"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.

Admirably bold triumph of the high-concept kind of "story mode". Sure, it's not the first time this happens, but it's a welcoming encyclopedia of grand environmental storytelling and a cocktail of nostalgia meets the fantastically ghastly and adventurous violence juxtaposed on RPG amalgamation for bouncy trigger-happy / wrench-whacky / chaotically-spellbound venturing. This feeling of methodical exploration took wonders for my amnesiac memory as the game pushed me on the path of bloodthirsty scavengers and armored puppets of ungodliness like a newcoming spectator searching for a way out of Rapture. Having said that, not every singular element slaps as smoothly as i remembered- Some of the conceptual grandeur and ambiance immersion lags because of how heavily schizophrenic is the start/stop gameplay itself. The Vita-Chambers come to mind- Not only an accidental source of monotony by forcing you to re-route yourself back to the place where you died at, but also a gateway to exploit the game's economy by sheer patience- All it takes is waltzing right where you died at and overpower your enemies affordably instead of spending cash out of a dozen of medkits mid-combat. It placed a harsh decrease on my inmersion as well, having to face a similar lot of weariness by the incredilous amount of pirating (and granted, this is an entirely player's choice, but it's such a tiresome avalanche of pipe puzzles you must endure to avoid combats) take a slight detour to the entirely non-cinematic hayride people tend to praise to kingdom come. Affordable gunplay married to a grand, one-of-a-kind neurotic storytelling, it's such a galvanizing fairytale arranged with an audacious style: Retrofitted to outlandish wonder and asphyxiating dread, fuelled with mysticism almost belonging to survival horror until you get your hands on godlike powers to cartoonishly kill-or-be-killed adventuring. For all the tonally opposed Frankenstein of mechanics, oddball logistics (what's the deal with turrets of mass destruction on a city underwater?) and spectacle before philosophy, i take a grand kick out of this game for being a innovative jump of profound themes at the time. FIFA and Call of Duty was becoming the norm and this took the spotlight to remind ourselves how it's like to embark a guntotting odyssey of good versus evil, with ourselves as the moral compass while whacking a wrench at the face of the humanely wicked.

Not just the beat-em-up, the stealth oriented preying-upon-armed-goons angle was such an insanely COOKED creative choice to embody the caped crusader. Attractively gothic detectivism that turns into a reverse-survival delight through seismic punchy combos and techno-noir sleuthing. So tonally splendid you'd groove from the ceremonial pacing running from one villain showdown to the next and game over screens down to the badass slow walking, gets a bit formulaic with far too easily readable boss fights to the point of unchallenging linearity, still takes a conceptual blast of comic book roots through amazingly ominous sequencing including a mindbending Scarecrow that toys around videogame metaphysics to amusing effect and a toolbox of crafty sneaking made particularly priceless when seeing the last armed guard running around while panicking helplessly. Solid pacesetter.

Coming from a native japanese person, this game is oblivious to actual japanese history. It dances with fantasies of japanese stereotypes like "honor" while ignoring the undercurrent of actual samurai life, which is both far less honorable and far more mundane than depicted. It would be one thing if this was designed to be fantastical, but it isn't. Sucker Punch designed this game with the goal of accurately portraying Japan's culture and history, and they failed at that. To say otherwise would be a disservice to the memory of the samurai themselves.

Besides, the game is just bland open world AAA kitsch with a big map and picturesque locations made by crunching underpaid developers and artists. Which is to say, it's a game that isn't bad, but isn't memorable either. A game that entices the senses but never the imagination, that gives the illusion of enjoyment while leaving you empty in the end. It's a AAA game in 2020 and that's all I really have to say.