Really great and fun game and I love the way they try and synthesize the roguelike with the social elements, but I do think it gets a little tiresome the further you get. For me it got particularly frustrating when the npcs you want to speak to aren't available, and you have to do another run (30 - 45 mins) just to have a chance to advance your relationship with them. That, or an npc has so much queued up dialogue that it takes a dozen runs until they give you something that you need, which was a frequent issue for me during the orpheus and patroclus quests.

I also think that this game has really superb characters that I loved on their own, but the actual story itself was pretty weak. The best moment of the story for me was the first win, and I thought that ending was really beautiful and super well done, but as the game went on the story really just got weaker and weaker, and I felt exceptionally disappointed by the epilogue, which really failed to provide a meaningful catharsis to the tension of the story.

Despite all this, the gameplay is just fun and beyond addictive. The boons are quite transformative and while some can feel underwhelming at first, there's generally a synergy that you haven't realized that can make each of them extremely potent. I did feel a little uninterested in the heat system - I think I prefer something like slay the spire's ascension which has a fixed order of rising difficulty to the heat system, since heat 32 can be a mild challenge or agonizingly difficult, depending on your selection of modifiers. This is also just personal preference but I'd prefer a definitive peak difficulty that, while still challenging, is doable by those willing to put in the time, which in turn could be acknowledged by the game's characters. Heat 64 is so impossibly hard that the final boss doesn't even acknowledge it, since I imagine the devs felt no one would ever survive it!

Overall, this game is spectacular and I'm amped for Hades II. The devs seem like great people and I hope that they can take this already winning formula to even greater heights!

I often wish games would have dozens of animations and voice lines for repetitive interactions between the players and npcs. While this game went simple on the animations, they went to hell and back recording what seems to be endless dialogue. I played for nearly 100 hours and I don't think there was ever one conversation that was repeated. How did they do that?

And then there is the gameplay.

Nearly unparalleled experience.

I really like the mix of an in depth narrative with the cool gameplay cycle presented in roguelikes, thats one of the reasons why id prefer hades over other titles from the same genre, but sadly the whole plot is unbelievable underwhelming and ends up making all of that "in depth narrative" pointless...

the concept is cool the gameplay is good and all of the gods somehow felt alive but thats just it, all of that, going through the whole hell just felt pointless and really not rewarding at all

the surface is barely scratched when talking about characters, dynamics, or the whole persephone side of the story

hope Hades 2 clarifies some stuff, goes deeper narrative wise and has better gameplay elements🙏

Hades is only the second roguelike that I have played, and the second roguelike that i though was really good. I must admit that I still haven't gotten the true ending of the game, but I want to put the game down for a while because if I'm being honest, I'm not sure how good I am at it. It took me quite a while to finish my first run, though I had a great time playing the entire time. The gameplay is fun, the music is exhilarating, the characters are as interesting as they always have been in Greek Mythology. The setting of the game is such a perfect one, with different gods providing different powerups. There definitely were some abilities and weapons that were a bit lackluster compared to the other, some of which ruining a run if you got them at the wrong time, but this wasn't really a major issue of mine. I don't really have much bad to say about the game and everything good about it has already been said. Maybe in the future when I do get the true ending I will add to this review, but for now all I will say is that Hades is a great game.

Hades is possibly the best roguelike action game ever made. I first played this game in 2019, rolled credits, played for another 40+ hours and picked it up again for PS5 in 2024. Playing again after five years feels like coming home. Failing a run never feels like a major setback because the player is always working toward something new, whether it be character upgrades or advancing Zagreus's relationships with the House of Hades's many residents. If you only take one thing away from this review, PLAY THIS GAME. It's well worth your time.