Gameplay and System Changes

[RealVanillaSmooth]

There are some pretty major design changes between the first and second games. I'm cool with changes but some of the things in Hades 2 seem like bad design since it is a fast-paced game that removes player agency in some aspects. Let's talk about it.

(1) dashing: the recovery frames from dashing should be addressed. At the moment I haven't been in any fights where I thought it was super punishing, but if we can expect an exhaustive pact of punishment system then I imagine this is going to be overly punishing very quickly for heat levels (or whatever the equivalent will be) that aren't high heat. Combine that with the MUCHHHHHHH smaller stages and I expect dashing is going to feel very frustrating as the game becomes harder either through balance changes or increased difficulty.

In fact, I almost entirely expect things to get nerfed for the player. This was true for the first game and is basically true for a lot of other games within the same space as Hades (The Last Spell, Risk of Rain, etc.).

(2) Committing to attacks: Right now there doesn't seem like a lot of agency in being able to cancel your attacks and it seems worse since however the inputs are being read in the game make it so that you're forced to press buttons multiple times with a very small window to decide if you want to continue with an attack string or not. Either this window needs to grow so that players can more easily decide if they want to commit to their attacks mid-string OR we need a reliable way to cancel.

This isn't a Souls game. We are going to get flooded with things on the screen down the line and it's not going to feel great being locked in when we need to move. I think this is where looking at SHMUP design would really help. Or just look back at the first game. It was perfect there.

(3) Screamers (or whatever they're called): I understand that the strategy here is to either take a Demeter boon to freeze them or run away, but with the recovery frames on dashing and the actually running mechanic having poor control in small stages (as addressed earlier), there doesn't seem like a ton of ways to reliably evade these enemies without taking damage. Could just be a symptom of not unlocking everything but I think their attack range or movement speed need to be lowered.

I think the way the game is now could benefit from my outlined suggestions and IF the intention of the game is to be played the way it is now, why not add these features to pacts of punishment? In the past pacts of punishment exclusively either altered enemies or the environment. Maybe it's time we have pacts that nerf the player and we are forced to take certain buffs to alleviate these nerfs and reducing power elsewhere.

[Apollo]

i fully agree, but i think i can help you with the screamers: if you use your cast, they will not be able to go through the area fast and it will slow them a lot. I hope this helps!

[Epsilon92]

agree with all the above points, i think it's very weird you can't cancel or dash out of attack strings. Pretty sure zag was able to in the first game

Some of the later enemies seem to have a ridiculous health pool as well, but that could be because i'm getting to those floors without a lot of upgrades. I prefer the first upgrade system but that's probably because i've only done a few runs card system is kinda weird but i'm open to change

[RealVanillaSmooth]

Originally posted by Lightningfox206:

i fully agree, but i think i can help you with the screamers: if you use your cast, they will not be able to go through the area fast and it will slow them a lot. I hope this helps!

I mean that's the way they're intended to be counterplayed. Big issue is on the smaller stages where you might be dealing with more than one coming from different directions.

Thankfully the damage is low but incremental damage makes big impacts over time. It's not so much an issue right now before we start getting pacts of punishment but I see these enemies being big issues in racking up "free" damage down the line.

But yeah there is counterplay. Demeter boons IMO are the best to get a no hit in the first biome.

[Catastrof]

I fully agree. For me the biggest problem so far is how the character moves. The dash is quite awful to play in my opinion, the character feels much heavier than Zagreus was. The sprint is a great idea, but the lack of precision makes it often bad. I play with the mouse and keyboard, and it feels very frustrating in comparaison with Hades 1 (my BGE).

[nottoph]

Originally posted by Lightningfox206:

i fully agree, but i think i can help you with the screamers: if you use your cast, they will not be able to go through the area fast and it will slow them a lot. I hope this helps!

Yeah, it seems like the cast is basically meant to replace zagreus's high-mobility fast/multiple dashes as your main distance management tool? Meant to use it to lock down enemies so you can safely charge and execute your damage combo/omega (as opposed to hades 1, where you'd use dashes to reposition yourself for safety/backstab damage), or manage multiple fronts i.e freeze one side while you deal with the other, or lock down the big scary melee guys while you sprint to the back to take out the ranged enemies. Takes some getting used to, not sure how much of it is the balance still needing some tweaking and how much is me being used to hades 1 where you could just zip zap zip zap in and out of the enemy's danger zone with impunity lol.