Melinoë takes time to kiss her oversize pet frog. She soothes Dora, her tiny dead soul friend. She debates, and then battles, the witch Hecate, her stern mentor. She also must save the Underworld. Melinoë has much to do.
In Hades II, Melinoë must defeat Chronos, a calculating, lanky giant who resides atop a dungeon-filled Mount Olympus. The task feels Sisyphean, but she perseveres. “Death to Chronos” is close to the first thing she utters, as she dreams of vengeance and freeing her parents, Hades and Persephone. She often broods near a painting of the family posing together.
In this brilliantly balanced and elegant sequel of titans and witches, it’s not Melinoë’s godliness that shines. It’s her strength of character.
She begins as a weak entity, becoming more powerful each time she travels through Hades and, later, the world above it. To aid her cause, she might equip a heavy, silvery Moonstone Axe and the gift of a Ghost Onion, extra health offered by Dora in exchange for fruit. This sweet, cranky and occasionally verbally violent soul mate sometimes unexpectedly desires life. Melinoë never knows what the nonplayer characters like Dora will say, part of what kept me going through constant dying.
Very early on, the emanating sound waves from a demonic wailer killed me. I respawned, down but not daunted, near Melinoë’s rudimentary tent, where she took a second or two to lament defeat, but only that.
Later under the sea, Scylla, a sadistic Harley Quinn-esque witch, emerged from a giant clam to torment me. She’s modernized to be a mean, egotistic pop music superstar. As you battle for a pearl, she and her band the Sirens rock out, belting, “I’m gonna claw out your eyes/Then drown you to death.” They reach into an arsenal that includes burning lasers and exploding orbs.
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