Recent reviews by m51d25

As someone who doesn't play rogue-likes, but still enjoys games like Risk of Rain 2 and SYNTHETIK, I can say with confidence that this is the one that will get you hooked.
---------------------------------------------------------
The major criticism of this genre from me is its repetitiveness and the lack of end game content. Hades offers a genius solution to this problem by providing a compelling, well written story that unveils the more you play. Each character has believable struggles and motivations, that you can help resolve. The artwork and soundtrack are what carry this game from a good recommendation, all the way to Olympus where it belongs.
---------------------------------------------------------
Combat is crisp and polished with a good variety of ranged and melee weapons, although I have found the ranged weapons being weaker with their lack of mobility and attack speed. This could be an issue with my style of play though. The core gameplay revolves around clearing rooms of mobs and earning different boons or blessings from the various Greek Olympus gods from the pantheon that empower the weapon further. You learn more about the world by accepting each boon and this works really well to encourage replayability.
-------------------------------------------------------
After completing the main game, you get a chance to collect gifts and gems to decorate and improve your hub area and improve your relations with the various characters from the game, giving extra dialogue and story progression. And even after all this, there is more...
...
...
...
...
...
fishing

10/10 game of the year

It is definitely not without it's issues, even after a long time after release, crashes happen, not as often but nonetheless. After you've reached lvl 30 with all characters, maybe got a couple reds for each, there is very little reason to keep playing, not to mention the excruciatingly low drop rates for red items (best items in the game).

*edit: some of this changed since the Winds of Magic update, you have a whole separate game with competitive elements like the leaderboard, but the biggest problem I have with that is that it is completely separate from the base game, which means you'll have to grind a lot more to upgrade the items in the Weaves...*

So you end up playing the same maps over and over again, relying solely on rng to get easier bosses, fewer hordes/patrols etc AND even after you get all the tomes required to gain an emperors vault (a chest with highest drop rate for reds), it is not guaranteed to get it, in which you have no guarantee to get the red item... pretty annoying in my opinion and remains one of the only major issues I have with the game.

*edit: again, Winds of Magic fixed this issue somewhat, I've been getting much (like A LOT) more reds since the patch and apparently they made it so that you can get reds from all chests in the game, including commendation chests. So in my opinion, the problem has been handled well, after reaching lvl 30 with every character, I managed to get enough vaults and chests to get my favourite red item setup for each of them, something I wasn't able to do before.*

If you are ready to get your ass kicked by some demon vikings and religious rats with crazy magic stones and poison and a horde of goat people barbarians worshipping those same chaos gods, you are in for some of the greatest the genre can offer (sprinkled with some grimdark lore)... A definite recommendation