
The story progresses even through your failures, with new story beats and interactions occurring even when you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, and items you take out of the Dungeons, even on death, help to improve your fortunes in future runs. Each seems more than happy to help Zagreus ascend, but some have motives of their own.

The other gods, Zeus, Poseidon, Artemis, Athena, Ares, Hermes and Dionysius make an appearance throughout each run, offering power-ups and boons that increase your stats and attack power, or add special elemental effects to your attacks.

But it’s not that simple, and reaching Olympus is the test for entry, as all the horrors of the Underworld stand in his path.Īn interesting, surprisingly intricate plot is weaved between repeated delves into the netherrrealm, and sees Zagreus uncover godly conspiracies and unravel a web of lies about his heritage. An isometric dungeon crawler, Hades casts you as Zagreus, the son of the titular god, as he attempts to escape the Underworld and reach Mount Olympus, where the rest of the Greek Pantheon awaits him. Having proved a success on PC, Hades is finally moving over to the Nintendo Switch, a platform that seems almost custom built for titles like it. Hades has been consistently worked on, tweaked and refined by Supergiant Games, a developer who already had immense pedigree from the success of Transistor and Bastion, and the result is a title that may be easier to get to grips with, but is no less complex or challenging in the long run. Of course, it helps to be reviewing the 1.0 version of a title that has been in early access for several years.
Hades switch version upgrade#
It doesn’t have the same variety of weaponry and gear as some of its peers, but Hades offers a unique weapon upgrade system that always feels worth pursuing but still resets with each run. Like Dead Cells, Hades rewards you for failure, encouraging you to go back for that one-more-try, because it might be the one that leads to you unlocking a new weapon or power up that makes the next run easier or, at least, different. Yes, it’s a hard game – rage-inducingly so, at times – but it balances that with a constant sense of progression and achievement that newer, more modern roguelites overlook or deliberately ignore.

One of the main reasons Hades stands head and shoulders above many other roguelite action-RPGs is the progression system.
