Second Wind [Intro Music] I‘ve every intention of reviewing
Hades 2 when it finally comes out, but find it odd to give my opinion of the sequel
without mentioning the original. Or at least I find it odd that I can’t help but anticipate
an outcry of “What are your thoughts on the first one?” or more likely “Who asked you?!”
Part of that’s because the roguelike crowd, like the soulslike crowd, like the
metroidvania crowd, like Scientology, get aggressive when they perceive an insult
coming from an outsider, and an insider, and an inbetweener.. Tweeting out “Hades is the
vanilla pretty boy of roguelites, and sometimes you want someone with more demons than daddy
issues” didn’t feel sufficient, so here we are. The thing about Hades is it’s the roguelite you
can bring home to mother, provided that your mother isn’t a diehard Christian Evangelical who
finds the ideas of multiple gods and queers to be an affront to The Almighty. I don’t think her
poor heart could handle polyamorous polytheism, but I wouldn’t have the Greek Pantheon portrayed
any other way than a no holds barred appreciation of beauty. Beauty in the arts, beauty in strength,
beauty in music, beauty in comradery, and obviously beauty in the booty that makes you go
whoo wee. There’s something for everyone. Bears, twinks, milfs, gilfs, crazy latinas, and even
something for those who prefer playing with the zipper on someone’s heart instead of
their jeans. That’s all for you to keep locked away in the spank back though, because your
in-game character is Zagreus, the son of Hades, so most everyone is his aunt, uncle, or cousin.
–I know that didn’t stop the Gods in their myths, but some holds have to be barred to secure a T
rating. Thirst respectfully– In staunch defiance of Hades’ wishes, the god not the game, the
family is helping Zagreus escape the Underworld so he can find his mother Persephone, and I have
to say Supergiant Games absolutely knocked the narrative system out of the park. It's an expertly
balanced blend of serious but goofy antics from divine beings who know they’re destined to do this
forever. I’m more of a gameplay-first kinda guy, so take note when I say the way the story pans
out over multiple runs and incorporates your success and failure goes above and beyond industry
standards even today. It feels alive. It feels dynamic. And it’s not something you’ll ever want
to mash to get it over with. It helps that the dialogue is short, sweet, and sounds like it’s
being delivered by people who frequently sneak to the fridge at night to eat shredded ambrosia
from the bag. It’s not so much the writing, Stupid boy. I told you nobody
gets out of here whether alive or dead. It’s not so much the writing, the story is simple. It’s the mechanation, the
interlocking dialogue that impresses me. It’s similar to how I appreciate Bob Ross’s paintings
but I enjoy watching him paint even more. When you come sulking back to your dad after a failed
run he always has a new and interesting way to mock you based on what killed you. If you
win, he gaslights you. It feels organic the way the dialogue refers to the gameplay and
the gameplay refers back to the dialogue to create conversation. Hey, free money. Whoops. [Growl] Sorry. [Growl] Sure beats having to ferry souls about, right? [Growl] WHY YOU?! Shouldn't you be getting steward by the dead? Well then. My favorite example is this
chamber with two boons. You can only take one, but the other god will get jealous and
try to kill you. So you have to think, is it worth taking a chance on Poseidon and
making Zeus jealous or do you take Zeus’s boon first because you feel more confident you
can take Poseidon on in a land battle? After you clear out the room, the scorned relative
immediately cools off and gives you their boon too as an apology. Or they apologize the
next time you run into each other if they killed you while throwing a fit. It’s petulant
and it’s tied into the gameplay. I adore it. If you’re keeping track, I’ve said Hades
is gay, Hades is glorious, but in a cruel twist of irony the gameplay isn’t godly. From
the perspective of a gameplay centric player, Supergiant Games fanboy, and enjoyer of roguelikes
in general, Hades uses the same sturdy isometric hack-n-slash core that I love from Supergiant’s
first game, Bastion, but in this genre I look for something with the potential to get wilder.
Narratively, it makes sense to always struggle as a demi-god fighting out of the hell your godly
father created to contain the mightiest of heroes and monsters. If you’re a stickler for narrative,
then maybe Zagreus can take the Blade Runner “more human than human” approach and explore what it
means to be more god than god. As it stands, you get 6 weapons and 10 gods giving blessings,
so there’s a semblance of variety as the story gets going, but the combat boils down to: get in
close and attack dash cancel until the chamber stops spawning enemies. There's 4 main dungeons,
Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and the Temple of Styx, beautifully designed, but they don’t impact
the game much more than what you need to avoid stepping into, traps, lava, wall traps, and rat
caca. The blessings, they’re actually called boons but I keep calling them blessings and can’t stop,
match the aesthetic of their respective gods, but only Athena’s shield deflects, Hermes’ superior
mobility, and Zeus’s chain lightning change up the gameplay in any meaningful. The rest are pretty
interchangeable, like Dionysus’ and Ares’ boons inflict extra damage with status effects but one
is called Hangover and the other is called Doom. Same thing. The combat’s not bad by any means, but
it’s what I'd refer to as an egg buffet. Scrambled eggs have a different texture than omelets,
but after a bit of chewing it all tastes like eggs. You need to toss something else in there
before you get sick of eggs. And to its credit, it does have some diced canadian bacon and green
onions to liven things up, but you have to grind resources for the cool ones, like gathering up
Titan blood through multiple Titan blood drives, and scavenging gifts to give to specific gods
you only happen upon at random, to get the mysterious weapon aspects from gods outside
of the Greek Pantheon like Guan Yu’s spear, King Arthur’s sword, and Lucifer’s chicken
mortar. The rest of the progress you see in the meantime are those incremental upgrades
where you get 5% increased damage that doesn’t feel substantial until you hit the cap at 50%. I
enjoy a good grind, but a bad grind ruins knives, lap dances, and video games. This system is used
in a lot of games nowadays, and I don’t care for it. It’s too frugal, in that ‘penny saved is a
penny earned’ kind of way. Every now and then I’d like to feel like I finally scratched the
winning lottery ticket or assembled the pieces to a framerate-destroying run. The wildest run I’ve
ever gotten in Hades feels as exciting as saving two pennies. It waters down the replayability
for roguelikes. Yeah, I know replayability sounds like a strange thing to measure. Unless you’re
immediately arrested and thrown into a Russian gulag with no wifi connection after completing a
game, there’s nothing stopping you from replaying a game. What I imagine people are getting at
when they ask for games, specifically roguelikes, with high replayability is “how likely am I to
want to play through this game again?” In that sense, Hades is solid and modest. You’ll get your
money’s worth and go your separate ways amicably. I have a tinfoil hat and tie theory that the
recent popularity of the bullet heaven genre, following the success of Vampire Survivors, is
in retaliation to the repressed roguelites that sprang up hot on the heels of Hades, mistakenly
thinking the sterile roguelike experience was worth mimicry instead of the dense narrative
system. To balance a roguelike is to neuter it, and I have another theory that the Early Access
period is when this game got the snip. Balancing for a wide range of feedback skews everything to
average, and you can go back through the patch notes to see how the game was balanced towards
sensible over time. Game balance is the literal job of game designers. You put yourself thousands
of dollars in debt and took out a 4th mortgage on the house, just to let a mouth breather like
me balance the game? Grow a spine, stick to your guns, and don’t let the rest of us tell you
how to balance a game. You also put in an easy mode and a flaming hot cheeto skull sliding scale
feature to make the game spicier. What’s the point of letting the public balance the game during
development if they can do so after development as well? That’s the thing about Supergiant Games.
They’re a dom when it comes to art direction, but a sub when it comes to gameplay. Too eager
to please or perhaps too afraid to disappoint. Not all of their games can get you off, but not a
single one offends. Vanilla. That french vanilla with dotted vanilla bean flakes to let you know
it is superior to normal vanilla in every way. In short, Hades combs its hair, is nice
to the dog, has a lovely singing voice, helps stray grannies out of trees… You get
it. He’s a stand out citizen you feel makes a more convincing argument for games as art
than that Binding of Isaac fellow covered in his own tears and poo in the basement,
coincidentally another game that would cause your Christian Evangelical mother to disown you.
Supergiant Games flexes their mastery of telling narratives through video games like no other,
and stays humble in the gameplay department. The start of the game remains unmatched, and
I wish I could suffer just enough brain damage to experience it again for the first time.
The grind is inoffensive but uninspiring, and I wish it could be finished by someone
who isn’t me so I can play around with the aspects and full builds. Glass half-full opinion,
Hades is an isometric hack-n-slash rpgs with the best New Game+ system on the market. Glass
half-empty opinion, Hades is a respectable enough roguelite with Game of the Year worthy
art and story direction. I’d buy a car from them. Before I go I’d like to address that you probably
don’t know me as a reviewer. I started off as a reviewer, but Cold Take got bigger. Part of me
misses reviews, so we figured we’d give this a go. Reviews are certainly easier to write and give
more time to flesh out my think pieces. But I’ll let you all decide. Cold Takes will not go away.
If I review something it doesn’t mean you’ll get one less Fully Ramblomatic out of Yahtzee. What
would I review? It can be a new release. It can be something like this in anticipation of a
hot sequel. It can be the remaster for a game I never played originally. Phantom Liberty, I
never played Cyberpunk when it sucked. Maybe people are wondering if it's okay now. Stuff
like that. Thank you for supporting us here, on the Patreon, in the merch. Leave a comment
if you want me to review anything specific or if you just think I should shut my
whore mouth and stick to Cold Take. This video is sponsored
by Sovereign Syndicate, a new Victorian steampunk
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cults across brothels, opium dens. I'm thinking we'll even
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