Gun play is surprisingly good, soundtrack rocks, level design is pretty cool. For its time the graphics are good, the physics are insane, voice acting is pretty good as well. The way the physics work with the gravity gun is cool as hell, especially at the end. I really like the way they do cutscenes in Half-Life, the fact that you can still walk around while the cutscene occurs is pretty cool compared to contemporary cinematics and offers something different.

Some level design is unintuitive though, like the one part of the one level where you have to go down all these pipes and turn a wheel to fill the area up with water ... How am I supposed to know to do that?

Some of the puzzles are just obtuse like it's difficult to understand why the developers would expect you to know how some of the mechanics work without wandering around for 20 minutes trying to figure it out, specifically the blow up barrels in the shipping container so you can go under the dock and hit the ramp, like 1. Why would I know to check inside the one shipping container? 2. Why would I expect that blowing up the barrels would actually blow off the door of the shipping container when I haven't received any indication of this mechanic before, like sure I could've wandered around that area for 30 minutes trying literally everything and eventually figure it out, but I preferred to just look at a guide at which point I was like oh lol okay that's how it works

I shot a watermelon and it exploded, nice

Boons are cool and differentiate between runs

There being only 4 main bosses seems a bit weak and repetitive, I get that the main replayability comes from the different weapons and adding extra heat after you get one completion, but still imo adding new bosses or changing things around after getting your first completion would make the game so much better, or maybe after five completions. At least until the main story is completed. Also I don't really find changing up the Fury sisters as being a fundamentally different fight than against Meg, it's basically just a different skin

You can really feel yourself getting more knowledgeable as you play the game knowing what to do in certain situations, which boons to take, etc. As Zagreus gets more powerful, you get more knowledgeable

Losing doesn't feel bad, you always feel like you're progressing and getting stronger even when you fail, which is very difficult for a game to do

Combat, characters, art design, sound design, voice acting, are all amazing. The amount of dialogue in this game is actually insane, somehow every time you talk to a character they have something new to say even after 30+ hours

Every run I made sure that my heat bar was filled and I was using whatever weapon gave the bonus to to the Nyx's mirror shards, and having to do so many runs to beat the game started to make the game feel like a drag. What was at first amazing turned, at some points, into tedium with you basically doing the exact same thing every run. It is true that stories continue to advance like with Orpheus but at the end of the day, 10 clears in order to "beat the game" is a bit much for me. For the game to truly have as much replayability as it's demanding there really needs to be different bosses at the end of each zone, as well as different mobs throughout each of the zones. Or maybe even having zone mechanics themselves change. Sorry, but fighting Lernie for the 50th time isn't engaging anymore even if I have a slightly different build, am using a different weapon than before, and have some extra challenge placed on me by the added heat. I get that that's part and parcel of roguelikes and many people may enjoy this aspect of doing the same thing over and over with slight variations, but for me at a certain point enjoyment is replaced with tedium. According to HowLongToBeat.com, the average playthrough of Hades for the 10 completions takes about 24 hours, I think it's safe to say that doing fundamentally the exact same thing with minor variations would get monotonous for almost anyone after such a time period. That being said, the fight against Hades was always awesome, and I learned to hate Thesus so much haha.

Some enemies are just frustrating to fight, looking at you shield shades in Elysium

This game is so close to a 9/10 for me considering the fluidity of the combat, art style and voice acting, but its repetitiveness with lack of new content as the game progresses ultimately hampers the replayability which is necessary for any roguelike By the time I finished 10 clears and beat the game, I was already ready to move on. I will likely come back and attempt to 100% this at some point, but it also seems likely that the game will be too repetitive and tedious for me to actually 100% it.

Overall while Hades is a fundamentally fun game with great action combat, amazing visuals and voice acting its lack of content, repetitiveness, and length drags down what would otherwise easily be a 9/10, if not 10/10 game. I'm moderately excited for Hades 2 and will likely give it a shot when it releases