This is a game that was mainstream for a while and like a good hipster I refused to have anything to do with it until I've literally scrolled like five pages in steam (maybe more) and was like "Nope, nope, played this one, played this other one too, nope", I suppose it isn't very surprising that the game is indeed, good.
PR: You're some sort of derivative from a loose interpretation of greek mythology, and have problems with Hades, your dad, because he won't let you leave the underworld.
So, you try to escape through various means, though the heavy lifting are the legendary cursed-forbidden mythical weapons, located in the courtyard conveniently at your disposal. Since I'm not good with names I'll just refer to said weapons by their resemblance to common weapons.
The other significant mean is the blessings of the olympians, which at first I suspected where some sort of left-handed trick to lure you into dying, typical mythology God move. Turns out they actually mean well, which is probably, no, definitely the most non-canon greek myth thing since "good dad" zeus in Hercules movie by Disney. Here Zeus is also wildly regarded as a good dad, so, yeah don't expect to learn much mythology from Hades. At least they didn't made Achilles black, score up.
A lot of minor comments are made through the game by the other gods and various figures from the underground, and part of the progression of the game involves bribing said characters with a special currency in order to "deepen your relationship" as apparently deep pockets also mean deep relationships in this videogame, just like in real life.
These comments are mostly inconsequential, showing small snippets of the relationship between the characters but not too much and about everyone seems to get along with everyone, save for Hades and the protagonist. At first the other Olympians seem to have a bad concept of Ares but in the end turns out they're cool with him, and if you're wondering, contrary to what I initially expected from you know, the god of WAR, Ares blessings are among the worse of the entire game.
Long story short, or well rather huge ellipsis of you killing mobs over and over, training sequences, eye of the tiger and whatnots, you defeat Dad in what I think was a rather underwhelming fight with literal rats being above in the difficulty ranking than him, the final boss.
My perception may be misguided as you do arrive with the final set-up so generally you already have a thing going on whilst on the prior boss battles you could get caught flatfooted. Though I do recall having reach the final fight with a literal sliver of health and no resurrections, having struggled with everything priorly and winning regardless.
You then proceeded to the surface, which is nice I guess, and you unceremoniously die after three lines of dialogue with Persephone who is depicted as a greyed old hag (questionable). You, then, resurrect and set off again to do the same thing like five more times, until Mommy dearest finally deigns coming down to the Tartarus with you, after which you're promoted from mischief runaway to head commissioner and top (only) agent of Hades counter-security department. Headquarters your room, conveniently located next to the weapons and the giant door that may as well have a neon sign "exit here"
A lot of praise have come to the plot of Hades, I frankly believe that's, huh... Dissapointing, mainly. Most of the drive of the game comes from the characters being greek Gods rather than original characters, and had it been the latter I would've skipped the comments EVEN HARDER. I did skimmed a lot, or rather, was forced to given the irrelevance of each dialogue instance.
Certainly the scripwriters for the game didn't measure up to my expectations of what divinity should be like, and would say that if the models for the game were switched to pasty neighbourhood kids it would have suit the tone of game better, which is family drama with some comedy. The fact that Hades turns around in the end like "I always loved you, son, I was just tough because I was trying to keep you save, etc." was just it.
The gameplay is definitly the most notable part of Hades, and while I cannot pin down the exact motives, runs feels fresh most the times, with great variety of blessings, status effects and boosts. The weapons, while some feel weaker than others (and I'm not pointing at anyone here, SWORD) are mostly balanced and nudge the player to try different blessing combinations in order to better suit the weapon they're using.
While some strategies are more efficient, such as superjuicing the gun's granade launcher to the point it literally one-shots the final boss (Or well, two-shots because of phase switching invulnerability), the game does rewards handsomely for trying as many different combinations as possible, which is especially enjoyable if you come from games that have a preffered gameplay style that's objectively better than all others and pretty much force you to do the same thing over and over again.
I do, obviously, have a listcheck of pet peeves, like the mob that drops a bomb when he dies, or the mob that has a weird animation before he dash-attacks making it very difficult for me to correctly dodge, or the magma in the second biome, or actually the entire second biome, or the mobs that resurrect on the third biome, or the super tanky pink ball of the third biome, or the assasin miniboss from the first biome, or the... ok maybe I don't like the gameplay so much, but it is really absorbing, that's a good thing.
The reason why I won't score Hades very high is because of this feeling that the game decieved me into thinking characters had important things to say, or that there was something at the end of the line and when you arrive it's just nothing.
The tone in general, I felt that it could've darker and edgier and that would've been funnier than just goofy gods, soooo... overall, a pleasant experience for the variety of blessings and weapons but I'd recommend to cut the gameplay after having experienced the majority of said variety.
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