Hades

💠 2021 April 13th

I've discovered the game by watching a playthrough on a (very cool!) YouTube channel called PlayFrame. Here's the link if you would also like to enjoy it:

Hades playlist on PlayFrame

After a few episodes, I decided that I definitely had to test the game myself. I've played a lot since, and I still feel like playing more.

Hades is a 2D action game in isometric view. The player controls Zagreus the main character, whose goal is to escape hell as it is described in the greek mythology.

The underworld takes the shape of a succession of randomised rooms, in which monsters appear when Zagreus enters. To get to the next room, he has to kill all of them. If he fails, he is drawn back to the beginning.

The concept is far from revolutionary, but it's extremely well implemented.

First of all, the game is very beautiful. The graphics remind of well drawn comics with clear ink outlines, sharp angles and bright colour contrasts. They are supported with good quality animations and sounds (some of them really cute and funny!). The music is balanced between encouraging background rhythms in the fighting rooms, some rock style, and even songs at times.

As for gameplay, Hades offers quite a huge variety of ways to fight. The character gains abilities as he progresses, some becoming permanently available, while others only in the current run. What I especially like is that there's always an unexpected part in a particular game, but as a player it is possible to influence the way temporary skills unfold, so there's no frustration in being stuck in a gameplay I don't want at that time.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the game is its incredibly vast amount of dialogues. They're short, which goes well with the fact that it's a relatively fast paced action game, but there's tons of them, and they're all voiced.

During gameplay sessions and between each session, Zagreus meets lots of colourful characters. When he interacts with them under the right circumstances, it unlocks story elements or other cool things.

To give an idea of scale, I've played more than a hundred hours and I haven't seen all the subplots nor all the dialogues yet, and there's only a handful of them I've read more than once.

The variety and number of possible interactions adds a lot to the game and makes it feel lively. It's a very efficient means to counterweight the overall repetition of the core gameplay.

Finally, a word about difficulty. I don't think this is an easy game, it definitely takes practice to master, but it's not hard for the sake of being hard either. Some of the permanent abilities also greatly help to go further. It's important to mention that there's a "god mode" option that can be ticked or unticked at any time, which makes the character more and more resistant to damage only when it's switched on. It's very flexible and well thought, I would have loved to have a similar system for some Dark Souls III endgame bosses T_T

Overall I don't really have negative remarks to make... which is good I guess? :)

I haven't had much meta gaming to do, but if I really had to find something... I felt like I needed to check online how some of the resources could be spent, because I wasn't sure what to prioritise and I didn't want to waste the ones that were harder to obtain.

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