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This game is best summarised by its director who in "stuff comments" section wishes us

"to enjoy the game while harboring feelings of deep guilt"

as she did while making it. The game is a strange beast indeed, many may consider it to be torture porn, and on some level it truly is, but it also wants to comment on the genre not only comply to it. By being as it is it can analyse power dynamics and interpersonal relations in a way that would be hard to show otherwise.

You have many beautifully drawn and morally abhorrent sex scenes here, but the ending the characters will get seems to better the more you try to avoid them in your dialogue options. Psychologically very bad things happen to characters here and no one pretends this is not the case. You don't have "oh, it was not so bad for them in the end" excuse that erotica usually happily gives you. If you enjoy it, you are being sadistic and the game wants you to know it.

So did I enjoy it? Yes I did.

I love Supergiant, Transistor is for me one of the best games ever, however I do not like roguelikes/-lites (I've tried before). So I had big doubts if this game is for me. Finally I was convinced to check it by the presence of an easier mode which made me sure that at least I would be able to see the whole plot (which is usually great in Supergiant games).

This easier mode was truly a great idea, because it made me more confident and in the end I haven't used it at all! As I expected Hades has a lot of complex and diverse characters and ridiculous amount of well written dialogues. It's funny, it's insightful, it's entertaining and there's no end to it! I am still genrally not a fan of roguelikes, but this game is an exception. There is just so many options to modify your playstyle that you can test entirely new approaches to combat for tens of hours and not get bored. Near the end of my playthrough when I was finishing the last of character quests I still had fun, now experimenting with hard modifiers which significantly change how you play.

It is not a bad game overall, but I was disappointed and I think there are much better choices to play a horror game. It has few significant advantages:
+ sound design is on point
+ visual effects are great and add a lot to the atmosphere
+ initial pitch is interesting and makes initial half of the game intruguing

However, the second half of this game becomes very chaotic and more boring than scary. At first it seemed this will be a game about claustrophobia and related fears; this is what I signed for. Alas, the latter parts of the game start to jump between different kinds of environments and topics; the game becomes sort of a "the best of modern horror". The problem is it subsequently becomes hard to take it seriously, the lack of overarching theme (other than quite weak "fears") hurts this game badly. It also hurts pacing: in the middle of the game you meet truly hideous, deformed monsters, but at the finale of the game you fight with giant cockroaches. Come on!

Other than that, you see this is a game made mostly by one man, it is rough around the edges. In few places the gameplay is trial and error, which is the last thing you want for a horror game. I had few bugs and twice I needed to load a save because of them. Also most of the rooms load as a separate areas which is immersion breaking and allows for easy escapes from monsters.

It's unfortunate that now it is free many people are complaining, who would never buy it otherwise. This is an abstract ambient game, it's meant for people who like mood, concentration and meditation. As such, it is the best game of this type I ever played. (Fibrillation and Kairo share the second place.) The visuals are gorgeous, the same goes for music. Playing this game for me was a basically religious experience.

I have also seen complaints for the light platforming sections. I don't know how to respond to that, I didn't have the slightest problem with them. For me they revigorated the experience a little without breaking the atmosphere, which was great.

It is similar to Fibrillation, Kairo and NaissanceE. It's worse than all of those, but it is still nice. It could have been better if it wouldn't be so disjointed. You are teleportet from place to place many times, in some cases without warning. Sometimes you are in control, sometimes you are not, it's confusing. Few scenes end after some time with no control from the player. Especially the last thing got me frustrated, because some were beautiful and I wanted to stay and observe more. To just turn screen black without reason seemed completely arbitrary.

That said, the art, which is here the most important thing, was great, and the whole experience was good. It is really short though, so I think the normal price is too high.

Well, considering you get a warning in the main menu, it is not much of a spoiler to say that this is not entirely a typical visual novel. Having said that, the rest of my opinion is about details of the plot.

The basic idea of this game - that it knows it is a game, is not particularly original these days. I would name ICEY and Pony Island as two other examples, among others. It does not mean it is bad, it only means it does not deserve praise only for being innovative.

As for the execution of this concept, it is fine, mostly entertaining, but not much more. I think its mainy problem is it becomes too obvious too soon. The death of Sayori is a good emotional moment and interesting psychological stuff, as it deals with hiding a depression. So it is unfortunate that game immediately shows planned glitches and bugs, rendering it completely unimportant. It is than clear that Monika is changing the game code and she's modyfing the behaviour of other characters. It is therefore not a story about them, it can only be a stroy about her - the only self-aware person. This is further reinforced by the ending.

To some degree her dialogue touches the subject of free will and existentialism, which I like, but I feel it does not entirely drive the point home. She is obsessed with the player and this constitution makes her suffer, but that is mostly all that can be said about that. It is a short game, I know, but quite a long portion of it is a filler serving only to hide the twist. And because the twist did not particularly impress me, a lot of its volume feels wasted.

I probably would be more satified if the twist was only that the true character of the girls was completely different then you initially assumed, and player's ignorance was caused by his brainless approach typical for visual novels. The game suggests this a little, but sabotages its own efforts of character nuance by all this fourth-wall-breaking stuff.

It is still good, especially as a free game, but it had potential to be something more.

You should get it only if it's very cheap.

I don't get all the praise that this game gets. The fighting system is pleasent, but not very deep. There is nearly no actual plot outside of the barter with the narrator. Which is fun, but becomes tedious quite quickly. He forces you to do something, you are ignoring him, so he is talking and you are waiting untill he gives up. It is static and boring. I suppose it was planned as some comment on the notion of free will, but the binary choices presented in the game do not reflect this idea at all.

As I said the gameplay itself is nice, but it breaks apart near the end. It was clearly rushed, there is a lot of recycling, they literally copy pieces of previous levels in the last one. What is worse, the final boss fight is just plain terrible. He is very similar to a different boss, but to increase difficulty they've added 2 weak enemies that accompany him. This causes a mess, at moments you do not see a thing, their attacts throw you into his attacks, and most of the difficulty comes from the fact that he has HP 2.5 size of any other boss in the game. I generally like hard games, but this fight is just random, unsatisfying and leaves bad taste after finishing the game.

It is a very interesting platformer, in which every level brings something new, some fresh mechanics, gimmick, etc. Without it, it would probably go boring very soon, but because every next level brings slightly different type of challenge, it keeps being non repetive and fun. This changing of circumstances makes it a quite hard game - almost every new section needs some time to get used to.

Above that, it has atmospheric, disturbing graphics and music, which gives this game orignal appeal. For sure it is worthy of attention.