The Gift of Eternal Death

This is it! The one that worked: Hades truly feels like the culmination of lessons learned from Supergiant's previous games, combined into an experience that's compelling, exciting, and an audiovisual delight.

Like Bastion, Hades brings a variety of weapons into real-time action combat; but this time, each one really feels unique and meaningful. Like Transistor, Hades has a ludicrous amount of progression and upgrade options; but without confusing equip/upgrade modality, and with run-based resets justifying experimentation. And like Pyre, Hades deliberately separates story and action moments, building its narrative through conversational dialog inbetween fights; but now with full voice acting that seriously enhances its characters' personalities.

Unlike its predecessors, Hades had no trouble at all convincing me to repeat its "loop" -- maybe because the loop itself wasn't a surprise, as in, the fact that failing to escape Hades will respawn you ... back in Hades is coherent and clearly telegraphed. Or maybe because its fast-paced combat is legitimately fun, and stays fresh run after run thanks to randomized upgrades and encounter variety. Or! maybe because of the charming characters drawing me into its larger story, motivating me to go farther and unlock more of that story.

While Supergiant's earlier games felt like beautiful, incomplete experiments, Hades succeeds at bringing everything together: its plot and its cast, its action and its progression, all work and work well together. It's a good loop.

Key to that success is the amount - and consistently high quality - of written and voiced dialog. It continues to blow my mind that after dozens and dozens of runs, I never heard the same line twice! (Well, one time, I'm pretty sure that I got a repeat out of Lord Hades himself. Still!) This seemingly-endless supply of unique writing was critical in helping every repeating event feel new.

I can't commend Hades enough for making me like some rogue-like mechanics. I've enjoyed time-loop stories (Deathloop, Elsinore, Outer Wilds), and I've enjoyed some run-based games despite being rogue-likes (God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla, Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Desolation of Mordor) but -- Hades got me to sincerely appreciate the random encounters, upgrade combinations, and conversations I saw in each run. For the first time, I'm seriously reconsidering my c. 2014 declaration that I "hate this shit."

All that said, I do wish Hades didn't require quite so many runs to complete its story. Earning enough darkness to buy powerful upgrades took some grinding; completing enough runs to unlock the "ending" felt a bit silly; and then having to do more runs to incrementally progress character dialogs toward a "real ending" epilogue was a little annoying. The game's structural decision to restrict an NPC's dialog to one topic per run - requiring another run before they'll talk about something else - was especially frustrating when some characters acted like a bottleneck to multiple Prophecy side-quests.

(I'd also be remiss not to bring up the God Mode setting - a difficulty reduction which I absolutely needed - and how it must itself be upgraded by dying repeatedly.)

But despite wanting less-stingy story progress, I was happy to keep jumping into another run over, and over, and over again. Not just because the gorgeous art, incredible music, engaging characters, and compelling story felt worth the effort. Also because it's fun!

Better than: Deathloop, God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla, Transistor
Not as good as: well, until I play the sequel, Hades is kinda undisputed.
And, yes: you can pet the dog!