There's a mod that lets you play Hades 1 in Hades 2

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(Image credit: Supergiant Games)

There's already so much to do in Hades 2 that after 100+ hours I haven't seen it all. (Voice and Vanity is the one prophecy I still need to complete, I'll get there.) If you, however, have run out of things to do, then here's some good news: you can replay all of the original Hades but as Melinoë, and with the combat and boons of Hades 2, thanks to a mod.

The Zagreus Journey mod adds a third option to your choice of how to leave the Crossroads, a Chaos Gate labeled "Descend into Nightmare". Jump inside and you'll be back in Tartarus, with all the old shades and traps to contend with, before working your way up through Asphodel, Elysium, and the Temple of Styx. Even the original game's soundtrack is carried over.

What isn't carried over is Zagreus himself, and so you'll be playing as Melinoë (and whichever familiar you bring), with one of her keepsakes equipped, and encountering the pantheon and earning the boons of Hades 2. The sequel's magic-heavy, dash-light combat seems to work commendably against the first game's enemies, though they have had their hit points and numbers buffed to keep them challenging when facing the kind of endgame builds you'll presumably be throwing at them.

One place Zagreus does still appear is in the conversations with bosses. These play out just as they did in the original, only with a ghostly Melinoë lurking behind Zagreus like a hot new meme format. Oh, and the Lernaean Bone Hydra's necks appear to be invisible, which is the one thing that doesn't transfer over cleanly from the original.

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Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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