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Hades is actually a fun game to play on its own and not just for story. Main attraction here is seeing interaction and story between various characters. Though, your goal is as meaningless that of Sisyphus itself.

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Hades in many regards feels like an ultimate evolution of Bastion. It has beautiful hand drawn art. It immerses you into its world. Game revolves around story and characters you meet along the way. All warped in a top tier voice acting. Supergiant Games shines in Hades as it is their best game yet in these regards. What is different this time is that gameplay actually do not suck anymore. It is fun, fast and exciting rogue-like to play. Traditional weakness which plagued their games are now gone and Hades is genuinely fun game to play.

Story
• What story had presented in first dozen hours is interesting. Story is directly tied to gameplay and what you are doing ties naturally to what story is telling. It is light-hearted tale. However, it has a tendency to focus on a wrong elements. It doesn't explain how Hades mother escaped. Nobody seems to care how he can stay in world of the living. Hades himself just dies before giving you any answers and then he acts like he doesn't know anything about you beating him. While some of it might be explained further I go, I found it odd that massive plot holes like these are left unexplored and game seemingly is completely uninterested in fundamental questions. After beating game first, Hades outright pretends that he doesn't remember it for the sake of the story. That nothing will change and you are still going to receive his mocking each time you die and everyone else could just dump their lines at you just as before.
  
  Another problem is that Hades himself is not developed. Story goes in tiny bits everywhere and it is presented by minuscule portions between each run. This works fine for the gameplay, but it never had that big exposition dump to establish context and background. Even your journal just have generic information. Major questions like your beef with your father remains unexplored. Why are you allowed to flee each time? Why your relationship is so bad? It is done in such a sterile way that it doesn't feel real or that either of them really cares about it. Hades is a terrible father, because game tells you so.
  
  As such, game story failed to entangle me. It was delivered in tiny bits and it did not provided me with a push to go for another run. If anything, it established only meaningless of doing so and I wished an option at that point to reunite with my father. Admit that my quest of escaping is pointless. I wished that I would had earned his respect by successfully escaping underworld. At that point, we could had lived happily ever after in our palace and I could just end the game where I felt was a natural conclusion for it to end.
  
  Characters
  
• Characters are lively and chatty. They each have their own unique personalities. As Gods, their roles define who they are. I enjoyed that you can build relationships with them and denizens in your palace. The only thing which felt forced and gamey is that they would force me to choose and ALL of them would act so insulted that one won over the other. Like, what did you expected? Then they immediately calm down and give their boon. This felt so gamey and could be done better. First, via dialog which some Gods give. For example, God of War couldn't care less about it and just see this as fencing match. Even preferring that you do not choose him and instead choose to face his wrath, seeing you as a fencing partner for it. One God could even be cool with that and just laugh it off like God of Wine and celebrations. There was so much potential here, but this mechanic felt gamey.
  
  Gameplay
  
• Game gives you that rush of adrenaline when you are beating hard boss for a first time. It felt exciting, difficult, intense, fun. This is what I game for. One game which felt like this was Synthetik. Hades managed to induce the same feeling of challenge and excitement with its challenging and fast gameplay.
  https://youtu.be/wfZ1NUF_lkY
  I even recorded my second attempt at finishing this game. Like Synthetik, first try is to learn the boss. Second attempt is to defeat him. Games like this are more intense and exciting than I felt in something like Doom 2016. Shooters tend to rely on their gameplay all the time. It gets boring and repetitive pretty fast. Rogue-lites have an advantage of having periods of intense fights and then long periods of build ups. These pauses in intensity and variations between gameplay which Hades does better than Doom Eternal does. Intensity is not always up 100% and thus it doesn't get exhausting. Nor you are forced to play same game. With shooters, it is always shooting with slight variations. In rogue-lites there are two games. One of character build up, discovery and RPG. Another is of intense action when you are facing hardest challenges game can face. This formula works a lot better for creating intense and exciting fights than traditional methods.

This game is remarkably well refined thanks to all that Epic deal money no doubt. However, there are small things there and there which could be improved. These smalls things however are ones which also prevents players from actually playing this game for gameplay alone and not its story or visuals.

Interface
• When you start playing, game doesn't try to teach you its own mechanics. They are self evident for the most part. However, certain details confused me. Like what my shard is supposed to do. Why it is so weak? What is God Gauge? Where I can find it? How it works?
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018035834
  Likewise, game is confusing until you memorise what these symbols mean. First dozen hours to people are spent them getting familiar and comfortable with a game.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018034699
  
  Imprecise Combat
  
• While Supergiant Games made huge strides in their gameplay, it is still not great. It is just good, something which doesn't take away from the experience. However, it is still floaty and imprecise. First of all, your character has a lock on. On some precision based weapons like a bow, you can't aim. You will feel how your aim is being locked on target. It prevents doing something more advanced and it makes aiming feel sticky. It lowers skill ceiling and what you can do with gameplay. In general, developer did not spend much time in fine tuning it or paying attention to detail. A lot of mechanics are just badly done. For example, power shot from your bow. You can do special shot if you time it just right. However, indicator is only a visible flash on your character. However, you want to look at your target. So, you have to train to shoot at a specific interval in order to hit those power shots. This isn't reliable and you just can't master it. Game wants you to look at your character while doing a power shot where a player who wants to master gameplay wants to free aim and to get natural feel when to release their shots. Small things like this puts a hard cap on how good you can actually get in this game. Combat is not deep. It is not complex. It is not something which you would want to stay for.
  
  No control over drops
  
• Another problem is that drops are completely random. Boons which Gods give are random. You can influence slightly what you going to get with an artifact, but that far from guarantees specific playstyle. If you want to combine two Gods, you are out of luck. Game decides before a run which Gods you will have access to and it just keeps on spamming you those options. You do not have a choice nor influence in deciding which combination you would want to have. This can lead to bad runs where Gods do not synergy well with your playstyle and with your weapon. As there is a lot of power in rare boons and especially Duo boons, they are important and run can be won or lost not due to your skill, but simply luck of the draw. I would wish that there would be more systems in place to tip odds to your favour somehow.

Your goal and dream is ultimately just as pointless as of Sisyphus. You can't ever escape underworld. Hades was right from the very start. This is a fun journey, but ultimately it doesn't felt that it has pay off. You are either smart enough to realise that in your first victory and then materialise that first escape into a real escape from your loop or you are stuck in it. Forever doing one more run until you tire and collapse from an exhaustion like a hamster in its own wheel.

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