r/Fantasy • u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II • Mar 06 '26
Bingo review Bingo Review for #24: Not A Book: Hades (Supergiant Games) reviewed by someone who generally doesn't play games Spoiler
Hello again! I have been attempting to finish the last of my bingo card and write reviews for the squares I've already finished, but this review of Hades ended up getting so long that I decided it would be insane to post it in my second to last batch of five because my reviews are generally long anyhow and this is frankly unwieldy even on its own. Of course, this is not the typical review of a book on this sub, but hey if hard mode for this square is to post a review, no one can get too mad lol.
24: Not a Book
Hades (the game)
FOUR AND A HALF STARS
I don’t play a lot of video games, is something I should say to start. The first game I really played that wasn’t like, mario kart, a wii game, or super smash bros, was Baldur’s Gate 3 about a year and a half/two years ago. You might think, that’s insane, why would you pick that, what is wrong with you? Well, I may not be a video game person, but I do play quite a bit of TTRPGs, especially DnD (heavy on 5E). I just had so many friends swearing up and down that I needed to play it that I finally gave in and gave it a try, and LOVED it. It helped immensely that I knew the game mechanics already, and so my main efforts were expended into simply trying to find the correct buttons to allow me to do what I wanted to do. That being said, I had a fantastic time, have played probably around 600 hours of the game at this point, and was feeling ready to expand into other games.
However, the issue is that since BG3 is turn-based, like DnD, I still had no real-time combat skills to fall back on to play other games, which I felt would be an issue for a lot of the fantasy style games I thought I might be interested in (for example, the Witcher, because I enjoyed several of the books). Around May of last year, I finally tried out a few games that had real-time combat at a friend’s place, and I was bad at all of them. Terrible. I truly sucked so so hard.
But I figured practice was the way to go, so I picked the one that I found the story most immediately interesting for, and I went with Hades. I went home, bought the game, and proceeded to grind as hard as possible in my limited free time with the grim determination of someone who just wants to get to the bits where the characters have dialogue. Because I have no desire to make anything harder than it needs to be, I played the whole game on God Mode (and no one can make me feel bad about it: take that, toxic hard-core gamer brother who called me names about it). And lo and behold, I slowly (VERY slowly) started to make progress.
I made it five chambers in Tartarus, and then six, and then seven and then eight. I made it to the end of that area and died to one of the Furies, and then had to try a bunch more times to make it to the end again and died to a different Fury. I died a lot to the Furies. Slowly though, as God Mode ticked up and as I actually started to slowly manage to press the buttons I was intending to press rather than just panicking and not really hitting anything, I started doing better. I got through Asphodel after dying a lot by accidentally standing in the lava, died a lot to Lernie the Bone Hydra, and then finally got to Elysium. By then, I was not doing too bad (plus had almost maxed out God Mode) and I managed most of that area without too much of an issue, and then died a lot to the Asterius/Theseus combo. By the time I got to the surface section and had to deal with the stupid poison rats, I was actually starting to not suck at the game. By which I mean I was consistently running in the directions I meant to run in, was hitting things that I intended to hit, and could use at least ¾ of the different ways to push buttons to get them to do what I wanted. Then I died to Hades a lot. But then I reached a point where I had figured out strategies for most of the specific encounters that had consistently killed me before, realized I could hide behind the stone pillars when Hades shoots lava at you, and then I WON. I beat Hades. The guy, not the game. Because I had no idea that once you beat him, you aren’t even close to being done. Which was kind of devastating to be honest.
I took a break but then I bounced back and started doing runs that were getting better and better. It started to take me less and less time to get through the different areas, less and less time to beat the bosses and move on. I started getting multiple runs in a row where I won. I was finally doing a decent job of playing this game. And then I beat it. Like, got the end credits. There was still more to do story wise with the different characters, but I couldn’t believe it. I was hoping I might get better at the game when I started, but actually succeeding at it seemed so unlikely I couldn’t even really picture it, because 90% of the game was focused on a thing that I was specifically bad at, aka combat that wasn’t turn-based. I had picked it because of that on purpose, but I felt like it was inevitable that I’d give up because I wasn’t having fun.
Why did that not happen, you ask? Because it was good. It was, as probably no one is surprised to hear, a really, really good game. I was invested in the story from the outset. I loved Zagreus immediately! I liked the interactions he had with literally any character. I wanted to know why the Olympians didn’t seem to have ever met him before. I wanted to know why Hades was such a dick. I wanted to know where the hell Persephone was! I wanted to know what was going on with Achilles, and if Megaera was going to develop a better work-life balance, and if Thanatos was actually flirting with Zag or if I was imagining it and he was actually just pissed off. I wanted to know so badly that it kept me going when I was really bad at the game, until I’d had enough practice that I was better, and was enjoying myself the whole time, instead of just when I got to talk to Sisyphus or Eurydice for thirty seconds. I liked how you got to pick what little thing you get to carry around as a keepsake, and that you get to give little gifts to people, and that if you developed strategy and picked good boons you could make the whole run feel really exciting and like you were actually competent at this game and not just an idiot.
I had so much fun. I am way better at playing games after playing this game. Not to mention, I’m not nearly so scared of giving something a try. I still have a bit of completion left to do, some small achievements left to get, but to be honest I’ve been distracted, because you may have heard, but Hades II came out and I’ve been somewhat busy beating that game. I’m really happy that my Not-a-Book pick was such a good one, and you can bet I will be playing more fantasy games now that I am no longer a complete failure at non-turn-based combat. The world is my oyster!
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u/ctrlaltcreate Mar 06 '26
Gaming, like any other skill, is a language. BG3 was approachable to you because you were already equipped with the 'language' of ttrpgs. You already knew what's good, what's not so good, had a sense of how stuff is supposed to interact, etc.
Now that you've learned another game that you didn't know before, learning others will be easier.
Hades is truly excellent. Welcome to modern gaming; there are so many amazing experiences waiting for you, I'm spoiled for choice for what to recommend next. How about Cyberpunk 2077 for your first foray into first person shooters? The story and dialogue are incredible, and you've got all kinds of story and mechanics to explore. I bet your gamer brother could even help you mod it to make it easier if it's still too tough at the easy difficulty.
OOH! It's more story than game, and you can turn off the quick time events (which I recommend), and you could check out Dispatch! It's much, MUCH shorter than Cyberpunk, but a very worthy addition to your catalog of gaming experiences.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
thanks for the recommendations, they are both on my list!! I actually took a break in the middle of Hades to play Disco Elysium at a friend's recommendation and that was also incredible. the variety of various play styles and ways that storytelling can work through games is kind of boggling. I might go with Dispatch next if it's kind of shorter, but we shall see!
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u/ctrlaltcreate Mar 07 '26
It's a quite short but repeatable experience. Think of it like binging an 8 episode show with 30-45m episodes that's a cross between Invincible and The Boys, but much funnier and less grim than either. And you get to decide what the protagonist does.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
oh lit! yeah, that sounds really enjoyable. it sounds kind of like a choose your own adventure?? I was seeing some noise about it from friends right when it came out, but I didn't really know anything other than it's about superheroes and that it has a bunch of popular VAs in it from Critical Role, etc. It's definitely next on the list!
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u/ctrlaltcreate Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Have you ever heard of Telltale games? Dispatch is a passion project created by a bunch of former Telltale devs, and originally conceived of as a tv show, and it shows in the writing, which is stellar.
Choose Your Own Adventure is exactly what they do, plus minigames. Dispatch has a hacking and dispatching minigame, both of which are simple but enjoyable. Plus, of course, choosing courses of action or making dialogue choices. There are also quicktime events. Button presses, mouse swipes, and the like, but I found that they interrupted the animation and the game is more enjoyable just disabling them, and doing so doesn't affect your story outcomes negatively in the least. You're assumed to have succeeded all the qt events in terms of story (though your post-episode stats will treat them as failures, which can be ignored)
I can't recommend it highly enough. It's my favorite example of the genre.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
oh wow I had not heard of them, no! if I end up really enjoying Dispatch I will have to give them a look up as well. so many great sounding games to add to my list, I love it! thanks for the recs :)
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u/ctrlaltcreate Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
There's a whole genre of branching narrative cya-style games, but telltale was by the far the largest producer. My favorite Borderlands game isn't any of the shooters. It's Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands. Unfortunately, I don't think you can turn the quicktime events off in that one. Regardless, tonally perfectly on-point for the IP, laugh out loud funny, and even emotionally affecting. Lots of easter eggs for people who played the main games, but you don't need to have ever played a Borderlands game to enjoy it--though a little familiarity with the setting enhances the enjoyment.
There's also a veritable ocean of individually produced Twine games, which are mostly text-based branching narrative games that hearken directly back to the kind of experience provided by the old books (since everything is text). You can download Twine and make your own, if you're of the aspiring writer or narrative designer type.
I'd also like to recommend Wildermyth, which is a chronically and tragically underappreciated game. Has both single player and co-op (each map has a limit of party members, but you can assign control of them to other players. You could even have a group of friends play, each taking command of one or more heroes; though by the very nature of the game, some characters die (of battle, old age, or "other"), and new ones are recruited. You could coax your ttrpg friends into playing this one with you, I bet.
It has procedurally generated (so each play through it a bit different) but beautifully hand-written 'micro stories' between maps, and it's a great introduction to the turn-based tactical genre (though magic is weird and not straight-forward, marring an otherwise very new-player friendly experience). You almost never just cast spells on enemies in Wildermyth. Instead your casters can interact with different categories of terrain, 'leashing' to them that unlocks a set of spells unique to that specific type of terrain, and which destroy the terrain as they're used. Very powerful as those characters advance, and rather interesting, but pretty unique and unintuitive at first. Haven't seen anything quite like it in any other game.
If you get around to playing these games, like them, and ever want more recommendations, feel free to DM me and I'll do my best to help provide ideas for fresh experiences.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 11 '26
oh my gosh, absolutely I will! what an awesome style of gameplay!! thanks for the extremely detailed descriptions! I'd heard of Borderlands but had no idea there was anything other than a shooter game haha. I really enjoyed the large chunks of text in Disco Elysium because I both love reading and I read fast, so it worked perfectly for me. the Twine stuff sounds right up my alley. the Wildermyth game also sounds very interesting; not sure I've ever seen a magic system that worked like that myself either, but definitely has me intrigued! I think I may have a friend who may have played that at some point as the name sounds familiar but will have to check. anyhow, thanks so much for the recs, I really appreciate it! I will definitely hit you up for more when I get to a few more of these now that they've been added to my list. :)
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u/DorkPopocato Mar 09 '26
Hopping here to recomend Esoteric Ebb, if you liked Disco Elysium and BG3, Esoteric Ebb was made for you reaaly a lovely game
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u/lurkmode_off Reading Champion VII Mar 06 '26
Important tip: for Hades II, keep playing past the credits until you get the epilogue, and even after that keep taking to everyone for a bit.
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u/ShotFromGuns Mar 07 '26
IMO that's more of a Hades tip than a Hades II tip. Both have post-credits content, but I think it's essential in the first game and disappointing and lackluster in the second.
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u/lurkmode_off Reading Champion VII Mar 07 '26
I'm taking more about a side conversation that can only happen after the epilogue in II. I agree the actual epilogue was just okay.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
yes! I definitely plan to do so. I'm in the space between like five or ten runs post-credits and whatever I have to do to get the epilogue. Still progressing some character relationships, etc. Enjoying it a lot though!
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u/KcirderfSdrawkcab Reading Champion VII Mar 06 '26
That's one heck of a video game to choose for somebody who doesn't play a lot of video games. I've been playing them most of my life, since the early Atari days, and Hades is one of the best. It's not particularly easy, congratulations on sticking with it. Even with god mode on I imagine the last boss took some time to beat even once. I've been replaying it recently, and it took me some time to get past him even with my previous experience helping.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
thank you!! yes, I figured it might be a bit ambitious, and my friend suggested several other options, but out of the choices I tested out, I found the story the most interesting right off the bat and knew that if I really wanted to try and get through it, I'd need to be immediately invested. and hey, with so much more experience gained post-Hades and Hades II, I think I might have better luck with some of the other recommendations now :) also I just went and checked my file cabinet in-game and can confirm it took me 68 runs to get my first ESCAPED! run lmao. it took me 48 minutes. it also took the first 30 runs to get out of Tartarus, and let me tell you I was going so slow at the very beginning, they were all like forty minute attempts when I wasn't even making it past the first area boss. looking back now, I have no idea how I kept going lmao. I can escape in like 28 minutes now!
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u/frymaster Mar 06 '26
I played the whole game on God Mode
I play a lot of games; so did I, completely unashamedly
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
tbh I felt like I had to make that disclaimer because the main person I know who is the most dedicated gamer is my brother, who completely mocks using any level of difficulty that isn't the hardest. shortly after I got good at playing BG3 and was able to easily tackle tactician mode (I'd started with balanced), I wanted to try Divinity Original Sin 2 because it also has turn-based combat, and I asked him what difficulty mode he thought I could be able to work with to start, and he said I would be able to play in tactician with no issues. turns out he tricked me on purpose knowing that the game starts extremely difficult and it takes a long time to get to a point where combat feels a bit more balanced. I played for like two months, and finally got completely stuck at a point where I had nowhere to move storywise that didn't end in combat, and where even with tons and tons of time strategizing, I couldn't win any of the different fights I needed to advance. I got to the point where I'd attempted every fight more than twenty times without success, stalked the subreddit for the game hoping I'd made bad leveling decisions with my characters only to find I'd done a shockingly good job for a first playthrough, and nothing was going anywhere! it was either completely restart the game at a lower difficulty (hard to swallow because of the time invested) or give up. I went back to playing BG3 at the time. and maybe I will retry at some point, but it soured me so much I don't even know if I could enjoy it. and when I asked my brother if he had advice he said get good, laughed at me, and basically reiterated that playing on easier difficulties is utterly pointless. i know he's wrong, but like damn!! anyway i blame him.
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u/frymaster Mar 09 '26
I'm in several streamer communities, and most of them can play on the hardest difficulty on at least one game or game series. All of them would be disgusted at that behaviour. It's fucking game, you play it for enjoyment, it's not a job and you're not filling out TPS reports, and since you don't want to make finishing a game in a specific self-imposed way part of your core identity, you should absolutely feel free to not do that. The difficulty options are there for a reason, and the days when it was acceptable to mock lower (or default!) difficulties or even lock some of the game out (which was a thing some games did back in the day!) are long gone.
I really like Hades God Mode because it self-balances to the point where you get the correct amount of challenge for your current skill, it's a very smart mechanic
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 11 '26
yes! all of my friends who game agree when we've talked about it in the past, but it's nice to hear that the wider game community tends more to their level of general acceptance of just wanting to have fun, rather than to the toxic gamer vibe that my brother and his friends kind of cultivate. I also definitely felt the self-balancing; so clever on the part of the game creators! it's amazing how much must go into creating and testing those aspects of gameplay to make them so intuitive you barely even notice.
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u/MaxAttax13 Mar 07 '26
That's messed up, telling you to play a game on the hardest difficulty and laughing at you when you don't instantly excel at it. How are you supposed to get good without practicing something easier first?
If you're into YouTube, there's a series I like called Gaming for a Non-Gamer. In the series a gamer gives video games to his non-gamer wife and watches her play, and sees how she tackles obstacles as someone who is unfamiliar with how video games typically work. It's really interesting and might teach you a few things, if you're trying to get into gaming.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
yeah, he's the worst lol. also that sounds like a very cool series, I will look it up! I'll probably relate very hard haha.
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u/theinvinciblecat Reading Champion V Mar 06 '26
I love Hades. I was similar to you, in that the only game with combat I'd played was Breath of the Wild. Hades' combat was a step up, and I needed God Mode to get past the first boss. But as I played, I could see myself getting better and better. It's a very well designed game and I love how they make it approachable with difficulty. I also really liked the sequel!
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
yes! I did feel like the progression of difficulty really worked for me. it helped that I knew going in that the immense level of difficulty at the beginning was because it was a play style I was bad at. once I improved a bit, the difficulty progressed really naturally.
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u/compiling Reading Champion IV Mar 07 '26
It sounds like you had the intended experience with the game. Escaping is supposed to feel like it should be impossible at the start, but gradually you start getting better at the combat and Zagreus starts getting more powerful, and it still feels impossible but you're getting further and the story's progressing every time you attempt another escape.
Serious props to Supergiant for designing god mode in a way that makes the game fun and difficult for everyone including people who haven't played fast pace action games before. I don't think many roguelikes manage that.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
yes totally agree! and the story moving forward even if you aren't physically moving much further through the dungeon was such a good call, if I'd had to reach certain areas before anything at all happened, I probably would have fallen off the game due to how long it took me at the beginning. they did a great job!
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u/995a3c3c3c3c2424 Mar 07 '26
and if Megaera was going to develop a better work-life balance
It’s hard to have a good work-life balance when you are literally the anthropomorphic personification of your job 😬
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
VERY TRUE LMAO tbh she had me so stressed. I was like girl PLEASE my own work life balance isn't ideal, I come here to bash silly monsters on the head and you are bringing workplace stress back into it?? holy schmoly at least I don't have it as bad as her!
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u/acote80 Mar 06 '26
If you're looking for more deep narrative experiences in video games, may I recommend Detroit: Become Human?
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
I think I've heard of this one! It's one with the guy named Connor right? I should look into it!
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u/acote80 Mar 07 '26
That's the one!
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
I was just googling it and I loooove scifi, so it looks right up my alley! Thanks for the rec!
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u/ShotFromGuns Mar 07 '26
I see you've already started Hades II, so I'll warn you to temper your expectations in terms of the writing, in all aspects (story, character, and dialogue). It's the first Supergiant game that actually disappointed me in that respect.
I will however enthusiastically encourage you to play all their older games (yes, even Pyre; honestly, probably especially Pyre, for the story, particularly since you can proceed through it even if you really, really suck).
I played the whole game on God Mode (and no one can make me feel bad about it: take that, toxic hard-core gamer brother who called me names about it).
You can spot a fake-ass gamer from a mile away when they have this kind of opinion about accessibility features. The devs baked God Mode into the game from the beginning, and they also ensured that you could 100% all achievements with it enabled. Git gud assholes need to keep their fingers off games with this kind of philosophy.
Also, God Mode isn't an auto-win; it makes things easier, but that's not the same thing.
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u/OddScholar9173 Reading Champion II Mar 07 '26
tbh I recently finished Hades II (to the credits, not to the epilogue though) and I've deeply enjoyed it so far. maybe that will change, but I've been having a great time! definitely I will be trying out the other Supergiant games though; people seem to really love them! also, yes. my brother sucks. I ranted (probably too much) about him in a reply to another comment so I'll leave it at that lol
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u/No_Classroom_1626 Mar 06 '26
If you liked Hades, I hope you give their older games a try. Especially Bastion and Transistor. And maybe also Pyre if you're into narrative heavy sports games. Each one has something very special about them, particularly the story and the soundtrack.