A rogue-lite hack and slash dungeon crawler in which Zagreus, son of Hades the Greek god of the dead, attempts to escape his home and his oppressive father by fighting the souls of the dead through the various layers of the ever-shifting underworld, while getting to know and forging relationships with its inhabitants.
Zagreus, the son of Hades, has discovered that his mother, which he was led to believe was Nyx, Night Incarnate, is actually someone else, and is outside Hell. He is now attempting to escape his father's domain, with the help of the other gods of Olympus, in an attempt to find his real mother.
at://did:web:gamesgamesgamesgames.games/games.gamesgamesgamesgames.game/3mghrz6uhid2d| Language | Audio | Subtitles | Interface |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| French | ✓ | ✓ | |
| German | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Italian | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Chinese (Simplified) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Russian | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Korean | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Polish | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Japanese | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Spanish (Spain) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Portuguese (Portugal) | ✓ |
I may be a bit contentious with this one!
Hours played as of review time: 24.5
I've been meaning to play the first Hades for a long time. As the "roguelike guy" at work, it's gotten to the point where everyone assumes I've already played Hades, haha. So given Hades II is out, I finally decided to spend this weekend playing the first game.
I can see why people enjoy this game. The writing is absolutely phenomenal. There's a lot of depth to the relationships and the primary cast is extremely well-written.
There's an interesting variety of weapons (the ancient Greek assault rifle is very funny and I love it) and the weapons do play very differently, with the game encouraging you to pick up and try something different each run by giving you a very small boost to your between-run progression.
Gameplay-wise, however, I'm not sold. There's a lot of button mashing which hurts my thumbs. The loop has a lot of "blood gates"; just run around and clear the room of enemies and then you move to the next room which you need to clear of enemies etc. etc. etc.
I'm not a HUGE fan of that model (didn't like it much in Binding of Issac either) because it kind of wears you down over time. The enemies are diverse and require different strategies to defeat, which at least keeps it from getting stale for a time... but at the end of the day, combat really boils down to 2 things:
1. Get into the correct position and update it quickly and accurately during the encounter (good positioning is the number one thing the game tries to teach you)
2. Mash the buttons for your build as much as you can
There's not a lot of strategic thinking in this pattern; it certainly isn't Slay the Spire (my favorite roguelike). A lot of the thinking comes from identifying what enemies you should focus on in what order, and where you should be in the room during combat.
As far as build diversity, I will say that I very much like the way you can encourage certain gods to show up and give you blessings using the trinkets they give you. This means you can orient yourself towards gods which pair well with the weapon you've chosen. I'm sure there's a god meta because some gods do seem straight-up better than others.
That being said, there can sometimes be a frustrating lack of choices in the middle of a run. There have been runs where I keep getting offered upgrade after upgrade for my existing godly boons without being given the chance to ask for a new one. When I do, there's a good chance that the god who shows up won't even give me a way to upgrade my damage directly, but will instead give me some minor upgrade that I really don't notice in combat. It feels like I've been deprived of a good godly blessing or a good upgrade for my weapon.
Each run lasts about 30 minutes, which is a good length. However, the last 5-10 minutes are very brutal; there is a difficult 2v1 fight at the end of the penultimate area followed by this momentum-killing mandatory fetch quest where you have to hope the thing you're looking for randomly shows up in 1 of 6 rooms, and keep clearing rooms full of the same enemies until you get it. The enemies aren't a threat, but they sap your resources and make it harder to win against the final boss. This grind really kills it for me and I think the game would be better if this whole fetch-quest section did not exist.
Every run is very very similar. There are some small variations in bosses but you will always be fighting basically the same bosses basically at the same time basically every run. Contrast this to Slay the Spire, which has a small selection of bosses in each run but generally that small selection is enough for you to prevent things from being very same-y.
Your permanent upgrades seem... fine? There are some upgrades which are IMO mandatory and then there's just... the rest. You have multiple different currencies - gems, keys, darkness, nectar, etc. - but really the only things which matter are darkness and keys for most of the game. Keys fall off in the late-game and are replaced by blood, which is frustratingly hard to find as you are not necessarily guaranteed to find blood in any given run, but that gives you the most straightforward "I am stronger now" upgrade path.
If this had weaker writing I would give it a 3 1/2 star review. However, the strength of the writing keeps me coming back; I go out of my way to talk to every character and get invested in what's going on. The narrative team did a great job and that's the real hook of the game, moreso than any particular mechanics.
It's certainly a game worth trying out. If you get frustrated with it there is a setting to give you passive damage resistance and make the game easier for yourself, but it only scales based on the number of runs you had the setting on for. This means that if you've been tearing your hair out trying to get through the run, you should opt to turn the setting on sooner rather than later if you're interested in such a thing.