Hades

Beat the main story/escaped 10 times, so going to do the review now as I don't think I will 100% this or go full heat, I will probably just boot up and try out Hades 2 if I want more Hades. This is still going to be a positive review, because I agree with virtually every other review about most of the praise this game has already gotten: the roguelike elements are fun and rewarding, the combat is satisfying, the different builds you can make are interesting. All positives. But I am going to write a little on a few gripes I had with the game, as I don't think it's a perfect masterpiece that some people do. Overall, the main focus of the gameplay more than makes up for these gripes, but I wanted to expand on these anyway: -Dialogue for the sake of dialogue: I feel at times the devs went with quantity instead of quality when it comes to voice lines and just random dialogue inserted throughout the game. It was sometimes interesting on your first couple of runs when you're just meeting the gods. But after I was a dozen or more runs in, there's less wit or intrigue in the writing, and I don't feel I am learning anything new about most of the characters most of the time I speak with them, and we're just rehashing story beats or topics we already talked about. I think the game would be improved with using the dialogue more sparingly, like there doesn't need to be voice lines every single time I pickup a boon for a god on that run, the characters in the house could advance the story at the same pace without so many lines, etc. You can press skip once you start talking to them but my minor gripe with that is you won't know immediately which lines might be relevant to the story before reading ahead yourself, anyway I just think less is more would be better here. Maybe a game setting the removes dialogue not strictly related to the story or a side story. -Enemy visual design: Could be better in some cases. Especially if you are playing on a steam deck or something and in like Aspohdel, the soldier enemies with armor are not always easy to quickly tell apart (spear, bow, shield types etc.) Or some of those enemies in the lava region that either shoot an arc at you or try to swipe you over and over. This is a fast paced game sometimes you load into a room and need to quickly use abilities, having better visual distinction would improve the gameplay. -Balance: Deflect just seems a bit op, Athena's boons especially the dash deflect just make the game so easy, idk maybe that's intended from a gameplay standpoint to help less skilled players but I think it should be nerfed in some way. Like getting deflect on your dash and a strong attack boon is basically an auto-win by spamming dash-attack combo.