Feedback: The Surface is Exhausting

[Vinx]

To preface this: I knew going in that I'd never be among the top tier of Hades 2 players - I fought my way to Heat 16-17 of the original Hades with sweat and rage - but I figured I should still be able to handle the base level after some pattern-learning and patience. So far, H2 seems intent on smashing home the fact that those aren't enough. Enemies swarm you, hit hard or often, and zones are often unrelenting. Bosses are worse. The Underworld bosses are around the difficulty I'd expect from a Hades sequel (harder, but consistently beatable once you learn patterns and get some boons), but the Surface ones are... miserable. Bosses in the original game stumped me for a while, too, but none of them ever got to the frustrating un-fun misery that is the Eris fight. (As an aside: I have beaten her, but there was no satisfaction to it because I knew it I hadn't actually increased my ability to defeat her next time - her mechanics will make for a precision-fight every single time, and nothing I've attempted thus far except choose the one magic boon can make that slightly less miserable.)
Several of the other bosses, and even side-bosses, share a frustrating dodge-heavy, take-it-slow-or-else rhythm, which clashes with the frantic nature of most other combats. This is particularly rough when paired with the frequent mid-boss summons, as regular enemies will chase or charge or area-deny you into swift attacks and retreats, which can easily mess up dodging the hard-hitting boss. Eris is the worst for this (that I've noticed), but it is a pattern several bosses have.

I am not a bad Hades player. I am not a master, but I improved with the challenge at a rate that made for a very satisfying experience overall. I am a _terrible_ Hades 2 player, and not from lack of trying or experimenting... it is just significantly more demanding at the base level than the first game at several leaves of Heat, and seems aimed at the best of Hades' players instead of the bulk of them. I am only continuing now out of spite and the hopes I can contribute to the conversation - otherwise, I'd be dropping it until Full Release.
A part of me hopes they are boosting speed, health, and hit strength for the Early Access enemies to hold us back, but... attack patterns, swarms, and stinking Eris seems like they're going to stay regardless.

I'm not looking for combat advice - I didn't need it for Hades and we shouldn't rely on it for H2. I am not going to use easy-mode - ditto. I am seeing a pattern that H2 is aimed at a subset of the original player base, and that a lot of more casual (or even just middling) fans are going to get left behind or frustrated by the resulting sequel.

TL;DR: The Surface is exhausting. I am really close to loving Hades 2, but the unrelenting demand for precision in combat is making it a miserable experience.

PS: Developers, you're still building an astonishing game with obvious passion and talent. Just please, I beg you, don't get tunnel-vision on the people who've mastered the first one and forget the rest of us.

[UPDATE] I have finally made it to the 3rd surface boss, and all the same problems with previous bosses are more or less present... with the added frustration of an honest-to-goodness memory-game gimmick in the middle. Fast, heavy-hitting attacks, giant area-of-attacks that add fire to the arena, summoning shielded minions, so much visual noise you can barely tell what's going on... but if you survive all that and have no head for those stupid memory games, tough luck. Prepare to get crunched. This is not a mechanic anyone else uses, so no practicing it... I [do not like] these boss designs [very] much.

[Biscuits! Werewolves!]

I wanna give a heartfelt response to what is clearly a legitimate frustration for you - and trust me, I'm not going to give combat advice because I'm not good enough at this game to do so.

But here's what helped me to enjoy both H1 and H2 way more than I would have expected: watching better players play Hades games on YouTube. I have decent enough reflexes and awareness to muscle my way through Hades stuff, but it takes me much, MUCH longer to figure out the various systems/boons one can access and how to find the synergies.

I watch others play and sometimes I copy a build, just to see how if it clicks with me. I try boons I'd typically avoid because I didn't /get/ how they would be useful until I saw an example of someone else doing it. Heck, just seeing how much the Strength card can impact things almost entirely changed how I play this game. And I'm having more fun for it.

I don't know if it'll help you - I consider myself a mediocre Hades player at best - but it sure did help me.

[Specific Beef]

[watch me dance around the stipulation of "no combat advice"]

Hades 1 could more easily be played in a "surprise me" way: just pick whatever boon out of the three seems more interesting at the time, and on zero to low Fear players would generally be okay.

I don't think it's accurate to say this one is catering to the "git gud" crowd. I think it's trying to push all players towards paying attention to their build via negative reinforcement. The bosses are set up to be tests of your build, much more than they are tests of skill. If a build is balanced around some concentration of damage against groups and some concentration towards single targets, and if interplay between different boons is prioritised, you can sail through. If you don't, your DPS is likely to be so low that you would be killed by the timer on Vow of Time during one or other end-stage boss fight.

So, unlocking the Codex is really important, and you need to be consulting the list across a few gods every time you choose a boon to make sure you're following the right path. There are some boons that don't benefit hugely from high rarity when all you want is the effect and the Common form will be fine. There are others which look like a poor deal in the numbers on the offer, but actually go wild in combination.

Surface is certainly harder because it's structured so that the Underworld is "stage 1" and Surface is "stage 2", and likely there's a "stage 3" that's going to sting a bit more (but, assuming it comes directly after Surface, a build that can beat stage 2's final boss should be able to cope with whatever comes next).

[RelentlesslyLurking]

Yeah, the surface is ROUGH to deal with. Given that Melinoe is defying the fates the entire time she's up there, I can mostly accept it as gameplay reflecting the narrative that she doesn't belong up there and is literally fending off death with every breath. But the difference in relative difficulties is more than striking.

When I did the third set of Night's Champion challenges, after completing literally everything else available in the game except for the Trial of Haste, I cleared the underworld on my first attempt with a build I wasn't entirely happy with -- and a clutch appearance by Athena in Tartarus to refresh my Death Defiances. When I got to the Surface? She no-showed me on several successive, hard won passes through Olympus -- and I eventually got so irritated that I decided I was going to annoy Skelly by doing the most overtly mediocre job of the challenge that I could. So I loaded up God Mode, deliberately maxed out the damage reduction by disabling all of my arcana and dying in the first room a couple dozen times or so, and just brute forced the bloody thing with a Sworn Strike/Born Gain/Flames of Melinoe build designed to turn the enemy's swarm technique against them. As further punishment for putting me up to such an annoying challenge, I have decided not to beat Skelly up, ever again.

The thing that literally kills me about the surface, more than anything else, is the lingering environmental damage everywhere. Freaking everything wants nothing more than to throw burning oil on the ground or summon up bloody tornados that fill the screen so it's like I'm fighting in Asphodel if the rivers moved constantly -- and while I'm thinking about Asphodel I am going to complain briefly that it is RIDICULOUS how much faster all of this stuff damages me than the flaming Phlegethon itself does. Zagreus could literally dash into the lava, stand for a tick, and dash back out without taking more than maybe a few points of damage, but if Melinoe dashes over the corner of a patch of burning oil and accidentally leaves the corner of her hitbox adjacent to it when her dash ends, that's like 50 damage.

Okay, the Auto-Watchers have also been directly responsible for several of my failed runs through Olympus. Complements to Hephaestus for his work, but I get instantly angry at the sight of the robotic bastards. If I had a more responsive dash, it would probably be fine, but as it is I'll either dodge their entire barrage or instantly take like a couple hundred points of damage. Which means they're literally functioning as designed, but they are Not Fun.

[Fire walk with me]

I think it is a real crummy take to accuse SuperGiant of pandering to the niche hardcore crowd when all I have ever seen from them is bending over backwards to please as many people as they can while also being one of the most inclusive developers out there.

Frustration should not lead to random conspiracy theories about why you are not progressing as quickly as you like. That is usually ego.

That said this is early access of course. Everything has at one time or another felt way overtuned for a variety of reasons, but balancing is a part of development.

It took me over 300 hours to hit 32 fear on both routes. Just keep trying your best and don't get in your own head too much.

[murphy.shane80]

I felt the exact same way when I first started playing Hades2. Like all the skill I had developed in Hades was just useless. I'm more of a button masher than someone who wants to charge up spells. Just came here to say that after making a bunch of stuff in the cauldron, and playing for a while, it gets way better.

[Betta George]

I actually like the Eris fight a lot, she is one of my favourite bosses. Even though it took me ages to beat her for the first time, once I did it, it was because I learnt the patterns and I could do it consistently afterwards. So the fight does not feel unfair to me.

[Pauma del Sol]

Two things, one I commiserate a bit as I feel like Omega move slow time on the Sorceress arcana was in part the glue holding the heightened difficulty from being H1 but harder, it allowed me to breathe between fast-paced parts of the game, though I'm in a slightly different camp. The game is possible to master, and I cleared the new surface boss the only two times I've fought Him without this feature but since they're nerfing Mel's abilities I wonder how much more anxiety-inducing it will become to play. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's fun.

The second thing is that I want to encourage you to join the dev's discord to leave feedback because I really don't think they care about these forums, or at least that appears to be a common impression.