Review for Hades. Game for PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 17/09/2020
According to the epic poem The Dionysians, Zagreus is one of the various names by which Dionysus, the god of wine, is known. It is the result of an unacceptable betrayal of Zeus with Persephone, made for this reason by the Titans and rebuilt by Zeus with a new identity. Aeschylus instead connects Zagreus to the figure of Hades, specifically the son of Hades, born from the union between the god of the dead and Persephone.
Supergiant Games instead gives body to the myth of Zagreus with Hades, a new daring production that follows Pyre, Bastion and Transistor, titles that have been able to assert themselves on the indie stage. Like the Greek playwright, the Californian study places Zagreus at the center of the afterlife. Hades, just out of early access and available in its full version for PC and Nintendo Switch, has quickly become the spearhead of Supergiant Games, setting itself in the videogame pantheon as a shining example of Roguelikes.
Farewell, father
Zagreus is very different from his father: he is young and rebellious, while Hades is soured by his with his divine brothers - guilty of having confined him to the Underworld - and burdened by the daily paperwork of the souls to whom he pays an ear. The little lord believed all the time that his mother was Nyx, the incarnation of the night, but it is a lie wanted by his father to keep him close: the biological mother is Persephone, who one day decided to have enough of the place. hell and has given up her duties as queen of the Underworld.
Zagreus has always had a conflictual with his father, on the other hand, too severe towards him, and so the protagonist decides he wants to escape from the Underworld and look for his mother.
Hades rests on an engaging premise, the echo of which will accompany us throughout the adventure of the son of Hades towards freedom. The Underworld has a bad reputation: no one has ever managed to escape and the strenuous climb that starts from Tartarus is studded with procedural rooms, giving this mythological roguelike a well-defined identity. Hades has two strengths: the first is to have an edge through “narrative procedural storytelling”, that is to say that the underlying plot develops despite the constraints of the roguelike, which by its nature aims to become more and more difficult only to start everything from scratch again.
Supergiant's second great merit is connected to having a story that is destined to unfold despite death, and that is to make Hades a very rare game case in which you don't feel the taste of defeat. Indeed, in Hades it is almost recommended to lose this one because, back home, Zagreus has the possibility of strengthening himself in view of another escape. The defeat in one of the various planes that make up Hades, in fact, does nothing but make him return to his father's abode emerging from a pool of blood. Ultimately Zagreus is a demigod and therefore it is logical that he is immortal, and the characters who populate the rooms of the Supreme are aware of his numerous attempts.
Speaking of the chthonic (underground) deities, when the young prince inevitably returns to the fold he comes to terms with his extended family: there is Hypnos, son of Nyx, who has the task of making everyone else fall asleep; Nyx herself, acting as Zagreus's surrogate mother; Cerberus, a giant pet with three heads to cuddle and finally the chthonic divinity par excellence, Hades, who will try to make his son desist from leaving again. The characters comment, advise, criticize according to the efforts of Zagreus and contribute to coloring the world painted by Supergiant.
Could not miss the Gods of Olympus, who look down on the brother in charge of the dead. Being Zagreus blood of their blood, the gods espouse his cause and will offer in turn an initial enhancement linked to their element at the beginning of each adventure: Dionysus for example allows you to get your opponents drunk, damaging them; Aphrodite to weaken them; the inevitable Zeus instead gives the prince the power of lightning.
Hades' character design is incredibly painstaking: thanks to the art director Jen Zee, who has managed to characterize each divinity with an attention to aesthetic details that is a pleasure to find, giving each one its own personality: Artemis, followed by forest owls, is always a little on her own (on the other hand, hunting is a solitary occupation), while Ares keeps track of the victims that Zagreus reap for pleasure with his war paintings and so on.
In the footsteps of this cure infused by Supergiant in his new indie the ferryman of souls Charon is elected as the merchant of Hades, justified in the narrative as a seller of lost objects from the ferried souls, while some objectives are justified by the List of Fate, or a sequela of events that were predicted for Zagreus directly from the Moiras - such as seeing the stars, or escaping from the Underworld: it was predicted, it will happen, just try and try again.
The amount of dialogue between the characters is in a word astonishing; the development house has in fact been able to wisely measure the interactions between one death and another, so that even at the tenth meeting with Megera, the first of the Furies, for example, the two exchange different phrases. It is at times frightening to see how the game (through the characters) punctually and consistently follows Zagreus's choices via dialogues, all supported by an English dub that puts into practice the gentle impertinence of the protagonist, the bravado of Poseidon or the severity of Hades. - also, as far as we are concerned excellent localization which allows everyone to take advantage of the work.
All this, coupled with the fact that the full soundtrack has been made available on YouTube, courtesy of those good guys at Supergiant, denotes how much they believe in every pixel that makes up Hades.
Zagreus is dead, long live Zagreus
Gameplay side, Hades is an iridescent action in isometric view in which you move frantically from one room to another in the afterlife, often littered with traps, between various monsters who join the party in waves and which, together with the gods, make up the Code of the Underworld. Each room will have its reward and thus we will arrive, hellish horde after another, at the gates of Meg, charged by Hades to stop Zagreus. The procedurality of the rooms is explained in a very elegant way as a defense system developed by Hades to not allow anyone to escape, which is why the Olympic gods are in our favor. Zagreus has the ability to shoot, perform a normal or special attack, launch the haemolytes (customizable according to the Gods encountered) and have a series of different "builds" available for each game thanks to the possibility of choosing which gift to receive, which instead empower.
Among the various unlockable upgrades in the mansion, which is in effect the "Sanctuary of Fire" of Hades, Zagreus can prepare himself by reflecting in the mirror of the night, or order the construction to embellish the Underworld or facilitate the journey, characters to talk to and to ingratiate oneself with the Nectar and above all weapons to choose from: you start with a classic sword up to unlock others such as the Aegis of Zeus (shield) and others that were used to defeat the Titans, unlocked with enough chthonic keys.
The weapon chosen will be the one that we will carry on until the end and that will also have the ability to grow with us thanks to an enhancement that comes from Daedalus himself. In the different games that contribute to composing the macro story of Hades we have not once felt the anger mount in our feverish hands when launching a controller but fun, satisfaction and desire to help Zagreus in his enterprise, distance him as much as possible from his father. From one run another inevitably arises, but without that feeling of frustration that usually pervades roguelikes. Perhaps this is why Hades is more akin to roguelites like Dead Cells than to more cruel titles like The Binding of Isaac and that is why he is a winner..
Nintendo Switch, from the ideal oasis of hundreds of indies, welcomes Hades with open arms taking advantage of the possibility of making a procedural game portable - and therefore very long - as well as playing it on the big screen. In portable mode Hades runs smoothly, despite being quite busy with Zagreus shooting across the screen at 60 FPS or so. It is on TV, however, that roguelite appears a less refined thread on the graphic side, the result of an imperfect upscale that shows slightly grainy characters and writings. Not yet available (but will arrive later this year) is the cross save, in other words what will allow you to connect the saves between the hybrid console of the big N with the PC ones, continuing the game on any device, portable or muscular. . It is a service not to be taken for granted and to be applauded, as is the case with giving Hades a chance, given the price - even just to caress Cerberus.
In Hades Supergiant he squeezed all his mastery, rewriting the roguelike formula and narrating the chronicles of Zagreus, the son of Hades. Embedded in a coherent story that justifies the implantation of the Underworld, it has the virtue of enriching itself with every defeat and being challenging without being frustrating. Hades thus retrieves a lesser-known character from immense Greek mythology by surrounding him with subterranean and Olympian gods, lending himself to numerous games to unravel the tangle of Zagreus's future and seems destined to echo the echo of the Californian developer for a long time, writing its name in the great book of indies.
► Hades is a scrolling-indie RPG-Beat 'em up game developed and published by Supergiant Games for PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 17/09/2020
