Hades 2 reviews are out, and not only is it currently surpassing the beloved original, but it's now the highest rated original game of 2025, beating out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Since it was released back in April, it's been a given that Game of the Year awards are going to be heaped onto Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The excellent JRPG unsurprisingly got extremely high reviews, cementing it as the highest rated game of 2025 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic, with contenders like Hollow Knight: Silksong, Death Stranding 2, and (the real game of the year) Donkey Kong Bananza failing to overtake it. However, just as it seemed like no one had a chance of beating out the French JRPG, a new (well, old given the early access release was over a year ago) contender has entered the ring.
Hades 2 reviews are out, and the game has nabbed a 94 on Metacritic and 93 on OpenCritic. Over on Metacritic, this places it one point higher than Hades 1, while it matches with the original's score on OpenCritic. However, a score of 94 and 93 does put Hades 2 above the competition on both sites.
On Metacritic, it's currently the third highest rated game of the year behind the Switch 2 Zelda ports (notably, ports of games not released in 2025), although it beats the previous high score of 93 by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. On OpenCritic it's also behind the 94-scoring Japanese language learning-JRPG hybrid Shujinkou – which, granted, only has seven critic reviews on the site and not enough user reviews to have a user score. However, Expedition 33 has a score of 92 on the site, meaning Hades 2 is now the leader of the pack on both websites.
The GamesRadar+ Hades 2 review by Ali Jones gives it 4.5/5, and says "Hades 2 is a hugely ambitious sequel that occasionally stretches itself too thin in an attempt to make up for its increased scope, but that only distracts temporarily from a game that's intricately crafted in every facet of its existence. Impeccable combat and flawless characterization across a huge roster make for a follow-up that surpasses even its excellent predecessor."
Now granted, a higher review score doesn't actually mean too much when it comes to Game of the Year awards season (we saw this last year when Black Myth: Wukong was in over a number of higher rated titles), and I still fully expect we'll see an Expedition 33 sweep at most shows this year, but Hades 2 has definitely made a mark.
