Recent reviews by Zub

Hades but worse in nearly every way.
There have now been added like 14 more systems and things to worry about, most of which you will not care about but have to deal with anyway.
Remember how there was Thanatos helping you in the first game every now and again? Well now there are NPCs that grief your run instead. Nemesis AI is built for killstealing and unless you got good boons so you can kill anything in under a third of a second she's gonna pickpocket your gold. She will also walk down a path so you're stuck with whatever other door is still open.
Heracles is the same but even more annoying, he is supposed to fight alongside you instead of taking your gold, he does this by spamming a wide swing that staggers/stuns you if you're caught in it, usually into a wall, his AI attacks me more than it does enemies, his body also blocks your projectiles and enemies ignore him so you're getting dumped on by him, enemies and can't use range as he WILL position himself between you and enemies as he slams you into a wall over and over. He also shops so you're not getting that boon you wanted. I love how it waits for you to get there before he buys it so you can specifically see what boon that ass took from you. At least have their keepsake be "will not appear in your run" so i can guarantee them not spawning in and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ me over.

Resource gathering is ass, don't bother fishing, it sells for extremely cheap so you are better off taking a different tool, don't forget to pray to god that said resources even appear in your run
This has been fixed in the latest (as of now) update, now picking a tool simply increases the likelyhood of corresponding resource appearing and nothing else, all resources can be gathered regardless of your tool choice.
Driftwood is especially atrocious in this regard. The game tells you what resource you need for what, such as increasing relationships, except not really, it only shows a picture, so you don't know what it is even called let alone where to find it so you can't even google the damn thing. Why can't it just be in the shop? I need 4 driftwood for an upgrade that gives me a single.... fish thing (?) so i can progress relationships, unfortunately i average one driftwood for like 5 runs.

The artstyle for the character portraits seems worse (?), i'd say artemis was tumblrfied the most but at least tumblr "artists" aren't afraid of bright colors. Poor girl looks so washed out lmao. That goes for most gods.

The maps and enemies got worse as well. The boat section on the surface is horrid. Let's make a map that is just two long corridors and spam spawn enemies that fire projectiles in 3 directions that all outrange you, also they can just jump to the other side of the map. Very fun. A bunch of enemies have attacks that are very poorly visible. The harpy things on the boat with black attack effects on a dark background are the worst in that regard.
Overall the combat changed, the enemies were quite simple in the first game but not anymore and i think they went too far in that direction. 15 bags that ♥♥♥♥ out lasers, 3 guys that summon a plague of rats and fire homing projectiles, 15 teleporting skulls that charge you, 5 tanky thugs that charge you, and a bunch of hourglasses with orbiting projectiles, all with full armor, in combination with environment that keeps changing, rotating laser turrets and traps littering the arena. This is not Heat 10 with increased spawns and armor modifiers, this is baseline. You went from simple to a bullet hell. Why? Did people really find the first game so boring? Because of encounters like this and boss mechanics/attacks forcing you to keep distance for prolonged periods of time heavily favors range to point where playing melee feels like you're gimping yourself, unless you manage to get insane burst so you can actually get in some damage inbetween waiting.

There are things to be liked as well, obviously. I like the witch theme, I like the "incantations" progression, except the material grind part of it. A bunch of the areas look stunning, best among them being oceanus which is better looking than any area from the first game, all the underworld bosses are fun, elites are fun as well. Voice acting is still good. The chaos Trials are a great addition and i do like the Oath system and so on.

But...the downsides. Why? You already got it right before, a simple quick roguelite with a wonderful artstyle. Knowing that, why would you make the enemies and game systems more complex and numerous to the point where it doesn't really feel like Hades at all, it feels like i'm playing Enter the Gungeon. Change up the artstyle, sap the color out of it and make the runs take longer? Why introduce "allied" NPCs who are there just to grief you?

I understand that it's early access but this all seems so obvious, it's not a matter of the numbers not being right or glitches (which there are very few of) but on the most base level it doesn't work. I've already got ♥♥♥♥ boons and now i get punished more for that by being forced into a contest with nemesis that has 10 times my damage and lose 100 gold if i don't win. Who thought this up? How did this get in? Make good runs snowball even harder and bad runs even worse? If i don't get good boons i want on the first couple floors am i just supposed to find the closest environmental hazard so i can end it? I liked pushing bad runs and getting a busted combo through sheer coincidence at the end but not with this.

In the same breath i understand devs wanting to do more than just "first game but more of it" type of sequel but good god don't make it a Dawn of war 1 -> Dawn of war 2 moment.

In regards to how early access-y this game is. Not very, there are some obvious art placeholders but the game functions and bugs or "visual errors" are very rare, at least in my runs. Nothing to complain about there. There are some things missing like characters in the relationship tracker but generally it feels pretty complete.
It's already got more content and variety to it than the first game.

I do think it's worse than the first game mostly out of frustration with things i previously mentioned and although the different feeling combat doesn't take long to get used to i'm still not liking it as much as the first game. But it is still a generally enjoyable game. i'd say get it, not much of a reason to wait for full release other than full story and a new area or two.

While the game is fun and good, you need to pray before every patch that it doesnt ♥♥♥♥ up the game to the point of being unplayable, this is followed by the gigabrain move of not only having to go through a separate CDPR pre-launcher, but also having to wait through walls of text and logos that you cant skip/speed up only to be greeted by a crash report at the end of it so that it wastes as much of your time as humanly possible.

Tried every fix imaginable, it still crashes on startup, until one time it randomly doesnt. Launching the game through the .exe so it ignores their annoying ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pre-launcher seems to increase the chances of not crashing, but even then you'll still only be able to boot the game up 1/100 attempts.
So yea, the game is technically playable, if you are willing to do an hour long chore of starting it over and over until it decides to work (or not).
Its like every third patch they push out breaks the game for half the playerbase, before they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it in the next patch. That is a problem as i paid for the damn thing and i'll play it when i want, not when the devs graciously decide to fix what they previously broke.
This is as of patch 2.11, maybe in the next one it will work for me and not for you? Maybe it still wont work for either of us, or maybe it will brick your OS. Who knows, i sure as ♥♥♥♥ don't.

Pretty fun for what it is,

The absolute worst map design i ever had the misfortune of playing on, half the maps in this game are specifically designed to make spawn sniping the meta thing to do. Have fun playing when you can't leave spawn because the instant you spawn, you're in the crosshairs of 4 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ covered in bushes. In fact some maps are so ♥♥♥♥ that you can snipe enemy spawn from your own spawn and vice versa. You can literally die 6 seconds into the game starting through no fault of your own as the spawn as well as the route to where the game actually should be played, have no cover and is visible from across the map.
To make this even worse, the galaxybrain devs decided to make friction dependent on the type of terrain you are driving on, such as mud, this would truly be a great move if the game could actually ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ calculate friction, now, your metal behemoth that could in real life climb cliffs and hills twice as steep as what you're driving up in even worse weather, will just slide down. This is especially atrocious with vehicles that are slow and cumbersome to begin with, like the churchill. White rock fortress is so bad in this regard i cant see a historic star fortress anymore without my blood pressure rising up to the point of being able to cut steel.

The balance is also ass, gaijin pretends it relies on historical sources and asks to be provided evidence if players want something changed. They lie, They dont care about the documents, it only gets inspired by them, and when actual confirmed historical sources contradict what gaijin does, they'll just ignore it, they make vehicles worse than their real world counterpart, or better, depending entirely on how they feel that day. If they decided to make a tank that fires nukes and drives around at mach 4, no amount of official military documents saying "no lmao" will change their mind. This is also why modern ♥♥♥♥ keeps getting leaked, its either people wanting a new tank/ammo/plane/whatever in the game, or its the players trying and failing to prove to the devs that they are wrong, often resorting to classified info.
This combined with their inability to assign propper BR to certain tanks and trying to balance the game by making repairs more expensive rather than fixing the BR ♥♥♥♥♥ up some parts of the game to an incredible degree.
I am speaking as a ground battles player, that is to say i like playing tanks, not planes, which is a bit of a problem when the best thing you can do in ground battles is play a plane.
Thats right, in the tank game mode, planes are the better option.
Which means that the instant you kill somebody, they're gonna spawn in a plane, beeline it towards you and drop 14 2000 lbs bombs on your head.
This results in a fun gameplay of shooting once and hiding for 5 minutes under trees, hoping the enemy troglodyte doesnt notice you left your spot and bombs empty space.
Furthermore it means that you not only have to grind out the tank tech tree, which takes forever (if you wanna play modern tanks and not interwar/WW2/early cold war, good luck lmao), now you'll also have to grind out the aviation tech tree, because otherwise you are gimping yourself and your team.
What the hell is the matter with the devs. If aviation nerds can come into my tank matches and ♥♥♥♥ it up with planes, I demand to at least be able to ♥♥♥♥ up their air battles by spawning in with SPAAs.
"Well actually you can just spawn in an SPAA and kill the enemy planes in ground battles" Yes, i can spawn in an SPAA and wait for 5 minutes for people to start spawning planes only for them to crash while trying to bomb whoever killed them, riveting stuff.
And to top it off, there's a Volumetric Shells system in the game that results in your shots getting caught on random geometry and doing 0 damage. You could shoot a tank's side that you should pen 5 times over and you'll do nothing and get killed in turn because the system doesnt work. This is especially bad on some vehicles, like the Panther. Its turret weakspot is Volumetric hell, you could hit it 4 times in the same weakspot with the same ammo, same gun, from the same angle and get 4 different results. One will kill everyone in the turret, one will do nothing, one will damage the breech only and one will give the gunner jaundice.

There's so much more wrong with this game, from helicopters, some tanks getting gimped by warthunder giving them wrong copy pasted transmission so they feel terrible to drive, APHE being made far better than it actually was thus gimping any nations that were not using it in the process, helicopters, having to unlock stuff on tanks that you should have from the beginning, like ability to repair or put out a fire, helicopters, etc.

This game has some of the best vehicle variety there is, a great module system for damage and some actually great ideas, but it just fails at most of its ideas or doesn't go far enough with them, which results in a really fun core surrounded by pure ass. Even if you're not a tank guy, you're a plane guy, you'll still have to deal with a lot of these problems, its not as bad as with tanks to be honest, but it's still there, on top of it's own issues like missiles "technically working" (usually, unless they dont, or teleport around, or materialize 100 meters ahead of you)

Gaijin say they will fix this, they keep saying it and they never do, sometimes they "kind of" fix something (read: break it in a different way) as a way to appeal to the fanbase while they cook up the next retarded thing to ruin the game with (like drones) or a way to squeeze more money out of you.

The thing is i love playing warthunder, but i also loved Playing League, BDO and other sort of garbage that shortens your lifespan.
A while ago i watched a video on youtube from some people playing warthunder (dont remember the name) and at the end they said something along the lines of "Warthunder isnt a fun game, it has fun moments in it but it's not a fun game" followed up by "Well federal prison has fun moments". I know it sounds reddit but it's right. This game has some extremely fun moments and matches in it, but good god that's not what you're getting 99% of the time. If you play this game it will drive you up the wall the same way CS:GO, DotA, LoL etc. do. It's gonna sap the joy out of your day.

I would not recommend this game to anyone unless you absolutely must play a game where you fight as tanks and planes and you hate mechs. If you're not autistic and just looking for a multiplayer game or something to play with friends, get the hell away from this game. Get deep rock galactic or something instead.

The game is pretty good, maps can be huge, player counts even larger than Battlefields, you've a lot of gadget and gun variety as well as customization. Vehicles, while present aren't, nearly as much of a menace as in BF games as they die much easier. The game runs fine and never choked for me. Furthermore i haven't met a cheater yet.

There is however a couple issues i have with this.

First, the game turns on your microphone when you die for a couple seconds.
Upside: its really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ funny when you kill somebody and hear them swear.
Mind you i think the playerbase is good and not toxic but uh, its kinda obvious what this leads up to
Downside: people often swear as a way to let off steam, the more forbidden the word the more steam it lets off. It wasn't targeting anyone, it wasn't intended for anybody to hear it, but the mic turned on by itself and so people did hear it. The instant the wrong person starts moderating the reports, half the playerbase is gonna get banned.
This game is gonna have so many pewdiepie bridge moments lmao.

Secondly, the UI or whatever you call it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash.
In a match you have access to the usual Battlefield classes and class loadouts with a large variety of weapons, weapon gadgets and more and you can customize all these between spawns.
You cannot access this outside of a match. Wanna check stats of a gun, like its recoil or damage potential? Too bad lmao. Wanna check what possible customization is available for the gun? Wanna check what class has what secondary gadgets, like rocketlaunchers or throwables? Hell at least all the guns can technically be seen, although without stats/customization, you cant even see all the throwables/gadgets in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gadget section. Why? Theres like 5 versions of the RPG-7 and i can only see one? Why? Why do i have to boot into a match to check how far away i am from unlocking a scope on an AK or checking the recoil values on a FAL?
You unlocked something at the end of the match? You cant check loadouts at the end of a match, time to sit through map vote, people screaming into their microphones and a loading screen so i can see that i unlocked my fifth AK-74 flashlight.
I do not understand how you can get the actual game so right and fail so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard at something this basic and obvious.
You had the foresight to make things like toggle aim/sprint literally the first thing people see in the settings, as it should be, but you forgot to give us the option to SEE what sights we can even use on our weapons in the Weapons section?
What is even the point of the Soldier section with all the guns, (some) gadgets, vehicles etc.? It shows me how many kills i got with a weapon but i cant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ see what those kills unlock.
"but you can just boot into firing range to see that" I can't, in firing range everything is unlocked, i have to join an actual multiplayer match, AFK in the loadout section for 2 minutes and then leave, this is terrible.
It's such a minor thing but it is so unbelievably infuriating

Matches are quick to find, at least around 98% of max player capacity at the start of each match.
If you want a game where you don't have to invest time or much attention, just something you boot up for half an hour and have fun, this is a pretty good pick. Also a decent party game.
However
If you have the misfortune of getting a hunt game in your match, just leave and re-queue, even team maps are more bearable.
Other than that, one of the final maps is ass but you might as well finish that since it's the end.
If you follow this advice, it's a pretty fun and chill game.

I've gotten Hades in early access a couple months back and burned out on it a bit, so i've only seen the recently implemented ending on the net.
Nonetheless i would very much like to recommend the game, you don't even need to be a rougouelite fan to enjoy this game.

Supergiant games, the creators of Hades have previously made several games, and for me, the weakest part of those had always been the gameplay.

Their first game, Bastion, had absolutely fantastic voice work, soundtrack, artstyle and world that it was set in, but oh boy was the actual gameplay basic and not exactly fun.
Their second game, Transistor, had all the strengths of Bastion made even stronger, but from meh combat went to interesting combat that i could potentially see people loving, despite it not being my cup of tea.
Their third game, Pyre, had all the strengths of the previous titles and the gameplay was actually very fun. But this time around, with more numerous fun/interesting characters. It's a Hades review yes, but i'd also like to shill Pyre, i know, the premise of a fantasy basketball game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird but despite how great their previous titles were, it was their absolute best work without compare, for those that like the greek myths setting, that changed with the release of Hades though.

Hades looks fantastic, plays fantastic and sounds fantastic, i adore everything about it. I love the characters, including the MC, i love the soundtrack, i love the voice work, I love the hub and buying upgrades to it, i love the gameplay and i do like the story.
Basically, you're the son of Hades, and you wanna get out of hell. You have an assortment of weapons to use, each of which offers a different playstyle, with each weapon having 4 aspects, which play up the different strengths of those weapons. You can further alter them by picking up upgrades and "boons" from gods (the upgrades/buffs last for a single run) With boons you have a selection of 3 picked randomly from a pool of boons that that specific god can offer, there are also DUO boons which is a boon that can be chosen if you picked boons from different gods that play into each other.
If you took knockback on attacks from Poseidon, and you also had lightning bolt for a spell from zeus, the next time you find zeus and get a boon, you might (not 100%) get a DUO boon that makes enemies you push around with knockback get hit by lightning.

You also have things such as the mirror (minor buffs bought with currency that last permanently), Heat, which buffs enemies and makes environment more dangerous, but gives additional rewards as well as keepsakes and companions which further alter your play.

The main story was not my primary interest in the game, i was more into the atmosphere, each characters "side story" and gameplay more than the main plot. But it does open up strings like why your mother left, why nyx is aiding you, or are the other gods actually on your side, well as much as greek gods can be anyway.
I am happy to say that it does tie together nicely in the end and is easy to understand, no pretentious symbolism.
It's not the main driving force behind the game, but it is sufficient.

The only thing i was a little disappointed in was the setting, it's not poorly done or anything, it's just greek mythology.
I absolutely loved the moody and relatively mysterious worlds created by Supergiant for their games, more so than i like the greek mythos, it's not something that disappointed me in execution, but conceptually, i just don't find greek gods that interesting. Although i'm fairly certain i'm in the minority on this one.

With all this, you can easily dump dozens of hours into Hades, which will be made all the better by fantastic voice work, characters, artstyle and soundtrack.

Go buy it, it's well worth 20 dollars. ONE OF US

If you want something you can kill some time with and chill without having to actually dedicate a lot of effort this is for you, it's a clicker of sorts that's been around for forever at this point.
It's also got charming art and a fine sense of humor.
There's a P2W element as far as progression goes, in that it helps you progress faster, but you can at least drop a bit of the bought currency through quests and you don't have to pay, unless you want to compete for server best.
The progression doesn't get ridiculously slow without paying so i don't have a problem with it (from my experience in the browser version, which is basically identical to this and is cross platform with the mobile/steam version)

A lovely F2P diablo-like multiplayer game.

Gameplay/playstyle is what you'd expect from any game reminiscent of diablo, it's a looter with a focus on making the most efficient build you can, so that you can get more loot and so on.
You can do that for a while, follow a guide maybe, and once you get the hang of it, mayhaps make your own, wanna try making a build that can kill shaper afk? It's doable. Wanna make a build that spams a bright ability to visually assault and blind whoever's lobby you hijack? That's doable. Wanna crash people's game with a build? That's doable. Wanna take the spell that nobody takes seriously and make it viable? You can do that also.

This is a great game for people that like to theory craft and minmax their ♥♥♥♥, it's not exactly dwarf fortress tier autism project but you can still have a field day with it, or you can just follow a guide, guides are plentiful and there are even builds and guides specifically for people that are starting out or got brain damage.
The skill tree and skill pool to use and take advantage of, whilst daunting at first, are enormous.

In regards to classes, well the only thing a class affects is where you start on the skill tree and later on, ascendancy, which are relatively tiny (although important) class specific trees that give it a certain specific flavour, so while some classes/characters might be more viable/meta with a certain skill than others, you're not outright limited in terms of abilities and weapon choices on class selection

Content is plenty, with the first 10 acts, maps, syndicate, menagarie, delve, syndicate or whatever the flavor of the season is.
Never been disappointed so far, in fact the latest league reworked melee oriented ascensions (character specific skill trees) and basically all the melee spells making melee meta which resulted in me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ literal buckets.

Despite the games age the looks are still.....respectable, just don't zoom in if you're used to visual fidelity.

And importantly, the cash shop.
You can buy cosmetics, like armor, weapons, footprints, portal effects, a hideout skin etc.
What is also purchasable are stash tabs, basically, you'll be dumping lots of stuff in your stash (a personal bank) while you wont need them much at first and they're not what i'd consider necessery outright, you'll buy one if you like what the game has to offer and keep playing for a couple dozen hours (around the time the atlas of world/maps start)
There are many types of tabs, as a complete F2P with no purchases you get 3 tabs where you can put anything really, problem being that certain items stack at 10 but you'll have hunders of them if you play for an extended period of time, this is where the premium tabs come in, meant specifically for certain "item types", you can buy the currency tab and you wont ever have to worry about currency taking up too much space as it has it's own where it bypasses the max 10/20/40/whatever stack size the item has.
You're hoardin uniques? there's a premium tab for that, you're hoarding maps? There's a premium tab for that. Hoarding essences? there's a premium tab for that. Hoarding fragments? You guessed it.
You can also buy a "classic" premium tab, which basically functions the same as the classic F2P one, except whatever you place inthere can be tagged with a price and if you make the stash tab public, the information from that goes into poe trade webpage so that you can sell (trade items for currency) without building a tent in the trade chat.

I've spent a bunch of time in poe over a couple leagues and so far i've bought 2 tabs, 1 for currency and 1 premium "classic" so i can sell stuff easily. There are also nearly constantly sales on some part of the cash shop, and every now the then, the sale is on stash tabs. I think the cash shop to be fine and tolerable without the sales, the sales just make it more so.

In short, a true successor to diablo 2 with coop, multiplayer trading, memes, toucans and most importantly a cash shop that whilst present is what i'd consider F2P cash shop done right. It does not halt your progress or slow you down, you can't make anything faster or better with your wallet. It however does become somewhat necessary late in the game, although at that point, you'll know if you wanna spend the money or not.
And remember if you see a toucan in the chat, praise it. A meager chat restriction will not stop the church of Le Toucan

Art style/graphics-10/10
Soundtrack-9/10
Story-8/10
Atmosphere-8/10
Combat-7/10
Supergiant did what they do best. Simple yet refreshing combat, wonderful narrator, dreamy visuals and near perfect soundtrack. The Post Plot Depression (PPD for short), is strong with this one. Much like bastion.
Overall, i wish it was a little longer and definitly recommend it