Revisiting Hades in 2024 | Cold Take 

In response to 8:00 , all I have to say is that I don't care what you decide to do, as long as you do so with that voice of yours and your superb writing.

Thanks for waiting until the end for the sponsor read. Didn't disrupt the video, and as a result I didn't mind watching through it.

The review was pretty good and I would like to see more reviews of games that have been out for a while, but maybe add a slight subtitle for differentiation from normal cold takes. I personally like "Cold Review"

If you are looking for a review format to spice things up i would like to see you spend some time showcasing strengths and weakness of possible fixes of things you felt held the game back. Decisions that would have changed the game possible for the better. You cant change a games design path you can however show the future generation hey if your going to do something like this heres some things you can think on. Which honestly i feel would go more in theme with your previous show. As well as complimenting another show you stand alongside Design Delve. Where Cold Take would point out problems with the industry and how we might fix them. Your review show could showcase possible other takes and ways games might have been improved. For example yeah ok grind is an issue what could future game devs have done to lessen the damage here. Though you might want to have a seperate name for when you do these things so its easier to organize. Its not a necessity it just makes organizing playlists easier. I hope this feed back helps ya. Also as usual this video was great.

❤❤❤❤

Now I'm imagining the Lap Dance "Simulator" in GTAV

And coffee. A bad grind also ruins coffee. Just wanna say.

Not to mention skateboards.

When a person is _just now_ finding out about frost shortly after they departed escapist:

True poetry

True, they could both do a video on stamp collecting and I'd still watch both because despite them probably having the same opinion on the matter how they'd go about it would still be different and nuanced enough to enjoy watching. We come for their style and personality, the fact they both have good taste is just icing on the proverbial cake.

That's what people say makes a youtuber Good. Especially guys like SummoningSalt

@@TheCodemasterc We also come because we've come to know their tastes and priorities. Reviews need that context to really have meaning.

He has his own channel as well. He was mainly focused on smite for years.

I think that's why I love Mark Kermode. Even when I disagree with his overall options, his analysis helps me understand his opinion and even my own even better

@@maxresdefault_ that's exactly the person who I was going to say. Mark explains his thinking as to why he does or doesn't like something. I don't always agree with his take but I enjoy hearing why he thinks the way he does.

Well said!

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I’ve never watched Cold Take before this, but I cannot wait to watch another!

Yes! This. I'd even love to see both of their takes on the same game.

personally I think it'd be neat to see them do a Siskel an Ebert or Waldorf an Stadler thing on a game or two. Can you imagine?

Getting a little tiring seeing every cold take video have this exact same comment tbh

Welp, job's done. Everyone can go home now. Windwaking is now the official term for what happened.

@@dynomar11 "Cold Take" is owned by Frost outright, Nick talked about making sure the people who created them were the ones who owned them, same reason JM8 still has Design Delve, the other place owns the copyright (at least as far as we are currently aware) to ZP

@@dynomar11 Wasn't Fully Ramblomatic still named this before The Escapist hired Yahtzee?

Fr. I wish I’d had this review before I bought Hades, because if I’d known the gameplay was “Bastion but with more graphics and movement” I’d’ve waited until I had a stronger machine.

It's kinda weird cause anyone who played the game would realise the shortcomings of it pretty easily. The toned down powers that never get you to the insane builds you want. The ever present possibility of dying in a run regardless of skill level because you just couldn't get the necessary damage, the unfair boos fight at the end which is fine the first few times, but becomes a chore when you just want to test builds or finish up the grind. It's one of the few games I just couldn't complete because it got too boring by the end. Seen everything there is to see and done almost everything. The skill cap is also pretty unfair. Most games have a somewhat linear approach where playing more makes you better at the game until you reach the final challenge that requires you to improve over a certain limit. Hades becomes exponentially harder by the end (finishing 32 skulls run is the final challenge imo). and it didn't feel like it's my skill that's lacking, but my luck. It's a great game to play for some time, but it's not one of those games where you can just spent thousands of hours just to know you're getting better.

To be honest, I wouldn't listen to me either, but Hades is a amazing roguelike for people who don't like roguelikes. Frost's point about never winning the lottery is dead on, Hades doesn't remotely come close to the game-breaking builds in Isaac. I think what grinds my gears is the notion that some runs are just garbage in Isaac. That's true... but if you watch any decently talented player in Isaac, the moment to moment decision making is always more exciting to me. Once you learn how to game the system in Hades for legendary boons, the shine on the gameplay wanes significantly. Because you realize the game isn't going to let you outside its walled garden of combinations.

It kind of feels like they're being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian though. I've listened to the review and I just don't get it. I've played a lot of roguelikes / lites and Hades has a lot more options and flexibility and different playstyles than the vast majority of them. It's not that it's some kind of perfect game that stands far above all the rest. But the criticism they level at it rings pretty hollow. This feels like a long form version of clickbait, and combined with their really weird takes on railing against difficulty settings, it kind of makes me not want to stay subscribed to the channel if this is the kind of stuff they're going to be putting out. I don't have a problem with someone critiquing a game I like and putting some light on its problems. That's great! But most of their critique doesn't really seem to be founded in reality. Again, this feels like clickbait. It feels like someone being contrarian for the sake of it.

@@vezokpiraka speaking as someone who loves Hades, I 100% agree with you!

Did we get news on a release date? Or at least for the alpha? The last thing I remember seeing the the trailer a year ago.

@@Scroolewse Hell yeah, brother. I even bag my own farts for future enjoyment.

@@Atrophes Pshhh. Poser. I was beef bagging before it was cool.

Dude nice I just did 24

Hades is one of the only Roguelites I actually "Finished" because Supergiant made it such that the highest possible peaks are a bit sanded down yes, but also the "well this run is shit" valleys are way less impactful. Its completely possible to beat a run without a single boon, and there is even special dialogue for it, meaning the devs intended it. You straight up cannot do that in something like Risk of Rain because the game is scaled to say "You must have gotten at least THIS tier of busted to proceed" And I kinda had to wonder if Frost ever got Duo boons... because those are truly where actual "builds" come in, not the weapons themselves.

@@matthewturpin6429 yeah agreed, to me the combat is much better than most other roguelikes because of that, also there are still some really strong builds with legendary and duo boons

Like there are runs even with the pacts of punishment where I would've had to intentionally lose to die to Hades

My first successful run was with the weapon I like the least. I still like it least but I think that's saying something.

​@@matthewturpin6429 The Risk of Rain comparison is perfect. Love both games, but Risk of Rain is designed for the challenge itself being the fun. It's unforgiving, but that's the point. The enjoyment comes with peacing together a build that gets you through the bullshit. Downside is, because of how punishing it is and how item dependent runs can be (compounded by the fact that you cant read item descriptions during a run), a lot of losses feel like no win scenarios. The Hades devs went the opposite way. They made the act of doing multiple runs the fun itself by having endless amounts of dialogue and story updates every time you play. The game is still challenging, its just that the game is meant to completable at all stages, regardless of how lucky you got with Boons.

Real red oni blue oni here and i'm for it.

I mostly agree! I would say that, from my personal experience, I think their gameplay being merely “serviceable” actually has another positive element to it: accessible. My wife and sister, neither of whom have much experience with these types of games, both had a much easier time engaging with the game and enjoying it. My wife just defeated Hades (for at least the fifth or sixth time now) this morning.

@@jacobs483 Exactly. It's easy to get lose in the weeds as a fan of any given genre and forget that without welcoming in new fans, any genre will die. A lot of "it's just okay" gameplay is actually really good for people who haven't been neck deep in it for years like the veterans have. See also: Elden Ring. It doesn't really do anything special with the souls-like combat, but it got more people into the genre than every other game in the genre combined. Sure sounds like they did it right to me.

@@jacobs483 This is me. I love gaming but I get motion sickness VERY easily. It's going to be a controversial subject and I have been called a bot before when trying to find help for it, but I had to full stop playing BG3 on mouse and keyboard after 3 minutes because of the motion sickness. It got better after switching to controller but holy hell it sucks to use. Unless its Stardew valley, I am pretty much limited to games that are optimized for controllers. I normally dislike rogue likes because they end up being a bullet hell and too much stuff happening for my poor brain to process without getting sick but after watching my husband play Hades, I figured I could do it (my litmus test for all games before buying them is to watch a letsplay). For me, managing motion sickness is part of the gaming experience and means that I need to have a narrower focus field than other people and flipping around the screen looking at stuff not immediately involved in my character is a good way to make me lie down in a dark room chugging water for 3 hours. This game had that narrower field of focus and never once made me almost vomit. So, to me it's perfect gameplay. If other people want a game that makes them bleed from the forehead because they keep ramming it into a wall or requires a keyboard and mouse to be any good at, there are other games for that.

a game in which the actually gameplay is the weakest part. That's just sad to be honest.

There isn't anything quite like Transistor's gameplay around though - it isn't exactly a very expandable system but it was executed to near perfection in that game

I'm right here with you. A game like Isaac or Gungeon keeps me coming back because the "grind" is unlocking more wackiness. Hades is a good game but I really get bored of the grind to it.

@@mandradon Still want to play Isaac - only have a switch and I think I missed the sale. Dropped Gungeon right after I rolled credits but I could go back and see about the rest of the story. The grind wasn't all that bad in Gungeon either, I just wanted a different flavor of game. Currently playing through the additional campaigns in Darksiders II 😁

You can absolutely get broken runs in Hades. I just had a run where my dashes alone could slam enemies into the wall where they would blow up, get slammed into a different wall and blow up again, etc. etc. It made the stage before the final boss literally a walk (or sprint) in the park. You just need to find good synergies for your boons.

Yeah, there’s a few very lucky combos where things can go juuuuuust right and you breeze through it all, but compared to games like Slay the Spire, its so much more rare to really feel that insanely-OP in a run, and it requires a ton more luck than actual game knowledge or skill.

Absolutely, I want roguelikes where the power of the various combinations is so high that you get overpowered somewhat frequently, and on some rare occasions get so ridiculous that hitting the attack button once crashes the game.

It feels like SG really wanted to telegraph where the stronger builds were with the Duo and Legendary boons. But, they ended up putting too much scarcity in place, and then overshot sanding down the edges. It caused the intended power combos to be slog to pursue. It also doesn't help that several of them are just traps that only sound good on paper. Either, because the combo was never fully realized by the dev team, or the probability of the stars aligning was way too small. I mean, it DOES feel really good when everything falls into place, you've got 2x the Crystal Beams, they're homing like turrets, and everything is constantly debuffed and exploding. But, in my entire story playthrough, that kind of thing only really happened by accident or intuition a few times. Most of the time, it was underwhelming. What actually got me through the biggest difficulty spike I encountered was looking up high-level players on RU-vid. After a few videos, I could comfortably walk away and do the build-craft myself. Which is totally fine for me; but, I don't imagine it feels great to folks that don't enjoy recreational math.

slay the spire and hades were my first foray into the roguelike/lite genre and I think the fact that you can't get absolutely broken is what I like about these games. To me, that means every run is still a challenge no matter what you do, since your build alone won't necessarily carry you. I spent a lot of time over the past year playing Vampire Survivors and while I liked it, I stopped short of unlocking every character after I got every achievement and beat the main story, unlike with Hades or Slay the Spire where I spent 100s of hours going for max unlocks and achievements. And in retrospect, it's because builds in VS can get so broken as to carry you through even the hardest levels even before unlocking everything so to me, it felt kind of pointless investing more time into it. It wasn't changing my capacity to win or my playstyle. Though I do get how people can feel like the broken builds are a necessary reward for their efforts.

It made me realize that the game might almost be a story game with a rogue-lite-like gameplay loop but not a true rogue-lite. The loops are progression through the story and so all the runs are almost just one long run. Instead of individual runs focused on the build and trying to become broken, the goal is to complete sidequests, help NPCs, and the like. You don't want a broken build to beat Hades and win the run, you want to beat Hades so you can see Persephone or develop the Father/Son relationship.

No lie detected tho

The grind did eventually hit a point where I wasn't seeing new dialogue anymore, and I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty decent at Hades. It could've been a lot longer. I'm discovering I enjoy a grind sometimes, but that bag of tricks they designed with the dialogue in Hades is so cool that I consider it a minor failure that the game didn't QUITE have enough of it to fill out its entire runtime. It's not like I was grinding out all the decorations, either. Just the relationships I cared about and the weapons, really.

@@CJWproductions Yeah either that or the game just should have been a bit shorter.

You should play more games in the space, hades gameplay is trash.

@@ringworld251 Skill issue

I feel that dissertation writing comes first. I finished mine last year around the beginning of June. My goal was to be done before Tears of the Kingdom came out. I unfortunately forgot that my committee/reviews did not have that same time crunch schedule and ended up not being able to defend until June 5th. It was killing me seeing all the crazy stuff coming out of that game for like 2 weeks before I could play it. I had my husband download it while I was defending so I could literally get home, and it would be there on the switch ready for me. Protip 1, do your literature review last and start with your research sections first (if you are research based). Chances are that you have pretty much already written these as papers and all you need to do is adjust the format and page numbers. It really helps to break the glass and start the writing process. It also prevents you from going on very deep rabbit holes in the literature as normally you are in a time crunch at this point and just want to get it done. Protip 2, schedule your public defense (if that is how your uni does it) later in the afternoon. Mine ended up being around 2:30pm due to committee member schedules (not on my end) and it was an hour-long presentation with questions at the end, so defense didn't start until 3:45ish. Turns out, they don't want to be there past 5pm if they can help it and my argument only took about 30-45 minutes and their deliberation was approximately 5 minutes. I will also say that my committee was very involved with my research (infectious disease if that matters) and I had semi-annual updates with all of them so at the end they were pretty much up to speed on everything, and any issues were already addressed months prior. Most of the arguments were about what journal they wanted to publish in.

Where else would he be?

I wish more people had this kind of self-awareness.