Hades (2020)

Hades Review

This is my very first Roguelite game and it is a fantastic one for my first game. Its gonna be hard to play another one of these game if they don't follow what Hades has done.

Story

Hades is a simple story but yet pretty deep Hades son Zagreus wants to get out of hell but Hades tries to stop him and won't let him escape. As Zagreus is trying to escape he gets help from the many greek gods to reach the escape and also from people in hell. The story gets deeper when Zagreus finds out his father Hades and Nyx has been lying to him about who his true mother is, this makes his escape and motivation to get out more important to find his real mother. Zagreus discovers lots of secrets behind his birth though it makes the story very good.

Gameplay and Characters

There is two gameplay cycles one is in Hell at your home where you can do many things but mainly talk to characters in a dating sim kind of way where you get your affection level up with the many different characters and gods by giving them nectar you get.They give you keepsakes that help you out making your escape but they also have stories and some stories come together. There are also characters as your making your escape as well just so many characters, even if you seen the greek mythology done a lot Hades still keeps things fresh. I was interested in the characters i didn't really know about. Gods like Nyx, Hypnos, Achilles, Eurodice, Orpheus than theres the Furies Megaera Tisiphone, Alecto they might of have made up people to like Dusa who might be Medusa but just her head. The Gods design all look pretty damn great as well some gods i prefer there designs in other games, like Athena and Aphrodite i prefer in Immortal Fenyx rising but that's just me.

You can also decorate the whole area in hell including Zagreus's room and add stuff in it like a new rug' change the color of rooms or add in different items like a fish tank You do this by going to this constructor NPC. You can add stuff in the areas you go through so it benefits your runs. So you can buy something that makes these portals appear in the areas, buy something so there's more fountains to heal from, buy something so you get more money in vases. Later you use it to open new areas in the lounge because there's doors that are locked just tons of stuff

The second part of the gameplay is the escape the Roguelite element. First before you make your escape theres a mirror in your room where you permanently upgrade your stats, after the mirror you choose between a weapon you want to take, there are 6 weapons and they can all be very good. Theres is the Bow, the sword, The Spear, The Shield, The Fist, and a Railgun. Than there are weapon forms which you unlock later making the weapons different to play with because some give them different attacks. Each weapon got 3 forms so its a lot of stuff in this game. After you choose your weapon its time to go for a run.

Hades is a Roguelite this means everytime you make your escape everything is randomly generated your items, the gods that show up, upgrades, mini boss room meaning your runs won't ever be the same at the start and if you die you lose everything and you go straight back to lounge at the beginning but this is where story advances and characters will always have a conversation you can have which makes dying not very bad unless your at the final boss lol.

You can attack, you can throw projectiles and you can dash in rooms it can be very fast paced. In most rooms theres enemies you defeat and when you beat all enemies in the room you get an item. The doors you choose to go through sometimes there 1 sometimes 2 sometimes 3 they will each show an item such as money, a health upgrade, a lounge upgrade, a shop, a hammer to upgrade your weapon a pom of power to upgrade abilities and most importantly the gods who give you abilities. You choose the room and item you want to go for. In rooms theres sometimes enemies sometimes a shop which you buy stuff from, sometime theres a healing fountain sometimes its a mini boss room its all random. There are 4 areas in the game at the end of each area is a boss, they always have between 4 items in there rooms it can be either a diamond, nectar, or Titan blood. All the bosses are always the same besides 1 of them in the first area where you fight a furie at first its 1 but later 3 will come and you fight them at random.

Hades gets a bit deeper though and it is the main thing that can make or break a run choosing the right items and upgrades that will benefit you in your escape. The most important things are the gods you choose they give you boons with various effects that make you stronger and give you better abilities like doing more damage on special attacks more power to your attacks doom effects to use on enemies, a cast effect to change your projectiles you throw they give you special powers known as a call and there is just loads of gods to to get abilities from. It being random though you won't always see them on a run, but you can make it so you have better chance to get them by giving them nectar so they give you there keepsakes which if you equip will make them have a better chance of appearing. Each time they appear they give you 3 abilities to choose from. This can make or break a run because you want to have the abilities and be able to do high damage to stuff.

Enemies and bosses

There are 15 types and some have variations to. The enemy designs arent really anything special i didn't find these enemies cool or anything. The bosses are okay there's the furies you fight, there's a snake you fight, theres Theseus and the Minotaur you fight, and the final boss is Hades who is waiting for you at the exit. I only like Hades and The Furies for bosses but there all tough bosses.

Final Thoughts

I don't really know what else i can say about Hades except its a very addictive game. At first i didn't like it but than i got hooked for a few weeks. What makes Hades good to me is it having a good story to keep you intrigued and make you keep playing. The gameplay is also very addicting to but i loved talking to the characters in the game and learning about them. Also this game is fully voiced acted every character is voiced and the voices are great. Than some characters have unique stories with another character and you have to find a way for them to meet each other stuff like that is just really cool. Zagreus also comments on different things when your escaping so each dialogue with bosses are always different and the interactions are never the same, i was like 40 hours in still getting different dialogue and conversations.

So much work they put in and so much content they can put a AAA game to shame. The game is constantly adding stuff so theres a lot of replayability like when you beat the game and reach the top something happens in the story where you have to keep reaching the top for the story to get the true ending. Than when you get the true ending there's like an epilogue. The game can be made even harder when you beat it once because you get the pact of punishment which you use to make your runs even harder but get better rewards there is just so much to the game i really have no negatives for it except i wish there were more areas besides 4. I also didn't do everything because late game you have to have a better understanding of the gods boons you get and what works because you have to do high damage when your doing the pact of punishments. You raise the level to the pact of punishments making it harder but you need the items they give you so you can get nectar for characters to raise affection so it got to grindy for me sadly and i wanted to play something else.

That being said though i can see why tons of people would play it nonstop because you can do different builds like do an all dashing run or an all doom run and stuff like that but it didn't really interest me personally to do it. Hades is awesome though so my score for Hades is a 9.

4/5

Gameplay was fantastic, if a little bit frustrating at times. Enjoyed getting the nuggets of story from everyone after each run, and the weapon variety kept things fairly fresh.

While I finished the game, I used god mode to expedite things a little more. I think the gameplay is super solid and the variety of builds you can make is great and mentally stimulating, there are many facets to each build that you can tweak (weapons, weapon aspects, boons, items etc.) However on it's own it's not enough to draw me into the game, I prefer a combo of gameplay and character building with an engaging story. While this had an engaging story it was spaced out fairly generously and I grew bored of repeating the same rooms over and over. The ending of the story seemed a little abrupt, but the ending credits were stellar.

This has been my go-to for the last two weeks. Couldn't be more impressed.

I was very concerned this looked like a major turn for the conventional after Pyre and Transistor, but like all of Supergiant's ventures into genres, it's just too well executed to complain about. All the weapons are fantastic in their own ways. It refreshingly tackles RNG by marking doors to the next rooms with the upgrade/reward behind it and allowing you to give gifts to guarantee certain boons from Gods. You shape your run beyond mere chance. Currently, the game is the perfect length for short sessions that respect your time. I hope that doesn't change too much as early access progresses!

Meta progression a la Dead Cells is a controversial one. It's hard to tell if I'm improving in skill or just raw power. At least it's a way to ensure there's no perceived wasted time. You could always remove the advantage too.

Haven't quite yet beaten the early access final boss, but I seem to get to it every time at this point. Content has more or less dried up. Characters don't have as much to say, but whilst they did (for an impressively long time) they really distinguished this as a roguelike with personality and story at its centre. The conversations, gifting and flashback sequences really took the sting out of failure.

Watched the first No Clip documentary vid for it and I'm impressed with their rationale behind going early access for the first time. They found for every game they would reach peak flow in their output just as it started resembling a fully working build in the last few months of development - right before having to finish up for good and move on. They wanted to experiment with pushing out an uber polished slice of final build and maintain that flow for the whole development cycle. Considering the polish and quality of the early access, I'm certain their experiment will pay off.