In large part to the NoClip documentary series, I felt oddly attached to Hades even before I had loaded it up minutes after it went live on the Nintendo Switch eshop. I’ve been a massive fan of Supergiant Games for years, seeing them release amazing games time and time again. Seeing all the hard work and passion going into making Hades, and watching playthroughs of the title during its time in early access, I was beyond excited to finally get my hands on the final build, and it’s not only the best game I’ve played this year but is one of the best games I’ve ever played. In short, Hades is a masterpiece.
Rogue-likes never used to be games that I would look forward to. Losing your progess upon death was something that never kept my interest until a few games started to deliver their own take on it, making death as part of that progress, carrying things over to additional runs. Dead Cells and Children of Morta, for example, were the first real Rogue-like games to really make me stop and take notice. Each game featured a wealth of fun and engaging gameplay mechanics, and in the case of Children of Morta, a story that would roll out more and more upon each death. Hades is very similiar in that way as it is built around you dying, which changes the world and your interactions with characters every time you are defeated on a run, placing you back at the start in some ways, and yet farther ahead in others. While you’ll often die a lot in the early goings of Hades, death means more progress, more story, more character moments, more weapons, and honestly, I never wanted it to end.
Hades has you assuming the role of Zagreus, the son of Hades himself, but one that is not exactly his father’s son. Zagreus is rebellious towards his father, and his desire to leave Hell is only punctuated even more so by the fact Hades won’t allow it. It’s only a few runs in where Zagreus is given extra motivation when he learns a secret about his past, something that becomes the catalyst for a stronger desire to leave more so than ever before. It’s also something that leads into the endgame, an event that is designed to keep the loop running practically forever, making each subsequent run more and more important.
Each run will take you through the halls of Tartarus, the fiery pits of Asphodel, to the colorful and trap-filled Elysium, complete with its own fighting arena filled with numerous spirits shouting your name in victory. Subsequent runs will unlock a deeper underground, complete with its own share of battles. The final area is a maze of locations to track down an item to let you past Cerberus, the three-headed hound that guards the gates of Hell. Once you’ve handled the pooch, you’ll showdown with Hades himself, who is blocking access to the surface world each and every time you wish to leave. Each location contains a boss to close out the level, a battle that sees its own set of variables as some encounters change the rotation of bosses, upgrade their gear or change the location in which you do battle, such as leaving behind the large landlocked battlefield with the Hydra, to a series of lava surrounded platforms that cause you to watch your footing on every dash.
While most levels have set locations, it’s the branching points where the randomness of your run will come into play. As you defeat all the enemies in a room, making sure to avoid all the death traps littered about, the doors will unlock, sometimes offering up to three different paths to take. Each door is then advertised at offering different rewards as indicated by the icon above each arch, sometimes containing multiple rewards or a skull indicating that the next room will pack some challenging foes. If you see a coin atop the door, then you’re going to earn some money in the next room, wheras seeing the Daedalus Hammer will reward you with a weapon upgrade instead. This allows you to plan accordingly, especially if you are looking for certain items to round out your build, or maybe a quick stop to Charon to spend some of that coin you’ve been hoarding. As you complete runs, the various trials, or through Charon himself, you’ll bank a series of curencies that you can use to upgrade not just the House of Hades, or your own bedroom, but you can install certain things within each run, such as a healing pool that will occasionally show up, or the ability to swap out certain items between locations. You can also just plunk a nice comfy couch in one of the nearby rooms as well, or change the color of the curtains that flow around the hallways. These upgrades are handled through the House Contractor, who is designed as a way to lengthen the endgame with a host of items and decorations to bring your own sense of style to Hell.
Where each run varies the most is in the weapons you take with you. Zagreus has access to six weapons; the Stygian Blade, Eternal Spear, Heart-Seeking Bow, Shield of Chaos, Twin Fists of Malphon, and my personal favorite, the Adamant Rail, a type of grenade launching rapid-fire gun. Each weapon has numerous abilities, traits, and a range that truly shakes up combat. Switching from the Eternal Spear to the Twin Fist gauntlets took some getting used to as you go from this far-reaching range that feels limitless to pummeling enemies just a few feet in front of you, jumping into the thick of it and getting your hands soaked in blood. Each weapon brings with it new challenges and attacks that only get better the more boons and upgrades you track down and equip to them. The Adamant Rail, for example, has an upgrade to increase the range and power of your launched grenade to almost half the screen, but will also damage you should you get caught in your own blast. It wasn’t until a few runs later where I found an upgrade that simply let me launch my regular grenade three times back to back, and combining that with bonus critical damage, and a slew of other upgrades, I was clearing rooms faster than ever before. Each weapon feels like you can do a hundred different things with it, making the once familiar feel like something entirely new all over again.
Typically in games, I’ll find a weapon or two and stick with them, often finding that some weapons aren’t as fun as others, but Hades doesn’t have that problem. As you equip more boons or the upgrades you’ll find or purchase, each weapon becomes a thing of mutated beauty. Having this weighty sheild in my hands had me throwing it Captain America style, riccocheting it off the walls and straight up clearing rooms in seconds. Each weapon is built around being fast and fluid, making combat consistently lightning quick and even more so when you start combining your attacks with your dash. As you find more and more boons, attacks become faster, stronger, and often punctuated with lightning, critical damage, or causing enemies to become hungover, should you accept the boons of Dionysus, the God of wine, that is. With each weapon having a wide range of upgrades to equip during each run with subsequent variables to them, it’s almost impossible to wield that weapon the same way twice. I would constantly find new upgrades and boons that didn’t just complement my playstyle but had me thinking about how certain dash attacks or cast upgrades would benefit other weapon types. While I never found myself looking to create any particular builds, my mind was racing with all the possible combinations of weapons and skills and attacks that I would instantly start up another run after the last and try to make them a reality.
Now, I’ve gotten ahead of myself a bit and started to inject some of the game’s terminology before explaining certain things, so let’s address that stuff now. As you work through each location, you’ll find boons left by several Gods that are rooting for you and your quest. These include the likes of Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, Aphrodite, Dionysus, and more. While you’ll also interact with those who remain in Hell, those interactions are usually in combat or through other means such as a competitive killing contest with Thanatos. Each of the Olympian Gods can bestow a boon with each representing a certain combat trait. Athena’s boons are more based around deflecting damage, Aphrodite is about weakening your foes, and, Ares grants you the power of causing doom. There are also boons where two Gods will join forces and create combination boons that work in tandem, such as “Curse of Longing” having Doom affect those who are suffering from Weak status. Much like the weapons, the variety to these boons is staggering and you can go a dozen clears before you encounter something you haven’t seen or discovered a pairing that feels like it was made specifically for you.
Zagreus himself has a few other moves apart from the weapon you wield. He can quickly dash around or throw cast gems towards enemies, boosting the damage you can do against those hit with them. Once you’ve killed that enemy, or if their health drops low enough, you’ll gain access to them again. With the boons you find, you can alter how his dash and cast work. You can leave trails of carnage behind you as you dash around, or cause your dash to hit rather hard instead, knocking enemies off balance. The Cast gems work the same way as you can have it lash out with a homing attack or turn your cast gems into portable turrets and let them deal out damage while you’re out rolling and dodging around the chaos in your wake. There is a metric ton of variety here on how you handle even just these two skills, let alone your ability to call in the Gods to act as a special attack, such as granting you speed, a shield, or calling down random bolts of lightning. These attacks are aided by a God gauge that fills up as you dish out damage, or faster should you use a boon to upgrade it. My favorite boon for my God guage so far was having it capped at 25% but it filled up constantly, allowing me to almost spam the attack as long as I was still dishing out damage.
As impressive as everything the game has offered thus far is, it’s the dialogue and story moments that change upon every run and interaction that continues to blow my mind. Nearly every spoken line of dialogue is based on the moment, the weapon you’re carrying, the keepsakes you have equipped, even the upgrades you’ve chosen for Zagreus himself. Aphrodite, in one instance, for example, talked about how I just interacted with Artemis, who I just had a prior conversation with about my weapon. This level of detail between conversations is mind-blowing and always had me swapping to different weapons, keepsakes, and other variables to dive further into the dialogue rabbit hole. Every time I died, the characters knew, they would talk with me about my run, the challenges I faced, and the resolution that came with me defeating Hades. While all this stuff is great, it’s also the characters themselves that are a joy to interact with. Each God is clearly written to be unique from one another, with engaging personalities and genuine concern for what Zagreus was going through. Out of the entire roster, I don’t think I have a single character that I found lacking in any conceivable way; they are all just a joy to be around and all share in some deeply meaningful and engaging conversations.
Each and every character can be given gifts, or in the case of Cerebus, you can also give the good boy some much-needed pets. These help you increase your relationship with each character and can help you earn keepsakes or other means to make your runs easier, faster, and more efficient. Keepsakes, for example, allow you to take a perk like bonus gold at the start or taking an extra life with you, in case you die. These gifts often spark more conversation, more moments with each character, turning the game effectively into a Hell-based dating simulator. While giving gifts is certainly a way into their well-wishes, you can often just walk up to them and see if they have more conversations for you. This leads to learning more about them, the relationships between them and others, and often you can just walk up and eavesdrop their conversation with other characters, though Megaera will often call you out on it. There are also little spirits around the House of Hades that will have their own conversations amongst themselves like wondering if Zagreus really did make it to the surface or not. There is also a chef that is greatly appreciated should you bring him any fish, because of course, Hades has a fishing mini-game. It’s all these moments that make returning upon defeat to at least be worth the death that has placed you back home.
While home, you can spend a currency called darkness shards you’ll often find in Charon’s shop, or via rooms that advertise them as a reward. These shards are spent at the Mirror of Night, a way for Zagreus to reflect on himself and improve certain attributes. At first you only have access to a few options, unlocking more and more as you collect Chthonic Keys, earned in the same way as shards, or exchanged for in the lounge. These abilities range from having extra health, more dashes, more cast reserves, to boosting the capabilities of your boons. While there is a lot here to take in, wondering where you want to spend your shards, each skill has a mirrored version as well, offering up a different take on the same basic idea. You can sink shards into each version as well but you can only have one of those variations active at a time. The amount of flexibility here to create custom builds just keeps getting more and more impressive as you dive fully into what Hades is offering.
Hades from start to finish and everywhere in between is gorgeous. Every single detail is painstakingly breathtaking and the art design and killer soundtrack is easily the best Supergiant Games has delivered on. Every character is unique, superbly designed, and the voice acting placed alongside them has been chosen with such a degree of care that I can’t imagine any character having a better alternative. Every animation has a purpose, every slash of my blade or extended reach of my spear is a joy to watch. There are moments where you can stop and stand atop a cliffside, letting the game pan out and give you the view you were hoping for. While the Switch version is slightly lower resolution than the PC version. It still is every bit as fast and fluid, and I’ve yet to notice a single drop in frames no matter how hectic some battles have gone. The portable nature of the Switch does lower the resolution to 720p, but the smaller screen still makes every detail incredibly crisp, with not a single bit of slowdown. You’ll get 1080p when docked, and should you want to take your progress from the PC on the go, cross-saves are eventually going to allow you to do that.
Despite how expansive and intricate the game can be with hundreds of boon combinations or conversations that vary on the littlest thing, the early access period that Hades resided in was not just about adding new content regularly, but the polish the game was receiving. I can’t find a single fault here, not a single pixel that doesn’t feel damn near perfect. Hades is a blast to play from minute one, an action packed Rogue-like that rewards you constantly, and it feels like it never lets up on what you’re able to dig into. Every run is a joy, every death means I get to see my friends back at home, and then I would head back out there to push through to the end, to allow Zagreus to, well, you’ll have to see it for yourself. Seriously, go buy this game and support this impressively talented group of people. Holy Hell this game is amazing.
Hades was purchased by the reviewer and played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and handheld play.
All screenshots were taken on a Nintendo Switch.