AutumnLily
Hades 2018
Log Status
Played
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
109h 40m
Days in Journal
2 days
Last played
April 29, 2021
First played
November 5, 2020
Platforms Played
I've sunk around 100 hours into Hades. Unsurprisingly I think the game has a lot going for it, the core gameplay is very satisfying, the game gives just enough variety in the experiences it provides whilst having enough consistency to it that doing well is much more about mastering its mechanics than rolling the perfect mix of boons. Of particular note I love the player agency offered in the boons system giving you a lot of choice over the build that will come together this run, and the heat gauge which lets you up the difficulty whilst crafting an experience you'll actually still enjoy.
Beyond that the production quality is incredible, particular standouts being the music which is exciting and enjoyable but able to withstand many hours of repeated listening, and the character designs that are (almost) all just extremely evocative and endearing, each coming with ludicrous amounts of unique dialogue attached.
Beyond all this, beyond all the ways the game interweaves the lore of real mythology into its world, there's just something so conceptually compelling going on here too; the core gameplay loop and the reasoning behind it just makes so much sense, like of course a tale of someone breaking free from the underworld would be a roguelite, of course his inability to survive on the surface sets up perfectly for repeated gameplay loops even after you've "beaten" the game for the first time. It all just works.
That said, I've mellowed a lot on Hades since I put it down a few months ago (and returned to update this review). I still think it's a great game with a lot going for it, but I wish I felt like its true ending respected the player's time a bit more; it takes somewhere in the realm of 80 hours to get to it, but my best experiences with the game were all in my opening 20 or 30 hours of playing and I never really found myself recapturing that initial excitement. It doesn't help that once the heat level is pushed high enough the game stops really becoming fun, all its designs starting to crumble under the weight of however many different modifiers layered on top of one another, some mutated form of its former glory. As much as I enjoyed much of my time with Hades, and as much as I respect a lot of what it is doing, I'm unsure I will ever be returning to it.
Beyond that the production quality is incredible, particular standouts being the music which is exciting and enjoyable but able to withstand many hours of repeated listening, and the character designs that are (almost) all just extremely evocative and endearing, each coming with ludicrous amounts of unique dialogue attached.
Beyond all this, beyond all the ways the game interweaves the lore of real mythology into its world, there's just something so conceptually compelling going on here too; the core gameplay loop and the reasoning behind it just makes so much sense, like of course a tale of someone breaking free from the underworld would be a roguelite, of course his inability to survive on the surface sets up perfectly for repeated gameplay loops even after you've "beaten" the game for the first time. It all just works.
That said, I've mellowed a lot on Hades since I put it down a few months ago (and returned to update this review). I still think it's a great game with a lot going for it, but I wish I felt like its true ending respected the player's time a bit more; it takes somewhere in the realm of 80 hours to get to it, but my best experiences with the game were all in my opening 20 or 30 hours of playing and I never really found myself recapturing that initial excitement. It doesn't help that once the heat level is pushed high enough the game stops really becoming fun, all its designs starting to crumble under the weight of however many different modifiers layered on top of one another, some mutated form of its former glory. As much as I enjoyed much of my time with Hades, and as much as I respect a lot of what it is doing, I'm unsure I will ever be returning to it.