Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the first sidequest season of the Gaming Backlog Book Club. We just finished Fallout 4 and are watching season two of the Fallout TV series. It’s just as good so far as we expected and anticipated after season one, but we’re ready to keep rolling with the games. So a bit of background on our iteration of a side quest when we were chatting about what games from our backlogs we both hadn’t played but really wanted to play. A handful of games that made our initial long list before narrowing it down were the types of games that can be really hard to define, how long they might take, and even more difficult to actually cut into chunks of gameplay that can be easily digestible in our make a set amount of progress week to week and chat about it before continuing on format of running a season of our podcast. So think games that fall into genres that require a lot of repeated runs, a lot of trial and error, a lot of accumulated knowledge or specific knowledge about doing certain things, etc. This largely encompassed our short list of roguelikes, roguelights, time loop stories, and in many cases games with procedurally generated levels.

Due to the nature of these types of games, we decided they wouldn’t work well in our typical format, but we still want to cover them once in a while. So we’re going on a side quest starting now that will run parallel to our next season and probably even longer.

The way we’ll run this side quest season is after today’s introduction. We’ll jump into the game over the next few weeks on our own time, meet back up to chat about our initial thoughts and first impressions, and exchange gameplay tips and early stories and then take however the hell long we may need to beat the game. Then come back and give our complete breakdown of the game.

We will also be having a two week holiday break before starting up our next typical season game in January.

Alex, have you been playing anything else since we finished Fallout 4?

[00:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I have. I’ve been. I carried on with Yotei some more. Go see Yote. Same here, same here. Excellent so far.

[00:01:58] Speaker A: Looks amazing, feels amazing.

Just the right degree of evolution from Tsushima that was needed to keep it fresh, but also gives you the same good feelings.

[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.

Another one I’ve been playing just as just relaxing wise by myself is Powerwash Simulator 2 because it’s just very cathartic and it’s just got like a fun career mode. Yeah, that’s.

[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, those are really power washing career.

[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah and then Battlefield 6. I play a lot with friends online Because I. I don’t. I. I know. I.

I know. I just. I don’t know.

[00:02:36] Speaker A: That’s.

[00:02:36] Speaker B: I can’t do cod. I love Battlefield more, even though unfortunately, what EA is doing. But I still enjoy Battlefield.

[00:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:02:46] Speaker B: So. But mainly it’s been Yotei for single player and it’s. Yeah. Yote has been a lot of fun.

Yeah.

[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I’ve jumped back into Yotei as well. I’ve jumped back into Silksong a bit. Otherwise, I sort of. After playing Silent Hill 2, I was still feeling the itch for a spooky season game, so. And I knew it was very short to begin with, so I played through Resident Evil 3 Remake, which caught a lot of flack for shortening, cutting things out and making it pretty fast. But fast was a good thing for me here with so many other games to juggle and I really enjoyed it. Smooth and looked good.

Good time overall. Ready to move on from the horror for a bit though now. So moving back to our side quest. For our first ever season of the side quest, we will be playing Hades. Hades 1.

Hades 2 just came out of Early Access a few months ago to release their 1.0 full version, and from what I hear, it’s fantastic with a different character, character and story and different spins on the gameplay. Hades has been on my backlog since it released, and I’ve really wanted this day to come. I’m not sure how long you’ve been kind of anticipating this one, but I. We’ve talked about it in the past, here and there.

[00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we’ve talked about it in the past a little bit. It’s like. Because it’s. It’s a roguelike, this Hades game. And to me, like, I’ve never played many roguelikes. I’ve played. I’ve played some. They’ve never been like a genre for me, like a. It’s not one that I’m excited for or like, I.

[00:04:07] Speaker A: Right.

[00:04:07] Speaker B: When I see them, I have to jump into them. But Hades. Like, I saw the trailers. I saw some other people play like, some people playing it on Twitch since it’s come out, just little bits of it, not much. And it just. It looked really interesting. It looked really interesting to me. I thought graphically it looked really great. I liked how the story. I always liked the.

Anyway, like those characters of like the underworld and all that. So it’s definitely something that’s piqued my curiosity to play.

[00:04:38] Speaker A: Wonderful. It’s a good reason to do it.

Yeah. And so for background, if you aren’t yet familiar with Hades. Hades was released in 2020, developed and published by Supergiant Games for Nintendo Switch, Mac and Windows. In 2021 it was put on PS4 and PS5, as well as Xbox One and Series X and S. That’s a mouthful. And last year it was also added to Mobile. It received very positive reviews and praise for procedural storytelling, its style and its narrative, its take on roguelike gameplay, combat as well as its art, voice, acting and music. So long list of praise.

It won Game of the Year by many publications as well.

The story setup has us step into the shoes, or probably the sandals I guess, of a character named Zagreus who is the son of the Greek God Hades as he tries to leave the underworld and make it to Mount Olympus and reunite with his mother Persephone.

And he gets a little help from his Olympian friends along the way through roguelike gameplay. Roguelite I suppose in this case, wherein each run contains a randomized set of rooms to go through filled with various enemies, bosses and rewards. It’s hack and slash combat really from an isometric perspective, so it’s like diagonally top down with some special abilities from what I can tell in the trailers, and a decent variety of weapons.

Being a roguelike, you are expected to die a lot and you restart from the very beginning of the game rather than at a checkpoint, but you use what you picked up or learned to hopefully make further progress and you get to keep the treasure you’ve accumulated as well.

Additionally, the other Olympians give Zagreus something called Boons, which are power ups that you get to use during your run and just for that run when you’re not fighting at the beginning of each run in the House of Hades, you can unlock things for future runs or for your current run, set up construction of useful features. Not sure exactly what that means, probably some sort of well to heal and that kind of thing. In the Underworld, you can also chat with the other underworld denizens, which layers a lot of the narrative interactions to the story. So you have a lot of actual text and I think voice acted conversations throughout and their relationships evolve as you react to them in certain ways. They can also give you additional quests or goals for your current run and there’s even an opportunity for some romance.

Outside of that, what do you know about Hades going into the game?

[00:07:06] Speaker B: Not much. As I said it’s roguelike. I mean I’ve played played a few roguelikes before, not very many. I’ve only really completed like one, but not too much. But as I Said like, yeah, I didn’t know too much about it. As in.

I mean as in like gameplay or all that. I knew it was like a roguelike, but it just.

[00:07:30] Speaker A: All the.

[00:07:30] Speaker B: As I said, the characters being the.

Like, it’s Greek mythology that’s always like piqued my interest. So ever since God of War days have been there.

[00:07:43] Speaker A: That’s just gonna reference too.

[00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:45] Speaker A: And you know, while still being very adult and supposedly kind of horny, it does seem to lean slightly more towards kind of Disney Hurricane, Hercules style Greek God mythology than God of War style. That’s just all about vengeance and blood all the time.

I think the fact that it definitely seems to be a little bit more lighthearted and joking and not just murderized, it’s more colorful and more focused on the friendships and relationships with the other gods instead of killing them all.

But yes, I very much expect to be constantly saying just one more run over and over deep into the night, as is usually the case in roguelike games, because you feel you can do a bit better on the next try and then there’s no time like the present.

[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree, that is very true.

[00:08:34] Speaker A: And so, I mean, I guess on my end, as far as Rogue lights and rogue likes go, I’ve played a handful that I really enjoy. I get eventually get caught up on just doing the early areas over and over again. And that’s typically while I’ll slow down and not totally finish them, but I’ve played Dead Cell, Slay the Spire, into the Breach, Enter the Gungeon, God of War, Ragnarok, Valhalla, which obviously both love that series. So I think that’s the one you mentioned that you finished as well. Very well done in a AAA game in a different kind of way. I’ve also done a tiny, tiny bit of Spelunky 1 and a tiny bit of Vampire Survivors. You know, while I’ve completed runs in some of these games and continue playing some of the other ones, I don’t think I’ve reached the true endings of any of the ones with stories in them. You know, even though I love the gameplay, just end up falling off or moving on to something else. So one day maybe I’ll finish some of those. I think that all changes though, with Hades because of how good and essential the story here is supposedly done.

There are also in the Roguelite world, there are some really good Roguelite podcasts I’ve found recently and listened to that have kind of reinspired me to give another shot at some of these. One of them is called Rogue Pod Light Cast, and the other is called Grogpod. So check those out if you’re interested in this genre after playing Hades. Okay, so that’s roguelikes. Have you played much of isometric action games?

[00:10:00] Speaker B: Don’t think so, no. No, I don’t think so. As the roguelikes. Yeah. Really probably just Roguelikes or Road Light roguelikes. It was Valhalla, which, as you said you played, I beat, which was. That was. That’s like the main one that I fully have played through and I’ve beat. Yeah, Roguelike because the story was just as a continuation of Ragnarok. It was so good.

[00:10:23] Speaker A: Right.

[00:10:24] Speaker B: And again, as you said, it just made me be like, I want to just keep going.

[00:10:27] Speaker A: One more run one more.

[00:10:28] Speaker B: I want to keep going, going, going.

So that’s like the main one.

[00:10:32] Speaker A: I expect that to take effect here too.

[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I played a bit of dicey dungeons before in the past, which is like a deck building one, which is pretty fun.

[00:10:41] Speaker A: With dice instead of cards, right?

[00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s dice. Yeah, it’s. No, it’s cards. I’m trying to remember. I haven’t now played it in a few years, but it’s a deck builder. But each card has obviously, like special abilities. That’ll do.

But yeah, you’re a little dice fighting other.

[00:11:03] Speaker A: Okay, dicey in terms of you. Your character is a dice, but you play with cards. That’s an interesting.

[00:11:09] Speaker B: I played a little bit of a game called Rogue Book, which I found on PlayStation, which was another roguelike or Road Light roguelite type game, where again, I think it was like a deck builder too, where you do your run, then you can spend some of your money or to upgrade some stuff, get new weapons and all that to move along. So. But that one I didn’t play. I played a little bit of that. Really not too much. It was more of. Yeah, I think I saw it as it was either free game for a month or I saw it as just coming onto the PlayStation catalog and I was like, oh, I’ll try it out. Like, I want to try it out. So I put a few hours into it. But yeah, Valhalla was my biggest roguelike. And again, because of the story and as from what I’ve heard, Hades has a phenomenal story. So it’ll probably keep me interested for a lot longer.

[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that’s supposedly what will keep you attached to it a bit longer.

Yeah. As far as isometric action games, I have a lot in my backlog, but haven’t Played tons.

First off, obviously Diablo 2, 3, 3 and 4. Played through the stories of all of them. Played Diablo 2 for who knows how many hours way back when and a decent amount of four. I played Tunic recently and Death’s Door, which are both a lot of.

A lot of fun. I really enjoyed both of those and they are shortish but get pretty deep.

But I’ll finish by saying. And I’ve played the first two supergiant games games, Bastion and Transistor and loved both of them. Both have interesting spins on isometric action gameplay. They do something a little bit different with ways to enable and disable details to make the game more challenging as you get better if you want to. I know Hades has a similar feature to that. It’s more than. More layered than just having easy, normal, hard and lethal modes. Both of those games have amazing soundtracks and intriguing different stories, even if they’re not quite as detailed as this. I have yet to play Pyre, which was their third game, but I really want to.

Supposedly very different and kind of weird space for fantasy basketball, but with an interesting story mixed in. I’ll probably squeeze that in between Hades 1 and Hades 2.

[00:13:17] Speaker B: Oh, that actually sounds. That sounds interesting. Pyre. I’ll have to check that one out. That one does sound interesting.

[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it was.

You know, I say basketball because that’s the thing I’ve heard other people describe it as. It’s. Watch. Watch a. You don’t need to watch a review, but watch a trailer for it. Just to get a feel before you.

[00:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.

[00:13:39] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean I’m really as far as just why starting it up now. I’m just looking to continue on my Supergiant games journey and play a game that many consider to be within the greatest of all time. I think that’s kind of why we’re both looking at it now.

[00:13:53] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, it is. It’s just something. It’s. I think it’s a great game here for our first side quest.

[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:14:01] Speaker B: And again, it’s something different to what I usually play and I’m excited to give it a go, especially with the story.

[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yeah, and we’ll have another game running simultaneously or maybe multiple depending on how long we take. So you know, if we. If you need a break from. From the constant repetition, then we can, you know, just keep going on the main season. So as mentioned earlier, considering Hirs is a non linear roguelike game with a story that requires multiple completed or cleared runs and victories over the final boss to unveil the true ending 10 full completed runs to be exact, and that’s just for the credits to roll. Supposedly there’s an epilogue if you keep going a bit, and then if you’re a true story completionist, you can go many, many more runs and exhaust all of the relationship conversations with the NPCs. It’s probably a little too far for me, but I’m intrigued about true ending in an epilogue. In a game like this, everyone should explore it at their own pace. Plus the fact that these types of games are best experienced without a time limit or pressure to finish by a certain point the way our normal seasons go, we’re going to both start up Hades now, play a bit, and reconvene in a couple weeks to share our first impressions and any tips, tricks we might have picked up, or strategies for certain enemies or bosses. And then we’ll both keep playing alongside our other normal season game until we’ve either finished our first run, finished the roll of credits after 10 cleared runs, or gone all the way to the epilogue. Maybe a mix of both, and then we’ll meet back up to share our final thoughts and full playthrough discussion whenever that happens. This might take weeks if we’re really enthralled with the story, it might take months if we struggle or end up distracted by something else. But we promise to come back and have that discussion to wrap up the side Quest season when we’re ready.

And we really want to chat along the way. So let us know your expectations on Discord before you start. And keep coming back to exchange tips too. We’re curious to hear your thoughts.

[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. I’m excited to start this up. Start up Hades here for our first ever side quest game and looking forward to also having you guys either follow us along or hear hear your thoughts on Hades and if you’ve enjoyed it, or if you’re going to be starting it up and what you’re excited for about it. So thank you all for listening.

[00:16:10] Speaker A: Yes, thank you. And even if you’re jumping back In After Playing Hades 2, you’re more than welcome. We want to hear your thoughts too. Yep.

[00:16:17] Speaker B: Thanks everybody.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of naive games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club Podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram account under the same name. Thanks.