Hades (2020) [Switch]
10 min read
“Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.”
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
The family drama sitcom of one of the greatest mythologies in history has been brought to life (or living death) in Supergiant Games’ Hades. The random dangers of this action roguelike endearingly suit the capricious and cruel whims of the Greek pantheon in all of their bickering, backstabbing glory. However, Hades is not centered on the story of the god of the Underworld, himself, but upon his relatively less famous son.
It is at this point that I’ll let you know that I didn’t know about any myth with Zagreus in it before playing this game, and I won’t pretend like I knew who he was without hitting up Wikipedia!
Anyway, the young and restless Zagreus, frustrated by his father’s temper and ghoulish domain, embarks on a journey to escape from Tartarus. Through Asphodel and Elysium and the Temple of Styx he goes, all the way up to the surface. Innumerable fiends face him in the land of the dead, but the Olympian gods have taken notice and offer him their aid. Zagreus arms himself with mythic weapons and empyreal boons, gathering resources as he vanquishes shades and spirits, working his way ever upward in search of answers.
But the chthonic realm is as ferocious as his father. The path through the abyss is different each time. Its prison walls shift their traps and treasures, foiling Zagreus if he doesn’t prepare and keep his wits about him…
Nine Lives
So much in Hades impresses me, not least of which is how it frames its characters and unfolding plot without fighting against the unique nature of roguelikes. Instead, here is a story which needs to unfold through the repetition of rogue like gameplay. The randomness, the arbitrariness, the many deaths and failures, even multiple playthroughs, they’re all worked into the Zagreus’ plot and the game’s cast acknowledges it. Whether through earning the fickle favors of the Olympians or dying all over again, Hades has many secrets to reveal.
Once you’ve finished the game for the first time, you may think you’re finished, but that couldn’t be further from the veritas. In fact, Zagreus’ investigation into what happened to his mother Persephone demands multiple runs through the Underworld. Additionally, he also has to unpack the… volcanic relationship he has with his father. This will all require a great deal of skill and no small amount of luck.
As it turns out, in Hades, the most relevant deity of them all is the Random Number Goddess.
Entrée Inferno
I haven’t seen a roguelike really require multiple playthroughs, indeed deaths, in order to tell its story before. The roguelikes freshest to my memory are not at all like this. Atomicrops, Gonner, Rogue Legacy, Sparklite, my beloved Downwell… they’ve got the difficulty down, the constant dying, the sense of mechanical progression, the random equipment and items and abilities. But as good as they are in their category, they’re empty of the fullness of narrative that Hades boasts. Here is a game operating on more than a mere premise of “survive” or “explore”. This was the last place I expected so much drama, comedy, and tragedy. You know the Greeks loved their tragedy.
I’d be a hypokrites if I didn’t admit that I was quietly exhausted of roguelikes. I’ve enjoyed a handful of them over the past few years in large and small doses, but eventually the permadeath and the insistence upon “brutal” gameplay, that ubiquitous buzzword in the pixel indie scene, became utterly wearying. The great musterion of Hades showed me that all I needed for my faith to be restored in roguelikes was some drama. The gameplay could still be as fun for an adrenaline junkie as ever, but a rich story gave me the will to keep playing, demonstrating that the gimmick-combo that needed to happen wasn’t mixing roguelikes with Metroidvania or simulators or platformers. It was including a good story.
If this is the evolution of the tradition of roguelikes, I’m here for that.
One Hell of a Time
That isn’t to say the gameplay of Hades is anything to sniff at, of course. A host of options present themselves to the player, an army of choices to make.
Zagreus can change up his main modes of attack with several Infernal Arms, each of them upgradable in advance and highly customizable during a run. There’s Stygius the Stygian Blade, the default weapon, Varatha the Eternal Spear, which I used early on for its range, Aegis the Shield of Chaos, which I’ve never used even once, Coronacht the Heart-Seeking Bow, which is my most-used weapon, Malphon the Twin Fists, which is currently my favorite weapon for its high speed, and Exagryph the Adamant Rail, a kind of mythological gun… because video games.
Now you can combine these with a number of weapon-specific tweaks courtesy of the Daedalus hammer item, found randomly in a run through the Underworld. On top of that, their attacks (as well as Zagreus’ other traits) can be modified by boons granted randomly by a number of deities: Zeus offers chain lighting, Artemis increases critical hit rates, Demeter chills enemies, Ares causes damage over time, Hermes speeds you up, and so on. Figuring out unique combinations to best benefit your run is a great joy. You can tweak your traits even further via unique keepsakes you can nab from almost every character in the game, offering things like additional life or damage.
A Match Made In Heaven
For instance, there are two absolutely OP combinations that helped me complete a handful of successful runs. Whenever I manage to get these, I pretty much feel confident I can win.
The first of them involves Coronacht, Poseidon, and Daedalus. Poseidon grants pushback on your attacks, giving you lots of free space at range with the Bow. Upgrading this can even get you the rupture status affect, which causes damage to an enemy as they move. Pushing enemies back into obstacles also causes additional damage. Daedalus can either grant the Bow easier power shots (timed attacks for bonus damage) or, even better, the ability to rapid fire. This lets you pushback everything and rarely ever get hit when facing most enemies. Throw in a boon from the likes of Athena to allow your special attack to deflect enemy missiles and you’re good to go!
The second combo set requires my beloved Fists of Malphon, Ares, and potentially Daedalus. It’s crucial that you have at least two dashes (a la Zagreus’ Mirror) and that you grab the boon from Ares that creates a whirlpool of death whenever you dash. This stuns enemies without armor, so you can just dash and hold down attack to rapidly pummel enemies into oblivion without fear of repercussion most of the time. For additional damage, Ares also offers doom, an ability that causes additional damage, or you can pair it up with Demeter’s chill, Dionysius’ hangover, or Aphrodite’s weak. Daedalus can help by increasing the range of Malphon’s punches. Stacking status effects or damage of time means you can whittle enemies’ health down pretty quickly. This is setup made for my fastest playthroughs in the game.
I mention all of this hopefully to give you the impression that there is a lot to choose from and lots to enjoy in Hades. Currencies to gather, boons to snag, treasures to uncover, characters to meet, relationships to build, foes to fight, bosses to tangle with, upgrades to overpower… there’s just so much to enjoy packed into a single roguelike.
And you thought Oedipus had parent problems…
The 8-bit Review
Visuals: 9/10
As can be expected from Supergiant Games, Hades is immensely stylish with its attention to details, palette, and character design. It’s at times whimsical, at other times threatening in its renditions of iconic myths. While its dialogue portraits are intricate, its in-game models are relatively unrealized, and it can be so lovingly detailed makes it hard to occasionally see enemy attacks, particularly on the later levels. However, I think this is a game with very strong visual notions, as bold as the game’s protagonist.
The gamut of gods got some great designs!
Audio: 8/10
I’m less interested in the music as I am with the voice acting. This is mainly because the music, while good and undeniably cool, isn’t jaw-dropping, although it can be catchy. The music of the Tartarus region illustrates that, I think. Ultimately, I was more impacted by the voice cast, tasked with providing real personality to all of the extremely powerful personalities populating Greek myth. On occasion, the synthetic effects meant to modify a voice to sound more transcendent, beatific, or baleful can be overdone, resulting in a performance that’s difficult to distinguish and understand. This isn’t true of most characters, though, and with so many characters to perform and give unique vocal qualities to, it’s really an awesome achievement to hear this canon of characters performed.
Gameplay: 9/10
With such tight and tense gameplay, Hades is a joy for those in love with fast-paced action games. A plethora of options present themselves to the player and I imagine there are enough weapons and tweaks present to please nearly any playstyle, whether you enjoy getting up close or dealing death from afar, hack and slash, bullet sponges, or quick dodges. I seem to enjoy roguelikes in small doses, burning through initial addiction quickly after accumulating a ton of resources and upgrades. With Hades, however, I remain firmly attached. Heck, I’d rather play it rather than write this! For me, that’s the mark of a great game and I’d pin that, in part, on its gameplay, despite small complaints like a few cheap hits or an occasionally unreliable Bow lock-on mechanism. All things grow old eventually, and the four-part journey through the Underworld is becoming a little tiresome, as is spending entire fortunes on renovations in the House of Hades, so that’s where the narrative comes in.
Narrative: 10/10
THANK YOU devs for resisting putting entire swaths of lore like Wikipedia articles explaining all the mythology for players to unlock. It’s much better in suggestions and references, giving players the chance to recognize bits of the ancient stories.
Anyone, it’s not enough to complete the game once. In fact, the plot deepens, as do the characters, with multiple playthroughs. Nearly a dozen successful runs are required, evidently, in order to see it all. I’m nearly there with just over half a dozen completions, and even now, the motivations of Hades and Persephone, and the gods of Olympus themselves, have only recently been brought to Zagreus’ determined attention. It’s a remarkable system for a narrative and it directly feeds into my next point.
You know what? Screw Theseus.
Replayability: 10/10
I’ve made dozens of attempts at successful runs in this game, dying early on to the first mini-boss and then eventually beating the final boss three times in a row. A pact system upon initial completion (as well as boss fights changing up their tactics) ensures that runs can remain somewhat fresh, besides, y’know, the whole random layout of the Underworld, that is. As such, I’d say Hades is highly replayable and I know I’ll be playing it again as soon as I finish the critique!
I could spend eternity decorating.
Challenge: 10/10
There’s a real sense of progression in Hades. What was an insurmountable wall in your earliest runs becomes a mere speed bump eventually. You can tangibly sense Zagreus becoming more powerful with permanent upgrades. Despite these, though, the Underworld remains a treacherous place. Even when I’m armed to teeth with theophanic icons, a bad performance on my part or a series of brutal rooms boosted by pacts can still mean the end of the world. But the important thing to note is that while Hades is a hard game, it’s absolutely a game that rewards patient practice and the development of skill, a testament to its balanced approach to difficulty-design.
Uniqueness: 8/10
As I’ve said, I’ve played some roguelikes recently and none of them popped out to me quite like Hades did. Even among all the games inspired by Greek mythology, this one is special, to my mind.
Personal: 9/10
When I’m playing a game, I rarely take notes for the eventual criticism, unless the systems are really complex or there’s a story beat I really feel that I must remember. I prefer to think about how the game overall works together, the sum of its parts, rather than the individual parts themselves. With Hades, I’ll be honest, I had a tough time thinking about what was really wrong with it at all, “wrong” in the sense of the intrinsic and the technical. I knew I loved it, but I was hard-pressed to find anything that didn’t function.
I expected to be impressed by Hades, but not as much as I was. It is one of the best games I’ve played this year. Its lowest points pale in comparison to its celestial heights. Hades restored my faith in a genre that I had an uncomfortable relationship with, kind of like Zagreus with Hades: tenuous, frustrating, and distant at best.
Thank you to Supergiant Games for providing a copy of their game for this critique.
Aggregated Score: 9.1
Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.
