YMMV / Hades

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A to J

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • A line of Poseidon has been interpreted as an innuendo.
    Poseidon: What do you say, there, Nephew, ready to get wet, or no? Oh I suspect you are, so let's get to it, and dispense some liquid justice!
  • Theseus sometimes taunts that there's no greater pleasure than sending his spear into Zagreus.
• Adorkable:
  • Dusa stutters, is perpetually nervous, and frequently fumbles over her words at the best of times. These flaws only serve to make her more endearing, even though she's essentially a flying severed head.
  • Artemis also has shades of this as her affection for Zagreus grows. Unable to get on with any other Olympian, she begins bubbling about all the things that fill her fairly solitary life and the things she'd like to show Zagreus, and seems the most genuinely hurt if he chooses someone over her in a Trial of the Gods.
  • Hypnos' cheery, innocently sarcastic demeanor, lack of ability to focus without an organized list, and Butt-Monkey status made him very endearing to the fanbase.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Thanatos is pretty melodramatic when he fights by heavily emphasizing that he's death incarnated. Is he Not So Above It All? Does he put on this act to cope with how he's stigmatized for being the god of death? Or is he mocking the people who buy into Everyone Hates Hades by acting like a Card-Carrying Villain?
  • If Zagreus gives Achilles nectar enough times, he assumes Zag has a crush on him and gently turns him down. Zagreus doesn't confirm or deny this.
• Award Snub: A lot of fans think that Hades should have won Best Direction in the 2020 Game Awards, if not, Game of the Year. This is an especially contentious point because the winner of both awards, The Last of Us Part II, is a lightning rod for controversy, with multiple controversial storytelling decisions as well as Naughty Dog's reportedly horrendous working conditions not being the best example of good day-to-day direction, the latter contrasting with Supergiant having prioritized their employees' health throughout Hades' development. Averted, however, with other awards ceremonies during the 2021 season such as the BAFTA Games Awards, D.I.C.E. Awards and Game Developers Choice Awards all choosing Hades as Game of the Year, including the inaugural "Best Video Game" Hugo Award and "Best Game Writing" Nebula Award.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The game's attractive character designs are easily remembered by players and reviewers alike. This article for example, describes Hades as "a roguelike with hot gods to kiss and kill", while comments on the Official Animated Trailer mostly point out Zagreus' sexy hair flip or handsomeness.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Pulling off your first successful escape. On top of finally getting through the Nintendo Hard underworld without dying, interactions in the House of Hades make it even better; Hades' constant belittling of Zagreus and insistence that he'll never escape makes it all the more satisfying to prove him wrong, and the other residents' heartfelt support and encouragement of Zagreus makes it all the more satisfying to prove them right.
  • Theseus proves very quickly to be both an insufferable braggart with little to no self-awareness and a thoroughly annoying boss fight, so it's quite gratifying to beat him and watch his shock at how that "blackguard" Zagreus could best him. Even more so if you have Extreme Measures set to 3, at which point you've overcome that much more of a challenge (and got to see him complain about you trashing that gaudy chariot of his).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Aegis. Ordinarily in the PC and Mac versions, fighting will require two hands; one to move around with the keyboard, and one to aim and attack with the mouse/mousepad. Aegis puts this control complexity down to just one, allowing you to not only defend (something that can't be done with other weapons), but to do it while moving and attacking via the Bull Rush ability. You are completely impervious to any attack in the game as long as it hits the Aegis and not Zagreus himself. That, and on the off-chance that spamming this strategy won't work, the "Captain America" strategy (throwing the shield and watching it bounce around all enemies until the field is clear) might.
  • Skelly's keepsake, the Lucky Tooth. Given that it's available as soon as you first come across some nectar, it's a Boring, but Practical item that sees a lot of usage, especially to players who are just starting out. It gives you an extra Death Defiance, and if you upgrade it to its highest rank (and you probably will), it restores 100 health upon revival.
  • Cerberus' Spiked Collar is another easy-to-get keepsake, and it increases your maximum hit points. Just like the Lucky Tooth, it's almost never a dud pick, and is a solid option for a late-game switch against the final boss.
  • Every Olympian can buff Zagreus's dash, but two are by far better than the rest.
    • Athena's Divine Dash sits so far at the top that few others are rarely picked purely because of its function. Dashing ordinarily provides a single instant of invincibility if you dash at exactly the right moment to avoid damage. Athena's boon buffs this so that you are invulnerable for the whole extent of the dash, taking huge amounts of pressure off during crowd fights and bosses alike.
    • While not as lauded, Poseidon's Tidal Dash is the next best thing: it has a very generous radius in which it knocks back enemies, and its damage is extremely high for a dash boon at 35 when Common (compare to Zeus at 10). It also stacks well with Poseidon's other boons that can debuff and damage enemies even more. You can easily speed around a room and reliably clear it of Numbskulls, Flame Wheels, or Vermin when employing this dash.
  • Hermes' Greatest Reflex boon, which grants the player additional dashes, is often considered the go-to boon to always grab from him. This can increase the number of dashes that you can perform in a row. And as noted above with Athena and Poseidon's dashes, this can be essential to a successful run; being able to quickly put distance between you and powerful enemy attacks (such as the Spin Attack employed by the Final Boss) makes your life a lot easier.
  • For the Trial of the Gods, Athena's trial is considered to be the easiest one to pass, so it's often recommended to pick the other god's boon if she is one of the options. Unlike the others, she does not directly attack Zagreus, instead creating temporary shields to protect enemies from damage.
  • Shady tends to be the favored Companion Summon. Given to you by Sisyphus, Shady allows you to summon Bouldy for a flat 1000-damage attack and give Zagreus three healing items, darkness, and 30 gold. While the attack itself is not particularly stellar, the ability to heal is quite beneficial, especially on higher heat runs. The healing provided alone makes it worth it, especially if Dark Regeneration is turned on, for Midbosses and boss battles, as it can be the difference between being forced to use a Death Defiance or not.
  • Battie tends to be the favored Companion on higher difficulties due to its fast activation (shaving seconds under the Tight Deadline pact and being harder to whiff compared to Companions like Mort or Shady) and large area of effect (so it can hit multiple enemies at once such as certain minibosses or Theseus and Asterius).
• Disappointing Last Level: Styx is the final level you'll need to go through before reaching the final boss, and it's comparatively bland visual-wise, and consists mostly of cramped rooms and filled with enemies that are more frustrating than fun to fight against.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Wretched Sneak is a Tartarus miniboss whose gimmick involves teleporting around the room and attacking you with either fast shots, or an up-close stab. This is annoying enough in the beginning of the game, but if you have the fourth level of Extreme Measures active, the final boss can summon an even stronger version of it alongside other enemies. That thing is a nightmare to kill when the arena is twice as big and you have to deal with all the other threats.
  • Appropriately enough, Wretched Pests, who run around laying mines. They're easy enough to dodge on their own, but the little critters are incredibly difficult to hit with most weapons. The Gods help you if they have super armour and you need to kill them for a trove, which reduces your reward the longer it takes you to kill enemies.
  • In Elysium, there's the Flame Wheels, little "baby" versions of Nemean Chariots that try to run into you and explode for a decent chuck of damage. The only way to stop them is to either trick them into hitting a wall or kill them from a distance so that their explosions won't harm you. This is easier said than done, as the game spawns them in packs, usually with other enemies, and some melee weapons don't have the range to pull this off. The only other alternative is to wield Aegis and simply guard as they commit suicide by exploding, or use Deflect to negate the explosion damage. It's worth telling that one of the rarer Well of Charon items available exclusively in Elysium is the "Flame Wheels Release", which removes all Flame Wheel spawns for the next ten encounters, and there are only twelve encounters in Elysium per run.
  • From the Asphodel region:
    • Wretched Witches. The region turns what used to be a minor inconvenience into an enemy that, in groups or alone, can quickly turn the game into a Bullet Hell. As of the Blood Price Update, a new "miniboss-lite" room has been added to Asphodel, featuring a unique coven of witches. They all have very high health (which affects their now very tanky armor), and will now spin in place filling the map with spiral upon spiral of Bullet Hell, so that you can't turn left without taking a hit. Like all witches, they love to head over the Phlegethon so as not to be easily reached, and like every other enemy, they can't be staggered or interrupted until the armor's taken off. This nightmare is guaranteed to give you more of a headache than some bosses. Made even worse with Middle Management active, as they can fire shots that cannot be canceled with your own attacks unless you have Athena's boons on the attack in question (which will reflect them normally).
    • The Gorgons are basically the same as the Wretched Witches because they also come in large groups and love to spam you with projectiles, but they're worse because their attacks turn you to stone, forcing you to watch your lifebar slip down bit by bit while you struggle free, and then you can get petrified again in half a second. Also, they always head directly over the Phlegethon's pools so that you can't directly attack them, creating a major pain in the ass. Even worse, there's a miniboss version that you can fight, which you have to fight at the same time as a miniboss-level Skull Crusher.
  • Elysium provides several examples:
    • The soldiers of Elysium are split into Brightswords, Strongbows, Longspears, and Greatshields, and each of them qualifies for a different reason. Brightswords don't have much range or attack power, but they can dash, and will put on sudden bursts of speed and blitz it halfway across the map to either hit you, or dance out of the way from your attacks. Strongbows have the most highly-telegraphed attack in the game, but it hurts by far the worst among the soldiers. Longspears are easily the worst; they have the highest running speed of all the soldiers, and may as well have an "Instant Death" Radius because their attacks are fast and come with no tells whatsoever, so even dashing past them isn't safe. It's a very wide radius, too — their spear range is greater than everything you can wield except Coronacht when fully charged, including the gun. Greatshields force the In the Back playstyle on you, which can be problematic if your strategy focused on high aggression thus far. And what's worse, every soldier-type enemy leaves behind a spirit after being defeated, which also has to be killed; if the spirit isn't killed fast enough, the soldier will just respawn with full health and armor, forcing you to fight them all over again.
    • Soulcatchers. They are a nightmare on the battlefield, as you likely won't notice that they're there until you're getting stun-locked by a swarm of butterflies while trying to deal with other, more aggressive enemies. They're slow, so it's not like you can't hit them, but they have a ton of health even before armor enters the picture. Prepare to rely on patience if more than one spawns on the field at once. The Dire Soulcatcher, one of Elysium's mini-bosses, cranks this up to eleven; not only is it supremely tough to crack, but it also keeps spawning souls that will turn into normal enemies unless you divide your attention and deal with them, and it can teleport if the enhanced mini-bosses Pact condition is active.
    • Nemean Chariots were so bad in this aspect that they received a Nerf in the Long Winter update. They had a ton of health, even more so than Soulcatchers, and are very fast, running you down with ridiculous speed and dealing large chunks of damage as they plow you into whatever is nearby. Even after the update, they still somewhat remain as examples of this trope, but their damage-per-second was brought down to more reasonable numbers. If there's more than one of them, though, or if they have armor, defeating them is gonna be a challenge.
  • In the Temple of Styx, Satyr Cultists are a nightmare. They bounce around the battlefield constantly, can take a ton of punishment before going down, and they attack by spitting poison darts at you. The poison knocks off a decent chunk of your health if allowed to run its course, and while it can be cured using the yellow fountains in the room, the game does not tell you this. The elite versions are even worse because they can't be interrupted, and they shoot with a three-way spread.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Helpful Shade is adored for being supportive of Zagreus during his fight with Theseus and Asterius.
  • Among the Olympians, Dionysus has received a lot of praise for his attractive design, friendly personality, and particularly useful boons.
  • Hypnos, despite being quite the secondary character, gathered a lot of fans for his nice personality, and his amusing relationships with both Zagreus and Thanatos. Some fans have even started to wish that Hypnos would be another possible romance for Zagreus.
• Epileptic Trees: There are a not-unremarkable amount of theories that Skelly, the lying animated skeleton that acts as your practice dummy and who implies he was a sailor in life, is actually Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War known for being a liar and trickster.
• Escapist Character: Zagreus. He's kind, well-spoken, thoughtful, friendly, brave, powerful, and beloved by just about everyone he meets. He's also a major case of Even the Guys Want Him, and can pursue romances with the incredibly attractive Megaera and Thanatos. He does have his flaws (like his impetuousness and rebellious attitude) but even then, his life is pretty sweet, and he himself is a respected individual.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game itself is called "Fishing Simulator" by some fans because the Fishing Minigame nets you currencies for every fish caught, and the player won't likely give up the chance to catch fish whenever they see one. It also helps that Poseidon has a Huge Catch boon that increases the chance for a fishing point to appear in a room.
  • Nyx is often nicknamed "Night Mom" by fans. This was even acknowledged by Paige Carter, the 3D artist for the game, who called her that in a video.
  • Hades is commonly called "[REDACTED]", based on the reports censoring Zagreus' cause of death whenever he dies to the Final Boss, an oddity that Hypnos would repeatedly mention. Players use this nickname to avoid accidentally spoiling the identity of the Final Boss to newcomers who haven't faced it yet.
  • Patroclus gets rather affectionately referred to as "The Run Saver/Savior" due to his ability to completely replenish Zagreus' Death Defiances.
  • Theseus is often referred to as "Other Guy" because of one of the dialogues Zagreus has when about to fight him and Asterius, whom he shows far more respect to, whereas he gets increasingly exasperated with Theseus' behavior as time goes on.
  • The Special for the Fists of Malphon is affectionately called the "Shoryuken" by fans.
  • The "Captain America Strategy" refers to the act of players spamming the Special of the shield until all enemies in the room are killed.
  • Certain boons and status effects are given alternative names:
    • Poseidon's Tidal Dash - "Splash Dash"
    • Demeter's Crystal Beam - "Tower Defense"
    • The Blade Rift effect from Ares' boons is generally called the "Beyblade", although it's mostly used for the Slicing Shot and Slicing Flare cast upgrades.
    • The "Yo-Yo" refers to the strategy or build of combining the Twin Fist's Aspect of Talos with Poseidon's Tempest Flourish boon.
    • The "Super Soaker" refers to the strategy or build of combining the Exagryph's Aspect of Lucifer with Poseidon's Tempest Strike boon.
  • Artemis is referred to as "The Goddess of Crits" due to her boons being the de-facto Critical Hit Class.
• Fanon:
  • Theseus is commonly interpreted as homophobic and/or extremely attracted to Asterius.
  • It's rather common in fanworks to see Zagreus, who's never been to the surface for very long, to not know things that are rather common knowledge amongst mortals, such as what certain animals are. It helps that he mistakes Hermes' bird wing motif with bat wings, indicating that he doesn't know what birds are.
• Fanon Welding: The Song of Achilles fans like to see the game and book as being mutually canon, with Achilles and Patroclus having gone through the plot of the book, and Zagreus is leading the two to the end of the book, where they are Together in Death, through the course of the game.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Every boss fight with Megaera is preceded by an exchange of very clear flirting from both parties. It only worsens because Meg can be found in the lounge after being defeated, and Zagreus can speak to her and gift her Nectar. Her first response is an obviously flustered "I will make sure this contraband is put away." It helps that Zagreus and Megaera actually were in a relationship at some point, and they can get back together if the player chooses to.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With fans of the book The Song of Achilles, because of how both the game and the book portray Achilles and Patroclus' relationship as explicitly romantic. You'll see plenty of Patrochilles fan-content for the game containing captions or comments relating to the book, with people recommending the book to anyone wanting more Patrochilles content. It's also noted that the book came out in 2011, so fans of the book have welcomed this sudden influx of Patrochilles fan-content thanks to the game, and are appreciative of the inclusion of their romance. On top of all that, one thing the player can do in the game is reuniting Achilles and Patroclus in Elysium, and the finale of the book involves them doing exactly that. Because the characters in the game have long passed away, it can even be said that the book is treated as "additional backstory" for Achilles and Patroclus, especially since neither story contradicts the other by very much. It's also worth mentioning that Greg Kasavin, the game's director and writer, listed The Song of Achilles as one of his recommendations on modern Greek myth literature.
    A comment under a Youtube gameplay of their reunion: *cries in The Song of Achilles*
    A tweet from a ''Hades'' player: bought song of achilles at a local bookstore and the owner told me all the copies they received this week have sold out now. tbh i think it's the power of hades right now.
  • There seems to be an oddly specific overlap between Zagreus/Thanatos shippers and Miles/Phoenix shippers from Ace Attorney. Both couples are similar in that they have an extrovert with dark, spikey hair who defrosts an old, silver-haired friend with parted bangs who's more introverted and behaves like a Tsundere towards the former. A particularly popular piece of fanart of Phoenix dressed as Zagreus and Miles dressed as Thanatos might have contributed to the friendship of both fandoms.
  • With Hadestown, another much-hyped and much-awarded late-2010s retelling of Greek myths. Both works focus on the Underworld, diversify its characters, and spotlight the relationships between Orpheus, Eurydice, Hades, and Persephone. Both involve a “loop” and trying to Earn Your Happy Ending. (Hermes in Hadestown is aware that he is telling the same story every night, but he still hopes that it will eventually end differently.) It is not uncommon for players to recommend the musical or for reviewers to mention it while discussing the game.
  • With Blood of Zeus, another work released around the same time, and is also based on Greek myths that features attractive Animesque character designs, averting Monochrome Casting, and a main character with divine daddy issues.
  • With The Camp Half-Blood Series, as both are popular works based on Greek Mythology that flesh out Hades and have his son as a major character. There are many examples of fan art that portray Zagreus and Nico di Angelo as brothers.
• Game-Breaker: Enough to warrant its own page.
• Gateway Series: Hades brought newcomers to the Roguelike genre, so much so that you'll find articles talking about the game standing out as the perfect gateway roguelike, or that it made the genre more accessible.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Zagreus was an actual Greek god, but one worshiped in much older Greek mythos. He was the son of Hades and Persephone, but he was worshiped as part of Orphic cults, who emphasized the study of life and death, including gods who rose up out of the underworld. Orphic tradition merged him with Dionysus; specifically, after the infant Dionysus was dismembered by Titans, Athena recovered his heart, which Zeus used to resurrect him as Zagreus. This itself is referenced with Dionysus talking Zagreus into playing a prank on Orpheus by convincing him that he and Zagreus are one and the same. Interestingly, little is actually known about Zagreus as a god and what his role and duties were, making him a suitable blank slate in terms of characterization.
    • Zeus jokes at one point that they should claim Zagreus is his son, not Hades's. Some Orphic cults did in fact have him as his father.
  • The Statue of an Old Man is the Bust of Homer, though nobody in the Underworld seems to have any idea who it's supposed to represent (except for The Narrator, whose flattering description of it may be a hint towards his true identity). The joke here is that the Bust of Homer itself is a 2nd century CE Roman replica of a 2nd century BCE Greek original (which has long since been lost), which itself was made about 500-600 years after the original Homeric poems were recorded. In other words, it's no wonder nobody recognizes who the statue is supposed to be, because nobody knows what Homer looked like, or if he even existed at all.
  • Hypnos having a single tuft of hair on the left side of his head that resembles a wing is a reference to the Bronze Head of Hypnos, a Roman copy of a Greek statue of Hypnos; this statue depicts Hypnos with actual wings on his head, but only the head of the statue has survived, with the wings that were supposed to be on the right side of his head having broken off at some point.
  • One of the shades in the House says "Not Socrates, Just a Fan", whose cause of death is "Hemlock". In 399 BC, Socrates was sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock.
    • Another shade with Hemlock stated as a cause of death mentions "I shouldn't have drunk that" to hint at being the famous philosopher.
  • Looking closely at Hermes' in-game portrait shows that he has a tortoise in his bag (though the tortoise can be seen more clearly in this official art of him). This refers to how the tortoise is one of Hermes' symbols, since he's said to have invented the chelys, an ancient Greek instrument that was often made from tortoiseshell.
  • Zeus being the one responsible for Persephone being given to Hades in the game is a reference to some variations of the original legend where Hades kidnapping Persephone was Zeus' idea.
  • Given his congenial attitude and stoic contentment with his eternal punishment, it seems that Supergiant must imagine Sisyphus happy.
• Goddamned Bats: The Temple of Styx is full of little rats known as Crawlers. They die in one or two hits and deal minuscule damage, but they usually come in waves of eight or more at a time and surround Zagreus from all sides. Worse, they throw off the game's auto-aim system and makes attacks intended for more dangerous foes (like the aforementioned Satyrs) aim for them instead.
• Ho Yay: While there are canon same-sex relationships in the game (e.g. Achilles/Patroclus and potentially Zagreus/Thanatos), there are still some examples of this between characters who aren't officially together.
  • Theseus and Asterius, despite the former killing the latter in life, are portrayed as having become close companions in the afterlife. Despite Theseus being very full of himself, he clearly cares a lot about Asterius, enough to even convince Hades to let Asterius join him in Elysium. At one point, Theseus will get very upset when Asterius asks him to acknowledge Zagreus' strength, since he thinks Zagreus is "poisoning" Asterius against him. Asterius has to assure him of how strong their bond is and how Zagreus can never break it.
  • Artemis is implied to be more than just friends with her nymph friend Callisto; she even refers to her as "my Callisto" at one point, while Achilles and Patroclus call each other "my Patroclus" and "my Achilles" respectively. (It helps that, in the myths, Zeus seduced Callisto... by taking Artemis's form).
  • Although Achilles noted that Hades is one of the few deities who participates in a strictly monogamous relationship, it wasn't lost on many players that Persephone has quite a bit of subtext with Nyx. She'll mention that Nyx was the person (along with Cerberus) that she missed the most after leaving the underworld. Nyx herself clearly cares a lot about Persephone's well-being, since she collaborated with Charon and Hermes to smuggle Persephone out of the Underworld after Zagreus' stillbirth was too much for her to handle, and she still uses her abilities to keep Persephone hidden from both the Underworld's denizens and the Olympian gods. After Persephone returns, Zagreus will affectionately refer to them both as his two mothers.
  • Ares is very taken by Thanatos's role as Death Incarnate. If Zagreus gets together with Thanatos, Ares expresses his approval, and his dialogue implies that he may have been a Hopeless Suitor towards Thanatos at one point.
• I Am Not Shazam: The main character's name isn't Hades, it's Zagreus. Hades is Zagreus' father and the main antagonist.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: The Asterius/Theseus ship has been given the name "Burgerking" by some fans.
• Jerkass Woobie: Hades himself, ironically. On the one hand, he's incredibly cold and aloof, and emotionally abuses Zagreus. On the other, he's stuck with a permanent job that he never asked for, is estranged from his wife, and has an even worse relationship with his son. He spends nearly all of his time doing paperwork and overseeing his enormous, constantly-expanding realm. His other relatives are the original Big, Screwed-Up Family, he's sitting on a secret that could throw both the surface and the underworld into absolute chaos if it ever got out, and his house contractor refuses to install a Sundial. Of these problems, only his broken relationship with Zagreus is arguably his fault, and Hades himself eventually admits that none of it excuses his behavior.

L to Z

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Zagreus easily became the biggest one among Supergiant's games. Aside from his more canonical interests (Achilles, Thanatos, Meg, and Dusa), there are people who are happy to ship him with more characters like Ares, Aphrodite, Hypnos, and Dionysus. And then you add the multiple poly ships like Meg/Zagreus/Thanatos and even Achilles/Zagreus/Patroclus.
• LGBT Fanbase: In general, the game has a huge LBGTQ fanbase due to its extremely attractive characters, both male and female, and for its positive representation of queer relationships.
  • Zagreus, the main character, is canonically bisexual and can end up with Megaera, Thanatos, or both. (He's also implied to have a crush on Achilles, though he drops it once it becomes clear that the latter only has eyes for someone else.) Regardless of who Zagreus ends up with, every character is supportive of his relationship(s).
  • There are plenty of fans who appreciate how the game frames the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as explicitly romantic, as opposed to other modern interpretations that paint them as just being friends. There's also the fact that Achilles is a role-model and gentle mentor for Zagreus, who also later comes to admire Patroclus as well as his romantic relationship with Achilles. Having older LGBTQ people be represented in a game, and for them to be in a healthy relationship, meant a lot to many younger LGBTQ players who could look up to the characters and feel validated.
  • Many asexual and aromantic fans appreciated how the game resolves the relationship between Dusa and Zagreus once it's maxed out, with their bond being framed as no less valid than the romantic ones he can share with Megaera or Thanatos.
  • Sapphic/Ace fans love Artemis because of their respective headcanons of her.
• Love to Hate:
  • The fandom seems to view Theseus as this; he's a pompous braggart, a hypocrite, an idiot, and makes for a very annoying fight, but that makes it all the more satisfying to bring him down.
  • Zeus becomes this as the revelations of the story slowly come to light. The entire conflict is directly his fault, yet he refuses to take any responsibility for it. But since he's so over-the-top, condescending, and hammy, people find him equally hated and hilarious.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Of the 6 weapons, depending upon your playstyle and skill, your close-range weapons may be hard to clear early runs with, unless one is skilled with using their movesets and/or get lucky with Boons. After enough upgrades are spent, they become much more useable for clearing runs.
  • The Aspect of Guan Yu is one of the least popular hidden aspects, and is unfortunately the first one you unlock. For slower but stronger normal attacks and a Life Drain Charged Attack (but with a smaller AoE than the normal spin), it comes with a severe cut to your max health, 75% at base level, including Centaur Hearts. Unlike other aspects, upgrading it reduces this penalty instead of making part of its kit stronger, meaning you have to spend a lot of Titan Blood to make a terrible weapon viable instead of a strong weapon even better. The consensus is that Guan Yu can be strong, but it's heavily reliant on specific Boons and Hammer upgrades, and players generally consider its drawback too huge for its strengths to outweigh.
  • Hermes' Quick Reload, which makes Bloodstones dislodge from enemies faster, may actually be a bad thing for builds relying on Boiling Blood (enemies with Bloodstones take 50% more damage from attacks and specials) or Abyssal Blood (enemies with Bloodstones deal 30% less damage and are 30% slower).
  • Ares' Slicing Shot and Demeter's Crystal Beam are relatively slow-moving and having relatively weak enemy tracking, relying upon timing to aim their damage effectively. Due to the mobility of enemies and bosses alike, players may need to rely on getting their Duo Boons with Artemis — Hunting Blades & Crystal Clarity, respectively — to be usable. Ironically enough, both Duo Boons are considered Game Breakers.
  • Cold Embrace, the duo boon between Demeter and Aphrodite, adds tracking to Demeter's Crystal Beams... but unlike with Crystal Clarity, which tracks the closest enemy, Cold Embrace instead focuses beams on Zagreus. This requires the player to position Zagreus in harm's way to get off Crystal Beam damage. Unless you are using a very close-range weapon like the Fists, and/or are very quick to respond with dashing, you'd be better off not using it.
  • Mort and Rib, the companion keepsakes that allow you to summon Thanatos and Skelly respectively, are considered the weakest of the Companion summons. Thanatos is able to provide one of the single strongest attacks in the game, guaranteeing a 3500 damage hit, but the delay of his attack is long enough that mobile enemies are often capable of avoiding it. Skelly's keepsake, on the other hand, will summon him to draw all attacks from enemies, but he has 250 HP, which often gets him destroyed rather fast... and not helping matters that he is actually vulnerable to friendly fire from Zagreus (most likely to prevent the player from abusing Invincible Minor Minion).
  • Among the eight gods, Artemis' status effect is considered the hardest to trigger Privileged Status. This is because like Zeus, Poseidon and Athena, you need a specific boon to trigger her status effect. Unlike those three, Hunter's Mark works not by adding the status effect to the attacks themselves, but upon triggering critical damage. It also marks a different enemy instead of the one you just landed a critical hit on, which is great for snowball damage against mobs, but won't fly when facing singular enemies like minibosses and the final boss. This is most likely intentional by design to avoid breaking the game by spamming critical hits.
  • Depending on your choice of weapon and aspect, Poseidon's core Boons (the ones that buff your Attack, Special, Cast, Dash and give you a Call) can become this as their trait of knocking back enemies can knock them out of the range of your own attacks after the first few hits.
  • Curse of Longing, the duo boon between Ares and Aphrodite continuously applies the former's Doom as long as the enemy is under the latter's Weak status effect. In theory, this would allow for defensive players to do a hit and run tactic in order to continually wear down the boss but each repeated proc halves the effect so it doesn't come close to even doubling the damage output of the Boon according to the player's intent as opposed to simply reapplying it again on the same enemy.
  • Curse of Drowning (the Duo Boon of Ares and Poseidon) is notorious for drastically changing how Flood Shot works to the point of actually being worse in most cases. The Boon changes the Cast so that rather than shoot from a distance, now pulses around you. This means that players that are used to fighting in a distance must suddenly close in on the enemy in order to get the full use of the Boon, however since the Pulse has a short delay before it can trigger, this means that players who are not used to fighting in close-range will inevitably get hurt by enemy attacks to the point of suffering a quick death. The Boon also cannot be used with Hera's Coronacht Bow equipped (but not Beowulf) and prevents the more useful Mirage and Blizzard Shot from being selected so there's pretty much no reason to even pick it up unless you use melee weapons such as Malphon or Stygius.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Zagreus is a Homestuck troll. ^ExplanationMany fans have noticed how Zagreus' design makes him look very similar to the trolls from Homestuck (particularly Karkat Vantas), with his greyish skintone and black spiky hair, as well as his laurel crown having the same yellow-orange-red gradient as the trolls' horns.
  • I do not control the die. ^ExplanationA variation on the "I do not control the speed at which lobsters die" meme from Drake & Josh, where the sentence is blanked out in places to suit whichever god from Hades is saying it.
  • "Are Ya Losing, Son?" ^ExplanationHades fans commonly borrow the "Are Ya Winning, Son?" meme format, but alter it in order to reflect Hades' habit of constantly mocking Zagreus' deaths, when he's not causing them himself.
  • Hug your dad. ^ExplanationThe Final Boss has a massive laser attack that has an Arbitrary Weapon Range. Rushing to his close proximity is considered the best course of action if there is no cover nearby while allowing you to use your weapon for some free much-needed damage. This phrase is used by the players when referring to this move. It is noted that this tactic won't work when he is under Extreme Measures, where he will push you right back to his lasers if you try.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The explosive gun-like sound when hitting an enemy with the Privileged Status debuff.
  • The "guh-dong" of Thanatos' bell that precedes his arrival to an encounter.
  • The sound effect that plays when the player is offered a Legendary or Duo boon.
  • The "ding!" that indicates there's a fishing spot nearby.
• Narm Charm:
  • Under Extreme Measures, Theseus gets a pair of golden bandoliers, a minigun-armed golden chariot, and a gratuitous golden mask to complete his garish getup that complements the new golden armor that is inflicted on the Minotaur. It is utterly ludicrous, but entirely in line with Theseus's personality.
    Theseus: Chariot, I shall avenge you!
  • Thanatos is at once stoic and extremely dorky whenever he's in a chamber, what from the diegetic bell, his catchphrases about the inevitability of death, to the fact that Than gives Zagreus literal hearts if he beats him. And this unabashed dorkiness is part of why many fans love him.
• One True Pairing: Thanatos/Zagreus has easily become this with tons of fanart for them. This is possibly in part for being Supergiant's first unambiguous gay couple ^note There have been ambiguous gay couples before, particularly Transistor's Grant and Asher, Thanatos also shares his voice actor with Asher, and Pyre's Oralech and Volfred.. It helps that they have quite a bit of chemistry and can actually get together if the player takes the right steps. It's likely the most popular ship among all of Supergiant's games.
• One True Threesome: While not as popular as Zagreus' canon ships, the threesome ship of Achilles/Patroclus/Zagreus has its own growing set of fans. Achilles/Patroclus is already canon, but Zagreus is implied to have a crush on Achilles, and while he doesn't pursue it in-game, he's still canonically open to having multiple partners and fans of the ship like the idea of him pursuing a romance with both Achilles and Patroclus.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • "Thanzag" for Thanatos/Zagreus, which is especially fitting since "Than" and "Zag" are already nicknames they use for each other.
  • "Patrochilles" for Achilles/Patroclus, which was around since before the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Progression in various relationship plots is locked behind dialog with various characters. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you can only enter into a dialog with a given character once during or after each run, which means that you may have to go through dozens of runs to cycle through all their dialog and progress in the relationship. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that characters are not guaranteed to appear after every run (for example, Thanatos won't show up in the House of Hades unless you met him during an escape attempt), which means that even more runs are necessary to get through their dialog trees. On top of that, even if someone is in the House when you return, they might be engaged in a conversation with someone else, suddenly locking you out of the chance to give them a nectar for that run. If you want to advance your relationship with an Olympian, you will be unable to start a dialogue with them if their boons are purchased from Charon, or given as a part of a Trial of the Gods chamber. Lastly, you can only use so many keepsakes per run if you have them, so some of the pace of your relationship building will be up to the Random Number God.
    • Among the Olympians, Poseidon's favor is generally considered the hardest to complete. This is because unlike the others where you can complete theirs with enough dialogue and gameplay, for him you need to catch 18 fish before collecting his boon. What makes it hard is that one of them must be a very rare or legendary fish like a Seamare from Elysium and you cannot accumulate fish over multiple runs, with the game only allowing you accumulate 2 runs worth of fish before being deleted to make room. This is where the dialogue issue stated above comes in, where you find yourself being unable to unlock that pesky heart because you are unlucky and Poseidon remains silent instead of acknowledging what you did.
    • Dusa and to a lesser extent, Thanatos is the hardest to progress in their relationships as they can disappear after talking or gifting, which drags things out. Dusa in particular is hard to complete, if only because it takes ten bottles of Ambrosia in order to fully advance the dialogue tree. You have the option of getting all of those bottles back once you hit max affection with Dusa, but it's still going to be a huge sink of time and resources just to get that far.
    • Even worse, the dialogue that is responsible for giving out prophecies is rather low on the priority pool. This means that if it wasn't for their dialogue being constantly replaced by less important ones, you could've fulfilled their hard-to-complete prophecies long ago.
  • On the combat side of things, staggered or delayed enemy spawns. This is ordinarily not a problem until you come across rooms full of Flame Wheels, which — unless you use Casts, have Athena's Divine Dash, or ranged attacks for the weapons that have them — may cause the fight to slow down to a crawl while you run around the room, letting them hit walls. This strategy sometimes drags way out, and can also happen during trove challenges — which are timed in nature. Gods help you if you have Tight Deadline active.
  • The contests with Thanatos are free help, stop the timer for the Pact of Punishment if it's on, and if Zagreus gets more kills or manages a tie, Thanatos also gives a free Centaur heart in addition to the room's reward. However, depending upon the enemies' numbers and Zagreus' build, among other things, this can range from easy to borderline-impossible because Thanatos showing up is completely random. The latter normally applies to large groups enemies in armor, particularly those from Elysium, as Zagreus needs time to tear through armor while Thanatos' attacks are a (delayed) One-Hit Kill.
  • Minor, yet you can meet the requirements for multiple run clear messages after clearing a run. However, only one will be displayed and what determines it is a hidden priority variable. If the earned messages have no priority, one of them will be picked at random.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • These can be created by opting out of the two main ways the game makes Zagreus stronger: Boons and the Mirror of Night. The Mirror of Night's benefits can easily be removed by spending one Chthonic Key, though achieving a true no-Boons run is rather difficult, not only because of the usefulness of Boons, but because you can't refuse getting some Boons. However, it can basically be pulled off, with the help of the RNG, by picking Boons with the intent of not using them and purging them at the first opportunity.
    • The "Fresh File run"^ExplanationBeat the final boss at your first escape attempt. is generally considered as the ultimate example of this. At your very first run, not only you have no access to the Mirror of Night, you also have no Companions, Keepsakes, upgrades to the Underworld, access to the Boons of five gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, Aphrodite and Demeter) and Olympian Calls while being locked to base level Stygius as the used weapon.
  • Some of the varied self-imposed challenges limit a playstyle to a certain gameplay mechanic, or forbid the use of certain controls. These resulted into Cast-only runs, Special-only runs, No-dash runs, etc.
• That One Achievement: While most of the achievements are relatively fair and straightforward, there's a couple that generally feel like a Luck-Based Mission.
  • "Thanks, But No Thanks". This requires you to purge a Legendary-level Boon in a Pool of Purging. Sounds simple enough, were it not for several problems. First, you have to earn such an extremely rare boon in the first place, which means running through at least half the game. Then you have to find a Pool of Purging — you'll find them at the end of each floor, but you might not even get a Legendary boon until the final floor. Then you have to hope that out of the three boons you can purge, one of them is the Legendary one. This was made easier in later updates, as Pools of Purging can appear in regular rooms even in the Temple of Styx (unlocked after beating all foes), and Fated Persuasion can affect which three boons Zagreus can purge, but it still is highly luck-based. However, there is a way to cheese this. Once you get the Rod of Fishing, Poseidon can congratulate you for doing so the next time you get his boon which in turn alters his standard boon selection to a single choice of the Legendary Boon of Huge Catch (Increase fishing spot spawn rate by 20%). When you reach a Pool of Purging, it will definitely show up as a choice if you were savvy enough to not get over three boons.
  • "Bad Call". To get this, you have to use an Olympian's Greater Call against them in a Trial of the Gods. It sounds easy in theory, but it's rather uneven in practice. First, you have to come across a Trial of the Gods, which is random; even if you use the Mirror of Night upgrade to alter room rewards, a Trial is a pretty rare occurrence. Then, it also has to include the god whose Call you're currently using — it picks two gods at random from the boons you've already collected, so if you have more than two, the god you want might not be there. Once you're actually in the Trial room, you have to choose the god who doesn't represent the Call that you have (i.e. if the Trial makes you choose between Athena and Ares, and you have the call of Athena, you'd have to pick Ares). And finally, even after all that, the Trial needs to have enough enemies and you need enough passive upgrades to your Call's charge rate in order to fully build up the meter and fire off the Greater Call. You could go through dozens of runs before even getting the possibility of trying for this achievement, and it's still a pain to get even if you do everything right.
  • "Thorn of Thanatos" requires you to accumulate a 30% damage buff from using Thanatos' keepsake, Pierced Butterfly, which gives you a stackable 1-2% buff (depending on the keepsake's level) if you can clear a room without taking any damage. So at max level, you'll need to clear 15 rooms without getting hit, which is a bit harder than it seems as they don't count non-combat areas like Charon's shop and fountain chambers. Not only can you take damage from enemies off-screen, but you'll also have to avoid suffering any trap damage. The Keepsake also has a specific exemption for the mini-chambers before the final chambers in the Temple of Styx, denying you the ability to accumulate damage boosts without dealing with multiple waves of enemies.
• That One Attack:
  • Megaera has a specific move where she sits still and spams waves of projectiles at you, rather like the Spreader Witches from Asphodel. Unlike those, however, she will do it for a long time without interruptions, and will trail her attacks directly on Zagreus. If you're nearby when she starts, it's almost guaranteed to chew your health down quite a bit. On the plus side, this attack does have a maximum range, and if you can get some distance, the bullets can be dodged more easily. Alecto and Tisiphone also have their own versions of this attack; Alecto's shoot projectiles in a six-star pattern, while Tisiphone's does not leave any room to dodge (all-but requiring using dashes to I-frame them). The latter of which is especially bad since it coincides with Tisiphone's increasingly small chamber.
  • Alecto also has her own Blade Rifts — yes, those things that Ares gives you. Turns out they hurt quite a bit, they follow you around the arena, and stay on the field for far too long. Unsurprisingly, both this attack and the above one can be used if they are supporting the current sister on a Pact run.
  • Tisiphone is a nightmare as a supporting Fury because she has two moves that are debilitating/dangerous when combined with the primary Fury's moves. The first is a cranked up version of her flame spout attack that appears in three rows, covering most of the battlefield, which is difficult to dodge if you don't see it coming. The second is when she covers the entire arena in a fog that makes it very hard to see where the other enemies are, and it lasts for a decent amount of time.
  • Asterius enjoys a very over-cranked bull-rush wherein he runs you down for massive damage. It doesn't stop on its own (only when it hits you or a wall), he's much faster than you, and he has insane tracking. He can easily curve around the pillars in the arena, so they're out of the question unless you can dash through them when he's right on your heels. It's much simpler to just approach the edge of the arena and get him to smack into a wall that way — except that the outer edge of the arena is where Theseus throws his own highly damaging attacks (spears, which you need the pillars to hide from, and on Extreme Measures, he circles the arena laying potent bombs). It is not unheard of for him to still hit you despite having multiple dashes, particularly if he buffed by Forced Overtime. If you plan to have him run right into your shield, he could instead circle around you indefinitely until you have to let go, where he would nail you during the recovery animation.
  • Demeter is probably the most annoying god whom Theseus can call. Every time Theseus spin-attacks or throws a spear, she'll summon a growing icy whirlwind much like the player's version of her call, either near Theseus himself or at the spear landing point. It deals damage quickly and applies Chill to you, making you slower and likely to take more of it. Additionally, it generally happens to spawn with a wide radius right under your feet, making it difficult to avoid even when you're already moving. Gods help you if your weapon is melee and Theseus is right in the middle of a whirlwind.
  • Fitting for a Final Boss, Hades has three:
    • After shaving off a third or two-thirds of his health in his first phase, he will summon random enemies to assist him. While they can sometimes be completely ineffectual and simply ignored (like Numbskulls), he will summon mini-bosses like the Giant Soulcatcher and Megagorgon on Extreme Measures. Neither are fun to deal with on their own, but to divide your time between them and the final boss is full-on hell.
    • In his second phase, Hades thankfully stops calling in back-up, but instead gets a rotating laser attack that will shred through your health in seconds. When he gets really low on health, he will fill almost the entire screen with these rotating lasers, and your only defense are the few remaining rocks as cover, or certain boons and trinkets (like Athena's Call). The wind-up for the attack is very short, so if you're caught too far from cover, it can be a run-ender. Thankfully, a patch significantly increased the size of the cover points and their associated hitboxes, making hiding a lot less of a guessing game than it had been. However, this attack like any other also sets off any urns it hits, meaning that even if you successfully got behind cover, a nearby urn might go off and hit you.
    • In all phases, he can send out shockwaves that cover most of the arena, commonly as the attack of one of the skulls after a while if you don't kill them. If you don't happen to be on the other side of the arena, you're going to need to pull off some precise dashing through the shockwave if you don't have your dash shielded, and even if you do, it's not too hard to fumble when Hades throws a lot on your plate.
  • If you have the Middle Management Pact active, Linker enemies are hell if you have a melee weapon. The Linker effect creates a continuous laser beam between two or more enemies that causes rapid damage on contact, similar to the Snakestones. Since you need to get close enough to hit them, this involves dancing around the enemies until you can pick off the ones at the edge.
• That One Boss:
  • Theseus and Asterius are the hardest duo boss comparable to Ornstein and Smough. The king has the combined abilities of all Elysium's shades; the aggravating-as-hell shield block from the front, a close-range spin attack, and the incredibly accurate snipe that requires special action to dodge. At half health, he also invokes the gods, who proceed to paint the entire map in energy blasts, with each possible god having a different pattern of blasts. This would not be a huge issue if it weren't for the presence of Asterius. The bull man is an aggressive attacker with highly-damaging swings, and will chase you down across the arena with them. While either opponent would be fairly simple on their own, you have to divide your attention between them, which is juggling a lot. They can easily fill the map with more attacks than you can reasonably expect to dodge. Combined with having more health and damage migration than the other bosses put together, their battle is an epic test of endurance
    • Turn Extreme Measures up to level three, and they become even more of a pain. Theseus gets the Macedonian Tau-Lambda, a golden chariot with a gatling gun and bombs to force you to move, while Asterius has his attacks buffed by causing shockwaves and getting a massive charge up move that sees him spinning across the arena, dealing damage with every swing of his axe. Once Theseus gets down to one-third of his health, he'll go right back to his shield-and-spear setup, but now with the added trouble of a buffed Asterius forcing your attention elsewhere. Unless you have a weapon that lets you play keep-away with them, expect to lose a good chunk of health on this fight, at best.
  • The Hydra on Extreme Measures becomes a nightmare by the simple virtue of an arena change. What once was a spacious island with several hiding spots and plenty of room is now four tiny islands with no such safety nets. Fighting seven heads (six armored and one impervious) on that little land makes for some hectic dashing, to say the least. Oh, and once the Hydra is down to one-third of its health, its spine breaks and it's free to chase you all around the arena. And you have to deal with the second wave of secondary heads on top of that.
  • Not to be outdone, Alecto is considered the hardest of the three Fury Sisters to fight due to her more aggressive fighting style. Her Lightning Chase sees her chase Zagreus across the map, summoning an attack from below him, making it hard to counter-attack her during this phase. And then there's her Whip Shot, in which she summons a cast similar to the Hunting Blades duo cast, which can deceptively do a lot of damage to Zagreus if you do not dodge in time, and they follow you. Over the course of the fight, she will progressively summon more of them. Extreme Measures cranks this up if you have the misfortune of Tisiphone serving as her support, as she will obscure the screen with fog.
  • The Wretched Sneak. Already having a large amount of health and a full complement of armor would make it enough of a pain, were it not a frenzied, hyperactive enemy that constantly teleports, only ever stopping momentarily to lob attacks or try to shank you. Unless you are fast on the draw and can dash right to where he appears to get in a hit or two, thus keeping up a relative hit-and-run approach, he's damn-near impossible to whittle down quickly (especially since status effects don't stick upon teleporting). And if the Middle Management condition is turned on, it also constantly spawns Wringers to hold you in place, as if dodging its attacks weren't difficult enough already.
  • The Dire Soulcatcher is an armored Damage-Sponge Boss version of the enemy listed under Demonic Spiders, but it also constantly spawns (armored) Disarmed Souls that will turn Elysium's other Demonic Spiders if left alone. The fight requires you to balance dodging butterflies, damaging the miniboss itself and killing the Souls so you don't have more to deal with, and it takes place in a small, cramped room on top of all that. Worse, killing the Dire Soulcatcher does not instantly end the fight, you still have to kill any Elysium warriors remaining, and it's not uncommon for them to finish you off.
  • The "Middle Management" condition of the Pact of Punishment creates these. For extra fun, this condition also buffs the minibosses Hades will summon when his level of Extreme Measures is activated.
    • The Tartarus minibosses begin spawning large amounts of mooks, or in the case of Dire Inferno-Bombers, double the enemy count.
    • Asphodel's Megagorgon and Elysium's Dire Soulcatcher gain teleportation abilities and become extremely jumpy.
    • The Barge of Death is a special one: the Voidstones that populate the vanilla ride are replaced with a single incredibly tough Dire Voidstone, which requires you to concentrate fire on it while cartwheeling around other attacks. And since the enemies crowding the already-small space have invincibility barriers up, half your shots simply will not connect.
    • The Temple of Styx's already aggressive and tough mini-bosses (e.g. Dire Bother, Giant Vermin, Satyr Chief, and Dire Snakestone) begin appearing two at a time.
  • As of "The Blood Price", Charon faithfully upholds the proud tradition of one of a roguelike's biggest challenges being an Easily Angered Shopkeeper. His oar strikes alone are quick, merciless, and capable of taking off huge chunks of health, and the sheer amount of Bullet Hell he's capable of doing wouldn't be out of place in a Touhou Project game. Good thing he's optional and only has one phase, but getting three hundred obols and a twenty percent discount makes it almost worth the trouble to fight him.
  • Extreme Measures Hades is arguably the hardest boss in the game. The boss hits even harder, gains an extra stage, new variations on attacks that make prior strategies difficult, the ability to heal, their summon brings out mini-bosses instead of just regular monsters and they summon Cerberus to blanket the field with attacks. The common strategy of getting up close and hitting when they fire the laser attack also doesn't work it's countered with a push and stun. On high heats and with pacts that increase damage or Tight Deadline, it's near impossible to win unless you're quite skilled.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • Picking up any of the three Cast from Hit Points boon curses (Addled, Flayed, Maimed) from Chaos can be debilitating if the player has already min-maxed, depended, or specialized too much on a certain combat aspect (Casting, Specials, and normal Attacks, respectively). These curses encourage the player to switch around their playstyle in the next rooms, but the difficulty ramps up if the other combat aspects weren't upgraded, leaving the player with fewer or weaker offensive options than usual. Thankfully, these curses are only temporary and will buff Zagreus once they are lifted. But regardless of their initial adverse effects, some players deliberately choose a boon with these curses if their end-result upgrades are very beneficial in the long run.
  • Among the conditions for the Pact of Punishment, a few of them stand out they can single-handedly cause your run to fail. The only reason you would undergo them is due to the Harsh Conditions prophecy and/or 32 heat and above runs forcing your hand.
    • Approval Process (cuts out one choice when obtaining Boons and upgrades per rank at random) is generally considered the most hated due to its infamous tendency to prevent you from obtaining the choice you are after. The censor doesn't completely cover the choice, effectively rubbing it in (especially if you are denied a Duo or Legendary Boon). Not only that, if you attempt to use Fated Persuasion to reroll, it is possible for the same choice to get blocked again.
    • Underworld Customs forces you to purge one Boon every time you leave a region. This already means you'll be reaching the Final Boss with three less Boons than normal, but as the options the Pool of Purging offers are random, it's possible for all three to be vital Boons to your build. Even worse if they are Epic, Legendary or Duo.
    • Heightened Security is also another hated condition, mainly due to it not being worth a mere 1 heat. It increases the damage from traps and magma by 400%. Suddenly, your health is dropping faster than a stone in Asphodel's lava while the dropping axes in Styx cuts your health in half (if not more). Not to mention that the urns the Final Boss spawns count as traps, so their shockwaves are buffed by this as well.
    • Routine Inspection, especially at rank 2 and above, removes many important buffs from the Mirror of Night that would make life easier when clearing high heat runs.
• That One Level:
  • Asphodel being flooded by the Phlegethon (read: being a Lethal Lava Land) makes dashing and footing a challenge compared to Tartarus, due to all the lava and small islands. By comparison, Elysium has a higher density of traps and harder enemies, but more even footing.
  • Styx while overlapping with Disappointing Last Level. Nearly every enemy there has a ton of health, the poison effects will drain your resources absurdly fast, and the rooms are so cramped that avoiding damage is difficult if you're not quick. There are several Boss in Mook's Clothing enemies that you could potentially run into, and they're all a chore to fight even with Game-Breaker boons at your disposal. The Satyr sack that you need to advance is found in one of the five corridors, but it's programmed to never be in the first room you choose, and it's up to the Random Number God as to whether it'll be in the 2nd-to-5th room. While you still get boons and rewards from going down the corridors, and you can check the other corridors after you find the sack if you want to, you won't be getting any more fountains to restore your health after you've found the sack, so whether they're worth it is purely up to the player. The level even gets this reception from an art design perspective. ^note Mostly brown levels, lack of unique encounters, and focus on rats can make it feel more like a Noob Cave than The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. But given that it's the entrance to the Underworld, where people are supposed to enter — not exit, as Zagreus is attempting — this does make some sense.
  • For the Trial of the Gods chambers:
    • Any Trial of the Gods becomes this if you make Aphrodite angry. Instead of blanketing the arena in damaging effects like Ares or Demeter, or buffing the enemies like Athena, Aphrodite summons heart-shaped homing projectiles after Zagreus. Unlike most projectiles in the game, these hearts cannot be swatted down or deflected, and will chase Zagreus unerringly until they dissipate after quite a while, are steered into a barrier, or land a hit and stun Zagreus for three seconds, making him dead meat to the actual enemies of the Trial.
    • Trials of the Gods within Elysium in particular can be especially devastating if the primary enemies you have to fight off are the soldiers of Elysium, as you will not only have to contend with them, you also have to deal with attacks from the gods and defeat the respawning enemies. This can be specifically frustrating if it's the Greatshields variants, since they can only be damaged from behind, requiring a lot of precision on the player's part.
• That One Sidequest: Completing the Fated Prophesies can be a treasure trove of this:
  • Sea God's Spite: Given to you by Poseidon requires Zagreus to defeat Theseus and Asterius under the Extreme Measures condition from the Pact of Punishment. They're the first entry in That One Boss for a reason. To rub it in, it is possible to have already beaten the duo under those conditions before you got the prophecy, meaning that you have to repeat your victory again.
  • A Friendly Wager: Given to you by Hermes is a bet in which you have to defeat Charon two times in a row. Charon is both a difficult boss and one that you are not guaranteed to trigger during a run. The fact that the "prompt" to initiating the fight ^note Shop lifting a randomly spawned bag of gold can appear in any of the first three realms can lead to you challenging him before you have finalized your core build. Also like Sea God's Spite, the quest giving dialogue is rather low on the priority list in his dialogue pool, meaning that it is possible to have indeed beaten Charon multiple times in a row before getting the quest.
  • Wanton Ransacking: Requires you to defeat every warden in Styx. This is a time-consuming prophecy, as there is no guarantee to spawn a specific Warden. You will only encounter two boss chambers in Styx per run, so it will take repeated attempts. Not to mention how these bosses can be stealth run-enders because of how difficult Styx is.
  • Power Without Equal ^note Unlocking every Legendary Boon, Primordial Boons/Banes ^note Unlocking every Boon and Bane offered by Chaos, God(dess) of ______ ^note Unlocking all boons of a specific Olympian except for their legendary ones, Divine Pairings ^note Unlocking all Duo Boons requires unlocking all of the boons. Because of RNG, there is massive trial and error with completing these prophesies, particularly because for the rarer boons, they have specific prerequisite boons you had to have already accepted before you're able to gain access to it.
  • Obtaining the Daedalus Hammer buffs for every weapon can be frustrating due to the hammer's relative rarity (you might find a dozen or more Boons during any given run, but maybe two or three hammers if you're very lucky), and the fact that some buffs aren't compatible with certain Aspects (which is mentioned precisely nowhere).
• Ugly Cute: Dusa is a severed green head with the face of a snake. Doesn't make her any less cute.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Hypnos. In the game's universe, everyone seems to be annoyed by him and his presence at first, due to his immaturity and his habit of frequently falling asleep on the job. In the fandom, he's one of the most popular minor characters whom people wish to have a bigger role and be available as a romance option.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Orpheus's soft voice, flowing garb, long hair, and lipstick have mistaken some gamers into thinking that his and Eurydice's relationship was genderbent into a lesbian one. This still doesn't stop people from reading it with queer lenses, interpreting Orpheus as genderfluid or trans. It helps that the game already is very LGBT-friendly.

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