I hate rogue-likes as a genre mainly because a recurring theme that keeps cropping up for me when it comes to them is that I always feel like I'd actually really enjoy them if they were just more standard action/strategy games. Hades is a perfect example of this.

Hades feels like it could have been a really cool action game if it was traditionally non-procedural level based akin to Bastion; (Which seriously seems like it will be the only Supergiant game I will ever like) instead Hades is one huge, long, tedious, slog of a grind. The whole game is stretched out to its breaking point in both gameplay and narrative. As I said if this was a more standard story-driven action game I would probably love it. The core combat is solid and for a while I really was having fun and even had “a one more run” feeling; but the slog really sets in once the difficulty starts spiking. Like Hades himself is just such a brick wall that I didn’t really want to bother trying anymore, especially because Theseus and the Minotaur are hard enough as is. You need to grind so much if you’re going to want to stay alive and even then I didn’t really feel like I was actually getting any stronger. Even when I was getting as many boons from the Olympians as I could to make some decent builds I would still get destroyed. The game does have a God Mode that progressively gives you more permanent resistance the more you die but I just wasn't having fun anymore to even bother just easy modeing it. The game doesn’t have much variety either which also really makes me feel that this game shouldn’t have been a rogue-like at all. The story is also dragged the hell out by locking character interactions out through a collectible that you got to grind for and also that you can only really talk to characters once a run. Which is a real shame because the cast has their charms and if this game’s narrative was structured in a more straightforward game it would have been all the better for it. I seriously want to play a version of Hades where it wasn’t a rogue-like, I can’t stress this enough.

I’ve heard that this game was a good rogue-lite for people who don’t like rogue-lites and for that I completely disagree, if you don’t like the genre this game probably won’t change your mind at all. I wanted to like this game, I really did, but ultimately I’m glad I family shared my friends copy.