Quick Look: Hades

Hades is fantastic! Supergiant once again knocks it out of the park.

I adore Supergiant! Can't wait to try Hades! <3

It's a masterpieeeece

Getting some Undermine vibes from Hades. I might have to pick this up soon.

Didn't see a whole lot of his dialog here but I found Zagreus to be one of the most charming protagonists I've ever encountered.

The animation for the Mirror of Night is one of the slickest things I've seen in menu design.

The amount of craft in this game is truly incredible. Supergiant just blows it out of the park every time for me.

Man it hurts me so hard that these Supergiant games haven’t come out on Xbox (past Bastion). I don’t know if they were bought by Sony, but when I see this new game is even on Switch but not Xbox, I die a little inside.

Ive been playing Hades since it first came out in Early Access, and this is the game that finally got me to "get" roguelkes/lites. Unless Cyberpunk is godlike, this is 100% my GOTY

I feel like they should get Kasavin on the hotspot he would have a bunch of fun stuff about old game spot and developing during theses unpresented times

Supergiant's best game, and also a lock for my GOTY. Every single thing about this game is polished to a radiant gloss, each run (and death!) is satisfying and productive. Better than Dead Cells.

I love how Supergiant has such a defined style, yet their games are all so different. I've liked all their games, but I happy to see this one getting universal praise. I hope it does as well for them as it seems like it will.

Might be worth pointing out that when the game says something affects your "Attack" it is specifically only talking about the attacks that come from your main attack button, not your Cast or Special, so depending on your weapon and boon setup the "Take damage every time you attack" penalty on Chaos is sometimes no big deal at all!

HFIL

Best roguelike of all time. That is my opinion and it is a correct opinion.

This is a great game! The combat is smooth in that way that Dead Cells is!

Hades feels like a beautiful culmination of all previous Supergiant games. Fluid, fast-paced combat of Bastion, variable synergies of Transistor, combined with narrative and dialogue systems from Pyre. The addition of the run-based nature is integral to the storytelling and character development as much as gameplay progression. It's so fun to play, the art is gorgeous, and it's a joy to listen to the excellent music and charming voice acting. Finely crafted in all aspects.

I had nearly 150 escape attempts through early access and recently started a new save slot in hell mode to see how much the beginning changed. Love seeing how much has changed since it dropped on Steam. Marvelous work.

That was some really exciting play from Vinny, wow!

I played a bunch of this in early access on PC, but I'm curious if the Switch version runs okay, as it's definitely a game that'd suit how I use my Switch. Anyone had any experience ?

Man, I'd completely forgotten what the palace looks like at the beginning of the game, it's amazing how much character they let you add to it to really let you make it feel more like a home.

One too many chambers to make a Wu-Tang quip.

I think this is a Tetris Effect level ~perfect~ video game.

@dazzhardy: imo performance is generally excellent on Switch. There's slowdown here and there. I've had probably 20-30 runs and have only encountered significant frame drops once un-docked. Generally pretty solid at around 60fps as far as I am able to tell.

Maybe it's because I have been watching a bunch of streamers play the PC version but this switch version looks very blurry...

I think I love this game even more than Dead Cells. Dead Cells had the problem of every boss except for the end one just becoming boring very quickly, whereas this changes the first and second bosses up so I never know which version I'm going to fight each time, and I haven't had a single boring run yet.

Yah first I thought it was the player but then they mentioned it's on switch and I guess if you're playing on a handheld you don't notice it but blown up on a big monitor it looks kinda grimey.

@humanity: looks better if you're running it native on the 720p handheld screen but yeah the art still won't shine and pop like it would if you're running it on PC at 1440p or above.

Edit: oh and the models of all the characters and enemies look noticeably muddier than PC. Most of the art holds up though.

It's a small price to pay for the convenience of having it on Switch, I look forward to cross save support being added.

@colourful_hippie: yah I get it just a shame for such wonderful art design to get muddied up. As an illustrator myself it hurts to see fine art get compressed down.

I had this game from Early Access and checked in over update to update. Supergiant have sculpted a fantastic game. My favourite Rogue-like from the last couple of years.

The weapons, boons, keepsakes can create some wonderful builds that can make combat a joy to play.

I highly recommend it.

*Athena's - Deflect on dash is a game changer. Also Charon's keepsake at lvl 3 is good for long runs as some shop items will last 11-14 encounters.

I love how Vinny absolutely destroyed Meg and they thought he died.

This is an extremely good video game.

Right there with you.

Been waiting for years to finally play Spelunky 2 and I wound up playing this daily for hours instead. So good!

I think the game doesn't agree with Vinny, when he says, he has a "decent amount of money". Always under 150, can never pay the best item. ^^ Like a lost room almost and weakens the run.

Also: The Choice Boons rooms are the most desirable because, despite being harder, you get 2 boons for just 1 encounter.

Fun and engaging quicklook guys !

I'll preface this by saying i've only had a couple of runs at the game so far and i've not watched this video yet. But i don't get this game? It feels frantic and clumsy in a way that Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells do not. I may have missed something but the icons on doorways don't appear to have been explained. The runs seem very linear with no branching paths. I shelled out $20 so naturally im gonna keep playing it but right now i'm not getting why people are saying this is a GOTY contender. And i'm saying this as a huge fan of other roguelites such as Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy, Slay The Spire, etc. What am i missing?

Is mouse and keyboard decent when playing Hades or should I go for a controller ?

Probably going to embarrass myself by asking this question before finishing the QL (I'm halfway through and considering just stopping until I can play more) but here goes:

How much does the story actually progress without you making level progress? I've so far died repeatedly to Meg without beating her but have gotten some new story cutscenes and opened new areas Hades (the Lounge). I think decoupling narrative from player progress a bit is a pretty neat and innovative approach, but I am a little bit concerned I might end up "finishing the story" before I've even made it 25% through the game which seems like it could be rather deflating.

i ended up buying this after watching the quicklook. does the switch only output 720p or something? i was shocked to see how different it looks on my pc

@strijd: Yup, the visual fidelity of the Switch isn't quite near the PC version. That surprised me quite a bit. Still a great game to play in bed, on the toilet, etc though!

@big_denim: yeah it still appeared to run fine on the switch, that's what is most important

@zaphoduk: Might just not be a game for you and the opinions of other people will change not the experiences you had with the game. "Am I missing something?" implies that the good points of the game are very niche or hidden behind some obstacle but what Hades aims for is presented upfront IMO. They are very good in this QL about specifically highlighting what they like about the game, if you want to align you expectations a bit more with what the game has to offer.

As for the points you brought up, I personally feel like the gameplay is very responsive, so I don't agree with your assessment of it being clumsy. Buttons do one thing, attacks are fairly fast, many animations can be dodge cancelled and there's a fair bit of auto aiming for the attacks to not feel fiddly. It is a hard, battle focussed game so it will always feel frantic in the beginning and the clumsiness might come from your unfamiliarity with the controls and enemies.

Compared to other rogue-lites, Hades keeps very few things under the hood and information about what boons and modifiers do is present whenever you're making a choice. Iconography on doors might not be explained but there are not that many to begin with. Every god has their icon, which you won't know at first but every first encounter with a god comes with a memorable introduction. On top of those, there are maybe 5 additional icons. The skull frame with arrows indicating harder enemies and better rewards, took a few runs for me to realize.

Each run is linear in terms of the order of the regions you visit. As there usually are two doors to choose from after each room you get to choose your path to some degree, but not being able to see the other path can make it feel like you're running along a line. There is no exploration within a run really. Only in the last level do you get to choose whether you want to finish the run or keep exploring a bit. However, the variety of rooms and variance in each runs is high enough that runs do feel significantly different every time. As the game goes on, more events are added and bosses start to switch it up as well. After the early game you also get to customize runs a bit more.

On top of the game being made by a respected and liked developer, Hades gets a lot of love for doing something new build on a very solid rogue-lite base, which is the presentation and the story. Characters go through multiple arcs, relationships develop better than I expected and the pay off for following through with the NPCs is great storywise. Some people call it a rogue-lite dating sim for a reason.

Hope this helps, though again just because a game is popular does not mean you will like it.

I was already impressed with the amount of talents on the mirror of night and now I just found out that each talent has an alternate version. There's just so much in this game lol

The amount of dialog in this game is absolutely insane! Not only the story related stuff, but just how the character comments on bosses or enemies during dungeons. Have been playing this for about 170h total, and barely have gotten any repeats.

Comparing that to big open world rpg's like ac odyssey, where there's like 10 things total the side characters say out of cutscenes.

Took me a few runs to really "get" Hades but I adore it now (I'd recommend writing off a few early runs as sessions to grind darkness for upgrades - you pick up a lot by osmosis for when you decide to get serious again). Pyre was my fave Supergiant game up until now but this is really pushing it. I've escaped 6 times now but there's still so much to discover and unlock, and I really want to see how the narrative ties up.

I’m really loving this game, which surprises me because I have never fully clicked with a Supergiant game before.

I hope they patch in cross-save soon, because I’ll buy it on PC too in heartbeat.

@julmajuuhan: Man do you mean 170h since it was released in early access or did you put 170 into the game since last thursday? Cause boy I admire the dedication.