Hades: Ungodly Perfection

hey everyone i noticed it's been taking me consistently longer and longer to make each new video for my channel so to get this hades review out in a more timely manner i decided i am not going to make an overly edited montage for the intro [Music] yet [Music] terribly [Music] before we get started i just want to say this review is pretty intensive and i'll be discussing a lot of different topics related to the game i won't spoil any major story plot points or cutscenes but you might see hidden weapons alternate bosses or late game music in case you're looking to go in truly blind without further ado here we go in the name olympus of hades this message i don't have an interesting angle to use when it comes to kicking off this review so i'm just gonna be direct about it hades is absolutely fantastic i mean no surprise considering we're talking about supergiant games here but it feels like there are so many indie roguelikes popping up nowadays that i just can't get to all of them and for a while it felt like nothing could compete with enter the gungeon for the title of my favorite roguelike as if my personal favorite means anything to anyone other than myself even the fundamentals of hades are fantastic with just the satisfying combat and signature jams from darren corb hades would be worth the purchase and they could have stopped there but they obviously didn't supergiant said hey what if we fill hades with a bunch of characters from greek mythology referencing their history while also developing them into unique charming and just overall not you wacky and lovable fellas and you know what let's throw in a story that brings those dang gamers to the verge of tears every time they hear [Music] if you know you know then they said hey let's throw in oh i don't know thousands of voice lines so practically every character can react to gifs win streaks other characters story moments weapons and whether or not zagreus has eaten a burger in the last 20 minutes hypnos eyed the brown mcdonald's bag hidden under the young princess robes as he emerged from the pool of sticks you could ask him if he had a few extra fries to spare at this point in development i imagine the programmers and writers have now fallen asleep in their chairs from exhaustion until someone across the office just yells we should add fishing game of the year goes to hades my only complaint is that i wish i could catch more fishing now have this oh all right let's catch some fish and if you think the game stops it fishing you'd be sorely mistaken as you make ample progress in the game and finish purchasing the various run benefits from the house contractor hades turns into an interior design simulator yeah i think the lounge deserves an aquarium and a disco ball oh yeah i think those flowers are gonna look great in that corner nick i mean it's only natural to put endlessly falling flower petals in the hallway as you emerge from the pool of sticks oh and don't forget the towels we wouldn't want anyone tracking blood on the new rugs i just bought who made this game alright since hades is an action roguelike and not entirely a visual novel even though it kinda is i should probably talk about what it's like to actually play it well after i do the popular spiel about how over 70 of the people watching my videos aren't subscribed so i'd really appreciate it if you subscribed because it's free and it really helps out the channel since i only upload like once a month yeah imagine if i did something like that in case you aren't familiar with anything relating to hades allow me to give you a super quick crash course you're zagreus the son of hades and you're having a little temper tantrum so you want to bust out of tartarus and go hang with your cool god family on olympus you pick your weapon head out and are immediately presented with a weapon upgrade or a boon from one of the various olympian gods these boons can change your damage output give you debuffs to apply on enemies or even provide powerful special abilities you then journey through each floor of the underworld fighting enemies and bosses collecting more upgrades to strengthen yourself before trying to kill your dad who also happens to be the god of the underworld boy i'm trying to get out of the underworld mate they trying to get out of the underworld i'm dad did you really just oh oh [ __ ] die at any point in the run and you'll get sent straight back to the house of hades to start all over again however starting all over again doesn't feel like an issue in fact that's the whole idea of the roguelike genre hades excels in this regard because it feels like a game with near infinite variety i mean basically every good roguelike feels like this but i think that's what demonstrates great game design fundamentals and execution in hades you are presented with six weapons with each of those weapons also having four variations to choose from these 24 choices alone support a range of incredibly varied approaches to combat from frenzied close quarters melee to calculated long distance archery but the classic roguelike addition of choice and random chance just dumps an insane amount of replayability into the mix for example you might be inflicting poison with super fast blows from the gauntlets and in another run you could be tossing your freezing spinny shield while you constantly pulse damage or you could use a weakening multi-shot bow point-blank as a [ __ ] shotgun have a bunch of homing lasers just rip apart the final boss or die because you accidentally picked the weird spreadshot modifier for the railgun without reading what the upgrade does i'm still more than capable of besting you point is i haven't had very many runs feel similar in over 50 hours now if the only way to get stronger was on a run to run basis beating the final boss would be really hard hades is technically a rogue light because you can get permanent upgrades that carry over between runs that make it easier to clear rooms or get rarer abilities but i call it a roguelike because not many people know the difference i know you're getting ready to leave that comment detailing the full history of the genre and the blatant misuse of the term but they called it a godlike roguelike in the trailer that's a good tag line take it up with super giant anyway the reason i mention this is because i love the way hades handles the amount of power it gives to the player in some roguelikes for example enter the gungeon risk of rain 2 and binding of isaac you can unlock new characters or weapons but you aren't given nearly as much to upgrade as you are in hades with just the mirror alone you can upgrade stats like max health revives dashes damage dealing rarity percentages re-rolls enter the gungeon goes you want more max health why not try killing the boss without getting hit dumbass after you invest in the various weapons level your keepsakes and max out the mirror finishing a run becomes considerably easier which is where the heat system comes in once you've cleared the game for the first time the pact of punishment allows you to increase the difficulty anywhere from yeah just a little teensy bit harder to oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] mom can you pick me up i wanna go home yes dionysus please give me hangover on my attack and please don't erase it you can make enemies have more health or deal more damage force yourself to become a speed runner or die and even make the bosses harder one fish two fish one boss oh [ __ ] the pact of punishment adds an enormous level of depth that lets you make each run as easy or hard as you want with new rewards and challenges for those confident enough to keep turning up the heat it's a perfect way to counteract both the personal skill and the persistent upgrades each player develops over time but gives full freedom on how hard they want their experience to be hades also includes a god mode to make things more casual which i think is a really smart move since the towering difficulty of roguelikes can often be daunting for those new to the genre i felt right at home with the intense and often punishing gameplay loop but i'm heavily biased towards action-packed roguelikes to begin with so it's nice to see that supergiant put a lot of effort into making the game accessible and enjoyable for the widest possible audience hell i'm still too stupid to not die in the first room of spelunky stop here and hades would be a really good game but as you probably know from the ungodly amount of time left in this video it doesn't stop here everything else takes it from a really good game to a really good game that second really is bolded italicized and underlined in the script when it comes to writing hades blew my expectations for a roguelike out of the water so hard that any nearby fish [ __ ] died because it took them so long to fall back down from the sky i just didn't expect it at all i booted it up ready for an intense action roguelike and i ended up with the most endearing cast of characters i've seen in any game in a while the thousands of fully voiced interactions between zacharias and the olympian gods bosses side characters and this [ __ ] rock are a joy to listen to again this is the level of quality and care you'd expect from a hundred hour rpg or aaa story game jammed into an indie title the game released out of early access and they said you know what let's put it on sale for 20 dollars if anyone at supergiant is watching this i have a suggestion for your marketing team you gotta make the game cost more you make the game more expensive but now that i'm done talking about the gameplay let's talk about the gameplay when you get down to it this game is a visual novel and dating sim each run of the roguelike is just an excuse to collect bottles of nectar so you can give them to people for special dialogue you also get to see the tales of characters like orpheus and eurydice unfold alongside zagreus main story but here's the thing why did no one teach me in school that achilles and patroclus were super gay let's go sisyphus has a face carved into his boulder and he calls it baldi it has its own portrait art and you can give it gifts pack it up boys video games are done the more i played hades the more i came into each session being just as excited to hear new lines of dialogue as i was to play the actual game itself the quality and amount of writing isn't where the attention to detail stops though because details are everything when it comes to hades the gameplay puts it at a tier the story and writing bump it up to s and the extra care woven throughout every aspect of its design picks it up from the tier list and tosses it up onto olympus where it belongs above the ranking standards of mere mortals to explain what i mean in a general sense there's so much stuff that didn't need to be included in hades at all so many visual gags references secrets and lines of dialogue that many players won't ever discover or notice but the fact that they were included anyway adds so much charm to the game's world i feel like this is a weird concept to approach in a review and it's hard to explain the exact feeling i'm trying to convey here but after like 30 or so hours of play zagree has started calling the lernaean bone hydra learny and ever since that moment his health bar and vanquish screen updated to call him learny the third boss fight takes place in a big stadium filled with shades cheering for theseus and asterius and if you walk to the back of the stadium after the fight there's a singular shade with a zagreus banner who zagreus will say a thank you line to in every run hello supportive shade that was for you good shade thanks for believing in me my good shade you tell me that that isn't the cutest [ __ ] ever hermes literally has a voice line when you pick up his boon to react to you turning on the in-game you timer because since you're timing yourself in case you haven't noticed doesn't count against you when we stop to have these chats insisted on that little rule myself every secret i discover no just everything that happens in this game makes my experience feel one of a kind like i've unearthed some hidden cut scene no one else has found but plenty of people definitely have but the game doesn't even stop there since we're already on olympus what feature that i haven't talked about already could possibly make hades powerful enough to overthrow all the other gods and establish itself as the one true king of roguelikes well if you know anything about my interest in video games you might know where this is going next dear darren corb who are you and what real-life god of the underworld did you sign your soul to in order to compose a phenomenal soundtrack for hades while also being the singing voice of orpheus and the voice of zagreus the main character the dude who has the most voice lines in the entire game and skelly so the hades soundtrack it's kind of like orchestral rock with a hefty dose of cool instruments to really push that greek mythology base but this is also a modern action roguelike about the underworld we're talking about so sometimes it's hard rock and sometimes it feels like metal and i honestly can't picture anything better to fit this game's visual style and high octane gameplay let's just go with exactly what darren corb calls it mediterranean prague rock halloween music you've got your intense bass guitar synths and whatever those ancient sounding instruments are for floor and boss themes which are then contrasted with these beautiful vocal tracks sung by orpheus and eurydice that often only include one or two instruments like the liar normally i play this song on a bala ma it's what it's written on and what i played on the soundtrack it's a sort of long-necked turkish instrument you see when i said liar i actually meant the name of the instrument he just said that i definitely knew about the hades light motif is found in various places throughout the game and while it's only a short four note progression in its most basic form it spans so many different emotions from the triumphant yet sinister main theme to a high tempo time signature shifting boss theme to get you fired up to literally the complete opposite the you died theme did you think you were hot [ __ ] so you turned up the heat too much and then you went nah got this and made the bosses harder and okay i'm just gonna try to beat hades on this run no he i'm gonna say this really quietly because i don't know if it's considered a spoiler but in the extreme measures phase 3 hades fight this is a real boss song now it has enough guitars in it and i didn't even mention the art design but i feel like it speaks for itself i mean you've been watching gameplay in this video for long enough to be able to tell how fantastic hades looks each environment is drawn to make it feel like you're playing inside a work of art the combat and character animations are powerful and satisfying and the character portraits are ooh gorgeous yeah i like girls yeah magara is mine what are you gonna do about it come down here to the underworld and fight me oh [ __ ] let me grab this pretty shield first i've played a lot of roguelikes from the grotesque twisted caverns of binding of isaac to the over-the-top absurdity of enter the gungeon each one does something special to stand apart from the rest slay the spire took the genre in a whole new direction by switching the typical high octane action combat to a deck building card game risk of rain 2 allows you to push runs infinitely to the point of pure frame dropping madness and has amazing online co-op and i haven't even played world of horror or going under yet but just you can see the difference you got a one bit point and click rpg horror roguelike right next to a i don't know i just got a play going under i should honestly just make a full-fledged video about how much i love these dang games all of this brings me to how hades stubbornly fights for the spot of my favorite roguelike sure games like enter the gungeon and risk of rain 2 have tidbits of hidden lore but i've never played a roguelike with such attention to story characters and world building hades's base gameplay is so addicting and replayable that it doesn't even need a story and yet it wouldn't be the same without it to me there's one easy gauge to tell whether or not a roguelike is special long matches in multiplayer games can be taxing and i've experienced many a loss where me and the boys will say yeah that's it for tonight in single player games sometimes rage quits happen or maybe a game can only hold your attention for an hour or two in each play session the entire concept of a roguelike of losing progress and starting all over is brutal but if i can play one run of hades for over an hour just to die to the final boss when i was that close and i'm then forced to start back from square one but my brain goes hey i want to do it again that's the mark of a great roguelike and hades exceeds that by leaps and bounds it expands on the possibilities of the genre by building motives driven by characters and story rather than only using the excitement of beating the game to keep you coming back i don't want to beat hades just because i get a little pop-up saying i won or because the fish on the surface sell for a lot i want to beat hades because there's always more gifts to give more dialogue to read more secrets to uncover and more furniture to buy upon my initial purchase hades enticed me with its style and basically just the fact that it was an action roguelike and while its incredibly robust and addicting gameplay loop is all i needed to get started the ironic surprise of an underworld brimming with life is what made hades really stick the little details continue to bring a smile to my face each time i play and sometimes the story hell the music alone can make my eyes well up it not only captivated my heart i think it's taken the crown for my favorite roguelike and hey with the previous reigning champ being a game where you can shoot guns at a dragon made of bullets while playing as a bullet those were some big shoes to fill thank you for watching this video i honestly didn't think i could review a single game for this long so i spent some time searching the script to make sure the amazing and incredible word count didn't get too out of hand if you enjoyed it consider subscribing and checking out my patreon which is a great way to support me and get access to cool exclusive videos and discord chats and you know the drill see you next time [Music] you

Channel: yakkocmn

Views: 601,996

Keywords: hades, supergiant, yakkocmn, hades review, hades yakkocmn, roguelike, roguelikes, yakkocmn enter the gungeon, enter the gungeon, risk of rain 2, hades ost, darren korb, yakko, yakko hades, hades gameplay, hades game

Id: mHHt2BiCvN0

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020