Let's Have a Look at Hades!

I have been playing a lot of games lately. Getting the Xbox Game Pass subscription helped me get my hands on a lot of new games. I am using it to play games like Inscryption, Diablo and A Way Out but one game I have thought of playing for a long time was Hades and the recent Hades 2 being praised a lot, I had to try it. Sadly, it is not on Game Pass.

Defy the god of the dead as you hack and slash out of the Underworld in this rogue-like dungeon crawler from the creators of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. ^Source

I am afraid, this post will be full of spoilers, so if you want to enjoy it without any, you can skip the rest of the post.

We play as Zagreus, the prince of the underworld and seek to get out of here and go to the surface to find his mother. There are multiple biomes or regions we cross, each having its boss at the end of it. Magera is the first boss of the region of Tartarus. She used to give me a lot of trouble but not anymore.

Last night I went up to the third region's boss. There were two powerful bosses on this level. I had to fight them together but they seem to be a lot stronger.

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As I told you it is a rogue-lite so every time you die you go back to the House of Hades to unlock more NPC interaction and get a chance to increase your stats permanently using the Mirror in the Prince's room.

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Another powerful boss that I had trouble against was the Hydra you find at the end of Asphodel, a lava-filled biome with challenging enemies and environmental hazards like the flaming hot lava. But the cool thing about this fight is it gives a lot of rewards. You can get a diamond which helps in renovating, which is to say adding more structures in these dungeons that help the prince to escape the depths of hell.

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During each run, we get boons from the gods of Olympus, they give you a random selection of boons to choose from... this makes each run feel unique and sometimes you have some lucky boons that synergise with the others and make that run easier.

A Visual Masterpiece

The game is breathtakingly beautiful with each biome having a unique look. Every chamber is beautifully generated and has a lot of interesting elements. I don't know much about Greek mythology but for some, this would be a treat to play, especially for those who know a bit about such things.

Look at this random chamber of Asphodel.

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How about the Elysium, a beautiful paradise? Just like Prince Zagreus, I wouldn't mind being here if I was permanently dead. But this is the hardest region I have seen so far and I couldn't proceed beyond it. I wonder how many more regions are left until we get out of this underworld.

Death is part of the game

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One thing is certain in this game, you are going to die a lot. But each death will make you slightly stronger, depending on how many resources you were able to gather that run. Also, without deaths, you won't be able to learn more about all the NPCs residing in the House of Hades. Every time we go back after a death, we find new dialogues and you can also get new items called Keepsakes if you gift a Nectar to these NPC. These Keepsakes passively increase your build and there are many of them to choose from depending on your playstyle.

Even our foes like Magera, whom we have to defeat will give us a keepsake if we gift her one nectar.

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On the run, not all chambers are filled with enemies. Some chambers have Charon, who sells us some items from his shop in exchange for gold. Some chambers can be added like the Fountain chamber which randomly appears in our run and helps us heal a bit of our help.

There is a chamber where we can find Sisyphus standing next to a boulder. He was the guy who got the punishment for pushing a massive boulder uphill. Great to see those little details being added to this game.

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You know you have a great game when the training dummy has a good sense of humour. He is currently my favourite NPC in the game. I am always excited about coming to him and seeing what he has to say today. Not just for humour, Skelly, gives me a lot of good advice on combat and using the weapons.

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I can't recommend it enough. Excited to see how long it takes me to complete this. Doesn't look too easy but is a lot of fun and as a bonus, I get to learn a lot about Greek Mythology (which I have not bothered to learn for a long time). And props to the awesome voice actors. That narrator does a phenomenal job with voice acting and he is not alone in this department. There are many good voice actors in this game.