Highlights

  • Hades 2 may not be a crafting game, but it offers plenty of crafting elements like gathering reagents and upgrading items.
  • The Forget-Me-Not Incantation in Hades 2 serves as a unique pinned recipe feature, guiding players to the ingredients they need.
  • Forget-Me-Not sets a new standard for crafting games, making recipes easily trackable without the need for external research.

Supergiant Games' Roguelike action RPG Hades 2 can't rightfully be classified as a crafting game, but it still has plenty of crafting elements to it. From the ability to perform (craft) Incantations at the Cauldron in the Crossroads to upgrading Melinoe's arsenal of weapons, there is a wide variety of things players need reagents for in Hades 2. With Melinoe's Gathering Tools, players can collect reagents like Bones, Ashes, Silver, Glassrock, and Iron, all necessary for creating and upgrading bonuses and items in Hades 2. Players will need to find these reagents first, however, and Hades 2 has a very useful feature for helping them accomplish that.

Many crafting games and games of other genres that include crafting as a core mechanic have what is generally referred to as a "pinned recipe" feature, which allows players to better keep track of the ingredients required for a particular recipe. Traditionally, pinned recipes simply make the ingredients more visually accessible to players by including them in a quest-tracking list or simply highlighting them to make them stand out in some way. While this has proven to be very helpful in many of the games that incorporate it, Hades 2 has taken it a few steps further with its Forget-Me-Not Incantation, which doubles as a pinned recipe mechanic and helps players track what ingredients they will need for certain recipes and where they can find those ingredients. Forget-Me-Not is not necessarily a revolutionary mechanic, but it is certainly an evolution of the classic mechanic that all crafting games should strive to imitate.

Hades 2's Melinoe next to Hades Zagreus
Related
Hades 2’s Melinoe Is the Other Side of Zagreus’ Coin

Despite being siblings and sharing plenty of similar characteristics, Hades 2's Melinoe and Hades' Zagreus are still two sides of the same coin.

Hades 2's Forget-Me-Not Mechanic Should Set a New Standard for Pinned Recipes

Hades 2's Forget-Me-Not Mechanic Lets Players Track the What and Where of Ingredients

Hades 2's Forget-Me-Not mechanic is actually an Incantation that players can perform fairly early on in the game. It only requires one Moly, which spawns randomly in the first level of the Underworld, and it is more than worth performing for the benefits it provides. Once players perform the Forget-Me-Not Incantation at the Cauldron in the Crossroads, they can press the Rarify button/key on the controller or keyboard to track the ingredients for that recipe. However, Forget-Me-Not does much more than what pinned recipes have been known to do in other games.

Rather than simply making a recipe more visually accessible to players, Forget-Me-Not places a special symbol on the Gathering Tool required to collect the recipe's ingredients and then, when applicable, on the door players should go through to obtain the ingredients. For example, should players require Silver for upgrading one of Melinoe's weapons, the Forget-Me-Not symbol will appear on the Crescent Pick, denoting that it will need to be equipped to acquire Silver. On the other hand, should players require Ashes to unlock more Arcana Cards, the Forget-Me-Not symbol will appear on every door leading to Ashes as a reward for completing an encounter. As such, Forget-Me-Not not only serves as a helpful guide for players as they navigate the Underworld and the Surface but also helps them keep track of what they need.

Hades 2's Forget-Me-Not Mechanic Should Be the Future of Pinned Recipes

While it could be accused of holding the player's hand too much, Hades 2's Forget-Me-Not Incantation is nonetheless a refreshing take on the classic pinned recipe mechanic and should become a new staple for the crafting genre. Many crafting games, especially those with rather deep crafting mechanics, still require players to search online for where to find certain ingredients, even with a game's pinned recipe feature enabled. Forget-Me-Not all but removes the need for third-party research by making its recipes entirely trackable in the most accessible ways in the game itself. The crafting genre as a whole would undoubtedly benefit from a similar mechanic, were it implemented and even evolved from here on out.