I’ve been meaning to replay Hades for such a long time now. I played Hades a little bit after it first released back in 2020, and after nearly 100%ing it (there’s 2 achievements that I don’t feel like completing), I hadn’t touched it since. But with Hades 2 supposedly releasing in early access this year, I grew motivated to play Hades again, on a new save file. And I still absolutely adore Hades, from the gameplay, music, art, characters, everything, Hades is undoubtedly a perfect game. And I’m so glad I finally got around to playing it again.
Now before anything else I should preface this here, I’m not really a roguelike person. I’ve played a small handful of them, and while most of them are ridiculously fun, I still get a bit apprehensive while playing them. Something about having to start over from the beginning with nothing does not really appeal to me, and obviously, that’s a major characteristic of roguelikes. I mention this all to preface that I’m not the most knowledgeable about roguelikes as a genre, and I may get things incorrect, but I’ll try my best not to.
Still though, Hades is such a fun game to play. My end goal for the game was to get to the credits, that was when I decided I “beat” the game, and I tried to see how much I was able to do before then. To get to the credits you need to clear 10 runs, and in total I had 19 runs, 10 successful, 9 not. With those 19 runs, I feel like I was able to really understand a lot about Hades’ gameplay and mechanics, and I was able to unlock a large number of things as well. The more I unlocked and the more I experimented, the more I felt like I was actually getting good at the game, which is really nice.
When it comes to the weapons in Hades, I absolutely adore how unique they are. Though without a doubt, I think some are better than others. The starting weapon, the Sword, I feel to be the best weapon in the game. It’s a real jack-of-all-trades, with the only thing missing being a ranged attack of some kind. But even then, it’s powerful, the special has good range, and it arguably has one of the best modifiers that any weapon can gain, being Cursed Slash. While yes, it removes 60% of your total health, being able to restore 2 hp per attack of the sword is ridiculously good. Another amazing weapon is the Rail Gun, but it’s an interesting one. The Rail Gun has a bad start, needing to reload and all makes it difficult and really slow to use. But if you get the modifier that changes how it shoots but gives you infinite ammo, the Rail Gun is broken, as you can freely just dash about as the gun continues to shoot. The Spear and Shield were fun to use, and I love just how fast the Gauntlets are. The only weapon I’d say I don’t really care for would be the Bow, it typically requires you to sit and charge it up unless you get the modifier that removes the charge up. Even then, it’s not really all that powerful, and it’s rather slow still. I like being able to move quickly, and the Bow doesn’t really allow for that. Though I will mention that’s a good showcase of how Hades allows for different playstyles, some people may really like the Bow, and use it for their preferred playstyle.
And Zagreus’ movement feels so good to pull off. While he only starts out with one dash, you can eventually upgrade him to have 2, and it changes things exponentially. You can dash into attacks, dash to dodge, and sometimes you can completely avoid AoE attacks by dodging even if you’re still in the range of them. Dashing feels so good to pull off, I absolutely adore it.
Of course with Hades being a roguelike it has unique ways to alter Zagreus’ movement, combat, or other aspects while in individuals runs. A good majority of rooms give treasure which helps upgrade Zagreus in later runs. There’s gold which can be used for shops to buy upgrades. And of course, there’s the upgrades themselves. The big one here are the Boons, with 10 different possible Boon Types out there, based around specific Greek deities. Each Boon Type has specific themes to them, so you find a boon for a specific god, you have an idea of how they can impact Zagreus. Such examples include Artemis who improves Critical Hits, Dionysus who can improve health gain or inflict poison, or Athena who can grant reflection. There’s so many different ways to upgrade Zagreus in each run through boons alone. There’s also different rarities of boons, so sometimes some boons in one run will be better or worse than in other runs because they’re of different rarities. And ever so rarely, you can find Special Boons as well that require certain parameters, changing things even more. And on top of that, mentioned prior are the upgrades that the weapons can get in ever run. These can be done through the Daedalus Hammers, and each weapon has an entire unique array of upgrades that the hammer can give. There’s also other simple upgrades, such as health upgrades, or upgrades that level up boons to be a tad bit stronger. While some runs are similar because there’s certain boons and upgrades that I enjoy using more than others, it really does feel like every run I had, successful or not, was unique and I adore it.
And combat and the bosses are addicting. I’ve said prior multiple times, but I love how fast the game can be, and that is really shown in the game’s combat. I often found myself constantly moving through the environment, fighting enemies, moving on to the next, and somewhat destroying in my path. I’ll be honest, with how fast I was going, my hands hurt after each run which honestly is not a good thing. While some enemies (especially in Elysium) can be difficult, most aren’t but they can still hurt you. And as well, with how good the combat felt, clearing each room was fun. The mini-bosses were really fun challenges, though only somewhat frustrating when fighting ones that could disappear for some time. But they’re really fun to fight. Though of course nothing beats the bosses. There’s only really 4 bosses in the game, but they’re all so unique, and mostly really fun. When I was in the early couple of runs, the first 3 bosses were fun to figure out again, and they provided some great challenge because of it. I think the only boss I don’t absolutely love is the Theseus fight, and that’s mainly because of how his shield works, but even then it’s a good fight. But none of the 3 other bosses really compare to the fight against Hades himself. Even when I felt totally overpowered, Hades was still a tough fight. It felt like I was fighting someone who was on my level, but just much larger. And it felt so good beating him for the first time, I didn’t even unlock all of the death defiances yet, and I was close to death. The bosses in Hades are just so perfectly crafted I adore them.
And one completely spectacular thing about Hades is its narrative. Simply put, all of it is amazing. The story itself, the dynamics between Zagreus, Hades, and Persephone. The character writing of every other god, and the entire group of characters that call the House of Hades their home. The excellent voice cast that are able to bring these character to life. Everything about the narrative of Hades is downright amazing. But there’s one thing that still blows me away, just how much was written for Hades. There’s just so much, so many different lines of dialogue that can be heard, all based upon choices you made in each and every run. There’s a whole character that has unique dialogue for every single way you can die in a run, and there’s variations upon that as well depending on how many times you’ve died to that method. It’s utterly impressive for a game to have this much dialogue in it, and it’s still something that amazes me to this day.
And there’s still so much more I can gush about Hades. The excellent music, the ways you can permanently upgrade weapons or Zagreus. The modifiers that can impact runs, creating new difficult challenges for you to come, which increases replayability. The quests which challenge you to try out every single possible boon, or weapon upgrade. There’s so much that Hades as a game has to offer. I still love this game so much, and I’m glad I finally had the time to sit down and play it through all over again. Maybe next time it wont take over 3 years to replay it, but at the same time, I also can’t wait for Hades 2.