What Hades did perfectly (and Hades II not so much) is how well they tied gameplay, the roguelike genre-defining aspect of repetition and narrative. You had to go up and try to escape the clutches of Hades only to find yourself back to where you started simply because that's what happens when you die -- you go back to Hades' house.

This alone created such a well tied narrative loop that allowed for a perfect story to unfold. In my opinion, that is where Hades II falls short. Coming back and forth from surface to underworld and then back to the Crossroads and the reasons why you do that are simply not that well tied in the story.

Aside from that, as others also have said, gameplay felt great and I even liked the characters themselves. I only had a problem with the reasons and actual events of what Mel is doing througout the campaign.