Recent reviews by SnwBr

SPOILERS AHEAD!

I'm going to start off by saying, THE GAME IS NOT FOR EVERYONE! Think of it as a RTS game with a dark souls-like difficulty. Its long, frustrating and needs constant management from base building, tower defense and micromanagement on all sides (Literally). If you're not into RTS games, you may not like this. The game is best played when you can allot 1 to 2 hours of playtime per mission and likes to use a lot of brain cells. (Thy learning curve is steep and dark....souls)

DIFFICULTY: 15/10
This game likes to ♥♥♥♥ UP PLAYERS, especially those who didnt planned out their strategy well. Your enemies are terrifying despite being weak and easily killed of. Even just a single infected who managed to slip to your walls can cause instant mayhem. In my experience, chances to recover from these slip ups are low, especially in harder difficulties.

This kind of difficulty, along with long playtime sessions, may cause some casuals to leave out negative reviews and quit.
Fortunately, your best weapon to win missions is their pause feature. This feature lets you freeze time and rethink, giving you a limitless window to build, and plan ahead.

And as I said earlier, this game is not for everyone. If you dont like being ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up over and over again, this game is not for you. Even I take week-long breaks from playing the game out of frustration.

STORY: 4/10
It is expected that RTS games are not too detailed when it comes to story. I often find the lore generic and borderline uninspired. Along with its weird and often out of place voice lines you really can't place yourself being invested on its writing and how would your actions culminate to its ending. Its like being served with a bland food.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10
This rating is based on overall insight on its Campaigns. The story mission has a variety of mission modes and takes away the boredom and frustration of playing 1 to 2 hours for a single mission. Some modes are short, while there are some that lets you control a certain "Hero" or unique character. In the end, you'll be doing nothing but collect loot, defend buildings and survive.

But despite the repetition, every game you win is very fulfilling, especially if you've done it after being ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up multiple times. If this does not make you want to buy the game, just wait till you played its modded games from the community.

SKILLTREES: 6/10
One of the main features of TAB is their unique skill tree. After completing a mission it gives a signification amount of points that can be used to unlock new buildings, units and improve stats. Bear in mind that its skill tree houses a lot of options and stat upgrades, and it can be confusing to the majority to pick which one suits you better. Should you have a thorough knowledge on how RTS works and proper understanding of your play style, it wont be too hard to pick the right skills for your game.

UNIT VARIETY: 4/10
Being a RTS game, you command a wide range of units that is versatile with a lot of potential.

You have the rangers for exploration and rapid response defense
The soldiers for well-rounded attack/defense unit
And the rest of the group are mostly used as defense.

Dont take it the wrong way, the others are still good especially when in great numbers, but you'll be getting them in late-game and at that time you'll be focusing on reinforcing your defenses instead of maximizing their full potential, especially on survival and other game modes.


OVERALL IMPRESSION: 9/10
There's still a lot of content I have to explore in playing TAB. But I think everyone can agree that this game is made for RTS-lovers. Learning curve is steep but if you have patience, you can get the gist and have fun with it. It may have its imperfections, especially on the pacing and voice acting, it is well-compensated by its souls-like difficulty (even on easy mode) and the nitty-gritty action and satisfaction as your army mows down zombies while keeping your base safe.

If you're not exposed much in the genre and want to play the game, my tip is to start reading beginner guides first from the community. It helps climb the learning curve a bit better. And use the pause feature as much as you need to.

As for those hardcore RTS players, dont be a sourpuss and play this on HARD MODE

Hades is the result of a company who prioritizes content over profit, and seeks to add details that blends well to the feel and story it tries to portray. Its re-imagination of the whole Greek mythology through its story progression and character designs makes you want to deep dive and learn about their lore.

You play as Zagreus, son of Hades, who tries to escape in the Underworld with the help of his godly relatives. (Zeus, Posideon, Athena, and more.). Zagreus is also proficient with handling different weapon types such as a sword, shield, bow and even a gun, letting users switch up their gameplay and make every run a unique experience.

Rougelikes and the Repetitive Death Sequences
This is one of the selling points of Hades, especially for fans of rouge like games. The usual formula of most of these games is play hard, try to get far as much as possible, die and repeat. Making the whole progress somewhat in the linear path and all you could do to win it is just go straight ahead again and again and again until you win.

However in Hades, Death is part of the story. Each death opens a specific dialogue or a piece of information that lets you progress in the story and understand the well-written lore of Hades. As the matter of fact, YOU NEED TO DIE IN ORDER TO LEARN MORE. Finishing the game is more than just defeating the end boss, the REAL ENDING requires more deaths

This mechanic adds to what these kinds of games can offer, and it changes the fundamentals of the genre. Truly a genius play by Supergiant Games.

Difficulty
Difficulty is Hades is manageable at best, while there is an option later in the game that lets you place handicaps to make your runs a literal HELL, this makes you play more and removes the tendency for rougelike games to run stale due to its repetition.

What makes this game different from others is there is a cheat-like difficulty option (It scales your damage higher every death) for the people who wanted to casually play Hades and treat it as a form of relaxation, but with even that option, bosses would still f*ck you up. So yes, it is relaxing but not boring.

Upgrade Mechanics
Upgrades are a sweet spot in gameplay. You can drastically improve your character at your home, during runs (Upgrades are named as Boons) and enhance your weapons. There are also a variety of tough challenges during your play with bountiful rewards that makes you feel that the risk was worth it.

Voice-Acting,Dialogue and Music
The best part of playing Hades is the these three. How the story is made and how it came to life through the use of expert voice acting and music immerses you to the story of Hades. Each character you meet has a deep lore that you just want to spend an extra hour or two grinding to finish an integral part of their personal puzzles.

The dialogue is PERFECT in every way you see it. Detail after detail you see that even a sleeping NPC has its own genuine personality and you cant find another one like it! Supergiant Games makes sure that every NPC you interact is unique in their own way.

For the voice acting, it shows that Supergiant games really took time in perfecting each word, sentence and accent to make a believable story of Gods. Each voice pairs well to the represented character and I see no complaints from this, only praises.

Lastly, the music builds up the whole Greek/Godly/Atmospheric mood that makes me feel that the music itself is part of the story. Kudos to Darren Korb for directing and creating the music behind Hades.


Overall, Hades is exceptional in all areas and it deserves more praise and awards. Supergiant has added another prominent game in their lineup of quality and excellent works. Whether its on sale or not, Hades is a MUST BUY.