I honestly think this game is wildly overrated. Don't get me wrong, the window dressing is great. Voice acting is well done, the home base is well designed and constantly adding new dialogue to add to the story after each failed run, the characters design is cool and an interesting take on Greek mythology.
However to me the core gameplay loop leaves much to be desired. This isn't to say the game isn't fun, it definitely is. The controls are sharp and the combat is fast paced yet deliberate in nature. The problem is that for a roguelite to really hold your interest there needs to be a wide variance in gameplay on each individual run. This stops the game from getting too repetitive and eventually causing you to lose interest. The problem here is that there are only a handful of weapons and these are really broken down into two categories ranged or melee. All melee weapons play roughly the same and the boons you get during each run don't really change the way that you use them that much besides whether you will be using primarily the special attack, main attack, or dash attack. These boons also don't significantly alter the function of the attack, but rather just add an effect like a dot, pushback, extra damage, chance to crit etc.
There also seem to be a number of "must have' boons for a run to have a realistic chance of being successful. In my experience there is a clear and obvious best build that includes getting divine dash which allows you to reflect projectiles when dashing. This ability is simply a must have for any successful run. You then want an attack that causes doom and the dash ability that automatically procs doom. This to me is by far the best setup in the game. A game like this shouldn't have a clear and obvious best build and no item should be a must when each run is randomized.
Ultimately I didn't dislike this game, but was a little disappointed based on all the hype it got. I mean this game won GOTY awards so I was expecting to play one of the best roguelike/lite games ever and Hades simply didn't live up to that for me, not even sure if it would crack my top 5 roguelike/lites to be honest. Hades had all the extra components that add to a great game like good voice acting and dialogue, cool character design, an interesting narrative, etc. but missed the mark on the core gameplay loop that is simply necessary for a repetitive game like this.
However to me the core gameplay loop leaves much to be desired. This isn't to say the game isn't fun, it definitely is. The controls are sharp and the combat is fast paced yet deliberate in nature. The problem is that for a roguelite to really hold your interest there needs to be a wide variance in gameplay on each individual run. This stops the game from getting too repetitive and eventually causing you to lose interest. The problem here is that there are only a handful of weapons and these are really broken down into two categories ranged or melee. All melee weapons play roughly the same and the boons you get during each run don't really change the way that you use them that much besides whether you will be using primarily the special attack, main attack, or dash attack. These boons also don't significantly alter the function of the attack, but rather just add an effect like a dot, pushback, extra damage, chance to crit etc.
There also seem to be a number of "must have' boons for a run to have a realistic chance of being successful. In my experience there is a clear and obvious best build that includes getting divine dash which allows you to reflect projectiles when dashing. This ability is simply a must have for any successful run. You then want an attack that causes doom and the dash ability that automatically procs doom. This to me is by far the best setup in the game. A game like this shouldn't have a clear and obvious best build and no item should be a must when each run is randomized.
Ultimately I didn't dislike this game, but was a little disappointed based on all the hype it got. I mean this game won GOTY awards so I was expecting to play one of the best roguelike/lite games ever and Hades simply didn't live up to that for me, not even sure if it would crack my top 5 roguelike/lites to be honest. Hades had all the extra components that add to a great game like good voice acting and dialogue, cool character design, an interesting narrative, etc. but missed the mark on the core gameplay loop that is simply necessary for a repetitive game like this.