Rogue-likes pose a lot of challenges where it comes to managing player frustration, a feeling of making progress, and a satisfying difficulty curve. Hades does a really good job, imo, at keeping the stakes of each run high while maintaining a sense of development and progression in the hub, without it feeling like the game just gets easier the longer you play it. The boons, weapons, and upgrades system allows for so many possibilities of satisfying synergies, and a good balance of chance and strategy determining those synergies.

Aesthetically, the art design and characters are of course fantastic, and the mythological theme of escaping the underworld really lines up with the mechanics and gameplay. I will say, I was left a little underwhelmed by the writing. While the central conceit is really good, most of the dialogue comes across as cliche and annoying. I found myself skipping through all the dialogue, tbh, and wasn't compelled by any of the flavor text in the codex. Still, the combat, art, and gameplay systems are so good that it didn't bother me too much.