This is a game of choice. All outcomes are dealt by your hand. There is no room for error, no mistakes to be made, no extraneous activity set up to prey on your downfall. All that is asked of you is to select a case.

Are you confident in your decisions? Do you trust yourself enough to follow through to the end? How long do you believe you can stay confident in your selection? That is not what matters now. At the moment, you have six cases to eliminate from the pool.

One falls. Another. Then another. Four. Five. Six. Some lucky drops. Some higher than you would have liked. Out of obligation, you are now given the choice to finish the game immediately, taking a definitive offer totaled from your remaining potentialities. Usually no higher than ~70,000 dollars. The choice is yours. Deal, or No Deal?

Well, that's ridiculous. Look at the board! You still have several hundred thousands awaiting you! You would be a fool to accept that puny an amount with such high odds of success! No deal, banker.

Continue forward. Please remove five more cases from the stage. One... two... oh, dear. A major hit to your possible winnings. This will not go over well in your next offer. Nevertheless, all you can do is continue forward. Three, four, five.

The banker has returned with a new offer. You have gained an additional ten, maybe fifteen thousand to your deal. All you have to do is accept. But that is not what you are here for. You are behind the podium because of the big one million that still eludes you. It could be sitting right next to you, for all you know. This is another deal you cannot make.

As the game progresses, you start to feel it. Your confidence is waning. Your options are diminishing, and so, too, are your prizes. Your decisions have led you to exhilarating highs, and heart wrenching lows. You have lost your chance at the fabled one million dollar prize, but that does not mean you are out just yet. You can keep going. $750,000 is still a fair amount. If not that, then 500,000. Do not let this one instance tear you away from victory.

The banker has returned. You have done well, and are rewarded with the promise of a definitive 200,000 dollars, at the least. Deal, or No Deal?

Not good enough.

You have made it this far. You can go higher. There is still that non-zero chance of half a million. Do not accept the deal. Do not settle for mediocrity. Is that how you want to live? To spend your restless nights tossing and turning over what could have been? No deal.

Ahead of you lies four more cases. Choose one.

Your best bet crumbles.

The banker is not pleased.

The deal is dropped, and it is now clear to you that perhaps you should have left when you were given a satisfactory result. But that is not what you are here for.

One more case.

Down goes your saving grace. There is nothing left for you.

The banker has given you one final chance. Will you count your losses, accepting the perfect in-between of your last two cases? Or do you still think you can beat the odds?

At what point would you still consider it worth it? The only thing keeping you going anymore is your ego, which has tumbled time and time again as you decline each and every out. If you leave now, you will not only leave unhappy, but unfulfilled. Despite it all, there is still that looming sense of achievement that comes from taking your shot, and making it out stronger than you could have.

Do not accept the deal.

Your odds are now 50/50. There is no middle ground anymore. There is no settlement to be made. You refused what was given to you, because you held out hope. Hope that got you nowhere. You have one final decision. Will you swap your case for what is left on stage, or will you stay true to your first choice, the case that has stayed by your side since the beginning?

Your confidence is what pulled you through to begin with. You promised to see it through to the end. You will not let anything tell you otherwise. Win or lose, you have always stayed true to yourself. You have what you want. You know what is best for you. With no one to blame but yourself, you have lost everything, but you know there is still more waiting for you.

---

I chose to keep my case. Given the possibility of one hundred dollars or five, I decided not to swap.

I walked out with five dollars. I won five dollars. Nothing brought about this result against my wishes. Everything that happened in this game was under my hand. I have trouble even calling myself a winner, given that there was no opponent to beat, no loser to be seen. I can't blame the game, or another person, or any other outside force. I chose this outcome, and I did everything in my power to keep it that way. Myself. Such is the thrill, and the horrors, of Deal or No Deal.

Only being vaguely aware of Tactics Ogre for many years until I played Triangle Strategy and learned how much that game was inspired by it, I was incredibly interested in playing the game that served as a muse to what has become my favorite game of all time. When I learned it was getting a new release, available on Switch, I knew I was going to get it at some point and play it. I'm glad I did, because this game was fantastic, though I do have some gripes.

I won't get into specific spoilers in this review, but for reference, I played the Chaos route and got the Princess ending.

The gameplay was generally pretty good, although the learning curve is steep. There are a lot of variables, more than most SRPGs. Not only do you have classes, stats, weapons, equipment, skills, elemental typings, and status conditions, so many aspects of the game influence other variables. Armor doesn't just influence how much defense you get, it also influences your speed in acting between turns, different armors can protect differently against different types of attacks/magic. Weapons all have their own unique properties, even weapons of the same type can vary greatly. What this means, is that often times, upgrading characters isn't as straight forward as other games; (almost) every weapon, armor, and spell have pros, cons, niches and edge cases that can keep them relevant throughout the game's entire runtime, instead of just picking up the new weapon with the bigger damage number, or armor with the best defense value. It's great, and it makes the unit building and team synergizing incredibly deep, and in this way it feels unmatched from any other strategy game I've played, and for people who love that more than anything, I can absolutely see why this would be their favorite game in the genre. It is an intimidating system to learn, with a lot of nuance and complexity, which makes it reward system mastery in an incredibly satisfying way. There are still some things I'm not sure I entirely understand, or agree with design wise, but I can't deny the depth of it all.

There are other gameplay aspects I am less fond of, however. The random stat cards that appear on the battlefield are way too polarizing. Sure, it feels great to stack two crit cards and two damage cards and delete maps with Canopus and Cistina, but they make a lot of the turn to turn strategy devolve into collecting cards so you can nuke down the boss as quickly as possible, as often times, killing the boss automatically wins you the map. There isn't a great variety of objectives in battles, and the maps themselves vary in quality, with some being solid, while I found most to be pretty forgettable and inconsequential to my strategy. While this does mean a lot of the strategy focus comes from your character and team building, which is nice because of how deep those systems are, I think it is to the detriment of other gameplay aspects. The game also has strange difficulty spikes, which I think is a combination of the team level cap system, coupled with a lot of late game bosses coming pre-loaded with stat cards that just make them absurdly powerful right out the gate. The game is very swingy, and most of the time that's fun, but sometimes it's really frustrating.

I won't go too deep into the story because I don't want to discuss spoilers, but while I did overall enjoy it well enough, I think it falls flat in some aspects. The political nature of it was very interesting to me, and I enjoyed the different factions and conflict that arose from them, but the story didn't feel particularly personal, it all felt distant. The emotional core of much of the story, what ties Denam to the greater conflict as the story progresses, just didn't really grasp me. I liked what it was going for, I liked the theming of it, but the way it was all executed just felt cold most of the time, missing a sense of sentimentality where I think even just a little in a few more scenes would have gone a long way for me. I'm not sure if it's because of the writing, or the voice acting, or just the fact that this is a remake of such an old game, but it just didn't grab me much in that respect. I still enjoyed the story, and there were some nice character moments, and I do think the ending did a good job of tying things together, as well as drawing attention to and recontextualizing earlier parts of the game that hit much differently with newfound understanding. Still, it all just felt a bit too stoic for me, with only a few moments resonating emotionally for me. I think it just comes down to personal preference.

At the end of the day, I'm so glad I played this game. The act of playing it was an uneven experience for me, with some moments of the game being some of the most fun SRPG gameplay I've ever had, and other parts leaving me frustrated, but any gripes I have aren't enough to overshadow all of the great the game offers. I can absolutely see why this game has the passionate following it does, and I can see, both in gameplay and narrative, the inspiration Triangle Strategy and other SRPGs have drawn from this game, it's a game worth paying tribute to.

I eventually plan to go back and see some of the other branching paths I didn't go down, as well as the postgame episodes, but for now, I'm going to put this one down, though I think I'll find myself thinking about it for a long while.

One of the first times I felt like I was watching a movie while playing a video game (complimentary). There are some things that didn’t age well and are a little cringe-inducing after all these years (Mei Ling’s seemingly-forced stereotypical accent, I’m looking at you), but the meat of the game is still as good as ever. The action’s still fun, the boss fights are still interesting for the most part (damn you to hell, Sniper Wolf), and the plot is just deep and intriguing enough before it all got so bloated and tangled that even Kojima was struggling to tie it all together for MGS4.

A really charming an creative entry in the Mario Bros series. The Wonder Effects and the three new Power-Ups really mixed things up, and provided many surprises throughout the game. The new animations, Sound Effects and jingles are incredibly charming and were honestly neccessary after seeing how soulles the "New" series had become after a while. The world/level themes were at leas a little bid more creative than in the previous games, but I still don't understand why some world were so much shorter than others. The badges were really fun to use as well, they definitely add lots of replayability. However, the game felt a little too short for my tastes, especially for a full price game (still better than Sonic tho, lol) and some of the Wonder Effects were a little repetitive and/or underwhelming at times.
All in all, I enjoyed my (short) time with the game, and I will probably come back to it sooner or later. It's not a masterpiece, it has serveral flaws, but it's still REALLY appreciated after the drought of original 2D Mario Games.

Depois de 23 horas de jogo e 10 runs vencidas, acho que finalmente consegui entender a beleza de Hades.
O jogo, por si só, já é lindo. Os personagens, extremamente carismáticos e bem desenhados. A história é empolgante, as armas são incríveis, tudo funciona surpreendentemente bem.

Minhas poucas observações são quanto a facilidade do jogo (que, provavelmente, se deve ao fato de 1- eu ser foda e 2- eu estar jogando em temperaturas muito baixas), e o loop de gameplay acabou ficando meio chatinho depois de um tempo, STS me deixou com um gosto de rejogabilidade maior, mas sem dúvidas, esse aqui também é impecável.

PS: Eu provavelmente daria um 9.5 ou algo assim, mas como só dá pra dar nota inteira, 10/10.

Copy-pasted with lots of edits from a post I wrote in r/PatientGamers

When I first heard of Hades I thought "damn, this game sounds like it was made specifically for me". The choice of Greek mythology (IMO used in a knowledgeable way) for the theme with a touch of the spooky caught my interest immediately, and I really like action roguelites, leaning more towards stylized visuals.

I decided to wait for the full release on Steam (painful choice), but once I got to play it confirmed my expectations and even surpassed them.

The reasons why it's one of my 10/10 games come from how both the package as a whole and individual areas stand out, without any significant flaw.

Art is fricking gorgeous and the soundtrack and voice acting, just terrific.
The environments are really detailed and full of life (ironically). I found characters charismatic af, and the story was solid and compelling. A significant factor in my appreciation of the game comes from the way Supergiant managed to blend story within the roguelite gameplay loop. It could have been tricky to pull off, but they did it.

Last but not least, gameplay was so, so fun. Controlling Zagreus just feels great, and while there might be some builds that work better than others, or some weapons may fit some personal preferences better, experimenting and trying them all always remains entertaining (it's possibly the first game where I've enjoyed playing with a shield! 🤔) thanks to the VAST amount of flexibility. Procedural levels also give enough variation to mitigate the impact of repetition.

I found the difficulty challenging but never super frustrating (you can always tune it even further later on) and because of the progression systems dying never feels too punitive because you're always getting something new when you go back home, either in the shape of an upgrade, a new story fragment or who knows, perhaps something new awaits you now in your next attempts to escape. This gives you that slight push to try "just one more run" (and then three hours have vanished).

One of my all-time favourites, so I can't be too objective.