Hades is a Hell of an Indie Roguelike

in greek mythology sisyphus managed to cheat death multiple times before being condemned to roll a boulder up a mountain for all eternity he really thought he could get away with it too making a fool of the gods and living forever it's amazing that he was able to get as far as he did and he probably even had a little fun doing it but despite his cleverness he was eventually caught by zeus and his punishment in the underworld never ceased every time he thought his goal was about to be reached the boulder would cascade down the mountain again and the torment would begin anew the most ingenious part of the punishment of sisyphus is that there was always the faintest glimmer of hope that all would end eventually but that hope was dashed at the last possible moment every single time anyways this is a video about hades yes glory goes to the winner hey everyone and welcome back to another brand new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them hades is a very special game because at our charity event india land 2020 last year we hit the milestone that allowed you all to determine which indie game i would complete for the show and hades was that game and what a game it is so promo time today guys i am pleased to announce that indyland 2021 will be happening full force on september 24th through the 26th with a kickoff event taking place on sunday september 19th over several days we'll be playing freedom planet 2 shovel knight pocket dungeon paparazzi 30xx renane guys there's over 50 indie games that will be joined by the developers who worked on them as well as have a few world premiere exclusive games on stream i'm so pumped mark your calendars and watch indie land 2021 over at twitch.tv the completionist and just like last year you too can stream and participate directly to earn not just this awesome t-shirt but challenge coins and other exclusive merch items that only the streamers who participate in the campaign and raise money for can get all that info is down in the box below as our campaign has officially launched as of today so let's raise some money for dementia research while celebrating incredible indie games but back to it hades now in all transparency i was hoping to have hades completed by december last year and uh well you know how prometheus had his liver eaten once a day as punishment for giving fire to humans ever heard of that one ever heard about the time that the youtube personality who was cursed to play roguelikes every year because he was trying to do something good with his life no great let's begin hades was officially released last year in september of 2020. that winter the game could not stop winning awards it was an absolute awards juggernaut and developer super giant game should be proud but the journey to these laurels was a long process because even though it may seem like hades came out of nowhere that is hardly the case big picture what is hades it's a roguelike an isometric action game a hack and slash dungeon crawler themed around greek mythology players control zagreus the dashing son of hades lord of the underworld zagreus is on an impossible quest to escape the four levels of the underworld and see the surface to do so he'll battle every damned soul that stands in his way with a variety of infernal arms and skills and along that journey he will die a lot but death is hardly the end and those aggress must start back in the house of hades upon every defeat he throws himself at the challenge in the hopes of eventually making his dream of escaping a reality unlike other games in this genre hades is relentlessly focused on making the player feel as though they are constantly moving forward similar to dead cells which i completed last year watch my video don't worry about it i constantly felt like i was progressing even when defeated unlike dead cells i actually cared about the story and what was happening but i'm getting ahead of myself to talk about hades we're going to take a look at history hades is the fourth game from super giant games a bay area studio who has seemingly never released a dud seriously they've only made four titles but what a catalog bastion transistor pyre and now hades now i completed bastion back in 2015 and even though i've only touched transistor empire i can confidently say that no one else is making games like super giant and there are a few reasons why let me just say that i don't know any of these people personally this is simply based on interviews observations and of course the excellent no clip documentary about hades super giant is a pretty small studio with a lot of staff retention bastion which just recently celebrated its 10th anniversary was made by a team of only seven people all of whom stayed with the company and eventually worked on hades there is astounding consistency among super giant titles i think a lot of quality comes down to studio philosophy super giant is one of the most sought after places to work in the games industry because of how they treat their staff there is a focus on employees taking care of themselves not just physically but mentally the company is focused on sustainability this takes the form of a bunch of little things like no work-related emails on weekends and requiring staff to take 20 days off per year something that stuck out to me was that super giant is a studio that does not crunch this is striking when seeing the games that hades was up against at the game awards and other shows hades was made by a studio that deeply cares about the well-being of its employees and i think that alone is worthy of being celebrated greg cassaven the creative director of supergiant games has said that every new game the studio makes is in reaction to their previous games hades came after pyre and though the games share a narrative theme of escaping purgatory they explored that theme through entirely different gameplay pyre is kind of a fantasy sports game but hades is an isometric action game with a ton of different weapons and skills to experiment with amir rao super giant studio director says we were just ready to have a game where you fought some dudes hades didn't come from nowhere the game had actually enjoyed over a year of early access on the epic game store super giant is known as a studio with unique development process and with hades the studio wanted to peel back the curtain and give players a glimpse into what development looked like by actually asking for player feedback this back and forth early access program was hugely successful players loved having access to a new super giant game early and super giant was able to polish and polish and polish until hades shined brightly hades was the first time the studio made a game with early access features and cassavant himself had said that the process was so successful that it will probably impact how super giant releases future titles what i've been playing on the switch since last fall is fine tuned like you wouldn't believe it feels like super giant made hades with the intent of obliterating the pain points that plague other roguelikes there are still heartbreaking moments of loss when a great run ends defeat but death always feels like it leads to something new even if it's as small as a piece of quippy dialogue even though the threat of starting from scratch is ever present penies eventually gives players the tools to influence their runs in some very unique ways i know the game just came out on playstation and xbox recently and apparently the dual sense has haptic feedback and light up controller magic when interacting with the greek gods and goddesses but i was not about to restart the game from scratch for just an achievement list and some fancy controller shenanigans what i played on switch is the same extremely well designed game minus a handful of technical bells and whistles but regardless of whichever platform you play hades on you're in for a damned good time because not only is hades insanely fun to play there is an ocean of completion to swim through so as i started my journey of completing hades i came to comprehend the vastness of what was laid out before me roguelikes are always massive but hades really feels like it could be a game that lives on forever completion is baked into haiti's very structure zagreus meets athena he's a estranged olympian relative in his first escape attempt she gifts him with a powerful boon but she is just the first of many gods who want to help him soon enough i met ares aphrodite and even zeus himself there are 10 gods who provide boons and meeting them all was absolutely necessary each deity offers plenty of helpful boons to choose from but only three at a time that meant to see every boon i'd have to get lucky over the course of several runs on top of that there was no guarantee at first that i would see the same gods or goddesses during an attempt there are a total of 190 booms including duo boons that wouldn't even show up unless i had the right combo of two gods and remember none of these boons carry over into the next run i can only bring certain currency back to the house of hades upon death now this is not a bad thing if anything i felt excited by the promise of novelty as i would be playing hades over and over again to make my way to the surface every new boon led to new strategies to use in battle and with thousands of combinations available it would be a ton of runs before i could even possibly experience them all the structure of hades is divided into two main parts there is the house of hades where zagreus can talk to npcs and fiddle with menus like the mirror of night where zacharias upgrades his skills i think of the house of hades as the chill narrative section and then they're the actual runs part or escape attempts where the bulk of gameplay happens during a run zagreus clears chambers by battling enemies and bosses accepting boons from gods visits to the item shops and basically does everything in his power not to die though escape attempts aren't very chill there is still plenty of narrative happening during these more gameplay heavy sections as well haney's is a game about choices during every run i had to make dozens of choices that would compound on each other best of all each choice had an influence on completion choosing whichever chamber to enter next after clearing the previous one i was nearly always faced with choices would i go after a specific god's boons or would i rather earn darkness or gemstones currency that could only be spent back at the house of hades on cosmetics and upgrades or perhaps i'd go visit an npc like eurydice or petroculus earning more and more powerful rewards for that specific run and deepening our relationship for the future essentially i bounced back and forth between going as far as possible during an attempt and then doing as much as i could in the house of hades before making another run this meant a lot of time was spent with the house contractor an npc with a massive list of cosmetics i would eventually have to purchase all with gemstones and diamonds this list of wares offered by the contractor constantly expanded the longer i played the game and they eventually even sold me the entire in-game soundtrack all 30 tracks to be precise to play whenever i wanted now the contractor also sold me the faded list of minor prophecies this is essentially a road map of smaller objectives to constantly work towards during runs stuff like meeting every olympian god reaching the surface with a certain weapon defeating 10 000 enemies over time or winning a fight against an awesome secret boss a few consecutive times fulfilling each prophecy earned massive rewards which i would then turn around and spend with other npcs there are 55 total prophecies that slowly revealed themselves to me over the course of the game as i reached certain thresholds when i wasn't scanning the stuff on offer from the contractor i was figuring out how to earn more darkness to pour into the mirror early upgrades like an extra dash or the ability to resurrect during a run don't cost much darkness at first but to fully max out the mirror i would have to earn more than 35 000 darkness overall this only scratches the surface of what i had to do to complete hades you'll notice i've barely talked about the actual game itself you know the gameplay part of hades i knew i had to purchase every little thing from the contractor and the mirror i also had a growing variety of weapons to upgrade but all of this is on top of actually beating the game like starting at level one beating the area's boss etc etc until i broke through to the surface after all zagreus isn't just trying to escape hell just to earn cosmetics and fill out the giant codex of the underworld in some menu this entire game even though it's about doing the same loop again and again is suffused with urgency yes it's an incredibly tight action game but there's also a family drama going on here too zagreus and his father hades have an extremely contentious relationship something that is instantly relatable for me zagreus is tired of putting up with his mirthless father's abuse hades is proud of his job proud of the fact that the underworld is impossible to escape but zacharias is absolutely fed up with being mocked or bullied so yeah it's fun to check the prophecy list and see what little things i need to be taken care of but in the back of my mind i was always trying to escape the gilded cage that hades built god damn get out of my way dad in the mythos the fiery fields of asphadel are reserved for ordinary souls these souls get stuck in asphodel they are unable to ascend to elysium and aren't heinous enough to be punished in the depths of tartarus instead they are tormented by the simple fact of being trapped for the longest time that was me i felt like i was trapped and could not see any way out while completing this game for a painfully long time i was in something of a rut with hades but this was all due to my approach to completion for all the ticky tacky things to spend currency on for all the characters i could meet and relationships i could pursue for every trinket i earned in work to upgrade for every awesome weapon i could unlock and improve none of that mattered unless i could actually beat the game because at its heart hades is a dungeon crawler no matter how much time i spent in the house of hades i spent much much much much much more time in the four levels that make up this game's underworld i have played a lot of games like this which helped give me a leg up zagreus has four main actions a basic attack a special a dash an arranged cast with limited ammo but after a few boons from the olympians the variations and combinations start to completely change how the game is played it took me a bit to learn that pretty much any combination of gifs is viable if you know what you're doing at first though i was fixated on earning as much darkness and gemstones as possible during early runs instead of choosing chambers that would lead to boons which could help me you know win fights i'd go after a currency i could spend back at the house and i did get a lot of those early cosmetics and mirror skills handled but at the cost of being strong enough to make it to the end game i'd find myself making it through the first two areas relatively easily and then getting absolutely stomped in elysium so i had to make a shift in how i was playing hades instead of playing for currency i had to learn to play to win sometimes this sort of thing happens when i aim to complete a game i get a little lost in the labyrinth and miss the point but it all needs to get done i was just too focused on completing other tasks in the meantime the point is after i finally started focusing on progression in elysium there is a big fat roadblock named theseus and losing to this is truly demoralizing sometimes i'd start a run get a promising string of boons and get wrecked in this boss fight in seconds the third boss is actually two bosses theseus the hero of odysseus and asterius the bull of minos aka the minotaur it's a wild pairing if you know anything about greek myths side note did anyone else have to read and internalize like all the greek myths in high school like i did is that an american education thing or strictly a southern california thing now i'm not sure now i'm curious let me know anyways the point is these guys are brutally difficult to overcome and it started to feel personal and don't get me wrong it's a good well-designed boss fight i even appreciated the irony of theseus getting a boon from a rival god once he loses half his health the greek gods were all about undercutting each other so canonically it makes perfect sense that if zachary has started to get close to the surface with the help of one god that another god would see that and use theseus the champion of elysium to crush zagreus and knock that god down a peg both story and gameplay wise it works it's just devastating to lose to such an apple not hysterias he's a sweet boy theseus man i grew to hate that guy but like everything else in hades i eventually figured out the patterns set before me and learned how to overcome it dealing with the final area the temple of styx is a piece of cake compared to elysium and those awful butterfly orbs and of course at the end of styx is hades himself for a final boss hades is incredibly epic he's strong relentless he taunts zagreus losing to hades is humbling but i never felt annoyed when defeated by him i try to take those initial defeats as lessons in hades death is not the end no matter how wretched his demise zagreus always emerges from a pool of blood back at the house of hades no worse for wear every aspect of the game is built around death even progression story beats and relationships are advanced when zacharias dies the game wants you to return to the house of hades to see what's different i grew to appreciate the slight changes at the house every time i was sent back after a time i didn't even mind hearing hypnos give me inane advice but i wanted that victory because when a player finally beats hades that's where the real game begins now i've played enough roguelikes to know that the end game is only just the true beginning defeating hades for the first time grants zagreus access to what he's always wanted the surface and the chance to visit his mother persephone but after just a few brief moments zagreus is called back to the underworld and the house of hades it's a heartbreaking story beat and also indicates the next phase of the game after that first w against hades every subsequent run asks zacharias to turn up the heat to a certain level by satisfying the pact of punishment now the pact is basically an optional menu that i could enter before jumping back into tartarus where i could turn on different difficulty modifiers each modifier activated adds more heat and if i wanted better rewards i had to turn the heat higher and higher after every victory so not only was heat a factor to contend with i learned that there was more story to learn as well beating hades wasn't the big reveal i thought it would be persephone asked me to visit her again but the only way to get to her was to go through hades again turns out i'd have to beat hades 10 more times to see that true ending that's not 10 more attempts it's 10 more victories and each victory would be much more difficult because of the pact to be clear i didn't have to satisfy the pact to uncover the mystery of zacharias's parentage i could have opted out of the pact stuck with what i knew would work to get me past hades and just try to replicate that 10 more times but i still had that nagging feeling of wanting to be more efficient so i turned that heat up as i worked to find out why hades lived below and why persephone lived above and what that meant for zacharias it might not sound like a lot especially since i've already achieved victory once but there was so much ahead of me that i started to feel that strain i didn't want to grow indifferent to hades since i knew i'd be spending hundreds of hours playing it but the more this game stretched ahead of me the more i became to appreciate what hades was trying to do you know i often feel like i'm in a purgatory of my own making with these completionist videos right not to sound like a broken record here but there's almost always a moment of me saying to myself what the f have i gotten into when i see the road ahead of me but with hades this felt a little different because even though there were hundreds of tasks to accomplish each and every one was so meticulously designed and so tied to completion but i couldn't ever really be mad elysium may still be a part of the underworld but it's also a kind of eternal reward [Music] with the pact of punishment up and active i could finally earn enough rare items that would help me complete character arcs and fully max out my weapons the more time i put into hades the more fleshed out the characters became it's not only the olympian boon givers that i developed relationships with residents of the house of hades needed a little love and attention as well at first i could only give these characters nectar and have limited interactions with them but earning the rarer ambrosia could unlock much more when gifted but it wasn't like i could store up a bunch of ambrosia and give it all the way at once hades sets a specific pace by only letting me have one or two conversations per visit to the house of hades as much as i wanted to seek out dusa the monstrous yet adorable housekeeper and give her all the gifts i'd won throughout battle i couldn't i had to be patient like i said before progression is tied to zacharias's death whether it's death during a run or his eventual death after escape speaking of death this is probably as good a time as any to mention god mode god mode is haiti's version of accessibility option rather than an easy mode where zagreus is invincible or something like that god mode raises zagarius's resistance to damage by about 20 percent as long as it's active with every death that damage resistance goes up by two percent now god mode is a wonderful feature and does not prevent players from seeing major story beats it's there to get players over the hump if they start to feel worn out by the grind there isn't anything to be gained for maxing out that damage reduction either which caps at 80 percent i experimented with this as a tool and it sort of reminded me of the assist mode in celeste more ways to see the end of a story are always a good thing the more death i experienced the more i went to see relationships develop relationship tracks in hades act kind of like social links in persona 5 where every gift of nectar or ambrosia advances that track by one nearly every character has a relationship track and the way relationships advance is truly excellent characters are well written funny and honest if you're a fan of the greek myths most of these relationships will ring very true though they do feel like they have some more modern feeling twists zagarius as the player character obviously has a front row seat to everyone else's business but he also brings others together seeing how achilles and patroculous reunite in the afterlife is a beautiful story one that i felt like i had a hand in every character let alone every relationship feels incredibly strong thanks to the excellent writing every step of the way completing relationship tracks felt like a reward in itself but there was also material rewards there as well maxing out some relationships earned me pets which i could then summon in battle for amazing results look at this derpy little mouse all thanks to than who would have thought death himself would have such an adorable summon something that i loved was that sometimes these npcs would show up during runs as well seeing thanatos during an escape attempt feels like an old friend that just dropped by unexpectedly well he does do his best to kill everyone on screen but it's still a nice surprise and a friendly competition and i've been saving it until now but part of the reason i never grew bored of this game is the stunning art direction on display at every aspect art director gen z is at the top of her game here character portraits are sumptuous bursting with detail in life even in the smallest interactions stuff like skelly having a coin in his mouth to indicate that he could pay carron's fee is something i only noticed after dozens of hours i'm still seeing new details in whatever chaos has got going on z style is immediately distinct and seeing how her art has continued to be amazing from bastion to this is awesome besides the art there's daring corpses music it's incredible a driving force towards completion i love that part of the completion process was purchasing every song from the house contractor so i could listen to it whenever i wanted special shout outs to the song good riddance which has three versions in the game that are equally excellent and i'll never forget the triumphant thundering song in the blood that plays when the credits roll god what a rush and speaking of corb learning that he's the voice behind zagreus himself and skelly the training dummy blew my mind hats off to the voice performance and for the general musicianship on display i loved that completion required me to see almost every combination of boons working towards specific combinations to get duo boons was an unexpected delight and helped me appreciate the structure of hades even more some combinations like the aries aphrodite combo i never would have guessed would be so awesome and powerful but that prophecy list pushed me to try something new in other roguelikes there's always potential for staleness fortunately hades does everything possible to combat this and nudge players towards completion there are only six weapons sword spear shield bow gloves and of course gun but every weapon has hidden aspects that change how that weapon is used and there were often rewards for reaching the surface using specific aspects even if i didn't feel particularly skilled with one weapon sometimes there would be a perk that awarded extra darkness for choosing it best of all weapons have unlockable hidden aspects that hint at a larger universe outside of hades myths and folklore from around the world are neatly folded into hades and it truly never feels out of place maxing out every weapon with titan's blood yet another currency only earned by turning up the heat higher and higher is tough and time consuming but i found doing so satisfying because it meant that i had mastered the underworld progressing relationship tracks and fine-tuning weaponry was amazing reading excellent writing and hearing fantastic music felt like great completion rewards i actually grew to appreciate that seeing the full story of zagreus hades and persephone required me to beat hades ten separate times doing so leads to yet another permanent state change where persephone actually returns to the underworld after having lived on the surface for ages after that there is an additional secret ending a lavish feast featuring every olympian where i had to max out every relationship and take a boon from every single god i really felt like i was being taken along for a rich and rewarding completion experience but of course i found things that would break me and remind me that though i was having a heavenly time i was still very much in hell [Music] in hades the temple of styx is a place a whole realm not just a river but in classical mythology styx is a part of eternal suffering the further down the river a soul is carried the longer and more severe their punishment though hades the game does everything in its power to be fun interesting and engaging the final few steps towards completion prove that i must have done something wrong in a past life because the endless grind very nearly broke me during one of my many runs where i was trying to earn titan blood or diamonds or what have you i increased the heat to eight when i beat hades i noticed that there was a statue in skelly's chamber a little reward for achieving such a difficult feat that's when i noticed that there were two other statues that were covered up the implications were clear there were rewards to be gained if i kept the heat up so i did what anyone else would do increase the heat from 8 to 16 without building up to it at all and then because you know there's something wrong with me i did it again from 16 to 32. and you know what i took that heat like it was a day at the sauna there is no simple way to sugarcoat this 32 heat is a miserable experience earning the statue at 8 heat not so bad after as much time as i poured into hades i'd be fine 16 heat is a challenge but a rewarding one at that by that time i knew what boons i could use to my best advantage and was trinkets and pets that would give me the best edge by that i mean it is time to pay tribute to poseidon aka bro seiden a perfect storm of incredible character design flawless vocal performance and absolutely op game mechanics if i started to run and early on found poseidon special which grants invincibility and overwhelmingly powerful attacks for a weirdly long time i knew i could probably make it out of that final area it's that strong shout outs to bro seiden you made that 32 heat skelly statue shine all the more brightly i may have pushed myself to the limits of luck and skill for that statue but the game is extremely explicit that 16 heat is more than enough in fact there aren't any achievements beyond 16 heat it's actually very refreshing for supergiant to do this they know that players love to say they've gotten all the achievements or trophies and more than likely 16 heat will be tricky for your average player with heat 32 and any higher heat breaking people and yes you can push the heat well past 32 but there's nothing more to earn than bounties and bragging rights so just like god mode the game is built for players to push themselves as they see fit and after that second statue is revealed and the achievement chimes players can feel like they've done everything they need to do with hades but that ain't enough for me there is one final set of challenges that seem small but is actually the single most time consuming aspect of the entire hades experience after beating the game after gaining access to every chamber in the house of hades after learning what makes everything tick there's another shade to interact with the resource director hangs out in hades's room an innocuous character who bestows badges to zagreus for a few resources when first meeting this shade there's a little flavor text that explains zagreus new job as a security specialist doesn't do anything except confer badges characters won't acknowledge the badge and they have no functional purpose there are 50 badges to earn that cost more and more earning titan bloods and diamonds and ambrosia might seem difficult but actually it's darkness that came to be my enemy to earn the rank of unseen one the 50th batch i would need a total of at least 325 000 darkness and this is on top of spending darkness for other things from the rest of the game my entire identity became about farming darkness unlike runs with increased heat where i was focused on skill and figuring out how to stomp out a victory against hades by any means necessary all i came to care about was how much darkness i could earn during a run this was the final thing i worked towards in hades and it turned this dungeon crawler into kind of a laser focused experience instead of experimenting with different gods boons weapons trinkets and pets everything i did revolved around darkness what a real statement to make earning the most darkness became a matter of maximizing my poseidon and chaos boons both gods have boons that increase rewards earned from clearing chambers including from boss fights so instead of earning a paltry 10 darkness from clearing a chamber i could earn significantly more but only with the right combination of boons this beautiful varied experience turned into rote repetition i went back to the way i was playing hades during my first few runs i forced myself to make choices that would maximize my rewards instead of choices that would all but ensure victory it became almost numbing though i appreciated that there were a few things i could do to earn more darkness the mirror of night my beloved skill tree had had thousands of darkness poured into it over the course of the game so to get those final few modes of darkness i respect zagreus with a cathodic key and took back what was in the mirror i did this as often as i could i still spent dozens of hours grinding but being able to respect and regain darkness saved me a little bit of precious time what started to really haunt me was that every other currency in the game gems keys nectar diamonds titan blood and ambrosia can be exchanged for each other at varying rates in the restored lounge there's an infernal broker who will happily swap currency for other currency but not darkness with the exception of a few limited time offers darkness i had to earn through blood sweat and tears of frustration i wish that supergiant had given the broker some way to address this currency brokenness but then again the game makes it very clear that i was only doing this for myself the resource director and the ranked badges is meant to be for those who have literally done everything in this game and want a reason to go back to it over the years it's a grind but a different kind of grind than the difficulty of working up to different levels of heat instead of being burned alive on the coals of impossible difficulty haney's becomes a very different game the contrast between these final two challenges could not be more different and i approached them differently the high heat runs i managed to do by putting my head down and cracking the heat up as high as i dared and with earning the resources director badges i basically turned that sprint into a marathon i'd wake up early grind for an hour or two to earn a couple thousand darkness or so and go on with my life just like i did with hyrule warriors for many months this might sound boring and i thought it would be too but in the end it wasn't that bad reframing my expectations is something i've had to learn to do multiple times throughout my career let alone within this game i found ways to keep hades feeling fun and interesting even though the grind was ultimately not ultra satisfying to complete after hundreds of escape attempts dozens of victories thousands of enemies slain and hundreds of thousands of darkness spent on completed hades and though hades rewards players every step of the way during a basic playthrough with new dialogue and little character interactions completing the final challenges is really just for the sake of bragging rights it puts me in a weird state of mind when a game is as good as hades is at every level i'm ecstatic to complete it even if one of the biggest things in the game is some dumb bs just to give people something else to do when they've already maxed everything else out all six weapons i maxed out all four aspects to level 5 with pleasure all 25 relationship tracks an absolute blast i felt like i was being gifted with beautiful dialogue and voice acting at every turn there's even an extremely interesting romance thing that happens when you max out relationships with thanatos and megura the fury and death himself can have an off camera threesome with zagreus in his bedroom the dialogue leading up to it feels considerate but still titillating and i was genuinely shocked when it played out at all and of course i can't forget about the codex of the underworld filling this out required me to visit all seven locations in the game secret areas included multiple times i had to defeat all 35 basic enemies and 13 mini bosses dozens of times each and i'd be remiss to not mention fishing for the 18 varieties of river denizens i was constantly rewarded with more lore every time i satisfied one of these conditions it's a lot but it never got on my nerves to me this is the sticking point no matter how much it seems like i and moan about having to grind for well forever to complete the resource director badge requirements the entire experience of hades is a great time and the fact is that there is a tiny reward in the form of a cosmetic that is forever next to my health bar as proof that on this file i did this stupidly impossible task so that counts for something even if no one else in the game acknowledges it now before anyone jumps down my throat yes i played hades on hell mode 2. hell mode requires a fresh save file because in this mode heat is active from the very beginning and god mode is completely disabled in hell mode there are 5 mandatory conditions that are always active enemies deal more damage appear in greater numbers and have more health on top of that zagreus's recovery is nerfed meaning that any health i recovered was massively diminished probably the most significant change is the personal liability modifier which eliminates zagarius's i-frames after taking damage altogether but i'd already been playing this game at high heat anyway which meant that i was trying my best to not get hit at all when i started my completion journey the research i did led me to believe that hell mode was just the removal of god mode and starting with the pact of punishment to be accessible from the very beginning i was wrong however looking at the cost assessment of my time i had already spent hundreds of hours completing hades on my first save file this was yet another persona 5 conundrum was i going to spend several hundred more hours on a different game save for something that does nothing more than prove that i did it and by proxy never release a video on it or should i realize that i did everything to the best of my ability at the end of the day and move on based on previous feedback from you guys both in the comments and on my patreon you guys my audience i have come to the decision that i think you would want me to take care of my well-being first and foremost before i push the boulder back up the mountain only to have it roll back down again and again with all that said i did beat hades in hell mode in fact i did it twice just to make sure my first attempt wasn't a fluke but beyond that i hope that you will all in the comments will prove to be the eagles eating my liver out for something like this hell mode is tough and it only gets tougher i wasn't about to spend another year to unlock everything all over again it doesn't unlock anything extra but it is a great way to push yourself and your sanity when i think back on my 365 hour journey with hades i won't think of trying to maximize my darkness output i'll remember the small details because they had so much care put into them zagger is the steps melting the snow on the surface or the fact that there is an entire button for petting cerberus i'll remember how a cork pops every time dionysus shows up or how dusa exits every awkward social interaction by screeching and zooming up into the rafters a move that i am absolutely going to steal i'll remember logan cunningham's deep rumbling voice as he delivers haley's epic put downs i'll remember the clever twists that supergiant did with greek mythology that makes it feel fresh even though the subject has been well explored in several other games even though completing hades is truly a herculean task or as zagreus might say her ecclesian task i came away from it less like sisyphus and classic myth and more like sisyphus in this game beaten down but still positive a guy who knows that yeah he messed up that's why he's in chains and forced to roll boldly around but can still offer advice and help out others to avoid the folly of his hubris i've been thinking for a long time that i've got to come up with a more interesting way to talk about roguelikes like hades is it insane to complete them oh that's a huge yes did i have a great time overall completing hades also a huge yes did i grimace at grinding hundreds of thousands of darkness for an ultimately meaningless badge you guessed it yes did i feel like every component leading up to that was a master class in game development hell yes hades is gorgeous in every respect it's action-packed and heartfelt and epic every element of completion felt like i was swooping from the depths of hell to the tops of olympus but truthfully if you want to see the credits roll maybe do a handful of extra challenges you can absolutely have the experience without doing every single little thing if there were maybe one more extra thing at the end of the day i'd say otherwise but as it stands that's how i feel so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it finish it [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 583,948

Keywords: hades, hades review, hades soundtrack, hades tips, hades gameplay, PC, indie, indie game, indie games, gaming, completionist, the completionist, jirard the completionist, g4tv, g4, attack of the show, supergiant games, roguelike, roguelite, rpg, dungeon crawler, best roguelite, best roguelike, game review, game reviews, hades tips and tricks, hades guide, guide, hades trailer, nintendo, nintendo switch, switch, hades switch, hades switch gameplay, speedrun, hades walkthrough, hades pc

Id: P_dJqgXD7dQ

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021