The seasonal Steam sales are now my chance to rebuy games for different platforms. This time I picked up Hades, which I put about 30 hours into on Switch and never finished. This time, I'm being a lot more strategic about my boons, especially stacking status ailments, and I'm making much faster progress. Hangover and festive fog are my jam. To my surprise, the bow is my favorite weapon so far this go around, as I've found ranged builds to be the most fun.
I beat Hades on my 15th run! It feels really good!
Ironically, I'd started this run thinking I'd take a break from the game for a while, and I almost quit early on because I felt like I got a bad start, but I snagged some complimentary boons that ended up being OP and let me focus entirely on dodging while spamming cast. I had no right to finish as strong as I did, but that's the RNG folks.
Normally, I try not to get too butt-hurt about my inability to beat certain games, but I always felt kinda bad I never beat Hades. As I mentioned before, I think I put about 30 hours into it on the Switch and I got to the fourth level, but I'd never gotten to the final boss. And unlike games like Hollow Knight or Silksong, this was a game I felt I should be within my reach. Now, I understand a big part of the problem was I wasn't approaching it in a strategic way. God mode helps in more ways than one, because I knew no matter what happened on any given run, I'd always at least get a little tougher.
I'm nowhere near "completing" the game or the story, but now that I've unlocked heats, which allows me to continue earning titan's blood, diamonds, etc., I think I can chill for a while and just play to watch the story unfold. I'm gonna focus on getting the keepsakes and boosting the friendship of a few favorite characters and go from there. Having an OP build was extremely fun and I'd like to learn how to make that happen more often.