Falling in Love with Hades

Hey there! In the last few months I have been playing Hades on and off. For the few of you who don't know about the game, Hades is an isometric action rogue-like made by Supergiant Games, the guys behind Bastion, Transistor and Pyre (buy their games, they are all awesome).

I need to preface this by saying that I do not stick with rogue-likes too often, because I get burnt out by the inherent repetitiveness of the genre: you start a run, you die at some point, you upgrade your stuff with the things you found during the run and you go in again. Hades also does that, of course, but it does it in such a way that it makes you keep coming back. The game is filled with characters, each one with its own, distinct personality. You don't have access to everyone at any given point, since everyone has a job to do, or just didn't pop up in the randomly rearranged route through the underworld, through which you'll spend most of your time. If you meet a character, you can talk to them or give them gifts to deepen your relationships with them, and here is the kicker: in my 31 hours with the game so far, I've never ehard a repeated line. Every time I met someone, we either continued the thread of an old discussion, or something new popped up and the characters talked about that.

One run through the underworld looks has this structure: you start in the House of Hades, you talk to people, maybe you trade with the broker for some upgrade materials. After all that, you go to Zagreus's room to choose and upgrade your perks for the run. Next, comes the courtyard, where you choose your weapon and talk to your training dummy, Skelly. Finally, you exit into Tartarus, where the combat part of the game starts. You'll go through a selection of randomly selected rooms, most of them combat based, very few with friendly characters or stores. Each combat room offers you a reward, and the kicker is that you already know what the reward is before entering the room, because the door specifies the item. Eventually, you reach the boss of the area, have an exchange and start fighting to the death. If you win, you go to Asphodel, which is a very fire and brimstone kind of place. You repeat the same cycle until you reach Elysium, then the River Styx, which lets you prepare for the final boss. It must be mentioned that each area has its own pool of enemies, so you won't be burnt out very easily by the selection.

Variety is the spice of life when it comes to Hades, no matter the situation. Different weapons, each ahving different aspects you can unlock, different areas with unique enemies, bosses have an archetype absed on the area they are in, but their abilities change, lots of people to talk to and get invested in with each line of dialogue (it helps that the voice acting is stellar), a lot of stuff to unlock, be it perks, weapon upgrades or trinkets and, on top of all that, if you manage to finish the game once, you will be presented with a list of modifiers for subsequent runs, to make things more challenging.

My favourite part of the game isn't even the game itself, but the characters, their history with eachother and their interactions. Often, I would return from a run, only to see Achilles at his post, trying to be a mentor to Zagreus and giving a heartfelt piece of advice, or meeting Hades, ever grumpy and smug about me not being able to leave. Or Nyx, being a motherly presence to Zagreus, bolstering his confidence in spite of his failures. Even Skelly is a sight for sore eyes, and his only purpose is telling you beat him up. Sometimes, you return, and these characters are absent, or they are talking between themselves and you can eavesdrop on these conversations. It feels very lively for such a dreary place and it is really a great intermission between sessions of beating shades up to escape. The characters which pop up during the escape attempts are also an amazing island in the ocean of death around you, having a dialogue with you and giving you a reward for spending a little time with them. If I should characterize this game in one word, it should be heartwarming.

Besides the dialogue, you can gift everyone nectar to deepen your relationship with them, unlocking new dialogue and for a few select characters, even favours which you can complete to make their life better. Each gift of nectar comes with its own little exchange of lines, which is also unique. Eventually you can reach a level where you can share a bottle of ambrosia with the character, going on and talking about repressed personal history or sharing secrets. Some even have conflicting feelings related to Zagreus and some simply tolerate his presence, and this is what we call nuance, giving them that little push in the direction of actually being interesting. The people of this world do not exist simply to serve you, they just exist and have their own problems.

All in all, I'd recommend you buy this game whenever you can, because it truly is a gem which keeps on giving and drawing you in more and more with its great writing and refined and simple gameplay.

Steam link: here

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, personal