Greek Mythology is a common source of inspiration for entertainment of every medium and every genre. It is rich in lore and stories and filled with plenty of gods that each have their distinct personalities and character traits. With the days of the Ancient Greeks having happened millennia ago, all of this is in the public domain. Therefore, many of the legends of Ancient Greece have been easily adapted, some multiple times. However, there is also room to use the characters and locations of Ancient Greek lore to create new ideas. One shining example is the isometric roguelike RPG, Hades.

The Role You Play

You play as Zagreus, the prince of the underworld. He can fight with a wide variety of legendary ancient weapons including Stygius: Blade of the Underworld, Aegis: Shield of Chaos and Varatha: the Eternal Spear. Zagreus can do multiple different attacks with each different weapon, as well as do a dash attack and a spell ability. Each of these attacks can gain power-ups along the way to make them more effective. Along his journey, he can get blessings from several different gods of Olympus who can each improve your abilities in different ways.

Plot

Zagreus is attempting to escape from the underworld after discovering that he has relatives who live on Mount Olympus. He later learns of his real mother, Persephone and wishes to be reunited with her. Throughout his journey, he is being stopped by his Father, Hades whose minions impede his progress at every step. If he is ever killed in the process of making an escape, he returns to the underworld and has to restart his journey from the beginning.

Gameplay

Hades is an isometric roguelike action RPG. At the start of each escape attempt, you can choose from one of several weapons, ranging from a sword, a bow, a spear and several others. Zagreus has three types of attacks: a basic attack, a special attack and a cast. He can also get upgrades to his dash attack as well. As you begin your journey attempting to escape from hell, you enter chambers that have different enemies in them, and defeating all of the enemies in the chamber will grant you a reward and the freedom to progress to the next chamber. 

Some of the rewards are simple things like money or items that can be used towards upgrades on your next attempt. The other major type of rewards are boons that you can receive from the gods of Olympus. These boons give you special upgrades that are themed to the gods that you receive them from. For example, a boon from Zeus is lightning-themed, and a boon from Poseidon is water-themed. You can also get dual boons that combine abilities from two different gods.

Length

Because of Hades’ roguelike gameplay style, the length can vary depending on your style of play. If you are more suited to beating the game as quickly as possible and depending on skill alone, it is possible to beat the game on a single run, which can take roughly 45 minutes. If you want to improve your stats and make the game easier, it will take multiple runs to do so. With each run you do, you can collect relics from each of the gods that give you stat increases, buffs to your stats, upgrades to your weapons, and other improvements to help you along your journey. To can also use these upgrades to learn more about the underworld and the characters in it. With all that said it takes on average about 20 hours to finish.

Music

The music in Hades isn’t exactly what you would expect from a Greek epic or other similar works that focus on Greek mythology. However, it does share a similarity with other games from Developer Supergiant Games. The majority of the soundtrack ha  heavy focus on acoustic guitar. Each track does a good job of adding to the ambiance of the characters, battle scenes and the scenery. Most of the tracks are subtle, but a select few have some memorable guitar licks that will stick around in your brain long after you’ve put down the controller.

Notable Features

The main standout feature of Hades is its excellent depiction of characters and locations from Ancient Greek Mythology. There are a multitude of gods, monsters and locations that you will encounter. They all have unique personalities and character traits that make them identifiable and memorable throughout multiple encounters. Hades’ unique art style lends itself well to making it so that repeated encounters with the underworld never get stale.

The Talking Parts

There is a lot more dialog than you would reasonably expect from a roguelike action RPG. Whenever you have an interaction with one of the gods of Olympus, they will speak to you and comment about your recent encounters, the weapon you are carrying, or other gods you have spoken to. There is a plethora of different dialog scenarios that can occur and there is fully voiced dialog for each one. Not only that, but there are also multiple dialog variations for regular scenarios on repeated playthrough attempts. This ensures that the dialog rarely to never gets stale regardless of how many times you play the game.

Z…We’ve Reached the End. Anything Else?

The more you play through Hades, the more you have the option to expand upon the lore. You can build upon your relationships with different characters by giving them flasks of nectar. You can give jewels to the contractors to expand more areas of the underworld and also rest and dream of parts of Zagreus’ past. It doesn’t have much of an impact on the actual gameplay, but it does add to the overall worldbuilding and lore within the game itself.

Final Summary

Hades is a game that seems simple on the surface, but at its core has so much more to offer. Every aspect of the game is absolutely rock solid and there is more to love about it the more you play it. It is an absolutely excellent game and I can not recommend it enough.

Final Score: 10/10

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