TheGamer

Zagreus And Melinoë's Different Playstyles In Hades Complement Their Characters

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tessa Kaur

Published Jun 1, 2024

Followed

Thread 1

Summary

Hades and Hades 2 incentivize different playstyles with Zagreus being fast and intense, while Melinoë focuses on thoughtful, strategic gameplay.
Supergiant Games ties gameplay mechanics to storytelling, characterizing Zag as driven and almost reckless, and Mel as reflective and deliberate in her approach.
The combat mechanics in both games intricately reflect the narrative and character development, showcasing Supergiant's expertise in storytelling through gameplay.

If you’ve played both and , it’s readily apparent that while the games are similar in many ways, they feel very different to play. Obviously, Hades 2 builds on the strong foundations of the first game, keeping its hu🧜b world, room for different builds, and its general gameplay mechanics. Yet in practice, playing as Zagreus in Hades and as Melinoë in the sequel can feel quite different.

Hades And Hades 2 Incentivise Different Playstyles

Hades rose to fame partly because of the speed of its gameplay. Frenetic and furious, players could create builds that run through levels in a matte🍌r of seconds, even finishing boss battles in under a minute. Aggression was the name of the game, with a focus on taking out waves of enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible. This was sometimes to its detriment – some critics said that the combat could get almost button mashy at times – but in most cases, the speed and pacing of the combat was what hooked players. After the hot gods, that is.

Hades 2 is very different. Where Zagreus was fast and intense (that boy sure can schmove), the sequel incentivises more thoughtful and strategic gameplay. Wi๊th more enemies that actively pursue you around the map and can hit you from a distance, using Mel’s casts to hold enemies in one place and positioning her appropriately is crucial to success. Because she’s a witch, her magic ꦺspells are more powerful than her regular attacks, but charging them takes time and exhausts her Magick. This, obviously, slows the pace of combat as well, making the second game feel much less reliant on button mashing and more focused on careful, tactical movement around each level.

Different Playstyles, Different Characters

Supergiant is very cognisant of how mechanics tie into storytelling, and the way these different playstyles characterise Zag and Mel differently is pretty interesting. Consider their disparate backgrounds: they’re siblings, yes, but Zag’s intense, fast gameplay makes him feel more driven to escape from his father’s clutches. When we start the game, he’s insistent on making it out of the Underworld, no matter how many tries it takes. He never quite feels desperate, but he does feel a bit reckless because of his sheer speed and strength. He’s able to brute force his way through problems instead of being strategic &ndash🦹; he doesn’t really seem like a thoughtful character.

Mel is definitely more thoughtful, though. Zag only started really fighting properly when he decided he had to leave the Underworld, but Mel is essentially a trained killer. She’s a witch who, practically since infancy, has been trained by Hecate for the intensely difficult task of slaying a Titan. She’s become reflective and strategic because she can’t rely on pure strength and speed t𒀰o succeed in her task. As a result, she moves more slowly, but more deliberately. Every descent and run she makes isn’t a sprint like it is for꧒ Zagreus, but more like a marathon.

Both games’ mechanics tie intricately and inextricably into the narrative. Just like how the roguelike genre is crucial to the repetitive nature of the💮 story, the combat tells us a lot about the characters – after all, that’s where we spend the most time with them. The effectiveness of this kind of storytelling is just a reminder, lest we forget, that Supergiant really is one of the best at it.