Hercules had all the myths and gods. Xena really only featured Aries and Aphrodite for a few magical miss-adventures. After season 3 they started going into other cultures. Hindu, Chinese, Norse mythology.
Imo, Xena was the more entertaining show. I've got all the seasons on DVD. But my favorite wacky episodes are in the early seasons. The bad seasons are mostly due to writer constraints. Across 6 seasons Lucy Lawless was pregnant like twice and in a leg brace I think at one point. I mean, it's nice in a long running show to get episodes center around support characters. And there's creative fun episodes to explain why Xena is body swapped. But it's funny listening to actor/director commentary, every episode was "this is what we wanted; this is what we had to do"
You know in shows like Star Trek there are always these hallway scene where they're just talking about the situation while turning corners, they don't have to emote or look at each other. The elevator and mess hall table scenes are reserved more for personal interactions.
In Xena there are a lot of episodes where she's standing in a room because 70% of the time Lucy didn't have the mobility to walk or was showing a baby bulge so, except for the time Xena was actually pregnant, they could only do head shots, over the shoulder, behind the horse, incapacitated in bed, or just some fast editing with a stunt double.
You don't get those hallway scenes where the characters are allowed to be distant and impersonal and just doing the work because tomorrow will be different. But in Xena, it looks like everything is personal and threatening the status quo. Like, this is it, Xena and Gabrielle are going to split apart because this or that needs one but not the other...and its going to be that way forever.
It's like, Xena and Gabi find a box of kittens. And Gabi is like, "they need me". And Xena is like, "I'm a monsters with PTSD and once weaponized cats by strapping bombs to their backs. I can't even." so they end up using the cats to track down a pied-piper who kidnapped the children and a farmer adopts the cats for their rodent problem. And Gabi is like "Xena, you've learned to love. Your days of strapping bombs to peoples back is over." And Xena stares into the distant "maybe you're right" while ominous music plays as Xena is hiding the fact that she already strapped a bomb to Gabi's back 2 episodes ago. If it doesn't kill her, it'll certainly ruin their relationship. dun dun duuun.
