Hades, God of the Dead!

Hades is such a beautiful looking game with an amazing progression that is very satisfying. I have doing fewer runs lately but each run is taking significantly longer now and in of the runs I reached the surface but Hades was waiting for us.

I have some good upgrades going on, the latest one with the second level of Death Defiance was a game changer, now I can have two more attempts to kill those pesky bosses in the game. Talking about the boss, the first one is the easiest for now. There was a time when Magera was defeating me constantly and I would only beat her once in many runs. But now, she posses little to no challenge for me.

A bit of a challenge came after I met with her sisters as the first boss. They were basically just variants of Mag having slightly different attack pattern. Not too difficult but a bit of learning curve for sure. They can surprise you in your first couple of attempts and after that they also feel easy enough just like their sister Mag.

But the reall challenge starts with Asphodel, where the lava puddles and river makes the environment a bit more dangerous. The boss in this level is the Bone Hydra which is not an easy boss and gave me some tough time in the past. I defeated it a lot of times now and it now comes with some variants too.

---

These Hydra boss variants makes every run fresh. Just like the sisters of Mag, these different colored Hydras have slightly differnt attack patterns.

But the most difficult boss I faced until now is the Champion of Elysium. In my first try there was only one guy but the subsequent runs had two champions fighting together in the arena. That doesn't seem fair and without the right approach and the right build they can carve through you easily.

My strategy of dealing with them is to take out one of them first, usually Theseus just because he has range attack and looked like his max health is less than the other bull guy.

---

I had a debuff of slowness in this encounter with more attacking power. Was it worth it? Probably, just because I use a lot of dashes in my combat. Sometimes I just dash without looking where I will end up. I have realised kept moving and dodging are so much more important than being accurate and super precise with your attacks.

Defeating them will lead you to the Temple of Styx where Cerebrus stops us from going out to the surface. I have reached the temple only twice so far.

---

On my second attempt, I even managed to clear this and reached to the surface but alas, Hades himself was standing there as a final boss (?) before Zagreus got to feel the sense of Freedom. I was expecting Hades to be the final boss of the game but I didn't realise I was that close to beating him.

---

It didn't help that I reached here after draining both the charges of Death Defiance and very low health. I knew that no way, I was making it out of there by defeating Hades on my first try with this much handicap. And he deals a ton of damage too. Dealing 30-40 damage per attack is insane and it is taking a lot of time to drain his health as well. I thought I was lucky with the Temple of Styx encounters but going past, I am afraid, will take a long time.

But I am having fun for now and that's the best part about playing this game. Every run is unique with the different boons you get as you progress. Sometimes a few lucky boons synergise well together and can make the run interesting and easy.