Hades II

Measured against 2025, it picked off its rivals one by one

On the aggregate scorecard, its place is unmistakable: 94 on Metacritic, 94 on OpenCritic, a PC tier that climbs higher still and tops the 2025 PC charts outright — leaving even the year's loudly tipped Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 behind it. To stand at that altitude again, in a roguelike field already thick with talent, it doesn't lean on a single standout trait. It does the three things that almost never coexist — action, building, storytelling — well at once, several of them better than the genre's own benchmarks. Most roguelikes need just one of those nailed down to survive; this one stands on all three legs, each a notch longer than its rivals', and that completeness is why the score clears the competition.

The hardware and the sales back it: Best Action Game at The Game Awards 2025, Action Game of the Year at the 2026 D.I.C.E. Awards, Best Steam Deck Game at the 2025 Steam Awards, Best Foreign Game at the 2026 Pégases, on top of the two-million-plus copies it moved in early access alone. Another landmark case of an indie studio punching far above its weight.

That haul matters less as a trophy count than as corroboration. When juries with different tastes and an audience of millions all converge on the same game across two years, the verdict stops being a matter of opinion and starts looking like consensus — and consensus this broad, in a category this competitive, is the rarest endorsement a game can earn.

Who should buy in, who should walk past, and how to jump in now

Who should buy? The roguelike connoisseur who wants punchy action, deep building and a story that lands all at once — and returning fans need no convincing, since it makes the original thicker, deeper and longer on nearly every axis. If you relish theorycrafting and don't mind starting another run for a single new line, this was built for you.

Who should walk past? Anyone after a quick, short burst of a run who has no patience for grinding progression or wading through mountains of dialogue. The joy here is built on the long haul, and the early progression skews fiddly; if you want a fifteen-hour clear-and-leave, its pace will feel slow and roundabout. This is a game that rewards commitment and quietly punishes the curious tourist, and there's no shame in knowing which of those you are before you buy.

As for how to jump in now: the good news is you no longer have to time it. This is the complete 1.0 build; that awkward stretch where the story was half-told and you waited on the full release is long gone, and the spread runs across PC, Switch, Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox. Buy it today and you get a finished thing, vouched for by time, iteration and millions of players — no gambling on what it might become, the way early adopters once did. The one thing nobody can copy is that whole design that runs the death loop as a storytelling engine; you can steal the mechanics, not the trick of welding repetition onto emotional progress — and its only real rival is the already-canonized original. A nine overall: a sequel that climbs past an already-towering peak, and stumbles only on the very last step, at the finish line itself.