How to make amazing ports for consoles: Hades
One of the biggest Indies ever seen a few days ago landed on consoles, those same consoles that a year ago rejected it, today yield to the quality of a title that we can classify it in the Roguelike genre and that breaks with all the conceptions of the industry, It is extremely fun and so full of content that it is mandatory to "die" several times to see even a minimum of what it offers, because here death is a mechanic in itself and opens many doors to the understanding of the central plot of the game, you will wonder why the creators have wanted it that way and you will see, Hades is one of those games that is easy to understand and learn the basic movements but once we advance through the dungeons you realize that the enemies are more diverse, more numerous and more powerful, the game is designed so that you die at the first moment you get distracted by the controls, so it is assumed that you will die and it is at this moment in which you return to your save point you realize that it is not the same base you left, the elements change, the dialogues that say new things and the characters change with each death you have, this is what differentiates Hades from most conventional Hack n Slash.
But this single mechanic can not last the whole game, there has to be something more and Hades surprises even more in its playable facet with an absolute frenetism as we advance in each of its areas where each monster, object or character is randomly generated every time we pass, so memorizing and preparing in advance for any enemy will not help us, you have to be cautious and improvise along the way using all the skills that the Greek gods give us while we fight in each chamber to dozens of enemies and patiently wait for the final bosses that for me are the best thing about the game at the level of challenge as it is certain that you will not be able to with them at the first game or the second, but little by little you build the skills of the scion of Hades to be able to face them, this is how death is also an important part of its gameplay as well as its history because even if we die we will always have the possibility of reviving in a nearby chamber with all our skills and objects, from there we will have a little easier the way if we use the tools we collect before we die.
It is time to talk about something that I loved from the first moment I could die in Hades, the personality of its many characters (each representing a Greek deity) is shocking, each one has a characteristic feature and a way of being that catches you right away and their stories are also an extra additive to the story that I liked a lot, (I love well-written games) that builds with each new step we take in hell and that leaves some good arcs for many of its characters.
The subtle changes in its gameplay are the ones that also make it a step above its competition because despite being a game that does not stand out too much for innovating its mechanics its level design and artistic design is sublime in all aspects, each pixel seems to be part of a painting and each change in the gameplay has a plot response, something that is HUGE if we consider all the variants and characters we encounter and we can also get a bonus that radically changes our play style, Hades thinks of each line as a part of its story and intertwines it in a masterful way to give us a story and gameplay that cannot exist one without the other, something that in my opinion, is devilishly difficult to achieve in the video game.
Although I often hear the argument that Roguelike games tend to fall into repetition and get boring after a few hours, I think Hades has attacked this problem brilliantly, both in terms of the fact that death has consequences per se both in the story and in the style of play as well as in its confrontations, and each dungeon is a festival of weapons that we can deploy at a crazy speed, the game goes very well when we know what we are doing and allows us to make some very satisfying combinations to finish off our enemies.
As for the controls and how they have adapted to consoles, I think they convey very well the feeling of speed of the PC version, of course, the graphics are maintained and I even feel that they have improved a little textures and Frames, so even if we are facing a dozen enemies (that at some point if we are going to be) we can enjoy in all its splendor of the battles and graphics that brings this masterpiece.