Not only has it included a narrative and brilliant design aesthetics, but the one innovation it brought to the table that supersedes all others in the genre is "chambers". Fuck autogenerated maps and labyrinths, I just want to jump into the action. I put in about 100 runs into Hades and recently went back to try some of the classics, and holy crap is it frustrating basing your entire run on "finding an exit". I can't stand wandering and backtracking around a lifeless algorithm and zooming in on my minimap to make sure I haven't missed any dark patches of map.
Chambers: you're in, kill all the creatures in the room, take a gamble on your reward, and move the fuck on.
It's such a brilliant game. I can't recommend it enough.
I bought it about a week ago, and cannot recommend it more. Such a great game.
As much as I love The Binding of Isaac and appreciate the role it has in the genre of roguelites I will never forgive Ed McMillen for Curse of the Lost/Maze. Neither "haha you can't see the map" not "haha doors don't work gud" are enjoyable from a gameplay perspective, and there's a lot to appreciate in the relatively simplistic approach that Hades takes.
The balance of everything seems quite fine as well. I've run about 70 times and the range between "my build is sorta useless" and "my build whips fucking ass" is pretty comfortable. I still feel like I have a sold chance at clearing even if it takes me a long ass time to kill everything.
Unless I'm using a weapon without a ranged attack. I eat shit so fast using Malphon or the sword. Reminds me of the period in my Dark Souls career where I had timing and positioning down but couldn't parry to save my ass.
Idk, it felt less interesting mechanically than BoI/RoR/Spelunky for me. I played about 40-50 runs and just didn't feel like there was significant variation between them. I guess I like optimizing exits and exploration throughout a run more than having a room by room arpg
But supergiant always makes beautiful games, love them
