I started playing Hades a couple of weeks ago and for the most part I've really enjoyed it. It looks great, is fun to play, the story and characters are amazing...But, as someone who values gameplay over everything else, and who enjoys challenging and deep combat systems, it ultimately left me disappointed.
After around 30 hours I managed to escape the Underworld and, this being a Roguelite, this can't be considered the end of the game, maybe not even a half point. However, it was the moment when I decided to put it down, because I felt that the game had already shown me everything that it had (gameplay-wise). Like I said the story is great, but if the gameplay isn't keeping me engaged that's not enough to keep me going. So I just watched a summary on the story on Youtube to see where it went.
You always have to go through the same areas and face the same enemies (with bosses changing minimally) and the extremely simple combat system adds even more to the overall repetitiveness. The different weapons provide some variety, but ultimately the combat is so simple that it's not enough and 6 weapons is not a big number, specially when some of them are very similar (sword-gauntlets-spear, bow-cannon). Boons only add extra effects to your actions and rarely affect how you play. It reminds me a bit of the Binding of Isaac, in how your skill as a player plays a little part in how well you do when compared to the powerups you get during the run. I feel like there had been a point where I had learned everything the combat system had to offer and from then I had been just grinding to make my character more powerful. The prospect for the future runs was just to keep grinding to improve Zagreus even more, while I stay at the same skill level I achieved 10 or so runs ago.
In contrast, something like Dead Cells works really hard to keep evolving and significantly changing gameplay between runs: There are a lot of different weapons that are used in different ways, plus all the skills and traps, plus different biomes and paths to take, new enemies in higher difficulties...And the combat system offers much more, I specially like how you need to learn the enemy movesets and timings to really use your dodges and parrys effectively (you can also minimize this completely with pure Tactics-based builds). Or Enter the Gungeon, where even to succeed with the strongest gun you need to know your enemies in & out.
My major grip is how underdeveloped the combat system feels. You have stuff like dashing and even bonus when dashing out of danger in the last moment, however the way the dash works is too clunky for my liking: The game recognizes as close calls some evades done really far away from some enemy attacks, but waiting for the last moment to dash and using the i-frames doesn't work very well. It's like the game wants you to dash preemptively and get out of dangerous situations before they happen, rather than push your offensive to the limit and act at the last moment like having a "just-evade" system suggests you should be doing. It's a bit contradictory and it feels like the combat system isn't very cohesive as a result. There's also no need to learn the nuances of the enemies as it pays better to take a safe approach and overwhelm them with your boons. Sometimes, the action becomes too hectic, with a million different visual effects on the screen at the same time that make parsing what's going on very difficult and further strengthens that you should be taking a safe approach. The walls closer to the camera even obscure the action completely, hiding enemies and anything close to them! This is a huge oversight, they should be removed or made traslucent or something, this is a very clear example of a situation where gameplay implications should have been prioritized.
I was very disappointed when I almost killed the final boss on my first try and completely annihilated it on my second one, just by using a safe approach and very basic tactics (not like there's really anything more complex to try!). That was the moment it really sunk into me that player skill was secondary and that can't be the base for a game based on repeating combat encounters.
Even when everyone was asking for this game to snatch GOTYs left and right, and some friends directly recommending it I was wary because I had already been let down by the combat system in Transistor before, but I finally decided to give it a try. Hades is an improvement over that, but IMHO Supergiant games still have some work to do to create a truly engaging combat system.
Am I wrong? Did I put the game down too soon? What do you think about this combat system?
