I got Hades off the Steam sale and the general design is pretty good. There are some puzzling elements though.
I beat the end boss on only my 10th run through the game. It wasn't that I had mastered the game, not even close. In fact I doubt I've even seen half of what the game has to offer, and it's not even out of Early Access. But in it's current state the game feels way too front-loaded with mechanics and abilities. Its sort of like Binding of Issac, but there's nothing past Mom. So I reached the "end" and I haven't even seen all the enemy types yet, which feels like a pacing issue. I'm sure some of this will be fixed in the final release, but this is the state of Early Access.
As for how I achieved victory, I feel that the enemy encounters are a bit too frenetic. They start throwing too many enemies at a time, so it sort of naturally pushes the player towards an AOE/ranged build where you can just take out a bunch of enemies from a distance. It turns out this is hyper effective; by midway through my run I was beating every room by just casting poison clouds everywhere and mindlessly throwing my shield while dashing. I made it through two complete levels including bosses without needing to change strategy at all.
It's not to say that the gameplay is bad, on the contrary it's tight enough that they could pull off some Hyper Light Drifter-style combat. But the current amount of mobs kind of dis-incentivizes they player from playing the tight game because it is so much easier to just spam AOE and dodge. I would have preferred to see less enemies which are stronger to push the balance back towards thoughtful engagement.
In summary, so far I'm finding it to be rich with content and mechanics, but the actual game is much too short to experience it organically. You really need to grind to see everything the game has to offer.
I beat the end boss on only my 10th run through the game. It wasn't that I had mastered the game, not even close. In fact I doubt I've even seen half of what the game has to offer, and it's not even out of Early Access. But in it's current state the game feels way too front-loaded with mechanics and abilities. Its sort of like Binding of Issac, but there's nothing past Mom. So I reached the "end" and I haven't even seen all the enemy types yet, which feels like a pacing issue. I'm sure some of this will be fixed in the final release, but this is the state of Early Access.
As for how I achieved victory, I feel that the enemy encounters are a bit too frenetic. They start throwing too many enemies at a time, so it sort of naturally pushes the player towards an AOE/ranged build where you can just take out a bunch of enemies from a distance. It turns out this is hyper effective; by midway through my run I was beating every room by just casting poison clouds everywhere and mindlessly throwing my shield while dashing. I made it through two complete levels including bosses without needing to change strategy at all.
It's not to say that the gameplay is bad, on the contrary it's tight enough that they could pull off some Hyper Light Drifter-style combat. But the current amount of mobs kind of dis-incentivizes they player from playing the tight game because it is so much easier to just spam AOE and dodge. I would have preferred to see less enemies which are stronger to push the balance back towards thoughtful engagement.
In summary, so far I'm finding it to be rich with content and mechanics, but the actual game is much too short to experience it organically. You really need to grind to see everything the game has to offer.
