admin I lose again in Hades II.
Damn.
I wake up in the same dim corner of the Crossroads, staring at the same painting. Melinoë as a baby, held by her mother Persephone. Her brother Zagreus beside them. Hades smiling down, the whole family together with the serenity of a dream you wake up forgetting.
The game gives me one prompt: “Brood.”
When I press it, Melinoë scoffs, “You don’t remember them, besides this painting and your dreams. But still you fight for them…”
Another scripted moment no one will remember, lost to the churn of repetition. Brood, indeed.
That’s pretty much all of Hades II: a game that repeats forever without ever meaning something more than what’s said the first time.
“Death to Chronos,” Melinoë says.
“Death to Chronos,” Hecate says.
“Death to Chronos,” I say.
Chronos is the enemy. Chronos must die. It’s a setup that sounds rich with mythic potential—time itself is the tyrant that must be slain—but Hades II never seems interested in asking what this devotion might cost its protagonist. Melinoë isn’t a character enduring a story; she’s a weapon driving it forward until the moment when the story finally surrenders.
This piece contains major spoilers for the story of Hades II.
And yet, the structure of Hades II seems built for that interrogation. Like its predecessor, it’s a roguelike: death, rebirth, progress through repetition. A form that practically begs for introspection. Each failure could have been an opportunity to reveal more of Melinoë’s interior life. We could question what “Death to Chronos” even means to her. And yet the game never bothers, never earns her conviction. It takes her belief as a given and never really interrogates the ache that made her say it.
This is what writers call a failure of scaffolding.
Zagreus was a protagonist positioned perfectly within the roguelike form. Every run was a teenager sneaking out of the house against his father’s wishes, even though they both knew he would have to come back eventually. Zagreus, like so many teenagers, wanted more, wanted to push up against the limits of possibility, maybe push beyond them, to make things different than they are. And so often he has his hopes dashed, his yearning unfulfilled.
Hades II, by contrast, trades that ache for a slogan. Death to Chronos, Death to Chronos, Death to Chronos. The game is full of endless divine chatter that fills the stretches of silence between combat runs, but the world never gets any deeper. Hours of dialogue evaporate as soon as they’re read; nothing sticks. Worse, nothing scars.
By the end, the plot resolves neatly enough. Melinoë finally defeats Chronos, but instead of killing him, she sends a message to Zagreus in the past: reach out to him, forgive him, bring him back into the family. Zagreus does. History rewrites itself. Everyone remembers two timelines—one where Chronos was cruel and one where he was kind—and they choose to believe the gentler one. Melinoë gains not only the family in the painting but also the grandfather she was trained to destroy. Then, without fanfare, she sets off to repeat the cycle in “other timelines.”
It’s clean. Complete. A conclusion stated instead of learned.
Because Hades II is a Rites of Passage story that forgets to include the passage.
A Rites of Passage story, for the uninitiated, always begins with a life problem—something unavoidable and existential. Growing up, forgiving, grieving, learning how to stay. The wrong way to face it is denial; the right way is acceptance. The beauty of the genre lies in watching someone resist change until they can’t anymore.
If we consider another story in this genre, like Judy Blume’s widely beloved 1970 novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, we can better understand Hades II. Margaret’s life problem is becoming herself. She is learning what it means to inhabit a changing body, a changing faith, and a changing world. Her wrong way is through control. She prays for time to move faster, for life to just happen already. The hard truth she must accept is that time will go on with or without her permission.
Meanwhile, in Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie’s life problem is trauma. His wrong way is silence—the belief that not remembering will keep him safe. His catharsis comes when he finally recalls the truth and survives it. Both stories build empathy through resistance. We ache as their denial collapses because we’ve been with them through the denial.
Hades II has the same ingredients but none of the impact. Melinoë’s life problem is being born into revenge. Her wrong way is living by it. Her hard truth is that forgiveness ends the cycle. But the game skips the middle act. Where is the resistance? Melinoë never fails because of her flaw. Her vengeance doesn’t cost her anything. No friends lost, no cracks in her resolve, no moment where the loop itself becomes unbearable. She doubts only in fleeting dialogue, never in action. Her transformation happens underneath a run of combat indistinguishable from the last.
Without the wrong way, there’s no reason to crave the right one.
The roguelike loop doesn’t stall Melinoë’s growth. It always rewards her for embracing it. Every run makes her faster, or stronger, or more resilient. “Death to Chronos” is not a curse, but an endless battery. The game trains us to believe and give into what it should have taught us to question: Death to Chronos.
There’s one moment that could have broken the pattern. Late in the game, Melinoë learns that her mentor, Hecate, is an older version of herself—a Melinoë from another timeline who succeeded in killing Chronos but lost herself in the process. Her personhood sanded down until she’s just the witch who trains the next one.
The two speak in soft circles. There has never been meaningful friction between them and there won’t be today. Melinoë insists, “You are my mother.” Hecate replies, “I am not.” When it’s over, they agree, “Let’s pretend none of this transpired.” And nothing changes. Melinoë loves her just the same. The revelation is a gift to the audience, not the character. We’re handed a twist, a piece of trivia, not a destabilizing truth. I feel nothing.
Are we meant to believe the passage occurs here? That painful transformation is proven by one version of Melinoë living on under another name, sustained only by this timeline’s necessity? This version, like our unyielding allegiance to “Death to Chronos,” exists not to change the story, but to make its ending possible. Hecate had to be here. She is the proof of what the game can’t admit—that something must break for time to move forward, but Hades II refuses to break our Melinoë at all.
Hades II is afraid of its own premise. A Rites of Passage story demands stillness, loss, change, and this roguelike cannot abide. The game talks about ending cycles while mechanically refusing to stop spinning.
When I play, the only emotions I feel belong to the combat: the thrill of a build working out just how I imagined, the delight of a particularly rare boon appearing when I need it, the visceral pleasure of clearing a room without ever being touched. When the credits eventually roll, I’ve learned nothing. I haven’t learned anything about Melinoë, or about myself, or about existence. Zagreus saves Chronos, everyone remembers a better time, and Melinoë sets off to fix other timelines. Hades II isn’t a story. It’s maintenance.
So I wake up again, in that corner of the Crossroads, and stare at the painting. Melinoë, the not-yet-formed person she was. The family she was promised.
“You don’t remember them, besides this painting and your dreams. But still you fight for them…”
After brooding for too long, she sometimes covers the painting with a cloth. I understand now. Some dreams stop meaning something the moment you wake up.
