Lacks much variety for its genre, but that allows Scourgebringer to craft the most challenging yet fair roguelike experience with an insane killer "DOOM" soundtrack to match the intensity of the gameplay and some of the tightest 2D gameplay.

Its precise movement is often compared to Celeste, but an equally strong example is to Furi with how each basic move affords so many different options. Your firearm reloads by dealing melee damage to enemies, so you have to mix it into your melee combos strategically. Your dash has no i-frames but it resets on enemy kill, and drags enemies along with you. Your heavy attack isn't just an aoe, but it stuns almost all enemies, so you can combo it with the dash to corral enemies together. And yet by being risky and chasing enemies, you increase your survivability since hitting enemies resets your double jump too. Like Furi, all of these simple mechanics feed into encouraging you to play aggressively yet intelligently.

And you feel like a Gamer God

I would like to say I just went back to this to the beat true final boss. But really I had just beat Hades and I was feeling and itch to return to Revita. Coming back, I had an absolute blast and I absolutely fell in love with this game. Part of my new enjoyment with the game should also be of course attributed all the new relics I now had access to. But mostly the game came together for me in much tighter focus to me. While the player moveset might be simple, the game gains so much depth from its health system. Every choice you make to skip the chance for an item instantly carries so much meaning. Performing well in an area is instantly gratifying because

Stacking on top of the health system, the various different secret choices add so much more flavor to the progression of a run. Instead of simple binary choices like in Isaac, the health system is folded into how you can achieve the different optional routes and colors so much the narrative of a run.

Extraordinary this isn't even the full (2.0.0) release of the game.

As a roguelike, Hades' gameplay fumbles in a lot of ways. It's nowhere near often you are making difficult, impactful decisions like in Revita. It's a bit too quick to learn what are the best and worst boons. Although Hades is technically less challenging than something like One Step from Eden, but the visual noise and enemy jank can make it feel like a more difficult experience. Bomber enemies can repeatedly hop between the same two platforms. Floating ranged enemies can hover over lava or awkwardly out of reach corners. Some enemies can start projectiles from outside the view of the screen. Often times, the gameplay is a test of patience and it can feel like a chore in this way. Thankfully, Hades has what too many roguelikes are missing: a narrative context and a genius story premise. Whereas I would be tempted to return to any other roguelike because of the allure of learning more about the game's systems, I find myself pulled by the incredible cliffhanger after Hades' first run. But maybe then, I'll another roguelike to pass the time.

Love the concept of using health as currency for everything. But when health as value, it's even more important that damage is fair and avoidable. Unfortunately this isn't the case with some level lay-outs. E.g. an enemy spawn on a disappearing platform on top of you.

On that note, while you can at least pick an item knowing you'll get a curse cough isaac cough, some curses are just unfun like in isaac, most notable the darkness curse. Most of the curses are actually fine add some spice to game.

The relatively long load-times in this game has gotten me to appreciate One Step from Eden, where everything loads instantly.

Finally, and my bigggest problem with the game, is that most of the relics end up being useless. Too many relics don't have any impact on your build. Too many relics are only viable if you can hold onto them for a long time, like relics that increase your chance, so getting these relics late-game is useless. This hurts this game even more than something like isaac since you're health instead of keys to get these relics.

One of the rare few skinner-boxy games that didn't leave me feeling completely cynical and jaded by the end. Lots of charm, though a few QoL improvements would be very much appreciated. Too many glitchy bouncing cards feels off to me. Wish you keep expanding the map screen by increasing the card limit. But most importantly, I wish you could automate systems so you wouldn't have keep pausing every second to move cards at the endgame.

I feel like this game was going for something like Don't Starve, where you have to prepare for a wave enemies, but the game was too easy it never had any bite. The casual set-up sort of clashes with the permadeath element of the game.

Best monster-taming game I've played.

Minor grapes:
- File corruption problem forced me to restart the game after 5 hours of playtime.
- Damage numbers are tuned way too high on Master difficulty. I had to consistently be 2 levels above the enemies, and even then I had to pray they never chose to gang up on any single of my "pokemon" for any turn.
- The story threatens to be good. It's just told in very dry fashion
- I wish there were tougher platforming challenges like in Celeste, and there were deeper puzzles like in CrossCode. The mechanics for great platforming and puzzles are already there.