Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book club.

This is our first ever side quest season and we put some hours into Hades one to have this preliminary gameplay conversation and strategy exchange.

Today is about the early moments of Hades. We will not be going into any story spoilers, but will be discussing gameplay tips and tricks as well as the builds and combos we most enjoy so far and beyond our own feedback that we’ve picked up with our limited time in the game, we also have a special guest from Roguepod Lightcast to share some tips as well. He’ll be joining us about halfway through. In our next SideQuest season one episode, we’ll discuss the full game of Hades story, spoilers included.

Now, to kick us off, I’ve completed eight runs, or escape attempts as they’re called in Hades. How many have you done, Alex?

I’ve done.

[00:00:53] Speaker B: I think I’m at like 17 now.

[00:00:57] Speaker A: You’re chugging along.

[00:00:58] Speaker B: I’m chugging along, yeah.

[00:01:00] Speaker A: So we’ve. We’ve both put up hands.

[00:01:02] Speaker B: I’ll say I’m chugging along on the escape attempts.

Maybe not on progress, but on escape attempts, well, I’m chugging along.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: Well, as long as you’re doing unlocking something each round, you’re probably making some progress.

So yeah, I guess the point here being we’ve both put a handful of hours into it, but by no means are anywhere near mastering the systems and neither of us has yet had a winning run to escape the Underworld and achieve the first ending. Well, without even kicking off with anything specific, what are your first impressions here?

[00:01:37] Speaker B: First impressions of Hades?

It’s.

I’ll start with like Roguelites, which is what this is. Roguelite. Roguelite Likes I guess are not really my cup of tea of type of games. The one I’ve only really done is the God of Wall Valhalla type.

[00:01:56] Speaker A: But I will say for I sense.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. As said, I’m like 17 runs in. I said maybe but I’m not going to go on a spoiler but my progress hasn’t been of great but I’ve been really enjoying like the characters. The voice acting is amazing, the artwork is phenomenal. I love how it looks and I am really enjoying like I’m now getting more used to the controls definitely.

[00:02:23] Speaker A: So yeah I’m even really perspective, I imagine that sort of isometric perspective. Yeah, it’s unique considering the games that you typically go for, that’s for sure.

[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yes, it is.

[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah.

I took a number of notes throughout here. Otherwise just because of the rinse and repeat Nature of multiple runs. I wanted to keep my thoughts straight and semi in order. And, you know, I think the first thing right off the bat is that I loved how they kind of immediately thrust you into your first round with minimal to no context, so you don’t go through the House of Hades. They just throw you into the first arena room.

And I think most gamers, you know, most tried and true gamers will probably just instinctively push the X or Y buttons or whatever on your controller that you have, or keyboard or mouse to try to attack the giant Cyclops enemies in that first room and then try to evade using the. What is it, The A button in our case here on Switch, But B, your circle.

Whether they’re using the dash or dodge button or not, they’ll probably try to escape from the enemies and survive reasonably well in that first room. I expected that this game might have included a bit of a tutorial in the first run, but I’m sure it’s designed this way with the intended result of getting you to respawn more quickly to establish more of that story to kick it off. But it’s kind of like that whole throw you into the thick of the story right away. I think in the book and cinema world it’s called in media Res.

Anyway, I thought that was a really cool implementation of it.

[00:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I mean, I actually. I’m trying to remember my first run. I think I got. I think I only got through like a couple. I don’t know if they call them rooms or chambers.

Yeah, Yeah. I only got through. I don’t know, maybe trying to think of how many it is until you reach a boss. I want to say it’s like seven total. Maybe.

[00:04:14] Speaker A: I believe it’s 12. I think it’s 12 per biome. And that may be a give or take kind of thing, but I think that’s what I was starting to notice.

[00:04:23] Speaker B: I think on that first run I probably got through about maybe half of like six or seven or so.

And I was like, oh, man. I was like. I felt like, oh, I was doing pretty well. And then I died. I was like. I was expecting myself to die because I was like, there’s no way I. On this, like, first run, like, I’m supposed to probably do that much.

[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, if your first run is a complete victory, then that’s impressive. Well, then you don’t really need to keep playing, I guess. You’re too good.

[00:04:48] Speaker B: That would be. Yeah, way too good.

[00:04:49] Speaker A: Defeats the point. Yeah, I would say. I mean, even in that first run my muscle memory from Bastion, the game kicked in the other, the first supergiant game. So I kind of had a sense of my surroundings without ever having been here.

But Zagreus is so much more nimble than the kid, the main character in that is. And he can kind of zip around the battlefield. So I felt like I was picking it up pretty quickly. And then I quickly realized that that was not the case. I also love this snarky humor that you get. I don’t know if you ever walked up to a chair and hit the button, because there’s a button prompt that says relax.

And if you click it, he just says it’s no time to rest.

[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, I try to go to bed all the time. I only actually got him. I got him to go to bed once, which I think was part of the actual story.

[00:05:36] Speaker A: To continue. Correct? Yes.

[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:05:39] Speaker A: And I did that at the bed every time just in case. And then, yeah, eventually realized, oh, there’s actually a story element to the. Why you can’t rest because they’re using it to show you something. Also, I mean, I. I realized later that this wasn’t. It was because of where I was. But if you pause the game when you’re in the house of Hades and hover over the give up option, which is right above the quit option. So go back to the main menu. It says, sorry, no giving up here.

Which, which, that was the first time I’d even seen the main menu.

So I, I thought, like, so they just have that grayed out as like a fun sort of meta. Like, nope, don’t give up. You’re better than that.

But it’s because I was right already. Back at the house of Hades, I think when you. I confirmed this by going out into a run and then looking at the main menu. And if you do that, if you want to just bail on your run, you can go back to the house of Hades like that.

But yeah, that was kind of a snarky, funny, entertaining moment as well.

I think one of the other. And we were talking about this a little bit beforehand, one of my early thoughts was just how different all these characters, characters, the version, these versions of the Greek gods are compared to, let’s say, God of War, which we are both huge fans of. Obviously Zeus especially is just a major a hole in the original God of War trilogy. These are definitely, I would say, much more comparative to the Disney animated Hercules, although a lot more adult.

[00:07:13] Speaker B: I was going to say they’re quite a bit more adult. And you see, like Aphrodite and.

[00:07:18] Speaker A: And Dionysus.

[00:07:19] Speaker B: Dionysus.

[00:07:20] Speaker A: The artistic depictions of them are. Which honestly, is probably a bit more accurate to what all the statues and artistic references were back in those days. But at least, you know, the fact that this is just a drawn animation and so was. So was the Hercules movie. That. That’s probably where the connection starts and ends.

[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m. Yeah, I would agree with.

[00:07:46] Speaker A: I think there’s, you know, random. I’m just kind of randomly firing off here, but something that I noticed. So with the giant. I don’t know what the name enemy name is called, but basically the giant golden blob people.

[00:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah. That, like, shoot forward.

[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yes. They, like, kind of lunge at you out of nowhere.

They. What I did notice is that if you’re able to get enough hits on them kind of at a consistent pattern almost, or timing, you can really stagger them well. So if you do it.

If you hit them right before they start to wind up their lunge, it’s possible to kind of just stun lock them and then just keep stun, locking them with every hit, and then they end up dying. And you can’t. They can’t do anything about it as long as you don’t get swarmed.

[00:08:32] Speaker B: Okay. I usually just, like. I give them a few hits, and when I see them change color, I just kind of dodge and then.

[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So. And I think it happens with a couple other enemies, too. So it’s like. I don’t know if it’s. I want to say I was using the spear when I figured that out, so I don’t know if it’s. Only some weapons can pull it off and not others, but something to try out, you know?

[00:08:50] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:08:53] Speaker A: It also seems like the name of the game here is to just constantly be on the move and dashing whenever you enter a room with tons of enemies. I’m really close to reconfiguring my control so I can map one of the shoulder buttons to the dash, because I feel like I’m just constantly dashing and don’t want to remove my hand from the attack buttons.

[00:09:12] Speaker B: I get that. Yeah. Yeah, I understand what you mean.

[00:09:15] Speaker A: There.

[00:09:15] Speaker B: There are times. Yeah, I get that. There are definitely times where now. Now that I’ve been playing longer, I feel myself just dashing around more. When I was first. The first few runs, I definitely caught myself of, like, I just wanted to attack, attack, attack, attack. And then was a little too slow on some of the dashes.

[00:09:31] Speaker A: Punished for that exact.

[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I definitely was so I’ve kind of now, I’m now more confident and comfortable with it where I can get a few hits in dash, dash, dash around and try and dash to be sort of behind to do a little more damage in the back and then.

[00:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah, especially because the do more damage if you keep unlocking that perk. Yeah, I, I, I did pretty quickly when I was playing Dead Cells and I’m still kind of haven’t finished that even if one run of that fully, but really enjoy that game. Another roguelike and roguelite and I almost immediately remapped that to a. I think it’s the left ZL trigger, the dodge roll because it’s just too much to keep up with and it’s easier to just always be available to dodge without removing your finger from the attack so you can quickly get the attack in once you’re done.

So I, I mean you and I were chatting a bit about even just getting through to the bosses or finishing the bosses. I reached that biome that I guess the Tartarus boss on my second run, that’s Magera or Meg.

You know, that’s, that’s not impressive by any means, but kind of interesting. I, I do find that I randomly get beginner’s luck in the first few runs of any roguelite, but once I get past that, I sometimes overthink things once I come up with sort of more of a vague strategy and then do terribly for many more runs before finally actually understanding the way things work and being able to advance or finish a run. I think I got to the. I got to the first. No, I got to the final boss of the easiest difficulty or the baseline difficulty of Slay the Spire on my very first run and died when it was almost an almost wonderful.

And then it took me maybe 20 more 30 more runs to finally finish the one of the final bosses in that so, you know, point here.

Beginner’s luck can be valuable but you gotta like actually learn from it, not just kind of press it.

[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you do.

Yeah, I got, I don’t. It took me probably three or four runs to get to Meg and then it took me quite a few more to get past.

[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I guess I was able to beat Meg who I think you know, at this point still presuming to be one of the one of the multiple likely bosses of Tartarus on my first try when I met her and I beat her with 19 health left and made it a couple rooms into the second biome asphodel, but was killed by the giant Gorgon Mini boss immediately when I entered the room. Because I only had one HP when I got in there and was shot almost the second.

The whole level loaded.

But, you know, like any good, engrossing roguelike, I just said one more run onto the next and. And just kept going, basically. But you know that that first win against Mega was using the bow, which I’m really liking as my primary weapon choice so far.

Just keeping distance seems to be useful as I still learn enemy patterns.

[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah. For me, I’ll say the bow and the, like, the sword of spear are my top two. Definitely the top two.

[00:13:01] Speaker A: I agree. The spear has been super useful. I was really sluggish with it at first, and then I figured it out, I guess after I tried it a couple more times.

[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:13:11] Speaker A: Because I did unlock the spear after that and it’s.

[00:13:13] Speaker C: It’s.

[00:13:14] Speaker A: It’s slow, but has a good reach, so that’s helpful. I mean, again, it’s like keeping the distances seems to be valuable.

[00:13:22] Speaker B: I’ve tried. I’ve also tried the shield. I tried the gloves and I have.

[00:13:30] Speaker A: Not tried the gloves yet. I unlocked them, but then I got the 20% extra darkness currency on the sword afterwards, and that was the last time I was on.

[00:13:43] Speaker B: Do not like the sword that you start with.

[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I’m not a fan either.

[00:13:47] Speaker B: It’s too slow. I. I don’t like it.

Yeah.

[00:13:56] Speaker A: So another thing I think that I noticed, right. So the. Basically, the MCU Thor hammer God of War Leviathan axe recall mechanic for the spear is pretty cool, in my opinion. It’s cool to see it in whatever media I find it in, apparently. I remember first seeing the trailer for God of war 2018 and seeing the Leviathan axe doing the same thing as Mjolnir from MCU and, you know, Norse mythology.

But it was really cool to just, you know, use that spear in that fashion with the special attack and in that.

[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I was gonna say. Yeah, it was. I. Yeah, I like the spear. I also like that when you use it like that in that special attack, is that you get damage from the front and the back. When it comes back through, you get the double damage.

[00:14:40] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. Yeah, you get the hit in the back and it counts as a backstab as well.

[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:14:45] Speaker A: Which is even better because, you know, you unlock that backstab perk and it really helps out.

[00:14:52] Speaker B: I.

[00:14:53] Speaker A: It. When I was doing that first spear run, I ended up taking a couple of aspects that made it really useful against armored enemies. It was like 400% damage, multiplier. Which was awesome. But I could barely do any damage to Meg on that run because she doesn’t have armor. So I got like 3/4 of her health down over a really long period of time, but ended up getting killed. And then I think, have you noticed this, too? She. She picked up a new attack in her moveset at that point, which I’m not sure whether that was an evolution because I had already fought her once, or if she and all the other bosses movesets vary from run to run, or as you get better at fighting them, they start pulling out new attacks. I mean, it’s something I think we’ll figure out more of as we go along.

[00:15:43] Speaker B: Maybe I haven’t noticed. Yeah. But I’ve. I think now, because I’ve now beat her a few times.

[00:15:50] Speaker A: It was like that meteor type attack where it ends up being like three or three or four.

[00:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I’ve had that A majority of times I’ve fought her.

[00:15:57] Speaker A: The very first run that I beat her on, it didn’t. That didn’t happen at all. So I. Okay. But I suppose that.

But she. Yeah, it seems like she pulls out some interesting things every once in a while.

[00:16:08] Speaker B: One of the new ones that she did against me was, like, shooting balls of, like, purple fire.

[00:16:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. In a. In a bullet hell fashion.

[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that. That’s. That’s a consistent one for me now. Yeah.

I did also realize whenever I was back at the house of Hades, I always instinctively went to go check in on Cerberus and give him some pets before moving on to whatever else. Do you do that, too?

[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah, Every. Every run.

[00:16:35] Speaker A: Every run.

[00:16:36] Speaker B: At the end of every run, I go, like, I. I go.

[00:16:39] Speaker A: I talked to.

[00:16:39] Speaker B: I literally have a pattern. I go to hip.

[00:16:41] Speaker A: Yeah, he’s on the way.

[00:16:43] Speaker B: And then I go to Achilles, and then I come back and I pet Cerberus and then sometimes talk to him. Mainly always just petting him. And then talk to Hades and then everybody else.

[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, move. Move south. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. I go. I go hypnos, Cerberus. And then go up to Achilles if he’s there. And there was the couple times that Cerberus wasn’t around, and that was.

[00:17:05] Speaker B: Oh, I didn’t never.

[00:17:06] Speaker A: Oh, I think I’ve had that once.

And, you know, at that point, you’re like, where’s my moral support, man?

[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah.

Have. Have you give.

I. I want to say, have you given gifts to people?

[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yes. Okay.

Yes. And I think you should continue to give gifts. It’s like the nectar item.

[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:17:27] Speaker A: The gifts seem very useful.

[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like.

[00:17:30] Speaker A: Because every time you get, like a plus one to your health, which is really not all that much at the end of the day, but I think you end up getting in the first one.

You get an. Was it an aspect, I think they call it. But you get some element that you can attach as an item per run that you can. And I think there’s a perk to unlock in between biomes. You can switch them out, but, yeah, it gives you an upgrade. So Cerberus’s item, if you haven’t unlocked it yet, I know that’s the one. That’s the one I’ve been using. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:01] Speaker B: I was first using one from the training dummy.

[00:18:07] Speaker A: Skelly.

[00:18:08] Speaker B: Skelly. Thank you. And I got that one maxed out already.

And then I started using Cerberus as one.

[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Also Skelly’s is also pretty solid there, but Cerberus is great. I ended up having also, basically, I. You know, as you play three, you end up finding different boons and different combinations of things. And I got a run that was all about spinning speed. So in that run, I had the shield.

I was using the shield for the first time as my weapon.

But I had just unlocked in Zagreus’s bedroom the double dash ability. So you can like, dash dash really quick instead of just one. And then I. From Hermes, I got faster movement speed as my very first boon in the first room. And then I stacked on a third dash too.

So I was just like flying like, wow, super speed throughout the every movement, basically. And then I got a boon on top of that. That made my dash attack stronger. So it was basically just zipping between enemies. I still lost a Meg since I didn’t do any damage, really to her, because I was able to dodge her attacks really well. But it was just a kind of a war of attrition. And I couldn’t whittle her health down. And I was kind of careless. But the speed was a lot of fun.

I also noticed I like the bouncing shield throw. That’s like Captain America. So the supergiant devs must have been doing a full MCU marathon when making this game or something, because multiple weapons are pulling elements from those things.

[00:19:34] Speaker B: Definitely. Definitely.

[00:19:36] Speaker A: I will say one of the timeline tracks, so that makes sense.

[00:19:39] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the best boons that I got was from Poseidon for the spear. And I was shooting out. When I do just the regular attack, which is like Y or whatever, I would shoot out three every time it shot out like three.

Yeah. I think it was from Poseidon. So I was doing. I was able to hit multiple enemies, and they were doing. It was giving me a lot of damage, too. I think that was one of the ones. The runs where I went pretty far.

[00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah. It’s like. It feels like I’ve done really well with some godspoons and other ones. I just kind of crumble on.

And not with any rhyme or reason. It just, like. I guess that’s just the luck of the draw kind of. There. There was. I mean, I imagine you’ve had this experience also by this point. So on my sixth run out of eight, I guess it is, which was my second run with the bow, I beat Meg again and had what felt like a nice synergy going. And then I arrived at one of those. Those rooms where when you’re already inside, you pick between one God’s boon and another God’s boon.

[00:20:46] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:20:46] Speaker A: Like, right next to each other. And it. And so you. You pick one and they say something to you, and the other one says something about, like, that was rude. So you. You choose one while angering the other. But then after you beat that way of enemies, I got to choose the other as well and recover. Basically, like, socially recover with that second one.

But this time, I chose Poseidon over Aphrodite because someone in Discord said how great some of Poseidon’s boons were.

But right after that, Aphrodite said she thought we had a good thing going, but beware, because I’m the jealous type.

So I figured, okay, I’ll just finish the wave of enemies to get Poseidon’s boon and then recover and be fine with her. But instead, while fighting the first wave, Aphrodite’s heart logo would pop out randomly and just kind of drift towards me. So I thought. I guess I just wasn’t, you know, in the frantic dodging. I thought they were healing hearts for some reason.

And then I noticed I was taking a fair bit of damage, so I was going for them.

And then I died and realized that Aphrodite was actually attacking me. So, yeah, gotta watch out for who you anger here because it does have consequences.

[00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. It definitely does.

[00:22:02] Speaker A: Other kind of random notes. So Darren Korb, he’s the guy who does the music for all of Supergiant’s games, is the voice of Zagreus, which is super cool that they gave him that opportunity. Also, Logan Cunningham is the narrator, and he plays Hades, which he’s great at, but I’ll never forget his Unique voice and performance as the narrator in Bastion, which literally made that game for me. His voice acting was phenomenal in Bastion.

And if you don’t feel like playing the game itself, go listen to the soundtrack because you get a little snippet of it in there too.

Okay. So voice acting, incredible. I also think it’s funny that you’re having all these kind of like all out battles with Meg and then she’s just chilling in the lounge of the house of Hades and you have a casual chat afterwards.

[00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I find that funny too. I like that.

[00:22:48] Speaker A: I mean I think too that.

Right. So we chatted a little bit about it. Like. So this is Megaera, but they call her Meg and it’s a Fury.

Remind me back to the Disney Hercules movie. Was Meg just a person named after the Fury or was it the Fury?

I have not seen the movie in a long time.

[00:23:14] Speaker B: I think she was just a person.

Just a person who had basically sort of sold her soul to Hades.

[00:23:22] Speaker A: Okay, I forgot that detail. So. Yeah, I mean it’s.

The thing I think is that Greek mythology especially is one of the most well knowns worldwide as far as ancient gods. So there’s so many interpretations of them that this is a nice unique kind of iteration of all that.

[00:23:44] Speaker B: There’s a part of me that’s curious on if Hercules might show up in this.

[00:23:50] Speaker A: I mean, considering Achilles is in there, I wouldn’t be surprised.

[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I am curious.

[00:23:54] Speaker A: I also noticed while I was playing, you know, I eventually kind of picked it up, but I wasn’t using the Cast attack much at all, which is the A button on switch. I always forgot about it.

[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yep, I. Yeah, same here. And then I’ve been using it on some of my recent runs, but I don’t really know. I like use it, but then I don’t see enough to see if it’s actually do does that much damage.

[00:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it’s. It’s just. It’s such a frenetic pace that you don’t necessarily keep track of all that.

Yeah, but so, right. I mean you. You shoot with the cast attack. You shoot it into the enemy. It gets like lodged in them and disappears. And then if you hit them enough or you wait long enough, it pops out and you can pick up the ammo again. Basically.

[00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:24:35] Speaker A: But I never actually notice if it does enough damage. I think where it. I do notice a positive impact from it is when you use one of the boons to amplify it because then it can do something extra. It’s not just like a blunt force attack because, like, I picked up a Zeus boon for it that made it shock other enemies nearby. And there were a couple other versions that I think were a bit more useful, at least in my end. But I mean, it seems to be that it’s pretty much a guarantee that a balanced use of all the abilities you have is pretty important to win a run.

But I just haven’t put the muscle memory into hitting the A button enough, I guess.

[00:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah, same thing.

[00:25:12] Speaker A: I’ve kind of started to force myself to do it after unlocking the ability to cast three times.

Like having three ammo, basically, which I think is pretty useful. I also barely use the Call Ultimate Attack either.

Like, I never even pay attention to whether my meter for that is built up enough.

Have you used the Call much?

[00:25:33] Speaker B: I did it on a run and I tried to use it against Meg and I don’t even know if it did anything. Like I was standing next to her and I hit the button on switches, whatever, zr. And I don’t even know if it really did anything because again, it was just so hectic.

Like, it seemed like it just was like sort of a waste. But I don’t know. I might have done it wrong. I might have done it wrong. I have no idea.

Yeah, I gotta figure that out.

I might have to do a run where I just take that every now and then and then just kind of use it and see on some other.

[00:26:09] Speaker A: Regularly, like experiment and analyze what’s happening. Not a bad goal.

Yeah, I mean, I think as. As I’ve continued to play through this, I’ve kind of picked up my own habits and then tried to like deconstruct them to the point where I can make them make more progress by using them. On my, I guess it was seventh run, I used the spear and got past the, you know, beat Meg, got past that giant Gorgon that. The mini boss that killed me, and then was able to reach that boss of Asphodel and promptly got crushed. I. I got. I guess I got like half or three quarters of the way through. So I got to the third phase of that boss. But that one’s a tough one because it’s. It’s quite a bit more involved and there’s a lot more to dodge.

Oh yeah, we won’t kind of spoil that if you haven’t reached there yet. But I think we’ll want to have that. That chat in Discord and really kind of figure out people’s strategies for that. Because I have yet to beat It. Have you?

[00:27:08] Speaker B: No, I have not. But on my last run, just before actually getting on here, because I played like two runs before, on my last run, I got it down. If I had another one of the revives, like back to health, I would have beat it.

But I had it down to less than three quarters.

[00:27:30] Speaker A: You’re close.

[00:27:31] Speaker B: I was so close because I figured out all the other little things around and I was doing well, dodging and getting attacks down. And I was so close. But I just needed. But then after that run, I was able to unlock on the.

[00:27:44] Speaker A: What’s it.

[00:27:45] Speaker B: The permanent unlocks an extra revive.

[00:27:49] Speaker A: So if I get back there, I need to get doing well. I only have one revive so far. I need to get more.

[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah. If I get back there doing well, then hopefully I can. Yeah.

Beat him.

[00:28:01] Speaker A: Beat it.

[00:28:02] Speaker B: So. Yeah.

[00:28:03] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

I guess the. The last bit of sort of my first impressions are almost like a bit of a mystery to solve at some point in the future is so in Asphodel, I found a portal in a room that I could have. Basically, you have the option to sacrifice. In my case, it was sacrifice 24 health to enter this portal and descend, as they put it.

But I was just trying to get as far as I could. So that seemed risky at the moment. So I didn’t do it. And I have no idea where it goes. I mean, it’s something about taking an elevator down when you’re trying to go up to escape the Underworld seems counterintuitive. I’ll try that out once I have more confidence in my own survivability in this game.

[00:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve seen them. I’ve seen him.

[00:28:49] Speaker A: Did you run into that? Did you try it?

[00:28:50] Speaker B: I. I’ve seen it a few times. No, I haven’t. It’s in. I’ve seen in. Is it Tartarus? Tartarus.

[00:28:56] Speaker A: Oh, you’ve seen one there too. Okay.

[00:28:57] Speaker B: I’ve seen.

[00:28:58] Speaker A: I haven’t seen.

[00:28:58] Speaker B: I’ve seen him in both, but I’ve never. Because when I’ve seen it, I’ve been like, maybe I have like half of my health left and I don’t want to lose if I see one, like, maybe early on and I still have a good chunk of my health, I might try it. But yeah, because I am curious on what it does or where it goes.

[00:29:23] Speaker A: I guess we’ll just have to keep going, get better, and then eventually try it. So do it first.

[00:29:29] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:29:29] Speaker B: If you go down there and you just can get a ton of darkness to help upgrade.

So, yeah, I Don’t know.

Be interesting to see.

[00:29:43] Speaker A: So now that we’ve been through a bit of our initial experiences, we wanted to welcome a very special guest, Danny, from the Roguelite specific podcast, Rogue Pod Lightcast. Welcome, Danny.

[00:29:55] Speaker C: Hey, guys, thanks for having me.

[00:29:57] Speaker A: Do you want to give a bit of an introduction to your podcast, what you’re focused on over there and your ever growing Roguelite tier list?

[00:30:04] Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. The. The monumental quest to. To create the ultimate Roguelite tier list sounds a little grander than it actually is. Really. We just play a different roguelite or action roguelike every other week and we add them to a tier list, which is both a fun exercise and is a really good way to get people on the Internet mad at you for your video game. Takes trying to like, objectively rank such a subjective experience is flawed in its inception, but we have fun with it. So play a lot of roguelites. And just to get out ahead of any, like, definition questions, we basically use the most permissive definition of a roguelite to be any kind of procedurally generated game that has procedural generation and permadeath, but is not a traditional roguelike, which is like grid based and turn based. And that was kind of the, I think, more accepted definition of roguelites, maybe like five years ago, 10 years ago. And I think the tides have shifted to differentiate. Roguelites don’t have meta progression and Roguelites do. But we’re kind of in the old camp of the roguelite definition. So, yeah, Rog, ish games play a lot of them.

[00:31:20] Speaker A: So I might ask a clarifying question there too, because I, you know, I noticed that you’ve just recently put out a couple episodes about spelunky. And I know that on Discord you talk quite emphatically about how much you both enjoy spelunky, spelunky series, which, to my understanding, I did. You know, I picked up both, I think, on a Steam sale for like five bucks total a couple years ago and put in an hour or two into the first spelunky whenever that was.

I. And so that seems to fall much more into that sort of more traditional, and maybe not grid like, but into the more traditional, no meta progression. Only thing that you’re progressing with is the knowledge that you gain out of your run. Is that correct?

[00:31:59] Speaker C: Totally correct.

But when I say traditional roguelikes, I mean literally like NetHack or DCSS, like games that are designed like rogue. So Rogue was a game that came out in, you know, 1980, and you’re a little at symbol and you’re moving around through a dungeon. And before spelunky, Spelunky was like the first wave of this, the first game in this new wave Spelunky Classic in 2008 was the first game that combined roguelike elements with a platformer. And the developer said, this is an action roguelike. And people who play a lot of traditional roguelikes get like really pedantic about definitions. And this drove a lot of people crazy. This is nothing like a roguelike. How can you call this a roguelike? It’s not even turn based, it’s not even grid based.

And then when Rogue Legacy came out in 2013.

Rogue Legacy is a game that has a lot of meta progression. And they were the first ones that coined the term roguelite. And a kind of schism happened there where some segment of the community said, great, we have a new term for all of these games that take these roguelike elements. But aren’t these grid based, turn based games? We can call them all roguelites. And then another segment, and I think this, this segment is actually one out and we’re kind of living in the past, said, oh, roguelites are games with a lot of meta progression, and roguelikes are ones without. So since David and I both came from playing traditional roguelikes, like we played a lot of Nethack, I think we were in the camp of all of these games fall under this roguelite umbrella. But as the genre’s gotten more populator, it’s gotten more popular, it’s kind of branched that separate way. But I try not to get too bogged down in the definitions, at least on our podcast, because we tend to do it all the time. We tend to always get lost in the sauce on it. And people online are always, either way, if you say it’s a roguelike, somebody will say it’s not a roguelike. If you say it’s a roguelite, then you’re safer. So we, we go with the rog lights.

[00:33:58] Speaker A: I hear you. Better safe than sorry. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think the big thing too is right, so you’ve. You’ve got a full podcast focused on roguelites.

How? I mean, obviously you’ve both have plenty of experience and enjoyment out of it. I think the one thing that we’ve noticed after, you know, doing, what is it, six months now of podcasting, Alex, fitting in the time.

So you’re saying you do it every two weeks, you do another Roguelite game.

But the limited experience I have with Roguelites is going to be that hour of Spelunky, it’s maybe like 40 hours of dead cells around the same of Slay the Spire and then this little bit of Hades. Now I maybe have touched a couple others, but it takes a good chunk of time to get good at any of these things.

[00:34:48] Speaker C: Sure.

[00:34:49] Speaker A: Are you really, like, I’m curious how deep you’re going into these or a lot of them games that you’ve touched a little bit before and then really kind of decide to dive in and figure out the ropes around them.

[00:35:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I’d say it’s a mix of the two. Like I’d say all of the kind of big games in the genre that came out before a podcast we’ve played and some of them we’ve played a lot of, some of them we’ve played a little of. But in general, I try to play a game for at least like five hours, five to six hours in a, in a two week period.

And I think I can pick up enough from five or six hours in a way. Like Roguelites serve well to not playing too much because you can see the whole core gameplay loop right away for the most part. Like maybe you’re not getting into the deeper levels and maybe you’re not unlocking some secret things or all the content. Almost certainly not unlocking all of the content. But I think for the most part, like right now we’re covering Star of Providence for the podcast. So I’m in the like playing the game phase and it’s just extremely difficult, like Shoot them Up Roguelite, where it’s kind of screen based. You’re, you’re going into a screen, you’re clearing enemies and then you know, you’re going into the next one. And I’m really bad at it and I’m, I’m probably won’t beat the game by the time the podcast records up. But like I’ll probably get, you know, 75% the way through it because at the end of the day, one of these runs, for almost all of these games, a complete run is like even like Hades. Well, I won’t say anything about Hades.

[00:36:30] Speaker A: No spoilers.

[00:36:31] Speaker C: But like Spelunky, for instance, a complete run is maybe 15 minutes. So.

[00:36:38] Speaker A: Right.

[00:36:38] Speaker C: You are able to kind of acquire the skills. You can get pretty deep in the game pretty quickly.

[00:36:43] Speaker A: Right, right. Okay. Yeah, I mean that, that seems to make sense. I, I and you’re saying the Shoot em up. I think the other Roguelite I played was Enter the Gungeon, which I sure.

You know, there’s A high skill ceiling for that and pretty much any of these, too. But it’s really just about knowledge.

Knowledge that you pick up.

[00:37:01] Speaker C: Yeah, totally, totally. And then for ones that I really can’t crack, and there’s a lot more complexity. I’ll watch like a YouTube video, so I’ll be doing a full run just to kind of fill out the gaps before recording.

[00:37:13] Speaker A: Totally.

And I think another question too is how do you typically approach a roguelite that you start up and are just learning the ropes and getting into?

[00:37:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I try to change.

I try to take every different item that I can and every different upgrade that I can, because I think that you’re. You’re plopped into this and for the most part, you takes a few runs to even figure out, like, what is going on. What am I trying to do? What are all these menus? What are these items?

[00:37:43] Speaker A: What are those?

[00:37:44] Speaker C: And, like, your first run, you’re going in, you’re just going to lose quickly and that’s fine. And you’re trying to understand basics about movement, combat, whatever. And I think the key to picking them up relatively fast is it might be tempting to take a good item that you just got on the last run. But often in. In Roguelites and Hades is no exception.

[00:38:07] Speaker A: You’re.

[00:38:08] Speaker C: You’re presented with choices. Right. And I think, like, selecting something that you’ve never taken before, just to see how it works and see how it works with your build and whatever you have, I think that’s like the thing that will put you on a fast track to understanding the game quicker. And once you have kind of built out your own internal dictionary of, oh, I. I see that. And that does this thing, then you can start going for the stronger items because. But, like, you can’t know what a good item is unless you’ve taken a bunch of items.

[00:38:39] Speaker A: Right.

[00:38:40] Speaker C: And have some. So, yeah, I think, like, not trying to chase the same build every time, but rather trying to branch out as possible.

[00:38:48] Speaker A: Sure. Okay.

[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I get. Yeah, I agree on that.

[00:38:50] Speaker A: So Danny and David at Roguepod Lightcast released their episode about Hades a couple months ago.

So it’s fresh in. In your head, Danny. And we felt it was definitely the perfect time to have you on here to share some tips and strategies about Haiti specifically.

[00:39:07] Speaker C: Mm.

[00:39:08] Speaker A: So I guess we’re wondering, there are obviously many people wanting to jump into Hades 1 Now, after hearing such good reviews for Hades 2, are there any specific tips and tricks that you’d recommend for playing and progressing in Hades? Hmm.

[00:39:22] Speaker C: I mean, I think that Hades despite being, I think Hades is the most popular roguelite among people who don’t play a lot of Roguelites. And I, and I think it’s for good reason. But the reason is not that it’s easy, right? Like, I don’t think Hades is an easy game by any stretch. And so I think my advice with Hades, without getting into spoilers or mechanics that you may or may not unlock, I think is just like take different boons, take. Try to see how the boons might interact with each other, try all of the different weapons as you’re unlocking them.

And Hades is a pretty meta progression heavy game. So even when you’re losing, you know you’re, you’re progressing. I think, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that unlocking the, the extra lives in the meta progression tree, wherever that is, is like extremely useful.

[00:40:18] Speaker A: You.

[00:40:19] Speaker C: I think you can get up to maybe two or three extra lives within Iran. So where you die just don’t actually die. I think trying to prioritize that, saving whatever currency you use to, to go for that and then like it really becomes just a pattern recognition game about learning boss patterns. And so you just have to be getting to them and you have to be fighting them enough times to where you start recognizing their patterns and are able to dodge them more effectively. So I mean it’s, it’s kind of just throwing your head at the wall and but hoping that you have fun in the process of it.

[00:40:54] Speaker A: That you have fun and you’re actually acquiring information as you go and not. Yeah, just repeating the same thing over and over.

[00:41:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean the whole joy of roguelites is having fun while losing. You gotta find a way to do that. I think.

[00:41:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it is true. I mean, the Roguelites, I’ll say for me, like, Hades is one of my.

I mentioned it earlier in this episode, like one of the only like two or whatever roguelites I’ve played. The other one was all Roguelite. I’ve played the God of war, Ragnarok, Valhalla DLC and beat that. I loved it because I love God of War, one of my favorite series. But yeah, it’s new to me. So it’s like I’ve. I remember I got like seven runs in and I hadn’t beaten Meg, the first boss. And I was like, I’m like so annoyed because I got her so close a few times. I’m like texting him, like, I don’t know if I’m going to finish this. I Don’t know how I’m going to do it. He’s like, there’s a God mode. I was like, I know there’s a God mode, but I don’t want to do that. Like, I know.

And I have progressed a little further since I have beat her. And since I’ve done now I think about 15 to 18 runs. But there have been runs where sort of like, as you say, there have been runs. I do. Where to just get my darkness up.

[00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:42:03] Speaker B: Or to get some extra keys. So I actually just bought. I had 500 darkness and I just bought. I think it’s the second to give me two. Two revives. Yeah.

[00:42:12] Speaker C: It goes a long way.

[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. So there have been a few of those runs where I’m like, I’ll just get as far as I can, but I’m going for specific items to just get it up right now.

[00:42:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I’d say we’re. We’re trying to avoid story spoilers, primarily. And I think some of the gameplay things kind of you unlock as you go through it. Totally. A question I have, I guess, is do you typically. And this is across all Roguelites. Right. Do you usually try to unlock as much as you can? I mean, you kind of mentioned that, like, to get more variety and experience that you can try things out, or do you try to get as far as you can with every run? Do you go through times when you’re just like, let me just unlock these things or gather this much currency and then, you know, like, bail out or just kind of like crash on purpose, almost like, if a run’s not going well.

Sure.

[00:42:56] Speaker C: I will say, if there is a game that’s making me do that, I’m probably not having fun with the game. Like, okay. I tend to not like. Despite the name of our podcast being Rogue Pod Lightcast, I think David and I both tend to not like games with a lot of meta progression because our kind of foundation is from, say, like, spelunky that, like you said, has. Has no meta progression. Sure.

And the second I feel like I’m grinding just for currency in a game, I. I’m. It hits my brain of, like, what am I doing? Like, this is. This feels like a waste of time.

And like, a recent example of that is Ball X Pit. That this was like, a huge hit in the roguelite world.

[00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve heard of this. Yeah.

[00:43:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And, like, it’s. It’s just after, like, two runs, I felt like I was just grinding for currency. And then.

Then it Feels like an idle game to me where like even if I’m doing stuff, I’m just kind of like passively waiting to get strong enough to progress. And I think the, the magic of these games for me is the feeling that when I first started this very difficult game I could only get past say the first boss or only to the first boss. And now I can clear the first boss without taking a hit because I have like mastered it right. Like I have understood how to beat this boss. I have developed my skill skills and you get this like clear measuring stick within a game of I used to be only get to here now I can always get here. Now this beginning is a total non issue and the greatest roguelites are ones that make that first part. The game needs to go quick, it needs to kind of be on rails because when you’re good at the game you need to be able to breeze through it really fast. But it still needs to be difficult enough to where you can’t pick up the game and beat it in a two hour setting. And like finding that honing in on that difficulty is something that’s, that’s really hard. And I think meta progression can make it a lot more forgiving especially for folks who don’t play as many robots because it can feel like okay, I’m, I’m not progressing at all. Like what is the point of this? I think that that’s a common response to a game without meta progression. And I think like yeah, I very much see it as I, if it’s a game that I’m enjoying, like I want to beat this game and I need to figure out how to say beat this specific boss and the only way I can is to, is to do it. So long winded way to say I’ll bail on a game if I, if it’s forcing me to grind for meta progression currency.

[00:45:18] Speaker A: Got it. Got it. Yeah. I mean I think Alex had sent me that message of I might DNF this one and you know, I, I think that is totally a valid option if you’re not enjoying something. But for sure, you know, I, I, I pushed them along the, the route of try try this instead and see if you can sort of make some more, more advancement through that. I mean, I think so My first, I would say Dead Cells is the roguelite I put the most time into as well as I suppose I’ve gotten the farthest. And have you played that one at all?

[00:45:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I’ve played a decent amount of Dead Cells and I’ve, I’ve bounced off of it for whatever reason. I know it’s. It’s regarded as one that is. Is really high and honestly, since I’ve bounced off of it and I know that I. People like it so much. We haven’t covered it yet on the podcast because it’s going to be one that we’re going to put on our tier list and people are going to get mad at us for. So we’ve been, we’ve been dragging.

[00:46:14] Speaker B: Right, right, right.

[00:46:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I’d be hesitant to do that too. I’m glad we don’t do a tier list, Alex.

[00:46:20] Speaker B: I’m not gonna lie though. I enjoy watching those like tier list videos on YouTube of people who just. Any types of games or like.

[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:46:26] Speaker B: Specifically.

[00:46:27] Speaker A: You see how different is your opinion from mine. Can I attack you?

[00:46:30] Speaker B: I just, I enjoy seeing where people. Yeah. Rank things. Yeah. There have been times where I’ll say to myself, they’ll put something. I’ll be like. They’ll say like, oh, it’s a C. I’ll be like, okay, no, yeah, of.

[00:46:40] Speaker C: Course your whole, this whole tier list is now invalid based on that opinion. I know. I do like to try to get some. You know, we’re, we’re both, we’re all people that have a podcast.

[00:46:51] Speaker A: Right. It’s.

[00:46:52] Speaker C: It’s hard to grow a podcast and one of the ways that I’ve tried to do it is by like posting tier list videos on TikTok. And it’s, it’s funny the like, the range of responses that you get. People are actually kind of nicer on TikTok than on Reddit, you know, in a surprising way.

[00:47:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think so. Especially one of the things that I’ve picked up, like I have yet to finish a run in dev cells, although I enjoy the.

The moment to moment kind of action gameplay. I’m a big fan of Metroidvanias, which a lot of people mistakenly say it’s a Metroidvania. You know, the action itself may feel like it, but it’s a roguelite first and foremost. And. But I think that the thing that I. The kind of the.

What’s it like. Major element that I felt like I misunderstood at the beginning was that there’s. If you get through a particular biome in a certain amount of time and in the early biomes, if you get through them really quickly, then you can unlock basically a room with either an upgrade to a weapon or a bunch of currency to then, you know, continue your meta progression. I think when I was early on in the game, I was just like, oh, this is an option. Okay, I’m going to sprint through this level and find the exit as fast as I can so that I can get out of it within two minutes. And then, you know, up upgrade or unlock a new blueprint or whatever else. And then you realize, okay, but you know, that’s one way to, to advance somewhat. But if you actually go through sort of more meticulously and go to every corner and find all these, you know, that has these scrolls that give you an upgrade to one of three stats, then you get significantly stronger, significantly more health, and you can really actually survive a lot longer, which makes the whole game more fun in the first place. And it’s like, that’s one of the things I wish someone had told me. Obviously I could go on to any million websites or YouTube, wherever else to find an info, but it’s like a nice tip to have kind of right off the bat when you’re starting a game like this. I feel like.

[00:48:44] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, totally.

[00:48:47] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:48:47] Speaker C: I can’t think of anything similar for Hades.

Alex, if it makes you feel better, I DNF’d Hades.

I’ve never beat it.

I put about 15 or 16 hours in it and I kept losing on the final boss, but I got to that exact point where I felt like I needed to grind for meta progression currency. And that’s just not what I do the Roguelites for.

[00:49:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and that’s totally fair. Right? That’s just. If a game is not either respecting your time or it’s not fun for you anymore, then that’s, that’s the right time to move on.

[00:49:19] Speaker C: I would also say that God mode in Hades is unlike God Mode in any other game that I’ve heard of, where it is not just like you turn it on and the game is easy. The way that it works is you get. You turn it on, you get 20% damage reduction, and every run you lose, you get 1% additional damage reduction up to 80%.

So turning on God mode does not mean like free win. It kind of just means that like you scale, you, you. You know, by the time you have 80% damage reduction, sure, that’s a. That’s a pretty big bonus, but it kind of just makes it a little more forgiving as you lose over and over and over.

[00:49:57] Speaker A: Okay, okay, so. So it, it basically gets stronger as you lose more.

[00:50:03] Speaker C: Yeah, slowly. Which I think is a cool way to do it because. Because the whole conceit of the design of Hades is that the developers want you to be interacting with the story.

Every time you lose. Right.

Every time you lose a run, you come back and there’s different NPCs and dialogue and everything.

[00:50:19] Speaker B: I think that’s also what’s kind of keeping me going. Like, I’m still enjoying it because of that. I’m enjoying the story, the characters and all that. Like. Yeah. Meeting some of the new characters as well. So, yeah, that’s definitely keeping me going.

[00:50:31] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:50:32] Speaker C: Yeah, they do it better than any other Roguelite, I think. I think that’s Hades Special sauce, and.

[00:50:38] Speaker A: I think that’s definitely Supergiant’s overall kind of strong suit. Absolutely. In addition to their music and art style. Right. Which is kind of a separate point, but it’s something that is intriguing to the point where Hades 2 came out recently and is doing very well.

And I think even though it’s. And from what I can tell, they’ve made enough significant changes to the gameplay and to other elements of it, and then that story is what kind of cut people coming back on top of it.

[00:51:11] Speaker C: Yeah, people, people, People seem to really like Hades too. I haven’t picked it up yet, but I’m. It is definitely on our list.

[00:51:19] Speaker A: And I mean, even sort of, you, you. You haven’t finished, you know, a full run, but you’ve put enough time into it to, you know, understand it.

Do you have.

I mean, and everything is subjective in this kind of environment.

Do you have particular gods that you liked boons from better or any. Like, what is. What was your go to weapon? Or were you really just like randomly cycling through?

[00:51:42] Speaker C: Yeah, so I really need the run to run variants. And so I would pick a different weapon after every loss.

[00:51:48] Speaker A: Just every time.

[00:51:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, every time. I think I liked the spear the most, but this is Hades. Hades is. Is one of those games where you get. Get a decent amount of variance within a run. Right. Like by. By picking up different boons. But I actually didn’t find the boons to be too, like, totally run. Changing the weapon is the. Picking a different weapon is very much run changing. Right. Like, you’re playing really differently with the shield versus the spear versus the the gun, but within a run you’re kind of just like, you’re getting. Maybe you’re getting some slight modifier on your dash, or maybe you’re changing, you’re getting your call or stuff like that. But at the end of the day, it’s still kind of like isometric hack and slash dodge attacks. Get in.

[00:52:36] Speaker A: Hit, hit, hit.

[00:52:37] Speaker C: And so, like, I really needed to be changing the weapon to. To kind of create variants for myself. Because I think that’s the other. The other key component of Roguelites and what makes them fun for me is feeling like each run is like a fully different experience and you get this emergent gameplay from enough random factors coinciding to where every single time plays very uniquely. So I mean, that said, if there’s something that feels strong, I’ll definitely take it. And I, I wouldn’t say that like I don’t. I just never was that good at Hades. I feel like I always took the.

I think I probably over indexed on upgrading my existing boons. I definitely think that you want to try to get a boon for each of your kind of abilities as quick as you can. Because that jump from like zero to getting a boon for your attack, you get like plus 75 damage. And then upgrading that each additional time, you get maybe plus 15 plus 20%.

And so upgrading all of your attacks, I think with one you get more bang for your buck. I think.

I think I just always like picked whatever had the highest damage number. Sure, go for that.

[00:53:49] Speaker A: No, that makes sense. I mean, I think the thing that I’ve noticed myself doing was. Right, I’d see. I mean I kind of. I’ve played a lot of Diablo through my light, a lot of Diablo 2, especially when I was younger.

[00:54:01] Speaker C: And I’m still playing D2R right now actually.

[00:54:04] Speaker A: Yeah. You know you can never go wrong. Right? That’s. And you don’t even need to change the formula there. It’s just that good.

But tons of D2, D3, D4. Right.

I think this game also uses a similar. And so many RPGs in many ways include like the common rare, legendary, whatever godly type scaling of their perks or upgrades or whatever else. I think Hades has caught me in that trap of saying okay, I. I feel like it might be more useful because I’ll use more attacks. Like I’ll use my strong attack on top of my regular quick attack if I upgrade each one individually. But then for some reason like the next time I get into a section of boon options, the RA rare one is the one that stacks onto what I already have upgraded. So then I upgrade it just because it says rare on it.

[00:54:57] Speaker C: Hard to resist the call of the rare.

[00:54:59] Speaker A: Right. I. You know, it’s, it’s. It’s that. That’s a tricky one that I need to work myself out of, I suppose.

[00:55:04] Speaker C: Well, and it totally might be the play to just like go all in on on one thing. And I I think the real meta is like learning what the duo boons are. There are boons that have kind of built in synergies with each other that you can get the. That that’s how you access the legendary boons is by like acquiring this number of boons from this God and from this other God. And I never really like internalized that just kind of happened randomly for me sometimes. But I think that would be like the thing to look up if you were wanting to look up gameplay elements to make your game better.

[00:55:38] Speaker A: And I think also as you get farther through the rooms or the chambers, you end up getting door options instead of just the one exit door. And it gives you a little preview icon of like who’s the God or who wants the item in that next room. Did you find yourself kind of stacking on the same God multiple times because of the kind of benefit to a specific status or were you really just kind of winging it?

[00:56:04] Speaker C: I think I did. I think I would find myself feeling like, all right, I’m going for a charm build, right. Like I have this. That does charm. And then later you can get some synergy with charm where when they’re charmed they’re also taking more damage. And so it’s advantageous to be able to have all of your attacks charm or to be able to have. I think I gravitated towards feeling like I was going for the same focus. But I think the. The kind of next level up from that is knowing what like synergizes what duo boons you have that could work together and thinking, okay, I have Aries. That means I need to get this other God.

[00:56:43] Speaker A: Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense.

We’re both coming from this, from a very minimal to just a little bit of Roguelite experience. So this is all helpful in our continued approach to moving along throughout the game.

[00:57:00] Speaker C: I’m really curious when your guys next episode will come out because Roguelites are really truly one that it’s like you can’t just necessarily equate hours into progress.

[00:57:14] Speaker A: Right. Which essentially completely breaks our traditional format where. Where a season is a game is broken into, you know, reasonable working adult chunks of time per week and then chat about it the next week. Yeah, like a book club. I think that’s why we decided to call this a side quest in the first place because for sure it’s. It’s meta progression in this one in particular. In Roguelites, it’s. And I think we kind of jumbled our.

You know, Alex mentioned we, we set up A list of.

A long list of games we might want to talk about in this podcast. When we first started, there are many of them in our backlog that are either Roguelites or that have time loops or various other elements that basically make it impossible to say, finish this chunk by next week, because you can.

One person can take two hours to get there and one person can take 50 hours to get there. And whether that’s based on the knowledge you’re acquiring or whatever else, that exact.

[00:58:16] Speaker C: Phenomenon is actually what got David and I playing Roguelites together in the first place, because we were roommates in college, playing Spelunky and switching off and just kind of competing for who could get farther on a given run.

[00:58:29] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:58:30] Speaker C: Uh, and it’s. It’s fun that you guys have. Have recreated that in some way here. I think for me, leaning into the competitive spirit really helps.

I’m. I’m always like, secretly competing with David. Uh, and I know he is too, even if we don’t talk about it.

[00:58:46] Speaker A: So. Yeah, I mean, that. That needs to be part of the conversation too, is right. And anyone playing along with us needs to kind of egg us on, I suppose. But we have. Our current season running that just kicked off is about Final Fantasy 6, a completely different type of game. And because we’ that in our traditional format, we’re going to be splitting time essentially between that and whatever comes after it with Hades and making progress as we go. But I don’t know how long it’ll take us to. I mean, I think our goal is to get through to the true ending, but again, we’re both kind of novices at the Roguelite structure, so basically I think we’ll probably just cut it off if we get to six months and haven’t released the final episode.

Maybe. Maybe closer than that, because everyone was going to lose interest by then.

[00:59:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think.

[00:59:34] Speaker C: I think a good goal for you guys would be to beat the final boss.

[00:59:40] Speaker A: That seems a little more reasonable.

[00:59:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And it’s like. That’s not even like a reflection of you guys not playing a lot of Roguelites. I just think there are some robots that have, like, really, really interesting true endings that, like, unlock a lot more gameplay elements. And I think. I think Hades is one where you. You get the full experience kind of just by going through full game once, in my opinion.

[01:00:02] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:00:02] Speaker C: Unless you’re really hooked on the story, in which case you got to keep going.

[01:00:06] Speaker A: That is a good tip. You know, I. I would say as far as, like, game lore and uncovering Details. I’m a bit of a kind of. I get sucked into those things more than I should. Like, you know, I’ll go into as many side quests that are completely unrelated to a story in some games that I’m really enjoying, but others.

[01:00:28] Speaker C: Books and RPGs. Are you like that level of like find a book on a bookshelf?

[01:00:32] Speaker A: No, I will, you know, like in, let’s say, okay, divinity, original sin 2, I was reading more books than I expected. But that’s because it unlocks a skill sometimes if you do that meticulously. But like in the Witcher 3, I’ll get like really into the lore and then just end up like to the point where my wife walks in and says, oh, you’re reading. You’re what? You’re playing another game where you’re just reading.

Like of course. Every time she walks in the room, I’m reading something on the screen and then it’s like, is this really even a game at this point? I guess that’s why we’re called the book club.

[01:01:04] Speaker C: There you go.

Are you a big war guy?

[01:01:08] Speaker B: Not as big as Andrew. Yeah, but I do, yeah, I do.

[01:01:11] Speaker A: But he’s more of an achievement hunter. So.

Yeah, he’s the completionist in the Collectathons.

[01:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I, yeah, I, I, I, I was there are now I’m now started.

I’m not doing it as much now. I used to like would before I started getting. I’ll look at like through the TR. Like mainly on PlayStation playing them. Look through the trophy list and be like, is there can I platinum this right? Am I going to.

[01:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:01:37] Speaker B: And now, now I’m just like, you know what I’m just gonna go for. I’ll just play it through, get as many trophies as I can. Like what I do on my first playthrough of it. And then like I’ll still look at the trophy list and if it’s like little easy things to do that I can like, like do a certain side quest or I don’t know, like I’m playing right now, I’m playing Batman, Arkham City. And there’s one that I was going to try and do where it’s like jump off the tallest building and try and fly for like a minute straight. So I was like, yeah, I might try that.

[01:02:10] Speaker C: That kind of stuff is very fun. Yeah, I like the, I like the achievements. I, I like aspire to platinum. Some of the, some of my favorite roguelites, but they’re usually really hard. I’m still working on that.

[01:02:22] Speaker A: Sounds like an adventure.

[01:02:24] Speaker B: That’s an adventure.

[01:02:25] Speaker C: I think I have now 200 hours in Spelunky 2 and I have two achievements left and man, they’re getting harder.

[01:02:33] Speaker A: So we’ll see.

[01:02:34] Speaker C: Same with Balatria. Just one achievement left.

[01:02:37] Speaker A: I’ll get there somehow.

Okay, so you’ve set a good goal for us then. So I think our new target is to finish, finish one full run and beat the final boss of Hades. And if we do that quickly, Alex, then maybe we can consider going on and see how far we get past that. But that sounds like a good ending point.

[01:02:58] Speaker C: I like that.

[01:02:59] Speaker B: I like that goal. Yep.

[01:03:00] Speaker A: We are a book club. So once we hit that and release our final episode, if we haven’t finished the true ending, we can have everyone else spoil it for us. But happily at that point I was.

[01:03:10] Speaker B: Going to say, yeah, people can spoil it or I’ll more than likely I’ll go onto YouTube and watch, watch through.

[01:03:15] Speaker C: It’s like an hour and 10 minute long YouTube video, so.

[01:03:18] Speaker A: Oh boy. All right.

[01:03:20] Speaker B: That’s all right.

[01:03:24] Speaker A: Perfect. So is there any sort of final pointers you may have, Danny, or anything else you wanted to share about Rogue Pod?

[01:03:34] Speaker C: No, I’d say the thing I love about Hades is that it brings folks who don’t play this like, little niche genre as much into the, into the fold. And sometimes I think for a lot of people who picked up, got sucked into Roguelites in the last few years, Hades is like the originator, the kind of like first one that they played and then they started branching out.

I’m always stoked when people are playing Roguelites because I clearly have a lot of affection for the, for the genre and I hope you guys have fun with Hades. And I, I think don’t be, don’t be afraid to turn on God mode if you’re not having fun because the whole point is the, the journey in these games and the journey is not fun. I say this as somebody who has to play Roguelites every other week. So sometimes the journey is not fun and there’s no point in doing that if you don’t have to.

[01:04:27] Speaker B: That’s true. And I like that you telling us of what their God mode is like. I like that it’s not simply turning it on and you’re invincible and you can just go straight through. Like it’s still going to take skill to get there to the end, which.

[01:04:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yep, exactly. I think increase of 2% damage reduction, not one I correcting my own record. I pulled up my Hades notes while I was there. But yeah, same idea.

[01:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And it’s great. It’s great that Hades and Hades 2 now have basically created this gateway drug to get people down the rabbit hole of roguelites and then, you know, really experience what the full genre is about. Mm. So definitely, it’s. It’s nice to see that and it’s nice to see that you guys are out there and really kind of doing the work into exposing even some of the more obscure ones that. That, you know, you might not typically hear of. That. Don’t make those. Those top lists.

[01:05:16] Speaker C: Yeah, we’ve had. We’ve had some fun with some small ones lately. Coal, llc, I had a good time with. It’s like those old mining Flash games. I don’t know if you guys have ever, ever played, like, Motherlode, but somebody basically, like, remade that as a dinky little Roguelite and it was very fun. So there’s some good ones out there.

[01:05:34] Speaker A: Awesome. Alex, it may be too soon to decide, but do you think you’ll fire up God Mode to advance along more quickly?

[01:05:41] Speaker B: I might, but not right away. I’m going to continue how I’m going right now, just regularly. Yeah. I’m going to continue like that and see how much further I can get. And if I get to a point where I’m really just stuck. Stuck, Stuck. Yeah. Then I might turn it on.

[01:05:56] Speaker A: I think it’s a good approach. This is your first roguelite. You gotta go all in on enjoying the gameplay frustrations and repetition included.

[01:06:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And again, not. Not an easy game by. By. By any metric. And I, as somebody who plays a lot of Rogue, I. I don’t think Hades is easy.

[01:06:14] Speaker A: Perfect. So for next time, our goal is to play and complete literally as much of Hades as you feel like. As we’ll be discussing the full playthrough, at least, hopefully one full run. Once again, as this is a side quest season where everyone’s mileage may vary and time to complete may vary, and we have that regular season going on as well. We’ll come back to chat about Hades in our full playthrough episode at some point in the future, hopefully sooner than later. I expect we’ll both be chipping away at it over time, and we absolutely want to be chatting about it along the way with you all as well. So share your thoughts on Discord. And thanks again, Danny, for joining us. Everyone. Go check out Rogue Pod Lightcast, especially the Hades episode once you’ve finished playing.

[01:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah, Danny, where can people find you guys? Find you guys at your podcast and everything.

[01:07:00] Speaker C: Appreciate that we are on all the major platforms. Rogue Pod, Lightcast, you can go to Roguepod show. You can just look at our tier list if you’re curious. There’s also links to our Discord on there. That’s definitely where we’re most active. Andrew’s been in the Discord for. For a while now. Appreciate your contributions in there, Andrew.

And yeah, listen, listen to the show. Check it. We definitely have spoilers in Hades though, so if you are waiting. Don’t want to be spoiled.

[01:07:26] Speaker A: Yes, I will point that out. I listened to up until the point where I noticed that maybe a spoiler was about to spill out and I bailed. Yeah, so I have it. I have it. Actually it’s still saved in my app as like, you know, 40 minutes into it. I think you did pretty well without spoiling anything until.

[01:07:46] Speaker C: I’m glad to hear that because we’re also like so far on the end of not really even thinking about story because most robots don’t have any story, you know, so this was. Hades was a tricky one for us to even like talk about the story. We didn’t know how.

[01:07:59] Speaker A: Hey, I mean, did you see there, there was the Spelunky 2 episode of that prime show.

[01:08:04] Speaker C: I saw the teaser for it. I never watched it. It was.

[01:08:07] Speaker A: I watched it. It was like maybe eight or nine minutes. So I think you’d enjoy it. Was it good?

Yeah, it’s good enough. You know, it. It basically encapsulates the whole spelunky experience for a newcomer. At least that doesn’t know anything into a.

It’s entertaining. I’d check it out.

[01:08:23] Speaker C: Definitely. Well, thanks again for having me on. I really appreciate it and I’m curious to hear your thrilling conclusion to your Hades side quest. So thanks, guys.

[01:08:34] Speaker B: Definitely. Thank you.

[01:08:35] Speaker A: Appreciate it.

[01:08:37] Speaker B: If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of 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.