Hades Review and the Gameplay Loop That Keeps Players Hooked

I keep a notebook for roguelikes. For Hades it has 47 entries before my first clear, each one a line or two: the weapon, the god I leaned on, the room where it went wrong. Entry 12 reads "Cast build, no dash boon, died to the Bone Hydra at 40 percent." Entry 31 just says "greedy, again." Reading it back now, the notebook says more about why Hades holds people than any trailer could.

Supergiant Games released Hades in full in 2020 after a long early access period. You play Zagreus, son of Hades, trying to fight his way out of the Underworld. You will fail, often. The interesting thing is how the game turns every failure into something you want to repeat.

What one run actually looks like

A run moves through four regions: Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and the Temple of Styx, with a boss at the end of each of the first three and your father waiting at the exit. A full escape on a first clear tends to take between 30 and 45 minutes. A failed run in Tartarus can be over in six.

Inside each run, the Olympian gods offer boons. Zeus adds chain lightning, Athena deflects projectiles, Dionysus poisons with hangover damage, and so on. You usually see three choices at a time and pick one. By the end of a decent run you might be carrying 12 to 20 boons that interact in ways the game never spells out.

Then you die, and you go home.

Dying is where the game really starts

This is the part that sets Hades apart from most of the genre. When Zagreus dies, he wakes up in the House of Hades, and the people there have something to say about it. Hypnos makes a joke about how you died. Nyx might offer advice. Achilles teaches you about weapons. Characters you met during the run remember the encounter.

In my notes, I started writing down dialogue alongside the cause of death, because the two were linked. After dying to Megaera three times in a row, she had a different line each time, and the third one changed how I thought about her. That is narrative delivered through failure, and it is very hard to do well. Most games treat death as a reset. Hades treats it as the next scene.

There is also steady progression between runs. Darkness spent at the Mirror of Night buys permanent upgrades, like extra death defiance or more dash charges. Keys unlock new weapons. Gems and Nectar go into house decorations and relationships. On a bad run you still bring home something, and that matters more than it sounds. In my log, runs 8 through 20 were mostly failures, yet I never felt I had wasted an evening.

The six weapons and why they keep the loop honest

Hades has six Infernal Arms: sword, spear, shield, bow, fists, and a rail-style gun. Each plays like a separate character, and each has alternate aspects that shift its behavior further. The bow wants you at range and patient. The fists want you face to face, hitting fast.

I went sword-only for the first 15 runs because it felt safe. My notes from that stretch are repetitive, the same few boon combinations and the same death in Elysium. When I switched to the shield on run 16, I cleared Elysium for the first time two runs later. Changing the weapon did more than any upgrade I bought. If your own notebook starts looking the same page after page, change the weapon before you change anything else.

A note on Heat

Once you escape, the Pact of Punishment lets you add Heat, small rules that make runs harder in exchange for rewards. More enemies, shorter timers, bosses with new attacks. This is where a lot of players spend most of their hours, and it means a 2020 game still has new problems to solve hundreds of runs later.

God Mode is not cheating

A popular opinion in roguelike circles goes like this: the difficulty is the point, and any assist option ruins the design. I disagree, and Hades is the clearest case I know.

God Mode, which you can switch on in the settings, gives Zagreus 20 percent damage resistance and adds 2 percent more every time he dies, up to a cap of 80 percent. The game does not lock achievements behind it or mock you for using it. Crucially, it keeps the loop intact. You still pick boons, you still learn enemy patterns, you still die sometimes. You just stop hitting the same wall for three hours.

The reason this matters is that the story in Hades is told across dozens of escapes. A player who quits at run 25 because Elysium is too hard misses most of it. If God Mode gets that player to the ending, they have played Hades. Not a lesser version, the actual thing, with a softer floor. I played my second save file with it on, and my notes from that file are about relationships and dialogue rather than deaths. A different game, honestly, and a good one.

A similar argument shows up in my colleague's take in the Celeste review on tough gameplay that still feels kind, and I think both games make the case well.

Where the loop wears thin

Not everything works. Asphodel, the second region, is the one players complain about most, and my notes agree. The lava floors and the barge room feel slower than the rest, and around run 60 I found myself sighing at the sight of it. The House of Hades contractor also has more cosmetic purchases than anyone needs, and some players will grind Gemstones far longer than is fun.

The ending structure also asks for patience. Escaping once is not the end of the story. You need a number of further clears to see the full epilogue, and if you only have a few hours a week, that can take months. I do not count it as a flaw exactly, but it is worth knowing before you start.

If you enjoy thinking about builds between runs, Slay the Spire scratches a similar planning itch with cards instead of boons, and I would argue it is even better at teaching players to take risks on purpose.

Who it is for

Players who like short sessions that stack into a long story. Anyone who has bounced off roguelikes because death felt like wasted time, since Hades makes almost every run count for something. Story-focused players who are willing to switch on God Mode without guilt. People who keep notes, or who might start.

Who should skip it

Players who want a single, contained ending after 10 or 12 hours will find the epilogue structure frustrating. If you dislike fast action combat at any difficulty, even God Mode will not fix that, because you still need to dodge and aim. And if repetition of the same four regions bothers you after a few evenings, the variety from boons may not be enough to carry you to entry 47.