(142 runs on Switch with the party already thrown for Olympians back in Fall 2020. The following review is written through a mind refreshed by 27 runs on Steam Deck.)
By the look and sound of things, Hades is quite a departure from past Supergiant endeavors. The game has a look closer to digitally colored Comic Books rather than that Water Color style the San Fransico based studio is known for. With the game being about muscle bound heroic figure fighting the whole underworld, it’s only fair to provoke the media form and art style associated with Super Heroes. Also, for the first time, a Supergiant joint has a speaking role for its player character. Darren Korb, company sound guy and music composer, did an excellent job as Zag Son of Hades.
In terms of its structure, Hades is a rouge-lite or “God-like Rouge-like” as the trailers of its series like to boast. One complete run of which usually takes less than an hour. But to get this epic as a whole, 100 hours might be required. When its 1.0 and Switch came out in fall, 2020, it benefits from the Pandemic blues. So, it’s surprising for my 35 years old cynical ass to find some enjoyment out of it still in the year 2025.
Winter is coming for mortals and immortals alike
In many ways, Hades is retelling the Greek myth tale regarding how the season known as winter came into being. The story involves the Underworld and the Pom grew there. The tale must be important because it was told first in a documentary my 12 years old self watched way back in the days. That documentary pretty much sold me on Greek Myth and I would not have even given 2005’s God of War a look had I not watched it.
Speaking the “one and only” God of War, I would go as far as to say that Hades is God of War with Hades and Ares switching places: Ares is the titular final boss of the 2005 while Hades has one arguably minor supporting role to give player character power-up and its vice versa in 2020’s Hades. Of course, Supergiant’s aiming for T-rating at ESRB is more tasteful than the mid-aughts edginess.
Hades features many a Greek god to give player characters Boons. Big names like Zeus, Poseidon, Athena and so on, so why did I single out Ares? Well, it’s just nice to see a developer at California, namely Jen Zee, drew the Greek god of war as a milk toast pretty boy like he is in the myth. In comparison to the Mr. Bing Nose voiced by Steve Blum in the 2005 product by edge lord for edge lords, this recently returned for Hades II figure being caught a Gold Web with birthday suit wearing Aphrodite would be a much better view to behold. This is just a small aspect of how myth is handled so well in Hades by its developers.
Gladly sent to the mines
Strictly speaking, Hades is an action rogue-lite rather than rouge-like. While the player character being beaten in the middle of any level would send him back to the very beginning, the game does keep a lot for you permanently. It mainly comes down to 3 types of resource: Darkness, Chthonic Keys and Gem Stone.
Darkness would appear to be the most important of those three, as the game’s save files keep track of how much Darkness did the player collect along with how many runs (Or “Escape Attempts” as the words on screen) did the player went through. It’s the resource to beef up player character stats permanently to even the odds so to speak. One such stat would be Death Defiance, the maxed out on 3 retries that would let player picked up from where they die with half of their life at that point. While the game’s titular final boss does pull the trick of keeping another full life bar up his ass, to be fair to him, the player character pulls life bars out of his ass earlier and more often.
As the name implies, Chthonic Keys are used to unlock things like new weapons and new stats to use Darkness on. The game has 6 weapons in total, 5 of which can only be unlocked by those keys. Unlike Bastion and Transistor yet in line with Pyre, Hades’ key biding is not part of build selection. Left face button is for Attack, up face button for Special, right face button for Cast and down fact button for dodge on every weapon, Attack and Special are not necessarily light and heavy in that order, as the bow’s Special is lighter than its Attack. And this game has a gun that feels like Transistor’s Pling, Sparck and Jaunt build with Bastion’s click right stick to reload. Of course, the name is picked directly out myth. Many things in myth would make one go “Good gods! It’s just like [INSERT MODERN OR SCIENCE FICTIONAL CONCEPT HERE]!”
Gem stone is used to improve the hub area that player spent time in between runs. It’s also used to create stop gaps within the run. Of course, the runs have stop gaps before player can build any. There are shops (The currency useable there cannot be kept between runs) and friendly NPCs who offer helping hands.
Hades somewhat takes New Game Plus to a new extreme. The credit won’t roll until 10 complete runs (With the levity of not having to fight the final boss in that tenth run.). After that there are still a party to prepare and people to connect. Hades is not the “would not shup up” kind of game, but the amount of writing in it is still astonishing. The illusion of never repeating would keep one playing long after one is satisfied.
Finally no more slow down during commutes
As the Steam Deck was announced in summer 2021, Hades was already part of the Linux based gaming tablet. While it’s not the most demanding game across Switch and other platforms, playing it on more powerful does have its benefits. Namely no more slow-down when the screen is filled with enemies to kill.
It is not always the case, as 13 Sentinels runs better on Switch than on PS4. I still remember the framerate drop during that final battle on PS4 because the framerate going up did mean I was winning while no such difference on Switch. But Hades is another story, as the framerate holds up during the second boss fight and the host on that third out four areas, PS4 level hardware is a winner with Hades.
“Dune of video games” with script by Gamespot’s Snake Eater reviewer
Dune is interesting. It’s just dropping deep-sounding non-sequiturs one after another like “The Spice is the Worm! The Worm is the Spice!”
------Greg Kasavin, road trip to PAX Prime 2010, with all but one the vocal “likes” cut out.
Ah yes, that first part of Building the Bastion that is only watchable through a free Whiskey Media Happy Hour link on this site. I am guessing Mr. Kasavin was talking about that piece of shit released in 1984 and disowned by the late David Lynch. However, in some way, Kasvain can be seen as the Frank Herbert of video game with Hades as his Dune.
Dune is a double winner of Hugo and Nebula. More notably, the first Novel to win on the first Nebula Awards. Hades is also a double winner of those’ game category (Nebula does include tabletop games as well), with Hugo being the later comer. And Dune did Early Access before video game had any cultural significance, I shit you not. About first 2 thirds of the novel was sold as Dune World, which was nominated for a Hugo 2 years before the bigger volume won.
Excuse my fanboying, but it’s up so you all would take this review with a healthy amount of salt. I mean I wish Mr. Kasavin had put some cut scene length warning in his MGS2 review as he later did in his MGS3 review. It’s just that with the industry going to desolation hell in a corporate handbasket, I just want to celebrate the moment when I still like a favorite from years past. Whether a newcomer should buy and play this game or not is not entirely my purpose. Just look up more before you make your purchase.