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Hades 2 surprise released in Early Access on Steam around a week and a half ago at the time of publishing this video, and to say that I’ve been having a really good time with the game would be an understatement. I’ve put around 30 hours into playing already, and feel like I’m only just beginning to scratch the surface of the experience.
Considering the game has only just entered early access, the fact that there already seems to be more content quantity and variety in Hades 2 than the finished release of the original Hades, it’s hard not to recommend picking the game up if you found yourself enjoying the first title.
A few weeks back, I published an accessibility preview of Hades 2 based on the game’s technical test build, which allowed playing to the end of the first combat environment in the game. During that test period, the main accessibility issue I noted was the presence of a spider NPC in the first zone, who could pose a potential issue for arachnophobic players. However, having now played a solid amount of the early access release, I’ve encountered a pretty notable additional accessibility barrier during play, one which requires discussing spoilers to properly explain.
Spoiler warning for the final boss of Hades 2’s descent route.
Unsurprisingly, the final boss of the descent route in Hades 2, at least at present, is Chronos, the Titan of Time who has taken control of the underworld away from its titular lord.
The fight is a two phase boss fight filled with time stopping bubbles, one hit kill moves thankfully clearly signposted, summons, and wide sweeping attacks creating exploding tears in spacetime.
The fight with Chronos in Hades 2 is tough, that much is to be expected and isn’t the issue with this fight. Hades 2 has some pretty decent accessibility options available to help mitigate tough encounters including God Mode, which activates a 20% enemy damage reduction which grows by 2% each time the player dies with it active.
The accessibility issue with the Chronos fight in Hades 2 is that it removes the player’s ability to both pause, and to access the options and accessibility menus, until a certain number of successful runs have been completed.
There is a narrative justification for Hades 2 removing the player’s ability to pause during the fight, Chronos is the embodiment of time itself, and so the game has him gloat if you try to pause, stating that only Chronos can control the flow of time in his presence. I understand it’s there to be a gotcha, a rug pull enacted on the player to emphasise the strength of the boss and break the fourth wall. The fact I understand the intention doesn’t change the fact it’s an accessibility barrier.
Before we go much further, I want to talk a little about myself as a disabled gamer, and some of the reasons why pausing is important for me in a game like Hades 2. I have dyspraxia, a disability which impacts my fine motor control and hand-eye coordination. I struggle to use my hands with consistent reliability, and sometimes experience moments of poor hand control. In these moments, pausing allows me to rest and reset my hands, and continue a fight when I feel more in control of my input ability.
Additionally, another side effect of my poor fine motor control is that I struggle to grip controllers and handhelds at an appropriate level of grip strength. I’m a poor judge of my own grip, so I tend to lean toward gripping too hard rather than risking a loose grip and dropping my controller or device. As a result, playing Hades 2 on Steam Deck this past week, I’ve found as is often the case I get bouts of pins and needles in my hands, where I need to pause the game and stretch and rest my hands to let circulation return to them before continuing play.
Lastly, because of my inconsistent coordination issues, I use Hades 2’s God Mode intermittently. If I can feel that I am getting sluggish with my inputs, missing button input timings that I know I’m otherwise capable of, I sometimes activate God Mode to give myself a little extra wiggle room on taking damage.
Now, to be clear, I’m not opposed to playing challenging combat games without pause functionality. I’ve completed the FromSoftware Souls titles, I can play this style of game, I just need to know that’s what I’m getting myself in for in advance so I can play with a controller that’s most comfortable, in a well supported position, on days that I’m up to that challenge without relying on being able to pause.
Hades 2 very much springs this situation on disabled players without warning. The game breaks its own rules in a way that denies access to pausing as its own accessibility accommodation, as well as the deliberately designed accessibility and difficulty tweaking options that are otherwise available to access at any time during the game.
To walk through my discovery of this, I was having a really good run against Chronos maybe 25 hours deep into the game. I lost that run because I tried to pause to turn on God Mode and relieve hand tension. I pressed pause, put the Steam Deck down, and took my eyes off it for a moment. I looked back to see I was being destroyed. I tried hitting pause again, and that’s when I saw the messages telling me I hadn’t made a mistake and missed the pause button press, the game was making a point to deny access to that functionality without warning. I tried to use a Hex, Phase Shift, to slow down time for a few seconds to collect my bearings and give myself a second to breathe, but that was disabled in this fight also. Not even taking a specific build built around slowing the game down, and investing resources into levelling that up, could get around the fact I was being banned from respite.
If you’re someone who is playing Hades 2, and for various reasons needs to pause the fight with Chronos, or tweak accessibility settings for his fight, I do have a couple of tips for you that might be helpful. Your last chance to change your settings, including activating God Mode, is in the Charon shop just before the Chronos boss fight. If you need to rest your hands and take a pause, your only opportunity to do so is between phases 1 and 2 of the fight. Make sure that auto advancing dialogue text is turned off in the settings, and use the line of dialogue from Chronos at the end of phase one as a place to pause. Don’t press to advance the text box, and you’ve got a moment to rest before more inputs are needed.
Now, Hades 2 does feature a way to disable this element of the Chronos boss fight and gain access to pause and the accessibility settings menu functionality, but the way that is earned is part of the issue. It requires you to beat Chronos a minimum of three times without pause functionality before you can get back that pause functionality.
After your second defeat of Chronos, you gain access to a craftable incantation which will reactivate your pause functionality. The incantation requires three consumable items to be spent, which are acquired by defeating Chronos. If you don’t spend any of his unique item drop on anything else, you need to defeat Chronos three times minimum to be able to pause in future bouts against him.
To reiterate, I get what this element of the boss fight is aiming for. It’s thematically and narratively a cool way of surprising the player with the final boss’s power, and I suspect a lot of players will really love it. I’m not asking for this gimmick to be removed from the game, but I would really appreciate a way for disabled players to be able to work around it in the accessibility settings.
A settings option in the accessibility menu saying something like “Allow pausing at all times” or similar might potentially be a mild spoiler to the fact that at some points in this game might disable pausing, but it would allow players like myself for whom not being able to pause is an issue a way to work around this gimmick, without just having to have three lucky runs unimpacted by disability to work past it.
Players who need pause functionality come in many varieties, from those with pain and fatigue, to those with conditions like IBS, to simply people who have children or life responsibilities that might arise suddenly and not be able to be delayed or ignored for a few minutes. There’s a large number of reasons, disability related or otherwise, that a person might need to pause their game without warning, and being unable to do so in a game that otherwise generally allows pausing creates an accessibility barrier those players that may not have been prepared for.
I do generally believe that Hades 2 is a pretty accessible game, by comparison to other titles in its genre. While I have a lot to praise about the game, I equally believe that it has things that it needs to improve upon, if accessibility is something the development team are making an effort toward. If they’re going to have a dedicated accessibility menu page, they need to be open to improving aspects that are currently barriers to play, such as the ability to pause and support for arachnophobic players.
It’s great having fun fourth wall breaking gimmicks for boss fights, but if you want your game to be accessible you have to consider those gimmicks through the lens of accessibility.
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