The Insane Imbalance of Hades II | Design Delve

I feel like this video mis-characterizes a few things about Slay the Spire's systems -- it's true that there are achievements to hunt that require certain playstyles, but then JM8 says that hunting those achievements will unlock further upgrades, and that's just not true. There is technically a 'progression' system with each character in StS that unlocks new cards and artifacts as they 'level up' -- but secretly, the real purpose of that system is almost entirely hiding complexity from new players by introducing more complicated elements gradually, and doesn't substantially affect game balance. Like the additional Jokers that Balatro unlocks, the new ships in FTL, the new squads of mechs in Into the Breach, and almost all of the hundreds of additional items unlocked by achievements in The Binding of Isaac: what the player is 'unlocking' is not in fact generally an upgrade that will make future games easier -- they are mostly adding additional complexity to the game at a measured pace to both keep the game fresh and keep all these elements from overwhelming a new player, and with further achievements and unlocks as targets for the player to encourage them to play the game in new ways. The games I mention here are all far more roguelike than roguelite. (Uh. As long as we're not talking about the strict Berlin Interpretation of "Roguelike". I've met a few people who would probably want to shiv me for how wantonly I'm using the term to refer to games that aren't ASCII symbols moving on a turn-based grid) Another trend of Slay the Spire and its more roguelike / less roguelite kin is to directly reward victory by unlocking harder and harder difficulty options. The video talks about how 'consistency of victory' and associated leaderboards is the end-game for Slay the Spire, and that may be true for *some* extremely high level players, but for the first few hundred (!!) hours, the reward most obviously presented to players for victory is a one new higher difficulty challenge level after another, each of which will require even deeper understanding and mastery of the game's systems to overcome, up to Ascension 20 which has 20 layers of additional modifiers crushing down on the player. This is also featured in Balatro's stakes, Monster Train's covenants, and a general trend of uncovering harder and scarier levels the deeper into The Binding of Isaac the player progresses. Hades and Hades 2, of course, steal ideas liberally from their more roguelike kin, with prophecies encouraging variety of play in a way similar to achievement unlock systems, and Pacts acting as scaling difficulty for players who've had repeat victories. Of course they do -- those games are smart, and made *really well*. (I'm just echoing things JM8 said in the video at this point -- pardon my gushing)

Great analysis! I really love the way keepsakes and arcana cards let you adapt the RNG to your particular challenge. And Hades 2's blend of hoarding resources for unlocks while still having to discover access to them through gameplay and narrative is definitely the best of both worlds IMO.

Funny observation: Both Silksong and Hades II added a sprint to the existing movement options. I cannot say how much it changes the gameplay in Silksong, I've only jumped back in recently, after giving up a few hours in years ago. But in Hades II it changed the way the game feels significantly compared to Hades I, a few hours in I thought I'd never get used to it, but 200 hours later it feels super smooth to the point the movement felt rough when I did a run in Hades I.

After being unable to beat Act 3 of Silksong due to it's punishing difficulty, I was delighted to see that God mode returns in Hades 2. It's still very tough, but I think I have more of a chance to actually beat this one. The writing, art style, voice acting, and music are all superb.

This level of randomness and the need to create a crazily OP build is actually one of the reasons I dislike roguelites so much. If you don't know exactly what works, what doesn't, and what to pick up in the meantime, you are going to fail. And even just learning what is and isn't a good build is incredibly hard because I'm never sure what I did wrong other than "I took damage" 9/10 times. I've been playing Aethermancer the past few days and I really want to like the game but whenever I die, all I can say for sure is that my build was wrong but I never know what else I could've done right to make it work. When I ask for help, a lot of people fall back on the time tested advice of "just do better next time" without actually telling me what I should be trying to do. "Hey, I want to run a Poison build, is that viable?" "Yes, everything is viable" My friend, if that were true then the game wouldn't be fun. What should I do to make a Poison build work? Should I be combining it with Purge so that when an enemy is damaged by Poison, they lose Aether and can't use anything but the most basic of attacks? Should I be building a Poison/Weakness team so Poison and Weakness stack on top of each other? And what monsters are better suited for Poison than others? Monsters X, Y, and Z all have the Poison trait but how do they differ in what attacks they have access to? How do they use Poison differently? It's questions like that that no one answers that put me off these games so much. The repetition of going through the same early stages of the game every single time don't compare to the frustration of failing and not knowing why because there are so many variables at play that I don't even know to what extent it's my fault that I failed

Great job JM8, I'm glad to know it is a day-one purchase when it drops on consoles. Mechanics aside, is the writing still as on-point and thirsty as the first? That was the cherry on the cake for me with the first game.