I think prodigydancer must be talking about the 360' spear spin attack rather than the 360' fire beam attack. The spear spin you just have to dodge it. It's far from impossible.
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Hades - roguelike action dungeon crawler from Supergiant Games
- Thread starter LESS T_T
- Start date
I think prodigydancer must be talking about the 360' spear spin attack rather than the 360' fire beam attack. The spear spin you just have to dodge it. It's far from impossible.
Tigranes
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2009
- Messages
- 10,350
Yeah, except he previously specifically complained: "Dodge where? Into the beam of death or into an urn than explodes for 30 damage?"
It's a game that gives you dashes with invincibility frames & deflecting boons, there's not a lot you can't dodge.
Like, OK, you fought a boss and it was too hard for you. It happens. But no, dude has to start a gofundme railing about the deep state conspiracy that makes the boss impossible to beat.
It's a game that gives you dashes with invincibility frames & deflecting boons, there's not a lot you can't dodge.
Like, OK, you fought a boss and it was too hard for you. It happens. But no, dude has to start a gofundme railing about the deep state conspiracy that makes the boss impossible to beat.
TheChickenKing
Savant
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2016
- Messages
- 296
I actually found it more challenging to avoid "panic dodging" during the final fight over anything else. Most of the game lets you dodge around without too much thought, but the final fight has some fairly specific timings you have to respect. The spear attacks don't come out super quick, but they hit very hard and will most likely hit you if you panic dodge in the wrong direction as your i-frames will have ended by the time the attack actually comes out. There's still a ton of leeway with the 360 spear (just panic dodge behind him - he moves forward when he does the move) but I found myself getting hit a lot more when I felt pressured to respond too quickly rather than taking a deep breath and slowing down just a little bit.
That would explain the critics, but I don't think the users like wokeness that much. I remember a lot of shit storms because of it (e.g. Battlefield V), but no user based hypes. I saw one review where the dude claimed to have put over 100 hours into that game. His life must be beyond boring.
Multi-headed Cow
Arcane
Was like my 19th run when I got my first win, and I've been on a 5 win streak ever since. It's like I hit the magical tipping point of both gittin' gud and having enough purpleshit perma-upgrades both where it's smooth sailing. Even been playing with heat ever since my first win so I can get more unlock currency for higher difficulty and it's been fine. Actually having more fun with the game now in the "End game" than I did getting here, heat's a fun way of adjusting difficulty and I'm getting more into "Builds" due to having enough titan blood to unlock and upgrade aspects on weapons. The game's fantastic throughout, but it's sort of a shame that it really starts opening up once you get into it.
RNGsus
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2011
- Messages
- 8,106
In all honesty, if he's over 25 and playing vidya to get his kicks, then yes his life is undoubtedly very boring.
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2013
- Messages
- 3,348
I haven't been able to justify buying this. The moment to moment play looks slow and pretty boring. For an action rogue lite game the animation is not smooth in videos I have seen and there are few enemies / things happening on screen. Maybe I am watching the wrong videos?
I'm coming from Risk of Rain 2, which has some lore but no overarching story line to progress. The moment to monent game play is tits though. This looks rudimentary by comparison?
I'm coming from Risk of Rain 2, which has some lore but no overarching story line to progress. The moment to monent game play is tits though. This looks rudimentary by comparison?
Peachcurl
Cipher
Hades definitely does not clutter your screen like RoR2 will (which I love as well, but for different reasons). But timing and movement are much more important in Hades. So in a sense, there's less happening but your own reaction actually has to be pretty good. Hence, I don't think "slow" is the right word here.
If you want something like RoR2, there's a bunch of other nice games that you could try, say: Immortal Redneck, Ziggurat. But I'll admit that RoR2 is the one with the most 'omg-special-effects-everywhere' potential.
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,643
Metaprogression is the really harmful aspect of roguelites design, not real time action gameplay.
For example turn based PS Vita Shiren game suffered from this. Basically you needed your armor, weapon and shield upgraded in a lot of runs to beat the campaign.
What I like about roguelikes is the tense risk-reward exploration, random tactical and strategy challenges measuring your mastery of mechanics, high stakes and fresh unique runs having a lot of items and weapons to get and adapt to what is in the dungeon. I'm currently playing Dead cells and it plays great, but I see I will have to play a lot of hours to unlock items, skills and weapons. A real bummer.
The only metaprogression between runs should be my skill playing the game. The success of the run should only relly on skill and some RNG.
The same thing applies when I start an Alpha Centauri or another strategy campaign.
For example turn based PS Vita Shiren game suffered from this. Basically you needed your armor, weapon and shield upgraded in a lot of runs to beat the campaign.
What I like about roguelikes is the tense risk-reward exploration, random tactical and strategy challenges measuring your mastery of mechanics, high stakes and fresh unique runs having a lot of items and weapons to get and adapt to what is in the dungeon. I'm currently playing Dead cells and it plays great, but I see I will have to play a lot of hours to unlock items, skills and weapons. A real bummer.
The only metaprogression between runs should be my skill playing the game. The success of the run should only relly on skill and some RNG.
The same thing applies when I start an Alpha Centauri or another strategy campaign.
SevenSidedDice
Learned
Looks like this might win game of the year.
I like supergiant, and this game is awesome, but they were clearly vying for addictive gameplay and executed it well, so that it doesn't really feel scammy. I never played Pyre (pentagrams + creepy characters speaking in made-up dialects). Transistor > Bastion > Hades, IMO.
IMO you need about 70+ runs to really finish everything. If you have your first escape at attempt 20-30, you could end the game at 50 runs. It took me over 80 runs to get my first clear, and that was after enabling all the fountainchambers and a couple of house contractor upgrades. I didn't really understand the game then and it doesn't hold your hand too much -- the rarity / levels system isn't explained at all and the tiers aren't in the in-game manual. (Higher rarity = Larger default number + higher level multiplier)
It's fun to play and yes, the enemies are challenging and there are boons for every type of player, mood and style of gameplay you could want. This becomes much easier to guarantee once you get a keepsake from all gods (can be achieved in the first 10 runs). The enemies iin a biome indirectly prepare you for the boss of the biome, and there are very similar movesets / abilities of both Hades and Zagreus. You could get a stupid-easy mash-dash-and-deflect build or a more difficult build that involves a lot of movement and smaller hits that build up to a much larger effect.
What I really understood after clearing it a few times on 0-5 heat, attempts 85-95, is that after a certain point this game stops being about the gameplay and more about controlling the Randomness. If you've played that far along, you know that for heats 10 and up, mapping a run is essential. Non-God keepsakes are absolute trash. They're good for novices or maybe earning some achievement, but after that they won't be used. You get offered 4 gods per run by the game. You get one item / boon per chamber room, the exception being trials, in which you can get two boons, but no Duo boons. If you get all four in Tartarus, you can force up to three more, for a total of seven out of nine gods. This would be exceptional. For most runs, you want High-rarity boons (Normal, Rare, Epic, Heroic, Legendary) that allow you to access powerful Duo boons that make a fighting mechanism possible that can increase the amount of damage you deal exponentially. For example, you keep Athena (deflect) on attack and Artemis (small damage increase + crit (>200% damage) chance) on Special. After this, you'll be offered "Deadly Reversal", which gives you +20% crit chance for 3 seconds after you deflect. There are duo boons for almost every combination, and combined with the attack styles prioritized by different weapons and aspects, you can have a ton of customizability.
The downside is that it's not as complicated as it sounds. Once you have a rough idea of which combinations work well for you under which heat conditions, you'll end up treating the gameplay as auxiliary and taming the randomization as the goal. The game encourages this by letting you "gamble" for either boon choices or gate choices (unlockable using the Mirror of Night, final unlockable). This combined with the possible fountain rooms (free health + boon), character rooms (free upgrades) and basic game progression (Every biome has a fixed number of chambers, Biomes have successively difficult enemies, number of enemies increases with the chamber number of the biome) makes mapping runs trivial. The game also encourages this by setting the seed for the next run as soon as the current run expires (the game also recognizes when you try to "game" the system by quitting and restarting, so after 3+ attempts it'll change the boons/rooms you're offered). This seed determines a couple of things -- first, the abilities for which boons will be offered, and prioritized (aka rarity). Second, the kind of enemies that get health bar boosts, and the chamber in which this happens - you might get witches with huge healthbars and machine-gun like purple orbs, or armored skulls that teleport and take up to a minute to kill. Third, the starting dialogue and interactions (Hades' insult). Fourth, any character interactions and the chamber number, like a Thanatos assist. Fifth, the boons and the startiing boon / hammer offered. This does not change if you alter your mirror upgrades or heat, but can if you change the aspect (and not just the weapon). The only "truly random" offerings in the game are the Chaos gates. Even the die rolls are pre-fixed (this has been exploited in a mod that shows more than three options).
The other "True RNG" moment is at Styx -- the game will never give you the item you're looking for on the first try, and there's a higher chance of it being in a "Deadly Room" (marked with a skull) than in a normal room, but you're bound to find it in the second or third chamber.
The rooms aren't generated -- they're fixed and at most flip across y.
Some weapons (mostly the fourth aspects) can take a run or two before you can properly utilize them, because of the different boons, hammers and movement options they offer.
This game doesn't really have much in the way of SJW signalling -- yes, Athena is dark-skinned but she ain't hollering, and pretty much looks like blackface. Other gods are also colored accordingly. I suppose making Athena white would be too on the nose. At least she isn't brown, and there are no fat gods / people in this game, except the fat dudes you kill in Tartarus. And yes, Aphrodite is naked but she has only one pose, just like most Gods. Not a lot of faggotry -- they've added Theseus as a extremely tanned chad at Elysium who'll try to stop you with Asterius (who he's bros with) and eventually gets jealous of Zagreus and Asterius talking too much. There's nothing implied, but the story took potshots at a character they could've handled differently. Zagreus does have sex with his step-brother if you "Romance" him. Same with Megaera, although they're not related (is she his Aunt or something?). It's mentioned that they don't care because they're immortal. You can seduce the gorgon head but nothing happens because your step-mom fires her. Achilles and Patroclus are homosexuals, which is just gay. I guess the devs are faggots.
Eurydice is a proto-kween but they had the decency to make her a wood nymph or something and her head is tree-like. Her voice isn't hollering either. No stronk wamen in this game, and no gender flips.
The interactions are pretty cool and not cringy. The voice acting is also superb and the game's dialogue and interactions are very reactive. Sometimes you'll need to grind for dialogue, as you can only talk to characters when they have a sign above their heads (which is lost after a single interaction). You can gift them Nectar and Ambrosia to unlock story events, and bribe / pay the House Contractor to decorate the house / give you access to places you're not allowed in. The narrator is present, but only plays a major role until the second dream sequence.
The devs are trying really hard to "balance" everything, which IMO is ruining the game. Speedrunning Hades is really popular, so they're asking twitch streamers / speedrunners (people involved in the "Hermes Cup", https://www.speedrun.com/hades) to test these changes, and they're of course pushing to have all weapons / boons / aspects worthy of a speedrun. The latest December patch also nerfed some very fun abilities. Second patch post 1.0 was probably the peak.
This game also does not have a weapon testing area -- you can use the base weapons on the skeleton but the only time you'll use weapons with boons is during a run. This sucks because it takes at least two biomes to really get a functional build. Then you get two more biomes and just when you managed to get a really OP build, the game ends. The could have, for example, introduced a pit that transports Zagreus from the surface, back to Tartarus. Bastion and Transistor had a "new game plus" system that implemented this, but I'm disappointed that Hades doesn't.
I also don't like that this game doesn't end -- there really is no end to the story and the day you stop playing it will be the day when you find something better to do. Transistor was different, you could play it twice at best. Bastion, the same, for the choices in the end. This continuous replay destroys the music and the interactions. After completing everything, suddenly all the interaction will feel stale, there will be no more progressiion, and yet Zagreus will always be ready for another run. This is what really cheapens the game. Let Zagreus give up.
8/10
I like supergiant, and this game is awesome, but they were clearly vying for addictive gameplay and executed it well, so that it doesn't really feel scammy. I never played Pyre (pentagrams + creepy characters speaking in made-up dialects). Transistor > Bastion > Hades, IMO.
IMO you need about 70+ runs to really finish everything. If you have your first escape at attempt 20-30, you could end the game at 50 runs. It took me over 80 runs to get my first clear, and that was after enabling all the fountainchambers and a couple of house contractor upgrades. I didn't really understand the game then and it doesn't hold your hand too much -- the rarity / levels system isn't explained at all and the tiers aren't in the in-game manual. (Higher rarity = Larger default number + higher level multiplier)
It's fun to play and yes, the enemies are challenging and there are boons for every type of player, mood and style of gameplay you could want. This becomes much easier to guarantee once you get a keepsake from all gods (can be achieved in the first 10 runs). The enemies iin a biome indirectly prepare you for the boss of the biome, and there are very similar movesets / abilities of both Hades and Zagreus. You could get a stupid-easy mash-dash-and-deflect build or a more difficult build that involves a lot of movement and smaller hits that build up to a much larger effect.
What I really understood after clearing it a few times on 0-5 heat, attempts 85-95, is that after a certain point this game stops being about the gameplay and more about controlling the Randomness. If you've played that far along, you know that for heats 10 and up, mapping a run is essential. Non-God keepsakes are absolute trash. They're good for novices or maybe earning some achievement, but after that they won't be used. You get offered 4 gods per run by the game. You get one item / boon per chamber room, the exception being trials, in which you can get two boons, but no Duo boons. If you get all four in Tartarus, you can force up to three more, for a total of seven out of nine gods. This would be exceptional. For most runs, you want High-rarity boons (Normal, Rare, Epic, Heroic, Legendary) that allow you to access powerful Duo boons that make a fighting mechanism possible that can increase the amount of damage you deal exponentially. For example, you keep Athena (deflect) on attack and Artemis (small damage increase + crit (>200% damage) chance) on Special. After this, you'll be offered "Deadly Reversal", which gives you +20% crit chance for 3 seconds after you deflect. There are duo boons for almost every combination, and combined with the attack styles prioritized by different weapons and aspects, you can have a ton of customizability.
The downside is that it's not as complicated as it sounds. Once you have a rough idea of which combinations work well for you under which heat conditions, you'll end up treating the gameplay as auxiliary and taming the randomization as the goal. The game encourages this by letting you "gamble" for either boon choices or gate choices (unlockable using the Mirror of Night, final unlockable). This combined with the possible fountain rooms (free health + boon), character rooms (free upgrades) and basic game progression (Every biome has a fixed number of chambers, Biomes have successively difficult enemies, number of enemies increases with the chamber number of the biome) makes mapping runs trivial. The game also encourages this by setting the seed for the next run as soon as the current run expires (the game also recognizes when you try to "game" the system by quitting and restarting, so after 3+ attempts it'll change the boons/rooms you're offered). This seed determines a couple of things -- first, the abilities for which boons will be offered, and prioritized (aka rarity). Second, the kind of enemies that get health bar boosts, and the chamber in which this happens - you might get witches with huge healthbars and machine-gun like purple orbs, or armored skulls that teleport and take up to a minute to kill. Third, the starting dialogue and interactions (Hades' insult). Fourth, any character interactions and the chamber number, like a Thanatos assist. Fifth, the boons and the startiing boon / hammer offered. This does not change if you alter your mirror upgrades or heat, but can if you change the aspect (and not just the weapon). The only "truly random" offerings in the game are the Chaos gates. Even the die rolls are pre-fixed (this has been exploited in a mod that shows more than three options).
The other "True RNG" moment is at Styx -- the game will never give you the item you're looking for on the first try, and there's a higher chance of it being in a "Deadly Room" (marked with a skull) than in a normal room, but you're bound to find it in the second or third chamber.
The rooms aren't generated -- they're fixed and at most flip across y.
Some weapons (mostly the fourth aspects) can take a run or two before you can properly utilize them, because of the different boons, hammers and movement options they offer.
This game doesn't really have much in the way of SJW signalling -- yes, Athena is dark-skinned but she ain't hollering, and pretty much looks like blackface. Other gods are also colored accordingly. I suppose making Athena white would be too on the nose. At least she isn't brown, and there are no fat gods / people in this game, except the fat dudes you kill in Tartarus. And yes, Aphrodite is naked but she has only one pose, just like most Gods. Not a lot of faggotry -- they've added Theseus as a extremely tanned chad at Elysium who'll try to stop you with Asterius (who he's bros with) and eventually gets jealous of Zagreus and Asterius talking too much. There's nothing implied, but the story took potshots at a character they could've handled differently. Zagreus does have sex with his step-brother if you "Romance" him. Same with Megaera, although they're not related (is she his Aunt or something?). It's mentioned that they don't care because they're immortal. You can seduce the gorgon head but nothing happens because your step-mom fires her. Achilles and Patroclus are homosexuals, which is just gay. I guess the devs are faggots.
Eurydice is a proto-kween but they had the decency to make her a wood nymph or something and her head is tree-like. Her voice isn't hollering either. No stronk wamen in this game, and no gender flips.
The interactions are pretty cool and not cringy. The voice acting is also superb and the game's dialogue and interactions are very reactive. Sometimes you'll need to grind for dialogue, as you can only talk to characters when they have a sign above their heads (which is lost after a single interaction). You can gift them Nectar and Ambrosia to unlock story events, and bribe / pay the House Contractor to decorate the house / give you access to places you're not allowed in. The narrator is present, but only plays a major role until the second dream sequence.
The devs are trying really hard to "balance" everything, which IMO is ruining the game. Speedrunning Hades is really popular, so they're asking twitch streamers / speedrunners (people involved in the "Hermes Cup", https://www.speedrun.com/hades) to test these changes, and they're of course pushing to have all weapons / boons / aspects worthy of a speedrun. The latest December patch also nerfed some very fun abilities. Second patch post 1.0 was probably the peak.
This game also does not have a weapon testing area -- you can use the base weapons on the skeleton but the only time you'll use weapons with boons is during a run. This sucks because it takes at least two biomes to really get a functional build. Then you get two more biomes and just when you managed to get a really OP build, the game ends. The could have, for example, introduced a pit that transports Zagreus from the surface, back to Tartarus. Bastion and Transistor had a "new game plus" system that implemented this, but I'm disappointed that Hades doesn't.
I also don't like that this game doesn't end -- there really is no end to the story and the day you stop playing it will be the day when you find something better to do. Transistor was different, you could play it twice at best. Bastion, the same, for the choices in the end. This continuous replay destroys the music and the interactions. After completing everything, suddenly all the interaction will feel stale, there will be no more progressiion, and yet Zagreus will always be ready for another run. This is what really cheapens the game. Let Zagreus give up.
8/10
I didn't read all of that (srsly, learn to edit dude), but I don't think it's bad that they're trying to open up what builds are suitable for speedruns. Speedrunning is really boring for everyone but the most autistic people if there's objectively correct choices the whole way through a run.
SevenSidedDice
Learned
They're messing with the cool aspects (chiron, gilgamesh) and keepsakes (Hades, Shackle) so they can "balance" stuff. It isn't in anyone's interest, except thatt it'll be more difficult for newer players at the cost of keeping post-first escape 20 heat grind a bit more reasonable.
Except that this game isn't being speedran, but only the run (or a certain number of them). There's a lot of leeway, and all this "balancing" is killing the possibility of a ruined run.
You really don't think the ludicrous Eris domination of the charts is a positive, do you?
I mean it's pretty hard to ignore at this point.
SevenSidedDice
Learned
I really don't care. Eris tops the list because ALL the speedrunners use a specific boon - Zeus on attack (crowd control!), + Jolted, and Zeus legendary if they can get it, Artemis / Aphrodite on special and two hammers - rocket bomb + cluster bomb. The damage output of the rail's attack is absurdly low without a proper boon, and the only hammer that really augments it is the "short burst" hammer, which nerfs the primary appeal of the rail - range. To really "balance" the game they'll have to re-write everything to be a mushy uniform mess which I don't really want. Let there be outliers.
You really don't think the ludicrous Eris domination of the charts is a positive, do you?
I mean it's pretty hard to ignore at this point.
Zagreus rail is plain, Hestia requires reloading, Eris gives +60% base damage for just standing around, and lucifer ramps up damage but has no hammers comparable to rocket bomb for the special, and eternal chamber doesn't ramp up damage, which just makes it a nerfed zag rail.
The rail is garbage with a female god anyway, and Poseidon and Ares suck, too. This leaves Dionysus, which gives us small damage with some crowd control (hit and run, basically) and Zeus, which requires you to stand in one place and press the attack button, and to remember to upgrade the attack boon.
As usual, it's the impulsive chads making the most trouble.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,870
That is just function of people copying the most efficient build ATM.
Citizen
Guest
Citizen
Guest
Dionysus on-hit stackable dot effect makes rail a fucking lazer of death melting bosses like butter
Renevent
Cipher
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2013
- Messages
- 925
IMO this is one the best games of it's kind released in quite some time. It's polished to an unbelievable level, has huge amount of variety, and the core gameplay/loop is outstanding. I also think it's Supergiant's best game to date, by a long shot.
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It's pop culture shit, but still great to see people taking an interest in the classics in any form.
SevenSidedDice
Learned
Nah. Dionysus is only good for
- ONE core boon
- Premium Vintage
- +X% damage resistance under +Y% health
- Cast if you can get the Zeus and/or Demeter duo.
Dionysus stacks overwrite each other. Unless you have a weapon that strikes continuously and your boon deals damage above 12 (Level 4 Epic), it's shit. You also need the Aphrodite / Dionysus duo to get +3 stacks for max damage.
I got through 32 heat with chaos shield + Dionysus on special (got it up to 17 damage) + max stacks (+3).
Citizen
Guest
Yeah that attack ruined few of my runs. The thing about this attack, it's very hard to actually leave the AoE zone before it goes off unless you have good speed/dash boons, and Hades even dashes a bit during it to guarantee a hit on you. You need to time you dodge to actually "dodge it", which is kinda unexpected because before the last boss you are usually better preemptively leaving the attack AoE instead of timing the dodge
Surprise, Hades was developed with no mandatory crunch, but non-optional vacation time. You'd think the results should speak for themselves to the rest of the industry, but I doubt it. 
Renevent
Cipher
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2013
- Messages
- 925
I'd rather be working on Cyber Punk working 48 hours a week for a few months and get 150% pay and fat bonuses than having the company I work for force when I take vacation time. The company I work for now pulled that shit this year...thankfully I already scheduled a vacation (family event) and was able to get an exception...99% of everyone else had to burn their vacation time to just sit at home in the middle of September.
Another scam companies are pulling (and millennials idiotically cheer for) is "unlimited vacation." When that was announced all the little marxists at my last company stood up and cheered...meanwhile I knew this meant that vacation was no longer an accrued benefit and that the company no longer has to pay out vacation when you leave. Plus, the companies also know the vast majority of folks will take less or roughly the same vacation anyways, else they'll look like leeches.
Another scam companies are pulling (and millennials idiotically cheer for) is "unlimited vacation." When that was announced all the little marxists at my last company stood up and cheered...meanwhile I knew this meant that vacation was no longer an accrued benefit and that the company no longer has to pay out vacation when you leave. Plus, the companies also know the vast majority of folks will take less or roughly the same vacation anyways, else they'll look like leeches.
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Usually forced vacation means you have to take it eventually if you keep choosing to work through time you're allowed off.
It's not entirely altruistic even, someone who's overworked becomes much less useful.
It's not entirely altruistic even, someone who's overworked becomes much less useful.
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