When I picked up Hades in late June of 2020, I was worried that I wouldn't really be able to sink my teeth into it. Four months later, I have almost 200 hours in the game. Supergiant Games really perfected the roguelike gameplay loop here. Like many roguelikes, every run, you get a plethora of resources that will help you become stronger and unlock new skills and trinkets. However, what takes Hades a step beyond that is the way it integrates narrative into the experience. Dying is rarely frustrating because each death allows you to spend more time in your home, the House of Hades, where you can interact with the many affable characters who live there and build relationships with them. There's a metric ton of dialogue in this game, to the point where you'll still be seeing new lines even after beating the game dozens of times. The way the lategame and postgame is handled is also excellent, allowing the player to gradually increase the difficulty to the level they desire in exchange for special rewards that will make their weapons even stronger. The sheer amount of weapon, upgrade, and talent combinations allows for an enormous variety in builds, nearly all of which are incredible. There are very few things in the game that are actually weak - even the stuff that isn't universally good is at least situationally good with certain builds. That, more than anything, is why I keep coming back to Hades time and time again.

The most complicated divorce story i've ever seen.

I was a little hesitant about this game when it originally came out cuz I walked away enjoying Bastion but I through Transistor was kinda cheeks and never heard anyone talk about Pyre which is never a good sign. However, I was really surprised at how good this game turned out.
Gameplay is all around airtight, each weapon their own variations really mix it up. I wish the game got a bit crazier, and you could start getting the really weird boons earlier in the run (i feel like i never see a cool one until atleast elysium), and there never feels like there's enough room/enemy vartiation but it's not a big a deal as it seems. The consistent progression is really cool, you feel like you're constantly getting extra goals aside of just getting to the end of each run, and trying to achieve things like prophecies/gunning for particular resources will force you off the comfortable path and do new things. I think death deference makse the game a bit easy, but I also haven't done really high heats yet and you dont need to run DD anyways.
This game is hands down Supergiant's best writing. There is some honestly fantastic writing in here, every character is memorable and the voice work is pretty incredible. Did you even know that Hades and the narrator were the same VA? I didn't and you hear two talk constantly, every VA they got for this game has an incredible range. SOMETIMES I get a little fed up having a brand new fluff paragraph every time I pick up a boon, but it's hard to not be impressed by how much work was put into making sure htere's so much non repeating dialogue, dialogue prompts for weird scenarios, keeping everything a single narrative in a roguelike, it's very well done.
The story itself is fun, but a little flat and the main quest just kinda Ends. The whole thing is plagued with a narrative issue of "why cant you people just talk to each other or explain anything", but it is the greek mythos so that's probably in character.
Supergiant's best game, and I'll look forward to whatever updates follow the game's 1.0 launch, but it's a full package right now anyways with lots of replayability even after you "beat" the game.

Muchos roguelikes llevan años queriendo hacer lo que Hades consigue con una gracilidad que parece hasta fácil (PD: No lo es). Al componente tremendamente adictivo de ensayo, error y mejora que caracteriza a cualquier roguelike arcade le acompaña una progresión a largo plazo tan satisfactoria como la de un título no procedural, a través de personajes que conocer, poderes que mejorar para siempre, mejoras dentro de la estructura misma del propio mazmorreo, y una intriga mitológica palaciega que contextualiza narrativamente la odisea de Zagreo y su huida del infierno, con sus giros narrativos, sus tragedias y victorias.

Maybe it's the fact that I spent my off time ignoring my cat to play so he could spill coffee and eat plants and I resent this game for it so I won't put 5 stars. Maybe I just wish for one more world and a couple more enemy types to keep the game fresher longer. Maybe I just hate Elysium that much. Maybe it's weird to start a 4 star rating with a little negativity.

But a game that feels this good to play and over and over again begs me to do JUST ONE MORE room is something special. Even though my cat is a terror and I hate Elysium.

This game freaking shreds. What an achievement, truly.

Hades has cemented Supergiant Games as one the finest independent development companies around, and surely my favourite.

There’s so much style in here. The visuals are beautiful and uniquely Supergiant, as is the amazing, heavy, and fusion-induced soundtrack - all hail Darren Korb.

Rogue-likes have never been appealing to me, and I only gave Hades a chance because it was a Supergiant one. And I love it. The way it’s all deeply integrated into the setting and the story - it’s satisfying and never a bad thing to “die” and go back to the beginning- to the house full of amazing characters to talk to and further develop their relationship and move the story forward.

And those characters. Their monologues and their dialogues are so well written and excellently acted - the voice acting is superb and it perfectly elevated each character’s personality and mood at any given moment.

And the fact that you never experience the same comment or the same conversations with them is just nuts. Remarkable work there.

Having gotten the game’s credits now, I’m absolutely satisfied with Hades. But what’s so much better as that there’s still lots and lots of stories to see through and so much game mechanics to be explored.

Supremely excellent.

Hades was a great surprise for me, as someone who doesn't like roguelikes, i ended up liking this one a lot. The catch here is that they connected the rogue like progression to a narrative, where each time you try and fail people react to that, the story grows, you got to talk new stuff to an amazing cast of characters and then you interest, even if you die again, is replenished.

Super giant did an amazing job as they always do, the art, music, everything is impressive.

For me just the repetition needed to get to the "real ending" was kinda where the roguelike part showed itself, being a little repetitive, and some of the enemy and places not that excited to see for the 10th time and on, but in the end it was worth it.

Even if you don't like roguelikes like me, give this one a try, if you do, why aren't you playing this one already?

Como fã da Supergiant e alguém que foi capturado pelos charmes de Pyre, estava bastante empolgado com Hades - tudo indicava que usariam do fluxo de um roguelike para contar uma narrativa revolucionária, cujos alicerces já conseguiam ser vistos em Pyre. Essa ideia, quando misturada à apresentação fantástica da Supergiant e reviews de usuários que estavam apaixonados com o jogo, provavelmente fez com que Hades fosse o jogo que mais tenha me empolgado este ano - comprei na hora que lançou.

Infelizmente, a narrativa de Hades, além de pouco especial (embora com bastante coração e MUITO conteúdo) está linearmente escondida através de um ritmo de roguelike maçante. Para chegar até o “final” da história, tive que completar o jogo dez vezes, todas as tentativas com um conteúdo quase totalmente similar, e essa repetição não foi o suficiente para ao menos iniciar nenhum do conteúdo opcional, que envolve suas relações com os outros personagens e o pequeno minigame similar à dating sim do jogo. O ritmo do progresso é simplesmente MUITO lento - aqui é um conteúdo decente e lindo (mas nada impressionante) que está artificialmente escondido abaixo de dúzias de horas de jogo muito repetitivas - acabei vendo todo o conteúdo opcional no YouTube, o que me deixou bem incomodado, percebendo que era coisa bem relevante à história do jogo que não tive nem chance de acessar com 19h de jogo e tendo visto 95% do conteúdo mecânico que ele pode me oferecer nas primeiras 7h.

Hades, infelizmente, por mais que seja um jogo muito bonito e divertido, acabou sendo uma decepção. A história foi legal, mas muito menos interessante em sua execução do que em Pyre, e infelizmente, todo o conteúdo opcional que adicionaria tantas camadas aos personagens foi travado atrás de um grind que deixaria MMOs coreanos com vergonha.

I've sunk around 100 hours into Hades. Unsurprisingly I think the game has a lot going for it, the core gameplay is very satisfying, the game gives just enough variety in the experiences it provides whilst having enough consistency to it that doing well is much more about mastering its mechanics than rolling the perfect mix of boons. Of particular note I love the player agency offered in the boons system giving you a lot of choice over the build that will come together this run, and the heat gauge which lets you up the difficulty whilst crafting an experience you'll actually still enjoy.

Beyond that the production quality is incredible, particular standouts being the music which is exciting and enjoyable but able to withstand many hours of repeated listening, and the character designs that are (almost) all just extremely evocative and endearing, each coming with ludicrous amounts of unique dialogue attached.

Beyond all this, beyond all the ways the game interweaves the lore of real mythology into its world, there's just something so conceptually compelling going on here too; the core gameplay loop and the reasoning behind it just makes so much sense, like of course a tale of someone breaking free from the underworld would be a roguelite, of course his inability to survive on the surface sets up perfectly for repeated gameplay loops even after you've "beaten" the game for the first time. It all just works.

That said, I've mellowed a lot on Hades since I put it down a few months ago (and returned to update this review). I still think it's a great game with a lot going for it, but I wish I felt like its true ending respected the player's time a bit more; it takes somewhere in the realm of 80 hours to get to it, but my best experiences with the game were all in my opening 20 or 30 hours of playing and I never really found myself recapturing that initial excitement. It doesn't help that once the heat level is pushed high enough the game stops really becoming fun, all its designs starting to crumble under the weight of however many different modifiers layered on top of one another, some mutated form of its former glory. As much as I enjoyed much of my time with Hades, and as much as I respect a lot of what it is doing, I'm unsure I will ever be returning to it.

Hades is the first roguelike to really hook me in a major way since the original Binding of Isaac. So many games in this genre over the last decade have really felt great to play, but I always felt like they were missing something. Hades has finally showed me what all those games were missing, and that is fantastic character writing.

Hades urges you to play more runs in a very smart way,. It accomplishes this both through the traditional roguelike trappings of meta-upgrades and new gameplay permutations, but also through new character dialogues that are seemingly endless. On top of both of these hooks the game is also very polished compared to a lot of its contemporaries. Every single item combination feels very well thought out and fun, there's hardly anything that feels outright bad to use which is a rarity in this genre.

Overall, it's really great, and I'm eager to dump another 50 hours into it.