Hades, the action rogue-lite from Supergiant Games, has received its second major content update in Early Access! The Good Times update adds a new Greek god, a weapon, and a long list of balance changes to existing items and upgrades!
New Greek God
Like the Chaos update that came before, The Good Times adds a new Greek god to the game for you to gain powerful boons from. Dionysus, the god of wine, specializes in providing powerful stacking damage over time effects to your attacks called Blight Wine. There is also a new type of indicator on enemy health bars showing how many stacks of Blight Wine are on an enemy at any given time. Blight Wine stacks do not refresh the timer of previous stacks on an enemy, and being able to chain quick attacks in combination with Blight Wine will allow you to significantly increase the damage Blight Wine can do in a short period of time.
Dionysus also has several powerful support boons to offer, such as After Party, which restores your health if you reach a particular low-health threshold after an encounter. Another interesting boon that I saw within my time playing the new content was the ability to be healed significantly after picking up an ambrosia. Overall, Dionysus is a welcome addition to the game and his boons are sure to aid players in creating powerful builds through new types of gameplay.
New Weapon
The Adamant Rail is the first new weapon added to the game since the launch of early access, and will only be available once you have unlocked all previous weapons in the game. The Adamant Rail costs 8 keys to unlock, but provides players a unique combat experience. This gun has 12 shots available to shoot with its Attack and can be reloaded at anytime, but doing so will lock your character down for a short period of time and cause you to be vulnerable to incoming attacks.
The Special attack of the Adamant Rail launches a large bomb into the air that will bombard an area shortly there after, dealing massive amounts of damage to any enemy caught in the blast. The bombardment zone can be aimed by holding the Special button down, allowing you to pre-bombard an area that you know enemies will be entering. Also, unlike the other weapons in the game, you are able to Attack directly after using your Special, encouraging players to combo the two attacks for strong battlefield control.
The primary downside I found with using the Adamant Rail is that the Attack has a rather short range by default, and causes you to be closer to enemies than you might otherwise be with the Bow.
Overall, The Good Times update is another quality addition to the game, and Supergiant is continuing to prove that their small team knows how to make excellent games. For more information on Hades, be sure to visit our Wiki here!