Hades is coming from storied developer Supergiant Games, known for turning ideas into gold with past titles such as Bastion, the award-winning RPG with beautiful narration, and Transistor, another story-driven RPG that not only makes sense but is well worth the experience. So it seems logical that Hades would very much follow in the footsteps of the prior titles, offering players a fantastic story with well-thought-out dialogue and a unique world to explore.
Thus far, it seems Hades is well in-line with Supergiant Games previous titles. You take control of the Prince of the Underworld Zagreus, and you’re attempting to escape from hell. The rogue-like has flavorful elements from dungeon crawling titles, permanent upgrades to your strength and abilities, and the option to make runs far more challenging than they would be otherwise.
Aesthetically, the game delivers in spades; an isometric graphic-novel style of delivering action well-suits the title, making the action clear even when everything begins to get hectic. While other isometric dungeon-crawlers can become a bit confusing in regards to where your character is amongst the hordes of whatever enemy is in your way, Hades keeps the Prince always front and center, even while you’re dashing and dodging through swarms of minions.
The character models themselves look delicious as well; Hades will have you cavorting will all sorts of demi-gods and gods from Ancient Greece, from Poseidon and his command of the sea to Zeus himself. Mythical heroes also add continued flavor to dialogue, with Achilles making appearances to request various things from our own hero.
Builds focused around skills and weapons are all surprisingly viable, allowing you to find a specific flavor of combat and exploration that you prefer, and hone it to a razor’s edge. Even if/when you find yourself a bit overpowered, you have the option to really ramp up the difficulty of labyrinths in exchange for greater rewards.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Hades, however, is that it’s in Early Access. Typically those two words means constant bugs, a lack of content, disappearing developers only for them to return with fixes literally no one asked for, and raging forums. With Hades, however, it seems as though Supergiant Games is taking maximum advantage of Early Access.
Major upcoming patch and content releases are noticeably marked in the bottom right of the players’ screen, with developers discussing the upcoming content at length. The developers have also promised to read 100% of player feedback, with upcoming Major Updates being heavily informed by it. While it isn’t recommended to pick the title solely based on the idea that someone will finally read your 300-page Undertale fanfic, as long as you sprinkle enough feedback in there, they’d have to pay someone to sort through your mess of interesting grammatical style.
Hades came early to the Epic Game Store in the same Early Access style that it’s in now for Steam. While that may turn some people off, Steam users actually have EGS consumers to thank for the game bringing as much content as it currently has. With Steam’s discussion forum baked into their launcher, it’s sure to spark further discussion on the Prince escaping the darkness.
See you in Hell!
