"To Hell with this place."

Part of me wants to laud this game for everything it does right; it's got a killer soundtrack, gameplay is fun enough (fast, frenetic - maybe not deep enough to carry more than 30 hours of game), and the story is intriguing. But the other part of me acknowledges these elements are mostly in isolation from each other. The story is intriguing, yes, but I don't wanna have to finish 5 levels over and over again to be fed breadcrumbs, it's just not a great way to tell a story. It's like story edging. I'm being story edged when I play this game.

Plenty of roguelikes do have that problem of repetitive levels but that's rectified by a wide variety of builds and weapons... usually. Hades has really flashy weapons, they look good, they feel good, but are functionally the same, save for the gun. There's just not enough depth to keep on going for 10 runs as gameplay can quickly become dodge -> hit -> dodge -> hit with little to no consequence.

All that being said, this has some really nice art in it. The voice acting across the board is fantastic, I found Orpheus and Hades to be the standouts, the soundtrack is just stunning, and the art all around is absolutely beautiful. Maybe that's why I was blinded to its faults, it's just so nice to look at.

I booted this up after five months of not playing it and did a run in one go. Thought that was pretty cool.