The Basics
Version Reviewed - Steam on Mac
Time Played - 116.2 Hours
Genre(s) - Action, Indie, RPG, Roguelike, Roguelite
Price - $24.99
Developer - Supergiant Games
Difficulty - Medium to Hard (Adaptive Difficulty)
Style of Graphics - Hand Drawn 2D Animation
Length - What you make of it, A.K.A can be played forever but doesn't have to be.
Replayability - Replayable, but more satisfying to invest time into one save file instead.
Where can you play - Nintendo Switch, Steam (PC or MacOS), Epic Store (PC or MacOS)
The Plot, Characters and Story
Hades is a plot rich game, with some incredible amounts of storytelling and absurd quantities of fully voiced dialogue. It is a ancient Greek Mythology themed game, taking place within the realm of Hades (the ancient Greek underworld), where you play as Zagreous (not a part of Greek Mythology), the son of Hades the god of the Underworld. Knowing a great secret that he was never meant to know, Zagerous is determined to do the impossible, escape the Underworld; escape Hades. Along the way, he will need the help of his family members up in Olympus, the famed Pantheon, and his loved one back in Hades, Nyx (Goddess/Primordial Being of Darkness), Dusa (A gorgon head), Achilles (the great warrior) and many others. Although not everybody is on Zagerous's side. His father, Hades will do anything to stop him,nobody escapes Hades. NOBODY.
This game is incredibly character rich, with bonding to the characters actually being a primary mechanic. This game has fantastic writing, incredible voice acting and is a bit of a story telling technical marvel and I played for over 100 hours and I did not see the same dialogue twice, and never ran into what I would call "default" or "junk" dialogue that just wastes my time or is clearly just lazy filler. That is incredibly impressive. There must been hundreds of hours of fully voiced meaningful dialogue in this game, it blows many AAA games out of the water.
I loved all of the diverse and quirky cast in Hades, and I felt a bond with them as I played. Hades uses the character interactions as rewards for each run you take into the Underworld, making failure actually exciting. All in all, the story and characters in Hades are first class, and absolutely incredibly. This is a game for a story driven player.
The Gameplay
Hades is an action roguelike game, with heavy story elements. Like most roguelikes, the main mechanic of the game is loss/failure/death. Sounds counter-intuitive right? Well believe it or not, it is quite fun and addictive. Every run of the game, you get further and further, meeting more and more characters, and getting more and more permeant upgrades to make each run better and better. This gradual but constant improvement is addictive, and makes you feel like a master of the game after just a couple runs.
Combat wise, Hades is diverse with 6 different weapon types to unlock, called infernal arms, and each weapon come with 4 possible variations of the weapon, each drastically changing its core abilities, really giving the player room to customize, explore and find their perfect play style. On top of that, as you go through rooms, you will uncover Boons from the Olympians that change and enhance different aspects of your "build" (how you play, fight, move, and passive things like healing over time). One again, on top of all of that, we have keepsakes you get from friends, that give you additional bonuses for a run. With all of this variation, this is a truly customizable game (but not in an overwhelming way).
The combat is fluid, punchy, graceful, fast and satisfying; which is needed in a game where you have to fight constantly. And the game comes with a mechanic called "heat", which allow you to increase the difficulty of the game as you go if you want a harder challenge for a greater reward. This allows the game to scale its difficultly to the player's preference.
Everything about Hade's gameplay is honed to make you addicted, and I love it.
The Aesthetics
Hades is an all-around stunning game, from its visuals, to its voice acting and to its thrumming music. Its art style is that of a 2D hand drawn animation, but it actually cleverly uses many 3D elements without ruining the aesthetic. I find the best part of the art is found in the gorgeous and expressive character portraits that show up next to the dialogue text boxes; simply gorgeous.
When it comes to its audio design, Hades is simply impeccable. Its voice actors hit it out of the park 100% of the time, and its fantastic music library always sets the kick-butt mood juuuuust right. In many ways it's rock-metal sound should clash with the Greek Mythology theme, but with the smart incorporation of Mediterranean instruments into the songs, its feels right at home. Personally, my favourite song in whole game was In the Blood, and I have attached it in this post so you can see what I mean when I say this soundtrack is incredible.
All in all, Hades comes off like a piece of art, and deserves so much praise for it.
Final Review
My overall impression of the game was that it was a blast to play, fantastic to look at and made me feel positive emotions. I would recommended it to everyone, except maybe children, and would like to state, I am a moderately new to gaming and so if you are too, don't feel intimated, it is totally accessible with the ability to control your difficulty level.
For its price at 24.99$ it blows 60-80$ AAA games out of the water in value per dollar, and deserves the following ratings:
Overall Rating
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