This game is brilliant and i'm so happy it's #1 on the Switch download chart. 

Now you know what us Early Access lot have been harping on about.

Not enough comments about the music which gets me pumped up everytime.

This is great

Yeah I'm struggling with handheld. Things are just too small. Looks great but I can't put in a solid run away from the TV so far.

That beat that kicks in when you start a new run though? Never gets old. I just wish it carried on through other areas. The soundtrack is fucking brilliant.

I've been rocking the bow and flirting with the captain america shield which has surprised me as I'm usually a sword and board man.

It's a brilliant game. I'm not sold on the narrative and characters and exposition in between runs - it's not my thing really but it's certainly done with panache and it doesn't outstay it's welcome.

I think I'd prefer a faster way to get into my next run rather than running through the rooms with various things to tinker with but it's a minor nitpick. I'm pretty spoilt by the instant restarts of Spelunky and Isaac etc.

Proper good. Who needs a next gen console when you've got this shit??

Yeah it's kinda what the genre means. Random elements so it's never the exact same run.

Dark Soldier wrote:

Isaac
Dead Cells
Neon Abyss
Hades
Gungeon
whatthefuckever

in that order

Slay the Spire is stood atop this pile looking mighty, laughing at Isaacs position and mocking the others.

Really enjoying how moreish this is. Just managed my 6th run and limped to the second boss encounter, but no further. Must give it a go on the tv as I'm sure it looks divine on the big screen.

Do all the weapons start with the same base damage?

Football is the best rogue-like.

Or there was a thread about Rogues generally.

Anywho, as a purveyor of rogues for a long ass
time one of the things I am always a bit torn on is the slow incremental increase of power as you play it for longer. It’s why Spire, Spelunky and Isaac are the best, because they are truer to the origins and have you starting from the ground up with every run, only thing that changes is what passive/active items you’ve added to the pool and your knowledge of the game. Spire feels like the apex to me because eventually everything is a known quantity and there’s no physical skill cap to your ability to play well, it’s all reasoning and thinking, and the way every run requires you to understand it from move one as a unique experience due to the huge amount of variables is just incredible. Recall a few days ago I was watching a Jorbs video where after 6000 odd hours of playing the game he did a relic swap and got a certain scenario in the first hallway fight that he’d never seen, which is just amazing. Technically the same can happen in Spelunky and Isaac because the exact positioning of elements changes much faster, but having it crystallised in turn based stuff really hammers home the strength of the genre - the ability for a well considered game to offer almost bottomless depths due to seeded generation.

Now Hades also have the same power creep element that most action roguelikes tend to go for these days, a power curve that lets you invest in stuff to get slowly stronger run after run so that your power curve starts to march up with the game’s difficulty curve. Usually it’s the kind of thing that dampens the enjoyment of a rogue after a while. Enough unlocks and investments lead to you finding an optimum way through, or simply winning via brute force. Dead Cells tried to fix this with its Cell system, but for my money the difficulty increases were far too punitive to be attractive to anyone but the most ardent and dedicated of players.

I think this is where Hades plays an absolute blinder with its overarching meta systems - darkness and heat go hand in hand really well to offer an enriching and long lasting sense of progression. The skills in the mirror having two versions that you can swap between mean that you’re setting yourself up for almost infinite combinations of them that you can tweak at will with almost no penalty. The Heat Bounties actively encourage you to mess around with the difficulty and negative elements of the runs to earn more resources that you can pour into the weapon aspects, which in turn help you deal with the tougher elements of the game. There’s a beautiful, reciprocal relationship between the meta elements of the game that really hammers home just how brilliantly designed it is. It’s not got the limitless potential of Slay the Spire’s deck building vs act map structure, but it does establish a really strong precedent for making action roguelikes a lot more long lived when they have very set weapons and skills than previous efforts in the genre have managed.

Heat 8 win, good stuff!

acemuzzy wrote:

stonechalice wrote:

Urgh. Slay the Spire is a card game. Doesn't belong. These are cool, fun action games we're talking about here, not top trumps.

I'm glad Chalice said this so I didn't have to

StS has cards in it. I'll concede that.

Another run today with a genuinely absurd shield build using a hidden aspect, absolutely ridiculous damage by stacking everything on Cast, via Zeus and Poseidon. 



Made mincemeat out of everything.

Wariospeedwagon wrote:

Need to start paying more attention to what the PC early access regulars are playing - along with this I remember Hollow Knight and Slay the Spire getting love, then I jump on like a year or two late to the party.

It's a step below those names, but I'd add Pako 2 to that list. It's well out of EA now, but I got on it early, and it's a cracking little game.

(And I don't know if it's hitting consoles, but Gunfire Reborn is another to keep an eye on.)

It's a loooong way off and could still go either way, but Shattered is also worth keeping track of.

Loving loving this on PC
Controller play so fluid and fun and the dialogue and sound remind me of diablo
GOTY so far for me.

I've gone and bought this as well. Had enough of Spelunky 2 for now. I like this very much so far.