Why I Quit Playing ‘Hades’
Hades has been praised among players and critics alike for being a fantastic rogue-like with incredible story elements. These narrative bits go so far as to continue well beyond the initial scope of the game, creating seemingly endless replay value on top of the gameplay. Full voice acting and an enchanting soundtrack are layered on to create what should be an absolute masterpiece.
My experience was different, to say the least. I fell off of the game hard after a few runs, and it’s difficult to place why. I thought it could be a result of me favoring gameplay over anything else, but then I remembered how much I adore the Persona series. It’s not the fact that it’s a rogue-like either, as Binding of Isaac is one of my favorite games of all time. No, there were multiple factors at play here preventing me from pushing myself further beyond the end of Hades.
The First Run
My first run was mostly spent getting used to the mechanics and the controls. I didn’t know yet what boons were best or what darkness was used for, so I ended up picking whatever gave me more damage. I figured the dash was enough to get me out of most dangerous spots while I slaughtered any in my path.
Of course, things weren’t that simple. Due to the isometric nature of Hades and the graphical effects, I oftentimes had difficulty seeing what exactly caused me damage. In fact, this phenomenon continued throughout my whole experience with the game, even through to the final boss itself. There’s no sound effect or indicator of actually taking damage, forcing me to keep an eye on my health meter to know what happened. Perhaps I simply have difficulty with field depth in isometric games; regardless of the reason why, I ended up taking more damage than I would have liked.
This first attempt ended at the first boss, Megaera. In later runs she is practically a pushover, but my inexperience and difficulty in reading her movements cost me in the end. Not exactly the ending I had in mind, but that was almost at the end of the first region. Considering my prior experience with rogue-likes in Binding of Isaac, my expectations were set a bit too high for what future content may be in store for me.
Worth Fighting For
Upon death, I was revived back in the underworld in a hub of sorts. It was here that I learned what the use of all of the other trinkets were: darkness to unlock permanent upgrades like restoring health between rooms and revivals, keys to unlock more upgrade options and new weapon choices, nectar to trade for passive keepsakes, and treasure to give slight bonuses during the runs such as money-filled urns. There are also a couple of other rarer items obtained from bosses that can unlock weapon alternates and additional run perks.
The keepsakes from nectar were a one-time thing from each NPC, so I realistically only needed a couple of them. The best nectar rewards I found were from the hub area (Cerberus and Skelly), so I really didn’t need any more nectar, though I did try a good number of them in hopes of getting something else worthwhile. Any nectar given beyond the keepsake was purely for narrative purposes, something I found little to no interest in going forward. The majority of the treasure trades involved mere cosmetics to the hub, hardly worth the effort in acquiring.
Therefore, I found that the most valuable resources were darkness and keys, as they were the key to the more consistent permanent upgrades. After taking another couple runs seeing what was beyond Megaera, I decided to spend a few runs dedicated to solely getting more darkness and keys. The most valuable upgrade was Death Defiance, a revival ability giving a lot of wiggle room for mistakes going forward. Once I had a few abilities maxed out and every weapon unlocked, it was time to see what more Hades had in store for me.
End In Sight
With newfound power in hand, I effortlessly made my way past the second region, Asphodel. The boss there, the Bone Hydra, was an absolute joke with my newly obtained spear. Elysium, on the other hand, felt fairly ordinary. Tartarus was an interesting, yet standard opening region, and Asphodel introduced dangerous lava everywhere creating a thematic difference. Going to Elysium felt too similar to Tartarus, but that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.
While Elysium did prove to be a bit more challenging than Asphodel on early attempts due to inexperience, over time the only real threat was the boss at the end: the duo of Theseus and Asterius. No matter what my boons were, this pair always proved to be a difficult fight. Asterius has usually been no problem, but for some reason I struggled with Theseus, even alone, because of his shield. I’ll chalk this up to a personal struggle rather than anything wrong with the game itself.
When I finally surpassed the duo, I found myself in the Temple of Styx staring down Cerberus. This gave me a foreboding sense that I was approaching the finale. However, going back to my prior experience with Binding of Isaac — the fourth ‘area’ in that game was also a finale in a sense, yet had 2 additional areas beyond it — I went in expecting additional content to be drip fed once I actually beat the game.
The Temple of Styx is very different from prior biomes in that how long it takes is RNG based. There are a set of five doors and I have to go down each one until I find the one with a treat to get past Cerberus. On each of my attempts, I found it within two doors, leading to a very short final section compared to the prior areas. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it left me feeling a bit empty considering the hardship I endured beforehand.
Right after convincing Cerberus to stand down, I stood face to face with the big man himself, Hades. I actually got very close to downing him in my first attempt, but I ended up struggling to figure out how to dodge a laser attack when I should have just stood behind some rocks. On my next run, I got some lucky boons that both protected me and made short work of the titan. I had done it. On my eleventh run, I had beaten Hades, and I was ready for what laid beyond.
Diminishing Returns
A solemn ending sequence led me to Zagreus’ mother, Persephone, only for him to promptly die and get revived back in the underworld once again. There was no danger there, just a story beat that, no matter what, death is inevitable after reaching that point. I was told to go back and do it again, with the game offering a small dialogue with Persephone each time I did so. This felt like a slap in the face to my expectations – that’s it? No more biomes?
At this point, the gameplay had gotten a bit stale to me. I found a boon called Divine Dash that single-handedly carried me through most of the game, turning what used to be something that could maybe resemble skill into a roll of the dice. Even this far in, I still had trouble seeing when I got hit, so the Divine Dash was a godsend (pun intended) for me and practically required for any kind of progression. I had grown accustomed to the spear and bow weapons, letting me handle most threats from range without getting my hands dirty. Sure, I could go back to the sword or try out the gun, but they never felt right in my hands.
The only new gameplay content I could work towards were the weapon aspects, which are slight alterations to how a weapon functions. For my preferred weapon of choice, the spear, these aspects included a change to the spin attack that I never used and an alteration to the spear toss, something I only ever used when I got specific upgrades for it in a run. To me, these upgrades felt worthless, and on top of that, they had a high cost in a rare upgrade material: titan blood.
Titan blood is only obtained as drops from a couple of the bosses, and those drops don’t reset on a new run unless the difficulty, known as heat, is cranked up. Thus a loop is created of slowly playing through the game repeatedly for meager gameplay rewards. There’s no longer any motivation for me to keep playing. There’s nothing to play for.
Hades wants to motivate through continued bits of dialogue with seemingly no end in sight. Each death introduces new things for every NPC to say. Each nectar given unlocks a small little blurb about that character, which involves even more RNG to both get the nectar and find the character, assuming said character isn’t one of the ones in the underworld hub. The burn is agonizingly slow, such that I never got a real sense of story progression with any of the characters at any meaningful pace. The end result is a high effort with low reward, in nearly all aspects of the game.
No More Revivals
I wanted to like Hades. With all of the critical acclaim it has received, and how people I know have put in hundreds of hours into it, I expected more. Instead, what I got was front-loaded unlocks followed by an agonizingly slow drip feed of everything else once the main boss went down. It’s almost like a mobile free to play game, except without the pay-to-win mechanics and the addiction hook needed to keep me interested.
I can at least say I did beat Hades, if nothing else. I just wish there was more to see – maybe a fifth biome or an alternate route with completely new bosses. Small bits of new dialogue isn’t enough to warrant pushing myself to play for hours upon hours when there are so many other games out there to see. To others, there may have been no escape, but I’m satisfied with where I left Hades.
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