Why I Won't Be Playing Hades 2 In Early Access

As of Monday, May 6, Hades II is now available in Early Access. That’s an exciting development for fans eager to play the sequel to developer Supergiant Games’ 2020 action roguelite. But while plenty of gamers around the world will be diving into Early Access, I won’t be one of them.

To be clear, I’m not forgoing Early Access because I think Hades II will be a bad game. Rather, it’s because I want to enjoy it as much as possible—when the 1.0 version of the game ultimately releases. It’s really in my best interest that I do this. You see, way back in 2018 I was a massive fan of Supergiant, so when the studio announced its next game was available to play in Early Access, I bought Hades immediately.

I would go on to play Hades on and off for the next two years, until the game finally got its full-fledged 1.0 version release. At this point, I’d already poured dozens of hours into it, unlocking weapons, talking to characters as much as possible, and even facing off with the game’s final boss a couple of times. Upon release of version 1.0, I booted it back up in hopes of seeing the rest of the game’s lengthy story, but I soon found that the game didn’t quite click with me anymore. While there was plenty of new content to experience, the repetitive gameplay loop of the action roguelite was largely the same, meaning that I was just doing the same runs I had already spent dozens of hours optimizing, over and over again.

I had already put in more hours with the game during Early Access than it would take upon release to beat the story. It was too much of a good thing. Much like a delicious tub of ice cream, I couldn’t help but enjoy it until I made myself sick. So instead of seeing all the wonderful character moments that people raved about as they dove into the full release, I just sort of gave up and moved on to other things. It left me with an admiration for the game, but nothing close to the love that others have for it. Looking back, I feel like choosing to play the game in Early Access was my downfall.

Much like Zagreus learning from his constant deaths, I’m hoping to learn from my past mistakes with Hades II. I want to like this game and enjoy all the wonderful surprises Supergiant has in store. So, for my own sake, I need to abstain from Early Access. I’ve already had to mute Hades and all relevant terms on Twitter because I’ve already been spoiled on some of the sequel’s exciting new content within a couple hours of Early Access releasing. But don’t worry. I may be abstaining from the conversation for now, but I can’t wait to talk to everybody about Hades II in like a year, or whenever Supergiant releases the 1.0 version.

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