Hades

Hades is a roguelike game developed and published by Supergiant Games. It was released for macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo Switch on September 17, 2020, which followed an early access release in December 2018. The game was released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on August 13, 2021.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Great voice acting, soundtrack and graphics/visuals.
 * 2) God Mode. It's useful if you are struggling to play the game on normal mode.
 * 3) Your character can grow permanently stronger with upgrades, and the same goes for your weapons via their Aspects.
 * 4) You can form a bond with the NPCs by giving them Ambrosia. Some of them will even give you Keepsakes that you can use during an escape attempt.
 * 5) The Pact of Punishment (which can be unlocked after beating the final boss for the first time with either a normal or God Mode save file and immediately when you make a Hell Mode save file) makes your runs challenging.
 * 6) Extreme Measures makes the boss fights more challenging, with some changes from an ordinary boss battle.
 * 7) * You get to fight all 3 of the Furies at once.
 * 8) ** There is a different stage for the Hydra boss battle.
 * 9) *** Theseus is using a gold chariot and Asterius is wearing gold armor.
 * 10) **** Hades can be fought 3 times (Extreme Measure 4 condition only) as opposed to 2 times (in a run with the Extreme Measures 3 condition and below, a run with different Pact of Punishment conditions, or a normal run without using the Pact of Punishment).
 * 11) The cross-save option allows you to play your PC save file on your Nintendo Switch and vice versa.
 * 12) Like Supergiant Games's previous games,  with, allow unique conversations through player's different runs.

Overall

 * 1) Upgrading and unlocking the Aspects of your weapons will cost a lot of Titan Blood, which is hard to get.
 * 2) While most of the achievements are relatively fair and straightforward, there's a couple that generally feel luck-based.
 * 3) * "Thanks, But No Thanks". This requires you to purge a Legendary-level Boon in a Pool of Purging. Sounds simple enough, were it not for several problems. First, you have to earn such an extremely rare boon in the first place, which means running through at least half the game. Then you have to find a Pool of Purging — you'll find them at the end of each floor, but you might not even get a Legendary boon until the final floor. Then you have to hope that out of the three boons you can purge, one of them is the Legendary one. This was made easier in later updates, as Pools of Purging can appear in regular rooms even in the Temple of Styx (unlocked after beating all foes), and Fated Persuasion can affect which three boons Zagreus can purge, but it still is highly luck-based.
 * 4) * "Bad Call". To get this, you have to use an Olympian's Greater Call against them in a Trial of the Gods. It sounds easy in theory, but it's rather uneven in practice. First, you have to come across a Trial of the Gods, which is random; even if you use the Mirror of Night upgrade to alter room rewards, a Trial is a pretty rare occurrence. Then, it also has to include the god whose Call you're currently using — it picks two gods at random from the boons you've already collected, so if you have more than two, the god you want might not be there. Once you're actually in the Trial room, you have to choose the god who doesn't represent the Call that you have (i.e. if the Trial makes you choose between Athena and Ares, and you have the call of Athena, you'd have to pick Ares). And finally, even after all that, the Trial needs to have enough enemies and you need enough passive upgrades to your Call's charge rate in order to fully build up the meter and fire off the Greater Call. You could go through dozens of runs before even getting the possibility of trying for this achievement, and it's still a pain to get even if you do everything right.
 * 5) * "Thorn of Thanatos" requires you to accumulate a 30% damage buff from using Thanatos' keepsake, Pierced Butterfly, which gives you a stackable 1-2% buff (depending on the keepsake's level) if you can clear a room without taking any damage. So at max level, you'll need to clear 15 rooms without getting hit, which is a bit harder than it seems. Not only can you take damage from enemies off-screen, but you'll also have to avoid suffering any trap damage.

Nintendo Switch version

 * 1) Some of the textures (i.e. the fire effect when you defeat the Bone Hydra) look like they came from a mobile game, but this is excusable as the Switch has low power to handle high-end graphics.
 * 2) Sometimes, the game lags. An example of this instance is when you are switching between weapons.

PlayStation and Xbox versions

 * 1) No cross-saves unlike the PC and Nintendo Switch versions of the game, but this is excusable because they cannot implement this due to technicial issues. However, they won't add this feature to the game in an update either, because of the same reason.

Reception
Hades was critically acclaimed by critics and gamers with praise for it's dark tone, gameplay and art style, and was considered to be the best game released in 2020, on Metacritic, all versions of the game received a 93, indicating "universal acclaim".

PJ O'Reily of Nintendo Life gave the game a 10/10, stating "Hades is a sublime mix of satisfyingly gritty and flexible combat, a wonderfully vibrant art style and genuinely fun and engaging narrative. Supergiant Games has an excellent track record thus far but this really does feel its finest hour, a rip-roaring rampage through the underworld that's arrived here on Switch in a port that's nigh-on perfect. Even if you're yet to be swayed by the admittedly repetitive ebb and flow of the roguelike genre, we passionately urge you to at least give this one a try; for fans of the genre or anyone even remotely interested, this is one heavenly vision of hell that we highly recommend you sacrifice yourself to."

Trivia

 * The game was released in Early Access exclusively on the mh:crappygames:Epic Games Store for a year, and then it became available on Steam a year later, still being an Early Access title. This is also the first time that the developers of the game have released their game in Early Access.
 * It won a lot of awards, including Game of the Year, and a Hugo award.
 * It is the second game of Supergiant Games to be published by an AAA studio (PlayStation & Xbox physical versions only though), with Bastion being the first under Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (for all platforms that the game was released on) until September 2019. The game was self-published by the developers afterwards.
 * It is also their first game to not be available on Linux, since all of their previous games are available on the said OS.
 * It is the first game from the developers that has voice acting from their characters besides the usual narration from their previous three games, as well as the first to not be based on an original concept, instead being based on Greek mythology.
 * Some of the characters' portrayals are swapped from their original portrayals from actual Greek mythology, just like what mh:greatestmovies:Hercules did. Both feature characters from Greek mythology.
 * It was originally called Minos. Theseus was to be the protagonist, and it was about the player-character seeking an exit from the ever-shifting mazes of Minos. However, the developers found out that it was difficult to incorporate the branching narrative factors of the said facets and that Theseus was too generic of a character to fit their narrative. So eventually, the name, protagonist, and setting of the game was changed to the game that we know today.
 * This change had minimal impact on the development of the game, and Theseus was still in the finished product, but as one of the bosses that you face in the third stage of the game along with Asterius.