so far ive played 15 runs 2 of which have actually gotten to the final boss, this is coming from the perspective of a roguelike master and hades 1 veteran
the game as it stands and i think unless they rework the entire thing will seriously lag behind the legacy of the original, seemingly as a direction they have drastically decided to slow down the pace of combat.
:no longer do weapons move you forward when used, this was useful for pushing attacks without stopping
:the cooldown on your dash has increased, you only start with one, you cannot dash in and out of combat as easily anymore
:instead you now have a sprint which is only really used for dodging attacks or running away.
:the cast has been reworked, now it always summons a circle that stops targets, most of the time i used this while retreating so i could just stab who ever was caught while standing still, functions as a pause button
:
most glaringly, enemies have 3 times the health they had in the original, you can no longer dive into combat and expect to kill an enemies in one combo like you could in hades 1, the meta so far especially in later levels is to abuse your cast and run away while spamming your weak ranged attacks
compare game play from the two and tell me which one looks better.
the biggest change is the new mana system, now your special attacks are limited and usually require a long charge up, but are usually really powerful, however you cannot regain mana in the middle of an encounter unless you are lucky enough to get specific boons, another aspect of the game that needs serious work is rng, boons are severely underwhelming compared to hades 1 but are now way less frequent, most floors will offer you crafting recourses that wont help your runs, lots of my runs would end because i was under powered, one of the new gods powers only triggers after you use a set amount of mana so if you have no way of regaining it you're shit out of luck. my builds had much less variety and i would often rely on certain boons for a run to succeed, this wasn't the case in the first game where every build was viable, some runs will now feel so much better because of factors out of my control and i hate it
