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[Nighthawk]

I still hate the spear.

Beat Hades with pretty much every other weapon on my first try more or less after my first win.

But I've made 4 attempts with the spear and gotten stomped at Hades every time.

I think the charge attack just doesn't do that much damage, and leaves you hella vulnerable. Even with Divine Strike for the Deflection, the fast charge and several Chaos boons for +Attack Damage, I couldn't beat Hades with it. I'm sure part of it is just me spamming too much instead of avoiding. But I swear for how much spam that weapon puts out, its damage isn't that great and it's got a crappy recovery window that leaves you getting hit before you can dash out or start a new one.

Haven't beaten Hades with any weapon yet (I need practice and probably a lot more upgrades), so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I feel I did decently well with Varatha (spear), using Aspect of Hades (yeah, funny, I know). The game doesn't really tell you, but like with some other weapons, you can dash-cancel the charge attack and it still comes out, which is useful if you start charging in a bad place or you want to move the attack into a more distant enemy.

The charge attack is not great in most situations, but holy crap, if you charge the thing while a fresh wave of enemies is spawning and then drop it after they appear, you can kill or chunk half of them before the fight even starts (I had Artemis' critical chance on my basic attack and that helped a lot). It's still not optimal against a single target, but if you can hit 4+ enemies with the swing for 400 damage, you're dealing 1600 damage in one move, which is pretty worth the mileage.

Personally I think the throw is the weakest part of its kit, considering the spear has so much range on basic attack that you don't really need a dedicated ranged option. I feel like you're meant to be abusing that incredible basic attack range, because if you stab enemies while within kissing distance, you might as well be used Stygius (sword).

Against Hades Varatha doesn't feel particularly useful because in that fight you simply do not. Have. Time. To sit around and charge anything. When you get that far, it's time for maximum-range stabbing all day long.

And you still might die because RNG didn't give you good stuff, so I say don't beat yourself up about it.

[nenjin]

I know about the charge --> dash --> release.

That's what I was using, the Aspect of Hades. And even with the debuff for extra damage it puts on enemies, and a ton of other stuff, it just wasn't doing the damage at all. And the sweep strike with Deflection should cover my ass, but it wasn't. I'm not beating myself up per se. The Spear absolutely cleaned house all the way up to Hades. (Well, the Theseus fight is always a pain in the ass and I take way too much damage) so I went in to the fight really confident.....then he took me down twice before he'd even lost his first health bar. I just don't get the spear. The only version I've made work is the seekrit unlockable one with life steal. It seems like so much work to make the spear good enough to beat Hades, while almost all the other weapons turn into "one move to win" so much easier.

[Nighthawk]

I know about the charge --> dash --> release.

That's what I was using, the Aspect of Hades. And even with the debuff for extra damage it puts on enemies, and a ton of other stuff, it just wasn't doing the damage at all. And the sweep strike with Deflection should cover my ass, but it wasn't. I'm not beating myself up per se. The Spear absolutely cleaned house all the way up to Hades. (Well, the Theseus fight is always a pain in the ass and I take way too much damage) so I went in to the fight really confident.....then he took me down twice before he'd even lost his first health bar. I just don't get the spear. The only version I've made work is the seekrit unlockable one with life steal. It seems like so much work to make the spear good enough to beat Hades, while almost all the other weapons turn into "one move to win" so much easier.

I dunno what you want to hear. I've seen videos of runs online where people use nothing but the spear's charged attack and it positively annihilates everything, Hades included, by just dash-cancelling the charge every time an attack comes Zagreus' way.

There's not really much to "get" when it comes to the spear if you use it that way. Start charging, dodge when you're about to get hit. If you have Deflection on your dodge and your timing is good, you can block everything, because there's zero startup going from charging state into a dodge.

If the issue is that you're trying to just eat damage and beat Hades by beating his DPS... I dunno what do say other than I'm pretty sure like any action game you should be dodging often. I'm not trying to sound full of myself--I haven't even beaten the guy!--but the thing I say when I lose typically isn't, "Wow, this weapon didn't carry me at all," it's, "Wow, I really suck at avoiding damage."

[nenjin]

Well it was like the 8th or 9th run I did that night so I was probably getting pretty sloppy. But still. The same schtick with every other weapon (like the Fists, Shield, Sword, or shoot him for days with the Bow and Gun) takes him down no problem. I've stomped his guts out with the spear before, but that was pre-1.0, and I think some things have changed. Either way, of all the weapons, the Spear is my least favorite. It has one viable move IMO, although I'm sure someone on Youtube is better.

[Malus]

So I haven't played since... May(?) but it seems a lot easier. Back then I got two escapes (both with the sword) then got disappointed with the end and decided to wait for 1.0. So now that 1.0's out, I'm playing, and after one loss against Hades, I've literally escaped 10 times in a row so far, with at least one clear with every weapon except the railgun (I've just been picking whatever will give me bonus gems). I'm also really not a fan of the way the pact of punishment system works, where you aren't rewarded at all for pumping up the difficulty beyond the bare minimum threshold to get your bounties, so I don't really have any incentive to make things harder for myself. The game is fun, and it's been a very entertaining ~23 hours according to Steam, and I'd definitely recommend it, so these are pretty minor complaints in all.

[lemon10]

So I haven't played since... May(?) but it seems a lot easier. Back then I got two escapes (both with the sword) then got disappointed with the end and decided to wait for 1.0. So now that 1.0's out, I'm playing, and after one loss against Hades, I've literally escaped 10 times in a row so far, with at least one clear with every weapon except the railgun (I've just been picking whatever will give me bonus gems). I'm also really not a fan of the way the pact of punishment system works, where you aren't rewarded at all for pumping up the difficulty beyond the bare minimum threshold to get your bounties, so I don't really have any incentive to make things harder for myself. The game is fun, and it's been a very entertaining ~23 hours according to Steam, and I'd definitely recommend it, so these are pretty minor complaints in all.

There is an aspect that encourages you to pump up the difficulty (to 5/10/15), but you have to unlock it as well.
Of course that leads you to just play at exactly 5/10/15 heat and keep the same exact difficulty setting for 5 games in a row which obviously has some problems of its own.

[amjh]

One thing that feels great about this game, is how it teaches the player. In other similar games, there tends to be situations where a gameplay mechanic goes from irrelevant or locked to critical. As a result, the player has to learn a new thing in the middle of an encounter that's at the top of their difficulty curve progress.

In Hades, it feels like there's good early encounters for practicing everything, without feeling like an overextended tutorial.

[Jopax]

So I've been thoroughly hooked on this thing ever since 1.0 hit. Must've sunk 20+ hours so far, still got a ton to do tho. Favorite stuff so far has been the fists, the railgun (secret variant especially) and the chiron version of the bow for that sweet sweet doom/hangover cheese.
All of that however pales in comparison to my latest run. Was watching some other folk play the game and figured I'd give this cast build a try, especially since I've kinda been ignoring Poseidon most of my runs. So I grab his aspect of the sword and well, shit escalates to stupid levels afterwards:

Spoiler: Endscreen (click to show/hide)

Started off kinda meh as the cast wasn't that strong but managed to grab an extra from chaos early on. Then a lucky Artemis roll got me the bonus damage on dislodge, so the main clearing method was spamming out casts then doing the nova near anything that was still standing. By Asphodel I managed to grab both the Second Wave and Sea Storm, which was just pure damage on top of damage, then Zeus decided to be a real bro and give me his legendary as well (so even more damage). After that I wanted to grab Mirage shot but Artemis was playing coy and giving me pretty much everything (including her legendary) except that, managed to get it as my last boon in Styx actually. Before that tho, Hermes went, hey, wanna be even dumber, here have Instant Recall.
So by the end, my main move was just mostly standing still and shitting out my 6 casts (which returned instantly whenever they killed something, which was often), occasionally dashing towards something tougher to dislodge them all for massive damage. It was such a shitshow of stacked triggers too, a cast would hit, dealing damage and knocking the target back, this would trigger a rupture, then a lightning strike from Zeus (which then triggered additional ball lightning effects), then the second wave of knockback would hit, repeating the whole thing another time, and if it lived the target took even more damage once the cast was out of their system.
Oh and all of this shit could crit too. Think this run had my fastest arena and dad kills to date.

[nenjin]

Yeah, at first I thought Poseidon was one of the weaker sets of boons, but with the right circumstances it becomes one of the most powerful. That cast, despite not having high damage on paper, fucking wrecks when you throw out more than 1 at a time. Then you add the wall smash damage, and any other supporting boons and it becomes damn good.

Although truth be told, several gods act like that. Zeus, for one. His boons are kinda meh, the attack, the cast, the special lightning....but then you get all those supporting boons and their damage starts to stack up quite quickly. Probably one of the worst things you can do in the game is get a boon for your attack, cast or special and then do nothing to support it. I find myself in that boat with Zeus often. Like, if you get one of the boons for your main moves, it's a good idea to just start buying up everything that god offers. It's way better than JUST their attack, special or cast boons and then a bunch of other boons that don't have anything to do with them.

For me, I have officially finished the game.

Spoiler: It's a spoiler (click to show/hide)

The post-game has a very different vibe that the rest of it. Sorta makes me wonder how much potential dialog I missed out on because I completed the main story in about 30 runs. I think there's the potential for some interesting DLC here that expands out the story to its logical conclusion. (Hey, if Hades can be a boss, the other gods could be one as well......)

[Chiefwaffles]

I don't think the game locks out dialogue much if at all. I've gotten Meg saying "give it up; you're never going to reach the surface" and Zag retorting with the fact that he's getting better and totally will eventually.
...after I already fully beat the game.

[nenjin]

Spoiler: For those that have finished (click to show/hide)

I feel like Hades had a lot more to say back by the 'ol Pool of Styx. I may have exhausted most of his fight dialog, but there's tons of stuff I'm sure he could say that would seem totally out of place once Persephone is back. A line or two here from a character like Maegara, yeah, I can see those being kinda out of place but something you could maybe explain away. But Hades essentially says "Everything was my fault" once Persephone comes back, so anything where he criticizes your escape attempts or your wilfulness when he's given you his blessing to go trash the underworld.....those would be quite out of place.

Not that any of that dialog is so special it really matters. Still, the voice acting and character interactions are a tempting part of the game for me, and always surprise me with what seems like endless varieties of it.

[Mephansteras]

I just started getting into this. I have to say, it's quite fun!

Not all that great at it yet, but I'm getting better. Had a good run with the bow last night that got me all the way to Elysium. So far I've only unlocked Bow, Shield, and Sword (of course). Of the three I seem to do worst with the Sword for some reason. Probably because it doesn't really have any ranged options by default.

[nenjin]

FWIW, I'd make sure you spend your keys on unlocking new weapons ASAP, even though it's in conflict with getting all your Darkness abilities unlocked. I didn't realize until I'd beaten the game several times that you don't see everything about the weapons until all of them are unlocked....

[Mephansteras]

Good to know!

[Jopax]

Blergh

Spoiler: Weapon spoilers (click to show/hide)

So I got most of the hidden aspects, missing the bow and fists now, bow is easy and I can do it whenever, but the fists, I think I've done 5-6 runs so far (upped the heat three times at least) and every single time I pick the miniboss in Elysium it ends up being the ball thing and not Asterius. Gotta say tho, with the fists, Ares+Athena is fucking bonkers, got me my first sub 20 minute run to date, thing just chunks literally everything because it bypasses the only downside of Doom effects and lets you just trigger them the moment you apply them.