Why I Was Wrong About Hades
Finding Heaven in Hell.
As technology develops, accessibility to the gaming medium continues to improve, long gone are the days of punishingly difficult gameplay intended to extract money from your wallet at the local arcade. As games become more widely appreciated, the quest to build a welcoming experience is one that developers are becoming familiar with.
Games are made to be an enjoyable way to waste time. Having a title draw you in using carefully curated dialogue, engaging gameplay encounters and clever progression mechanics is vital for a game to thrive in the current market, yet there are few who acquire significant success doing the exact opposite.
Dark Souls is a masterpiece of modern game design precisely because of its unwelcoming nature and punishing difficulty, and the entire roguelike genre houses a barrage of titles that will mercilessly take away any hard-earned advancement upon the event of a single death.
The latter is ripe for scrutiny, as whole sessions can result in a mere fraction of forward progress, making each trip to the console or PC feel like a monumental waste of time.
It's a gameplay loop that non-believers simply won't entertain, and in doing so they risk overlooking epic titles like Dead Cells, Binding of Isaac and Rogue Legacy.
When Hades finally exited early access in September of 2020, it was surely -- and regrettably -- added to many players' seemingly never-ending heap of untouched games in the roguelike genre.
Hades is different, better even, and so worth digging back into the pile to experience. Leaning on many core elements of the roguelike genre but providing a whisper of accessibility and lenience, it allows the seasoned genre to flourish for both veterans and newcomers alike.
If any of the aforementioned games had you frustrated from the get-go, worry not, because Hades is the perfect bulldozer to break down the wall between casual audiences and permadeath paradise.
So don't say your prayers, because being in Hell never felt so good.