At a glance
Expert's Rating
Our Verdict
Hades 2 is a lot of fun and a worthy successor to the original Hades, and it’ll be nice treat for anyone that enjoys challenging arcade action.
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Best Prices Today: Hades 2
Hades was a huge hit when it first appeared back in 2020, so a sequel was pretty much inevitable and Hades II was released as an Early Access game for Windows PCs almost a year ago. However, the game received a big update at the end of 2024 that added native support for Macs with Apple Silicon. The bad news is that the game requires macOS 12 or later and – unlike the original Hades – Hades 2 won’t run on Macs with Intel processors.
Take a look at our favourite games on the Mac, see: Best Games for Mac.
The first game cast you in the role of Zagreus, the son of Hades – the god of death from Greek mythology – as he attempted to escape from his father’s underworld and eventually reach the home of the gods on Mount Olympus. This time around it’s Zagreus’ sister, Melinoë, who takes centre-stage, and faces an even greater challenge as she attempts to find and defeat Chronos, the ancient god who was father of Hades and is now waging war on Olympus itself.
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Hades was one of the few ‘roguelike’ games that have been released for the Mac in recent years, and Hades 2 follows that formula. Roguelike games don’t allow you save the game as you go along and then simply reload when you die, so each death means that you have to go right back to the beginning and start again. That can be frustrating, but you can find new weapons and learn new skills as you progress through the game, as well as earning ‘boons’ from the gods that make you more powerful. You also get to keep these skills and upgrades even after you die, so each time you start again you’re a little bit more powerful and should be able to fight further into the game and beat stronger enemies. And, if that gets too frustrating, or if you simply prefer to focus on the story that unfolds as you encounter the various gods of Olympus throughout the game, then there’s a God Mode that gives you a power boost right from the start, making it easier for you to plough through your enemies with fewer deaths to slow you down.
But while Hades 2 follows the same basic formula as its predecessor, there are still some important differences that give this sequel its own distinct flavour. Even in Early Access, the developers at SuperGiant Games say that Hades 2 provides more areas to explore, and more gods and monsters for you to encounter than the previous game. More important is the fact that Melinoë is a sorceress with powerful magical abilities, whereas Zagreus was essentially a hack-and-slash melee kind of guy. Melinoë can use melee weapons such as daggers and axes, so hand-to-hand combat is still an option if that’s how you prefer to play, but she also has a wide range of magical abilities available too, casting long-range and area-of-effect spells against her enemies from a distance.
Screenshot
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Melinoë uses mana to power her spells, so resource management also becomes more important in this game as you now have a mana bar to keep an eye on, as well as the all-important health bar. This magical element also means that crafting is more important in Hades 2, as you can collect various herbs and minerals to upgrade your weapons and skills. I don’t really have the reflexes for sword-swinging melee combat, so I quickly felt more comfortable with the long-range magical skills of Melinoë, and the magic and crafting elements also add a touch of Diablo to the roguelike format as well. We would recommend a games controller, though – casting spells is fairly straightforward as long as you have a two-button mouse, but the movement controls feel a little awkward when using a keyboard.
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Should you play Hades 2?
Although Hades 2 is still in Early Access – and looks likely to remain that way for most of 2025 – it’s pretty solid and stable, with no noticeable bugs during my time with the game. The hand-drawn graphics style looks great too, but the relatively simple 2D shaded graphics mean that you don’t need a particularly powerful Mac to run it and I was able to get 60fps using High graphics settings, even at 4K resolution using a MacBook Pro with M2 processor. Roguelike games don’t suit everyone, but even in Early Access Hades 2 is a lot of fun and a worthy successor to the original Hades, and it’ll be nice treat for anyone that enjoys challenging arcade action.
Best Prices Today: Hades 2
Author: Cliff Joseph, Contributor, Macworld
Cliff Joseph is a former editor of MacUser magazine and a freelance editor with 30(ish) years experience of Mac and PC technology. He first used a Mac working as a magazine sub-editor and found it so much better than using scissors and a pot of glue to make the words fit on the page that he become a convert to the Mac overnight. He has spent the rest of his career following the ups and downs of Apple (and is old enough to remember the time Apple came close to going bust). Cliff writes many of MacWorld’s games reviews - and is currently exploring options for getting Diablo IV to run on a Mac…