Hades
Hades was a huge step outside of my comfort zone. I’m normally a JRPG kinda guy. Even my action games are JRPGS, such as Ys. With that being said, holy crap, it blew me out of the water. I’ve never played a rogue or rogue-lite game before. The addictiveness of getting the stuffing beat out of you, and trying again, was such an adrenaline rush. All screenshots are taken by me.
Hades is the story of Zagreus, son of Hades. He’s your typical rebellious teenager archetype, but much more level-headed, calm, and caring. He’s learns a family secret one day, and now his goal is to uncover the truth behind why it happened. You will battle your way out of the Underworld, or at least attempt to, multiple times before you complete the base story. This review is being written after the point at which you see the credits. From internet sleuthing there is an epilogue that takes a lot of work to get to. I’ll work on it on the side of other games and post a follow up once I’ve obtained it.
The visuals in this game are 2D, but oh man, are they impressive. Even handheld on the Switch the animation is crisp and smooth. You never are left wondering “where the hell am I?”
Gameplay is fluid, concise and very addicting. Each time you try to escape from the Underworld you’re met by numerous Greek Gods who offer you powers in the form of “boons” to increase your capabilities in numerous ways. Trying to play these powers off of each other and form fun and interesting builds makes every run feel fresh. With 8 weapons, and 4 different variations of each weapons, on top of all the boons makes no two runs the same.
One of my favorite combinations is The Shield of Chaos with Ares Doom boon on the special, Aphrodite’s Weak boon on the revenge or dash, getting lucky and finding the Duo-boon that doesn’t let Doom expire on Weak cursed enemies, and just letting them run around until they all die after I inflict both curses. Another is the Twin Fists with Zeus’s Lightning Boon on the attack, so the melee weapon has some ranged chain attacks and coupling that with Athena’s Deflect boon on the Dash for crowd control on ranged enemies. Infinite possibilities.
It’s really hard to keep this review byte-sized, so I’ll wrap it up here. Hades completely deserves all the awards it received. With a beautiful art style, addicting gameplay loop, and fun characters to meet I can see why it was so highly praised.
The only thing I’ll knock it on is that it appears to get the whole story you need to sink an additional 100 or so hours in, and I think you could get burned out on that if you don’t take a break or play it on the side of something else.
9.5/10
