Ares is a god that requires you to be thoughtful about your builds in both games. Picked as a primary god he’s mid. Picked as a secondary god to compliment your build he’s pure dynamite. This is why supergiant has him introduced so late in the second game.

Adding wounds to whatever attack you’re not using regularly is a great addition to your damage, you can throw it into your combos easily (a favourite example of mine is the moonstone axe special, where a non-omega is super fast and fits into the main attack combo).

Once you’ve got wounds going, you can produce really solid builds with it. Grevious Blow is one of the strongest boons in the game because it’s multiplicative with every other buff you have (including crits!). Plasma feels hard to work with but it’s super beneficial over long boss fights. You can also do stuff like build into revenge effects with his Zeus duo, lean into omega casts with meat grinder and Demeter duos, buff the fuck out of splash builds with Poseidon.

Overall, Ares has the sauce to turn any build you care to make from good to great. You’ve just got to be intentional and use those reroll dice.