And yes, it does not disappoint with additional inventive and silly and creative levels. There's one that's an escape room! Little puzzles that must be solved while also doing the DDR thing in between....
I am so glad I played this, and yes - it's rough and lacks polish in lots of areas. BUT, it makes up for it in creativity and silliness and creativity.
Picked this up for the holidays because it's couch co-op and seemed really odd. And it is! But in a good way. I can only describe it as a weird combination of DDR and Overcooked. But, it's also has some easy/loose adventure game vibes as you wander around different locations picking stuff up, and so on. But, it's mostly the rhythm action scenarios that are the "thing" that makes this game shine in its own weird way. The Overcooked angle comes in because the DDR thing is a part of the game world and you need to stand on a special spot to "play" the rhythm action and, depending on the scenario, you or your partner(s) or everyone might need to leave the DDR spot to take care of stuff in the rest of the area. This might be picking up objects and delivering them to some other place in the area (all single screen with no scrolling, btw), shooting things with a fixed placement laser gun, fending off weird plant guys, etc. There's even one mission where you must alternate between two rhythm action games - on one you shoot a monster and on the other you repair your ship...here the premise is that your characters (in the game) are playing a videogame...it's all very meta and strange.
My favorite so far, just because it was so funny - was a mission in which the DDR tracks come done regularly, but the "board" they're on starts to rotate! And it gets going really fast, back and forth, in one direction, changing directions, and it made the DDR matching part super tricky and braintwisty and laugh out loud funny because it looked so ridiculous.
I had to stop playing to move on to other games (for class)...but I really wanted to come back to this.
I was stuck in the cathedral...and worried because I had died a few times and it wasn't looking good.
Good news! I remembered a bit more than I thought, and it soon came back to me...though I did get a bit of help from my son who was watching and reminding me of stuff (hey, remember you have a shield). He also suggested a strategy for the final cathedral fight which I was able to pull off. So, yay!
I've since finished the cathedral, picked up a bunch of map pieces and then figured out (almost by chance) where I was supposed to use the new extended dash/blink ability. I've since picked up all the extra bonus items and I think the next step is for me to take on giant ghost fox! This feels like getting close to the end. :-)
I've kept on playing Hades. Slowly making progress, learning more about the different characters.. Etc.
And yes, things slowly got a bit easier thanks to God mode (currently at %50 less damage)...but I had an epiphany.
Hades is a free-to-play that isn't F2P. I don't say that as an insult. I just mean that in terms of its structure and the amount of repetition involved...it feel structurally very much like a F2P games. There aren't time or cash gates - but there are things you can only "advance on" once per run. And with a run being ~40 minutes for me, that adds up...if you want to give a god a gift. It takes, I don't know...8 or so? Of course, you can gift multiple gods in a run, but you can't earn that many nectar for them...and so on. Everything needs leveling. Unlocking. Etc.
Now, many people were super drawn in by the story and don't mind the slow progress you make over runs. Some people REALLY enjoy the core loop of each run. And yes, it's fun - but, for me, not THAT fun. I started to get a bit bored and a bit tired. So. Yeah. I'm done.
I mean, I easily played 20 hrs. Easily. And I did beat Hades - so at least I got to see Persephone, but I'm not excited to beat Hades 10 more times (or whatever it is) to move the story along enough...
So, it has a F2P structure of slowly doling things out - but I do think it's interesting that the game's narrative is a big part of this. It's not just gameplay that gets doled out.