(Original title: “Hades”: the second most rated Switch game in 2020)
The new work “Hades” by the excellent independent game manufacturer Supergiant, who has produced “Fortress”, “Transistor” and “Pyre”, has ended the EA test phase, launched the official version 1.0 and logged on the NS platform.
What many people didn’t expect was that the NS version of the game received a user rating of 9.5 points on the Metacritic website, making it the second highest rated NS game this year.
Said to be a new work, in fact, “Hades” logged into the Epic Store as Early Access as early as 2018 (the earliest batch of Epic exclusive games) and has been updated for two years since then. After the game was logged on to Steam at the end of last year, there was a lot of discussion, but the game hadn’t finished testing until last Friday, the game finally launched the full 1.0 version, and without any suspense, it won Steam’s more than 20,000 reviews. 98% positive rate .
As a fan of Supergiant who has played from “Fortress” all the way, I think it is necessary to tell you about “Hades”-Supergiant’s breakthrough masterpiece.
Rush out of the underworld
“Hades” is based on Greek mythology and tells the story of Zagreos, son of Hades, who escaped from the underworld by every possible means, breaking through the underworld dungeon layer by layer, seeking the mystery of his identity.
During Zagreos’ escape, he would accept the blessings of the Olympians from all walks of life-in short, this was a hapless child who tried to run away from home. With the help of his relatives, he escaped. The story of an inhumane old father. These “relatives” are the Olympus gods in Greek mythology, such as Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, Ares and so on.
Supergiant has always been known for its strong artistic strength, and the depiction of the gods in “Hades” is as beautiful and high-quality as ever. Supeigiant abandoned the thick-coated block surface and the texture of oil paintings that were commonly used in the past. “Hades” adopts more lines and comic styles, with bright light and dark borders embellishing the picture, and the look is excellent.
(By the way, the game has a favorability and love system.)
I’m good, brother, cute, the game has four levels, each level is composed of multiple small dungeon rooms, and each level has different BOSS battles. Players need to defeat layers of enemies, and only by killing all enemies and receiving the rewards of that layer can they go to the next area. “Hades” has branch options. The reward items in the next room are for guidance. Players need to choose a different strategy route.
Combat: 45 degree angle, weapon, scene interaction
The content of “Hades” is played in an oblique 45-degree action battle. The player controls the protagonist Zagreos and uses six different styles of weapons to fight. These weapons include big swords, long spears, great shields, bows and arrows, and gloves. And the ballista, each play style is different.
Although the basic operations of these weapons are only normal attacks, special attacks, and sprint attacks, Zagreos’ own bombing attack and sprint dodge, they can’t even reach a combo with each other, but it does not prevent you from playing various tricks. . First of all, their operation methods are essentially different. For example, the big sword is a relatively pure output weapon, the bow and arrow are the classic energy-storing weapons, and the ballista has an independent loading mechanism.
And in the process of exploring the underworld, you will get a resource named “Dedlers’ Hammer”, which will directly affect the specific moves of the weapon, making the game more abundant.
You can choose a convenient form of attack
Secondly, Supergiant adds a lot of combat interaction elements to the map, such as crushable stone pillars, hot lava, and more sinister traps and mechanisms. They are a potential threat to Zagreos, but to the enemy. The same is true-you can knock enemies into the air, hit them on stone pillars and cause them to collapse, or knock them into a pool of magma to cause damage. Many designs for the combat environment, including frontal attack to pierce armor, backstabs, knocking into the wall after flying, etc., combined with the effects of different weapons, make the battle of Hades very refreshing.
Of course, if “Hades” is just an action game that can block the enemy, then it is estimated that it will not be so popular.
Gods bless
As mentioned in the previous article, Zagreos’ attack methods are not many, and there is no obvious link between each other. This set of basic action systems that are not so fancy requires the Roguelike mechanism to provide tricks.
The help given to Zagreos by the Olympian gods is a “blessing” and is also the core system of the game. “Blessing” has four levels, from ordinary to legendary. “Blessing” will affect Zagreos’ battles, such as increasing the damage ability of ordinary attacks, adding DOT damage and various debuffs, and even affecting Zagreos’ own actions.
These “blessings” are all carefully designed, and based on the descriptions and functions of different gods in mythology, the gameplay genres are distinguished:
· The blessing provided by Zeus, the king of gods and the god of thunder and lightning, will provide additional lightning attacks for the player’s actions;
· The blessing of Poseidon, the sea god, will make Zagreos’ attack with wave repulsion effect;
· Artemis, goddess of hunting, is known for her accurate bow skills, and her blessing can make Zagreos hit more critical strikes;
· Athena’s blessing makes some of Zagreos’ attacks and movements with shield rebound effect;
· Most of the blessings of Aphrodite, the god of love, contain the weakening effect of “heartbreak”;
……
And so on.
Why I think the blessing system of “Hades” is carefully designed, because these blessings can actually change the way you play, they fit the protagonist Zagreos’s non-complicated mode of action, and As your timeline progresses in the underworld, blessings will gradually point to one or more genres of gameplay, such as:
- Bombing skills that are not highly profitable in the early stage will evolve into different forms under certain blessings. There will be changes from damage ability to operation methods. You can even use bombing as your main output method.
- Let the blessing of dodge additional effects, combined with the blessing of Hermes’ enhanced dodge action, can bring damage/DOT/debuff to all your dodge actions to achieve true uninterrupted output
- Most of Athena’s blessings can make your attacks have a rebound effect. It seems to be a skill to receive, but it can actually hit back the enemy’s projectiles in the same way. It can be effective in the later stage when there are many enemies and the number of projectiles increases sharply. Reduce the difficulty, and you just need to stand and press X
The combination of the above blessings is just the tip of the iceberg of the game. With the development to version 1.0, the blessing system of “Hades” has been very rich. The blessings of some specific gods will be combined to form double blessings. Players can also do this The blessings of selling at the connection level customize the Build.
In addition, since the blessings are obtained randomly, the player also has a resource named “Honey Dew” to be given to the gods to obtain the corresponding accessories. Equipping these accessories can interfere with the appearance and rarity of specific blessings. The tokens transition in 3 scenes. Each layer can be replaced once, which is also part of the player’s strategy. “Hades” has more build ideas for players to explore.
Death penalty and numerical accumulation
“Hades” is a Roguelike game after all, and still has a certain degree of difficulty.
Summarizing a core problem of players playing Roguelike games is which items can be collected and brought to the next process to accumulate player attributes, and which items only need to be weighed and used by the player in this battle.
The same is true of “Hades”. There are only a few items that players can keep on their bodies after death. Dark gems are used to add talents, keys are used to unlock talents and bonuses, and other resources such as money and gems are used In exchange for props and palace decoration items, etc., the blessings obtained in the process will be reset as soon as the player dies.
The death penalty of “Hades” is not very harsh. Even if the player does not achieve much in a single cycle, they can still lay the foundation for the next rebirth by collecting these items that will not be lost. The talents provided by the Night Sacred Mirror will gradually reduce the difficulty of the game as players accumulate.
As for the upper and lower limits of “Hades”, Supergiant has basically taken care of it. For new players who are new to this type of game, the power mode that is switched on and off in the menu at any time will increase the damage reduction effect as the number of deaths of the player. For RL veterans who are pursuing challenges, the game will unlock the “punishment contract” mechanism after the first pass. Players can customize a large number of difficult conditions. As the challenge increases, they can also obtain more resources.
Superstars in the indie gaming world
If you have played Supergiant’s past games, such as “Fortress”, “Transistor”, or “Pyre”, then you must have a taste of Supergiant as the first-line independent game development team in the industry: awesome art, awesome The music, and the awesome narrative. Of course, if you haven’t played it before, it’s worth experiencing it.
But to be honest, I have always been not so satisfied with their gameplay design. Supergiant hopes to make breakthrough attempts in gameplay in every new game. This obsession is worthy of recognition, but to be honest, their past answers are not So excellent.
And this time, “Hades” finally completed Supergiant’s pursuit of gameplay.
Supergiant originated in 2009 and was formed in California after the departure of two producers Amir Rao and Gawan Simon, who had worked at EA. In 2011, Supergiant’s first game “Fortress” was officially released, and it quickly won many praises for its distinctive hand-drawn scenes, rich weapon system, excellent music and narrative.
The biggest idea of the game is to add a spectator narrator. In order to enhance the player’s immersion in the game, Supergiant has abandoned the traditional method of text dialog. The player controls the little boy. Every action he takes is as large as killing the BOSS. When it comes to switching weapons, a narrator with a grandfather tone will respond to the player’s actions.
The success of “Fortress” also laid the foundation for Supergiant’s game style. In the subsequent “Transistor”, supergiant became more confident, introduced the parallel mechanism of real-time combat and strategic combat, and also made breakthroughs in narrative techniques. “Transistor” uses a flashback method, where a silent female singer and a man whose body is dead and soul lives in a crystal sword are combined. As the story progresses, players realize that the man who narrated originally died to protect the female singer Red, and Red also lost his voice.
The silent Red is in sharp contrast with the narrating man. For Red, he can only write his thoughts on the man on the terminal, and the man’s response is also full of emotion. Although the two are accompanied by each other, they are also in different worlds, and their thoughts can only be conveyed through the terminal. This emotion continues to advance during the game, and finally reaches a climax in the game ending. Red killed the final enemy and entered the man’s world in a shocking way. This shock is more powerful than the previous fortress.
By 2017’s “Pyre”, Supergiant’s pursuit of innovation reached a level of paranoia. It not only expanded the narrative, but also created many characters comparable to a Galgame. Ueno’s gameplay has undergone drastic changes to become a Operate a somewhat awkward “drop ball game.”
Supergiant is always looking for new things, and it seems that they are uncomfortable without tossing out new things. They can always make a set of fancy and fun gameplay, with their consistent high-quality narrative text and art, and become the most independent game on the shelf. The dazzling batch of goods.
If their previous works will still be evaluated for lack of depth, then “Hades” is definitely a breakthrough for Supergiant Games. Its combat experience is compact and refreshing. The upgrade of weapons and skills very well unifies the randomness of the process. With the support of the performance, script, art and music that Supergiant Games is already particularly good at, it has made a masterpiece.
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