themselves are the most important tools. In chess, the pieces are tools but so are rules castling and stalemates. It's an intentionally broad term to discuss a broad set of game structures.

These tools are not only the ultimate determiner of how difficult the challenge is^[1], a well-designed arsenal gives players the opportunity to sculpt their experience, creating a mode of play that fits both the needs of the challenge at hand and their own personal preference. Often players end up self-sorting into two rough camps: those who choose one set of tools (a "build") and stick with it for every challenge and so experience challenges that may be easy for others as very difficult when the tools they've chosen don't line up well, and those who see each challenge as an opportunity to puzzle out the exact optimal set of tools and so take down the challenge as easily as possible. I myself fall into either camp depending on the specific context^[2].

One of the first thing a player will ask when choosing which tools to use is, "what's the most powerful?" And in some cases the answer to this is straightforward. In Dark Souls, the Straight Sword Hilt is certainly among the weakest weapons you can use by any objective measure. But in many cases the answer is unclear. There is no consensus "best" weapon in Dark Souls nor its successors, because what "power" even means depends on the player's play style, their goals, and to a substantial degree, their skill.

Defining Skill

I want to take a moment here to clarify what I mean by "skill", at least for the purposes of this post. I don't really want to get into the weeds discussing video game difficulty here and now, but I do think that discourse has made it difficult to mention skill as a concept without raising everyone's hackles and bringing in a bunch of extra baggage. So I'll try to be explicit about how I'm using the term here.

I'm not talking about skill as in some sort of innate talent at video…