Hades is Not a Roguelike
Video games are a great source of entertainment: they’re fun, they’re absolutely art, and they can bring isolated people together. In this returning series, Jayden Cammarata—Witherly Heights’ game critic—reviews a few that he liked… or didn’t.
By: Jayden Cammarata & Taran Nulu
Soundtrack Sample: The Painful Way
A roguelike is a type of game in which every time the player dies, they lose all the progress they’ve made so far. Some people are fans of roguelikes, because they virtually guarantee that a game won’t involve grinding; however, many people dislike the genre because losing one’s progress can be extremely demoralizing. Roguelites are similar to true roguelikes; however, players can keep a small amount of progress each time they restart, which makes this issue slightly less frustrating.
Hades, by Supergiant Games, is a story-driven action roguelite that’s become particularly well renowned– in fact, it’s popular enough to become the first game Supergiant Games will make a sequel for. The player plays as Zagreus, the divine son of Hades, the Greek god of death. He has one goal: to escape Hades, the Greek underworld, and reach the surface. Throughout the game, Zagreus meets many famous beings from Greek myth, who help and hinder him.
Hades is played in a series of escape attempts, starting when the player picks a weapon from a series of historically accurate Greek options– e.g. a sword, spear, or laser gun– and jumps out their bedroom window into Tartarus. To defeat the enemies that will try to stop them, players can use a dash, a normal and special attack (both unique for each weapon), a cast, and eventually, a call and summon.
As players progress through the chambers of the underworld, Olympian gods offer them help in the form of boons. Boons can upgrade one of the player’s abilities or give them access to that god’s Call, which is an extremely powerful attack that takes a long time to charge up before each use. Instead of boons, players can also find other treasures, like pomegranates, which upgrade boons, bottles of ambrosia, diamonds, and centaur hearts, which increase Zagreus’s maximum health. These upgrades help keep players alive for longer, as they fight through Asphodel, Elysium, and the bosses in each realm.
When Zagreus’s boons and the player’s skills inevitably fail to stave off death, the player is sent back to the House of Hades. They’ll lose most upgrades, like boons and centaur hearts, but keep some legacy currencies that can be spent on permanent upgrades.
(Screenshot by Eli)
Hades is a game about being a god, and it works hard to make its players feel like one. It succeeds: cleaving a path through the armies of the underworld with the aid of the gods themselves does make the player feel like an epic being out of legend. The style of the game supports this power fantasy: players can call for backup from the incarnation of death himself, or call on a god to personally smite a particularly powerful enemy. At one point, Orpheus himself writes a hymn praising the player and their epic accomplishments.
After every death, the game sends its players back to the House of Hades to spend time talking to other characters like a mortal would. This place of rest is one of the great strengths of the game. Every death, the characters found there will have new things to say; interactions with these characters are so diverse and well put together that Hades feels more like a visual novel than a roguelite at times. Because there is always something new to do after dying, losing a run is far less discouraging than it is in other roguelites.
The House of Hades deals with the players’ frustration elegantly, but the legacy progression system helps with this less so. In between runs, players can spend gems, darkness, and other types of currency to unlock permanent upgrades. This does make death less discouraging, and shifts more focus onto the fantastic story and worldbuilding, but it also encourages grinding, which is a major issue, since one of the main appeals of roguelites is the lack of grinding.
The legacy progression system of Hades makes the game grindier and, after enough upgrading, slightly too easy. This is the biggest issue of the game, but it is not the only one:
- The game has some balance issues: once upgraded, Coronacht, the bow, trivializes the game even more than most of the other weapons do; Artemis, though one of the best gods personality-wise, gives out weaker boons (excluding her Call) than the other gods.
- The enemies that spawn quickly become repetitive, as do the bosses. What enemies the player encounters are different in every run, but not different enough to feel new and engaging every time.
- After beating the game once, the player can turn on difficulty modifiers to make the game harder and more engaging. Playing on harder difficulties lets the player earn more loot and more legacy upgrades, but because of the way these rewards are earned, the game encourages players to try only marginally harder challenges, so post-game progression becomes repetitive very quickly.
Hades is one of the most popular titles by Supergiant Games. Because of its tolerable deaths and fun but easy gameplay, Hades is an ideal game for people who don’t usually play roguelites. Those more experienced with the genre might not find it an engaging enough challenge, but will still be able to enjoy the game for its epic theming and engaging story and characters.
Overall rating:
9/10
This Game ASAP: My favorite roguelite bullet hell visual novel dating simulator fishing game of all time
The Deicide Boolean: Yes.
Tips:
- Coronacht with the Aspect of Chiron is extremely powerful, especially when fully upgraded. When you get titan blood, unlock that first.
- Always try to have access to a call before the exit from Asphodel; if you have one, Lernie’s final phase becomes trivial– a fully charged boon from most gods can kill the last head instantly, or make you invulnerable for longer than it can survive.
- Unlock Stubborn Defiance as soon as you can afford it; the infinite healing it grants you is extremely powerful, especially considering its low darkness cost. However, once you can afford to finish upgrading the ability, replace Stubborn Defiance with Death Defiance; the extra survivability during boss fights is worth the tradeoff.
- While you have Stubborn Defiance equipped, you can intentionally die using traps to heal after an encounter, like a weaker variant of After Party. Make sure you have your revive when you do this though; I once lost a run once because I forgot I had died in that room already.
(Fanart by JenZee)