"Back already?"
After spending around 20 hours with Hades resulting in feelings of highs and lows I've come to the only conclusion these emotions could finally ascertain. I love everything about Hades, except actually playing it. This is both the best roguelike game and worst I've ever played and it's impressive how much that swings backwards and forwards.
The interesting thing to me mulling this over in my head, and to use a Greek mythological term of phrase, is that Hades greatest strength is it's Achilles heel. This game wants you to die, yes it's how Roguelikes function, but I have never felt that more in others than in Hades. Each time you die you get a bit more character interaction, a bit more dialogue between characters by design. These interactions are eked between the protagonist, Zagreus the son of Hades the Greek God of the underworld and it's occupants. Each attempted escape from the underworld Zagreus gets a little more development from the mythical residents of the house of Hades such as Cerberus, Nyx, Hypnos, Thanatos etc. They will slowly grow and reveal more about themselves and the situation Zagreus is in and it's great. The characters are well written and the amount of content and spoken dialogue is absurdly impressive. Dying is how you progress this, dying isn't failure, dying is a reward for the setting, for the theme of Hades. Death is Hades business and Supergiant games was extremely clever in how it's implemented that as not only the known Roguelike mechanic but as a fundamental mechanic to the story of Hades.
I really like the cast. Getting snippets of conversations with the gods of Olympus and lesser known Greek mythological characters is a real treat each time. I also love their art design, it's pretty clear who each character is without stereotyping them too much. The voice acting equally puts in work to match the excellent writing. My favourite being Dionysus the god of wine who comes across as such an extremely laid back almost surfer like attitude but there is a tone of strength behind it all in his voice as well as art with his chiselled physique. Hades presentation really is excellent.
So where is the weakness here you ask? It's the actual dungeon runs in which the game wants you to die in to get these slow roll story sequences that hurt it sounds badly. This game is 40 minutes of gameplay dragged out into hours and I despise it for that. Each run has so little variety that it gets stale to actually play each time. Finishing a run didn't make me want to go again, it made me sigh that I would have to fight the same 3 bosses over again on the same levels in the same order. It's extremely linear and stale and the more I played the game, the less I wanted to.
I stuck with it for the excellent setting, art and characters. The thing is it actually plays really well. The animations are smooth, the combat is fun, there are 6 weapons to choose between that all have great moves and the boons from the gods of Olympus you collect can add some good variety to how the combat plays out. In the end though it's all the same, you will fight the same limited enemies, bosses and room types in the same order. I expected a variety of bosses that would be random on each run, corridors, challenges, just something? It's 40 minutes of game you play repeatedly. It felt like groundhog day.
Later in the game you can add modifiers to make it harder which can change things slightly and there are some prophecies to aim for in trying to get certain boons but it doesn't change those 40 minutes enough in any way to not feel like this is just a short experience painfully dragged out. To get the full credits you need to complete 10 playthroughs once you are strong enough or get lucky enough runs. It took me 25 runs just to beat it once. There is some permanent progress you can unlock with skills in a mirror and construction requests but equally they feel like padding to make it take you time to unlock all the story rather than rewards. This is felt more than anything with the god mode option. In the settings you can switch it on "To make it easier or if you just want to see the story". The issue is that the game wants you to die to progress the story and character interactions so god mode gives you some base damage resistance then 2% each time you die. Even trying to speed through the game after I had beaten it the first time it's still doled out at a trickle as it counters what the game wants you to do. It wants you to die, thematically and narratively, this is clever, this is great, it lacks the variety to keep that interesting in practice though.
It's a real shame too because a greater pool of bosses, levels and enemies to make each run feel fresh would have made this a truly great game. After a certain point though I died to Hades with a pretty sub optimal boon run and just felt, exasperation. I would have to do the same levels and bosses again and decided to put the game down. I watched the true ending on youtube and it was cute, I just didn't want hours of repetition to get there. I didn't feel I'd missed much by watching the ending and skipping the faff. Maybe it's me? I mean I played Vampire Survivors, this game designed for addiction. I did three runs for 30 mins each and put it down feeling like I'd seen everything. I guess that "one more run" mentality for games like this just don't have that effect.
I happily play 500+ hours in each Monster Hunter game though so what do I know?
+ Setting as a Roguelike is excellent thematically.
+ Characters, voice acting and artwork are great.
+ Combat is smooth and fun.
- Dungeon runs lack variety, same bosses and enemies makes things feel dragged out.
- Gets boring fast.
After spending around 20 hours with Hades resulting in feelings of highs and lows I've come to the only conclusion these emotions could finally ascertain. I love everything about Hades, except actually playing it. This is both the best roguelike game and worst I've ever played and it's impressive how much that swings backwards and forwards.
The interesting thing to me mulling this over in my head, and to use a Greek mythological term of phrase, is that Hades greatest strength is it's Achilles heel. This game wants you to die, yes it's how Roguelikes function, but I have never felt that more in others than in Hades. Each time you die you get a bit more character interaction, a bit more dialogue between characters by design. These interactions are eked between the protagonist, Zagreus the son of Hades the Greek God of the underworld and it's occupants. Each attempted escape from the underworld Zagreus gets a little more development from the mythical residents of the house of Hades such as Cerberus, Nyx, Hypnos, Thanatos etc. They will slowly grow and reveal more about themselves and the situation Zagreus is in and it's great. The characters are well written and the amount of content and spoken dialogue is absurdly impressive. Dying is how you progress this, dying isn't failure, dying is a reward for the setting, for the theme of Hades. Death is Hades business and Supergiant games was extremely clever in how it's implemented that as not only the known Roguelike mechanic but as a fundamental mechanic to the story of Hades.
I really like the cast. Getting snippets of conversations with the gods of Olympus and lesser known Greek mythological characters is a real treat each time. I also love their art design, it's pretty clear who each character is without stereotyping them too much. The voice acting equally puts in work to match the excellent writing. My favourite being Dionysus the god of wine who comes across as such an extremely laid back almost surfer like attitude but there is a tone of strength behind it all in his voice as well as art with his chiselled physique. Hades presentation really is excellent.
So where is the weakness here you ask? It's the actual dungeon runs in which the game wants you to die in to get these slow roll story sequences that hurt it sounds badly. This game is 40 minutes of gameplay dragged out into hours and I despise it for that. Each run has so little variety that it gets stale to actually play each time. Finishing a run didn't make me want to go again, it made me sigh that I would have to fight the same 3 bosses over again on the same levels in the same order. It's extremely linear and stale and the more I played the game, the less I wanted to.
I stuck with it for the excellent setting, art and characters. The thing is it actually plays really well. The animations are smooth, the combat is fun, there are 6 weapons to choose between that all have great moves and the boons from the gods of Olympus you collect can add some good variety to how the combat plays out. In the end though it's all the same, you will fight the same limited enemies, bosses and room types in the same order. I expected a variety of bosses that would be random on each run, corridors, challenges, just something? It's 40 minutes of game you play repeatedly. It felt like groundhog day.
Later in the game you can add modifiers to make it harder which can change things slightly and there are some prophecies to aim for in trying to get certain boons but it doesn't change those 40 minutes enough in any way to not feel like this is just a short experience painfully dragged out. To get the full credits you need to complete 10 playthroughs once you are strong enough or get lucky enough runs. It took me 25 runs just to beat it once. There is some permanent progress you can unlock with skills in a mirror and construction requests but equally they feel like padding to make it take you time to unlock all the story rather than rewards. This is felt more than anything with the god mode option. In the settings you can switch it on "To make it easier or if you just want to see the story". The issue is that the game wants you to die to progress the story and character interactions so god mode gives you some base damage resistance then 2% each time you die. Even trying to speed through the game after I had beaten it the first time it's still doled out at a trickle as it counters what the game wants you to do. It wants you to die, thematically and narratively, this is clever, this is great, it lacks the variety to keep that interesting in practice though.
It's a real shame too because a greater pool of bosses, levels and enemies to make each run feel fresh would have made this a truly great game. After a certain point though I died to Hades with a pretty sub optimal boon run and just felt, exasperation. I would have to do the same levels and bosses again and decided to put the game down. I watched the true ending on youtube and it was cute, I just didn't want hours of repetition to get there. I didn't feel I'd missed much by watching the ending and skipping the faff. Maybe it's me? I mean I played Vampire Survivors, this game designed for addiction. I did three runs for 30 mins each and put it down feeling like I'd seen everything. I guess that "one more run" mentality for games like this just don't have that effect.
I happily play 500+ hours in each Monster Hunter game though so what do I know?
+ Setting as a Roguelike is excellent thematically.
+ Characters, voice acting and artwork are great.
+ Combat is smooth and fun.
- Dungeon runs lack variety, same bosses and enemies makes things feel dragged out.
- Gets boring fast.
14 Comments
@TheGamingN00b - Exactly this. It becomes incredibly rote after a super short time. A real shame considering the overall quality presented.
I should get back to this but yeah I wasnt in love with it either. Isaac is still the goat it seems
I feel the same way as you, although I don't even like the story and characters that much so I just stopped playing altogether haha
@bamdumtss - I only forced myself to keep playing because I quite liked them. Without that there is nothing here for sure so totally understandable!
I think you and chump have basically described why the game doesn't sit quite as favorably in my mind as it did years ago. The end-game modifiers do make the game harder as you've brought up, but they often make the game far longer too because of the way in how they increase playtime (more enemy health, for instance) or decrease your margin of error so you might have to spend more time playing more carefully. Off the top of my head, there's really only one modifier that significantly changes enemy behavior in the form of tougher boss fights, and the rest are just adjusting numerical parameters. I was able to blaze through to the standard ending pretty quickly, but lost motivation after realizing that I would have to do basically the same thing but spend a lot more time doing so for the "true" ending.
@Drax - yes I agree. The modifier changing the bosses is the only one with any real world changing effect and even then I didn't find the result that much different. Fury sisters get attacks from each other, the hydra? lava pools and Theseus...a chariot? Everything else as chump stated (thanks for the link there) is simply some number changes nothing more substantial.
I feel there is a framework of an amazing game here but that's sort of all it is? It's missing the meat to make it have that wow factor it needs based on the design choice of the setting Super Giant chose. Maybe it was due to budget, they are a tiny team so perhaps it was all they could do with what they had? Regardless the result for me was just a vision of potential and a bit of disappointment.
I feel there is a framework of an amazing game here but that's sort of all it is? It's missing the meat to make it have that wow factor it needs based on the design choice of the setting Super Giant chose. Maybe it was due to budget, they are a tiny team so perhaps it was all they could do with what they had? Regardless the result for me was just a vision of potential and a bit of disappointment.
I think the most charitable interpretation is the budget, but my memories of playing through Supergiant's past games make me more inclined to believe that it's an issue of scope like chump's pointed out; the game's designed in a way where the gameplay almost solely facilitates the storytelling, so it's intentionally quite stacked at first to be overly difficult yet feels too easy once you've gotten the upgrades to force more time spent in runs. It's been a while since I've played Transistor and Pyre, but they also suffered from similar design issues iirc; Transistor also had a bunch of modifiers to lengthen fights if you wanted more XP, and Pyre basically forces the player to activate star modifiers that toggled numbers (i.e. deal less damage to the opponent's pyre) as required in the end-game. I believe that Supergiant has brought up in interviews that Hades is meant to improve upon Pyre's base model (which probably explains why they adapted the modifier system), but in doing so, also brought along similar issues that were present in Pyre to begin with.
@Drax - Pyre is the only Supergiants game I haven't played and I have a feeling will stay that way so that was interesting to know Hades built on that system. 👍
Supergiant building a game system around an established story would explain why it's set up expecting you to die (even the god mode still pushes for it) so hard for it's story. It doesn't explain the absolute lack of variety on the most basic level in between that though. Greek Myth is full of monsters and characters this game could pull from so runs don't get dry so quickly without effecting the basic premise of what is transpiring. The fact there are only 3 bosses essentially up to Hades (ignoring modifiers and a secret one) implies there is another factor. I am presuming it's time and budget to give them the benefit of the doubt. If that is entirely by design to intentionally be that stale by extreme repetition then it's certainly something.
Supergiant building a game system around an established story would explain why it's set up expecting you to die (even the god mode still pushes for it) so hard for it's story. It doesn't explain the absolute lack of variety on the most basic level in between that though. Greek Myth is full of monsters and characters this game could pull from so runs don't get dry so quickly without effecting the basic premise of what is transpiring. The fact there are only 3 bosses essentially up to Hades (ignoring modifiers and a secret one) implies there is another factor. I am presuming it's time and budget to give them the benefit of the doubt. If that is entirely by design to intentionally be that stale by extreme repetition then it's certainly something.
This is to me how you felt about my view on Alien Isolation. I understand your points and they are definitely valid points. But this hurts my little heart as I wish everyone could have as much fun as I did with it and it is one of my favorite games ever. I played for 100 hours and had to make myself quit.
@DVince89 - Ha! Touche! I too wish I enjoyed it as much as you. I was really looking forward to it after a friend had been playing it obsessively. He isn't even a trophy hunter but got the platinum. No one is more disappointed than me how I bounced off it sadly.
Pyreheads rise upppp
Well written!
@LetzterhHeld - Thanks for the kind words!
TheGamingN00b
3 months ago