Hades 2 sees the cast of the first game waging a war against the god of time, Chronos, who’s sacked the underworld and the family that oversaw it, including the first game’s protagonist, Zagreus, and its main antagonist, Hades himself. In order to do that, you’ve got to be a pretty big deal, and when you finally take the fight directly to Chronos, he proves exactly how he did it so handily.
I’m going to spoil the shit out of Hades 2 now. You’ve been warned.
Chronos loves fiddling with time throughout Hades 2, often freezing Melinoë just as she’s about to travel between rooms and attempting to trap her back in time by way of visions of Asphodel, the first region in the original Hades. Time is a pretty powerful domain to have absolute control of, and he makes sure to flex this as much as possible, including during his boss fight. How? Well readers, Chronos doesn’t allow you to pause during his fight.
Yep, you read that correctly. If you try to pause during the Chronos fight in Hades 2, he will instead literally neg you and pull Melinoë right back into the fight. It’s fucking dastardly. It makes complete sense that the god of time wouldn’t allow you to suspend it yourself, but rather than seed that idea throughout the game, Hades 2 just outright surprises you in the moment and tosses aside your best-laid plans. That snack break you were planning on taking because you were laser-focused on your run? Gone. Did you need to go to the bathroom? Sucks to suck, loser.
It’s an incredible moment ripped straight from the playbook of one Hideo Kojima and the mind-bending fight against Psycho Mantis in the original Metal Gear Solid. Though Chronos doesn’t go quite as far as requiring you to plug your remote or mouse into a different USB port, it does shatter the otherwise impeccable defense that the pause button might offer in almost any other game. It’s like Chronos reaches through the monitor, calls you a little bitch, and then hits unpause before jumping back into the game to whoop you, and he doesn’t actually stop there. Melinoë can use moves that generally slow enemies and Chronos actively defies those skills. You cannot bend time around him or yourself during the fight; you’re simply at his whim and it kind of rips.
Rest assured, there is a way around this because Supergiant Games aren’t entirely evil. You can eventually unlock an incantation at the base camp called the “Power To Pause and Reflect” that does finally allow you to hit pause on the fight and have a potty break.
While I completely understand why a lot of folks are a little up in arms about the move, I do think it’s actually a very fun little gimmick, and very much in line with some of the fourth-wall breaks Supergiant has peppered through its games in the past. There’s also a very obvious way to avoid it once you know to look out for it. After the first time, you should obviously internalize that it can happen and, if you really need to pause for a break, just do it before you enter the arena and fight him.
Though that doesn’t account for an urgent situation that might arise quite literally in the middle of the fight, I do think that players and the game will ultimately be fine if the fight needs to be reattempted. After all, Hades and its sequel are all about the loop, growing more powerful and comfortable taking on these fights, and unearthing countless secrets, so you may as well get used to it! Either that or get that incantation and pause the fight as soon as you can. I believe in you all. Death to Chronos.