Hades is a roguelike with hot gods to kiss and kill Hades turns death into a chance to try something new (There are, of course, many achievements, collectibles, and other tasks to strive for when you’re not progressing the story.) And Supergiant encourages players to keep traversing down its many winding narrative branches time and again by laying out rewards for trying new combinations of weapons, upgrades, god boons, and difficulty modifiers. Yet while most games are content on building an endgame of achievements to strive for or monotonous tasks to fill out a quest log, Hades contains a huge, sprawling story that continues well after you’ve “beaten” it for the first time. Each time you kick off a run offers you the chance to use different weapons, swap out skills, and build a comprehensive arsenal of power ups, which in Hades take the form of “boons” gifted by one of eight Olympian gods who are best described as a weirdo cabal of your distant relatives. As a roguelike, it is naturally designed to be played over and over again. Hades’ endgame is the most cleverly designed interplay of story, reward mechanisms, and replayability I’ve seen in any game of its kind. That’s arguably Hades’ greatest achievement: taking what is traditionally a repetitive feedback loop and loot grind most RPGs don’t bother to dress up or obscure - what we call endgame - and making it a consistently surprising narrative vehicle. Those who’ve played the game in early access know this is a roguelike that deserves 100-plus hours of your time, all without ever feeling like it’s repeating itself. Its endgame is a masterfully designed interplay of story, reward mechanisms, and replayability