A pretty solid game but when people start calling it one of the best roguelikes out there I feel there's a bit of exaggeration, even if I can recognize some seeds planted that can truly end up improving on the genre itself. The way the act of runs links into the general narrative is great, for example, and never makes a run dull. At least, in the narrative aspect, because to me, Hades fails in the general gameplay loop. And that's in the sense that there isn't much you can improve per run and get permanent upgrades for it. There's stuff like the mirror, but you'll quickly max out what you want to max out. There's construction, but really there arent a lot of upgrades that end up helping you out. And there's the weapon upgrades, but getting those... is a bit of a complicated thing. You see, to get more Titan Blood, you need to finish the first boss with a new weapon, and the game itself incentivizes utilizing different weapons each run. But not all the weapons are good, in fact the only one I really enjoy is the lance, for its long reach and high damage output. The sword and shield are both fine, the gauntlets are a bit weird because its short range means you will eventually get fucked despite its high damage output, and you will catch me dead before I willingly use the bow or the gun. It's a game that ends up valuing range and mobility over its general damage output, but when its only real ranged weapons both stop you in your tracks and deal a pitiful amount of damage, and the mobile weapons have too short a range, its gonna cause a weird disconnect between the enemy design and the weapon design. And getting into enemy design, it's uh... weird. Each area has its own types of enemies but they usually have pretty similar ideas. The big guys, the small but mobile ones, the ones that throw bombs, and anything else they put in. It generally works, but more than once I felt as if the game simply threw these enemies into rooms and expected you to deal with it when the rooms themselves being so packed with hazards and the enemies making you stay on your toes, without a real good way to actually deal with either the enemies or the hazards quickly without upgrades. It's an issue that I feel isn't a problem in the later stages like Elysium, but makes the early game feel more tedious than anything. Of course, I don't have a lot of complaints only, its a very solid game at the end of it all, the actual gameplay can be fun, its a beautiful, beautiful game, and its plot is certaintly good and knows how to juggle its more serious moments and its more comedic moments well enough, alongside, again, planting some ideas to improve on the general roguelike genre. Lots of great ideas, but middling execution by the end of it all.