Tag Archives: Rogue

Hades II Review

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Hades was an amazing game that absolutely got me even more hyped for the sequel than I already was. ISee, remember the trailer for the second game coming out during one of the Nintendo Directs and it completely overshadowed all of the other games. That was when I immediately had to order the first game and when it arrived, it turned out to be as good as everyone had always said. So this way I was ready for the sequel which regrettably was not for the PS5 as of yet but the Switch 2 would work out well enough. This game does not leave you lacking for anything.

The game follows a girl named Melinoe who has been trained from young to take down Chronos and to save her family. All of the characters in the underworld from the first game have been enslaved and are in no position to help out. Fortunately the gods are still able to offer some assistance including a few new faces. Although they have their hands busy with Typhon so Melinoe will have to save them as well. She’s certainly going to be busy but with her training, she can win the day!

There are a lot of similarities to the first game of course. The gameplay is an overhead style title where you have to defeat waves and waves of opponents who go after you. You will gain different abilities as you clear each room. If you die, you can get some permanent power ups and try again. This is a rogue title so you are expected to lose multiple times and each run will allow you to get stronger. So don’t give up and just keep on pressing forward.

While the first game was more about getting in close for melee attacks, this one takes a more long ranged approach as most of Melinoe’s attacks are about keeping the enemy at range. I ultimately decided to use her scepter the most. You will have many weapons to choose from but this one suited my playstyle the best. You have your normal attack, power move, and cast. You know you have a good build when they all suit some kind of a purpose.

It may be tempting to throw the first few games on purpose in order to get stronger but I’d advise against it. Sure it’s a good strategy but it just doesn’t feel fun. Give it your best even if it means taking some heavy losses. They are all learning experiences after all and you will quickly become better at the game. One of the big strengths to this title is that basically every action helps you grow in some way. Whether it is fishing or digging up flowers, they can all be traded in for more upgrades. I made sure not to skip a single thing even though I wasn’t aiming for 100% here. You just don’t know what you will miss if you decide to be lazy.

The graphics are really good as always. The illustrations are always really solid and the different effects within the gameplay all look great. The game feels like a 2025 title and I mean that in the best possible way. Meanwhile the soundtrack is great as well. A lot of really good metal tunes and you can always feel like you are fighting for the fates of multiple planets.

There is a ton of replay value here as I already noted. You will have to complete the game many times in order to get the base ending and even from there you still have to max out your relationship status with each character in order to get their respective endings. Throw in how many characters there are and naturally that is a big hurdle. This is a game that will be taking you at least 50 hours minimum. If you aim to just do the main story, well that will still be a rather solid length too.

A tip I would leave here is to focus more on dodging than attacking. As you play through the game you will get a lot of abilities that deal passive damage and you need to be able to survive long enough to take advantage of that. Master the enemy movements and you will be fine. There are also two new mechanics in this game. The first are your moon abilities which essentially work as a final smash. Always try to get the energy blast ones but it is RNG. So if you get a weaker one, no problem. They are all still good to an extent.

There are also the new omega abilities which took me a little while to get used to. Essentially think of them as super attacks which take up some meter but reward you heavily with strong attacks. I was spamming the power special towards the end game because I upgraded a weapon to focus around that ability. When you’re choosing abilities from the gods, really try to style them all around a similar focus. So for example don’t just pick all the ones that sound cool if they are just being redundant.

Only experience and repetition will help you get used to them all. Likewise you have a card deck which you equip to get certain boosts. You can’t equip them all though so that’s where you have to make some tough calls. There are also a bunch of challenges and fire runs which is a massive partn of the game that I didn’t even get around to trying out. That naturally throws in a ton of extra replay value for you as well. It’s a way to spice up the normal story runs and you get great rewards out of them too. This game is just so loaded with content that there are even a bunch of stuff that I haven’t mentioned yet.

Overall, Hades II is a real blast. I love this survivor style of rogue game. I’m still not completely sold on Rogue titles in general but ones with lots of progression like this game always tend to go over well. I want to feel stronger as I’m going through the game and as of yet, no other game has been able to master it quite as well as the Hades series. They are really built different. It’s hard to picture them going back to do a third one, but you can bet that I will be there day 1 if they do. I highly recommend picking this one up as quickly as possible.

Overall 9/10

Hades Review

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Hades is one of those games that was super well known so I’ve been meaning to get it for a little while. I’m not always the biggest fan of rogue type games but I do love survival titles against endless hordes. Additionally, I feel like I have gotten a lot softer towards the genre as of late because all of the rogue titles end up being really good. The overall quality for a title like this will come down to how quick you can pick up a new run or not. If you’re losing hours and hours of work then I’m not going to be too thrilled, but this game masters the edge of how long it should be.

The game follows the son of Hades as he wants to know more about himself. He is not allowed to leave the underworld and Hades sees to this personally. What secrets lie beyond the borders of death? Our hero is determined to find this out and along the way he may even learn the truth of what happened to his mother. The gods of Olympus pledge their support and offer different powers along the way but what ulterior motives do they have There are a lot of mysteries to uncover here but when you’re immortal without much else to do…time is always on your side.

Immediately one of the most impressive things about Hades is the sheer volume of content. These rogue games can sometimes be annoying because you will question why you are putting in all of this effort. The Justice League mobile game for example was fun and I stuck with it for around 3 months but after a point there was no real content left. For Hades that isn’t a problem. There are easily 50+ hours worth of content here between maxing out all of the god bonds to complete their subplots, getting the true ending, maxing out your database files, unlocking all weapons, etc.

I completed the game 10 times to unlock the base ending and I can tell that I’ve only scratched the surface here. I only managed to max one character by the end of this and beast the game with only 1 weapon. I don’t see myself going for the platinum anytime soon just because of how long it would take to do that but I do like how all of the trophies are reasonable ones. The game isn’t asking you to do anything crazy. Really you’re just asked to play the game a whole lot and try out every mechanic. Even if you don’t plan to go for it all, I do advise trying out each weapon to see which one ends up being your favorite.

Of course, all this content would mean nothing if the gameplay was poor. So fortunately it is excellent. Your movement is very crisp and all of the weapons are good ones to have. The game has an overhead view and then you use your 3 powers to get past the enemies and make it to the end. Each playthrough has 4 areas and around 50-60 rooms total. At first it will probably take around an hour to clear the game, then near the end each run will be more like 20 minutes. I’ve heard people can do it even quicker but even with a maxed out mirror I couldn’t get under 20 minutes so they must be insanely good at it.

The game really values repetition as you learn all of the enemy movements and attack patterns. Focus on learning those since it is crucial that you dodge a lot. You want to deal a lot of damage of course but your health can go down deceptively quick. At the end of each room you get to choose a power up. Some help your attack power directly while others will help speed or other aspects of your character. Choose your ability carefully and then you will be fine. Even if you do lose, the game is so much fun that you won’t mind.

By the time I won 10 runs, I had already lost 27. So I can assure you that it is a process. Now I have enough passive abilities where I can confidently win with the spear on every run but so far I am still having trouble winning with any other weapon. For hat I suppose I just have to keep on grinding and eventually I can win there too.

Also I give the game a thumbs up for all the voice acting. Yeah, you’d expect voice acting for a PS5 game but there are just so many lines here that it still ends up being impressive. Each main character has over 100 lines of dialogue as you go through their normal routines as well as bond dialogue. I am probably even underplaying it for a bunch of them. This is clearly a game where the developers wanted to give you a complete product without worrying about dlc.

Meanwhile the graphics are really good. Even with all of the action on screen the game didn’t lag once. The individual animations are all clear as well so you know what is happening throughout. Now there are times where you might have multiple abilities that can be hard to distinguish in the moment but that is the price of being overpowered. I consider it to be a good balance. The soundtrack is also super good. There were quite a few great tunes in here that really fit the atmosphere of the game.

I don’t have any real issues with the game. I felt like everything was accounted for here and all of the gameplay elements were polished. It deserved all of the game of the year attention it was getting and then some. I’ve heard that the sequel’s gameplay is even better which sounds really impressive. I definitely look forward to seeing how good that one is.

Overall, Hades is an extremely satisfying game. It has enough difficulty to give even the most seasoned of gamers a difficult time, while also having a lot of difficulty options to allow for newer gamers to have a good time as well. That is why it is a very inviting experience since I can easily recommend it to anyone. The game’s very intuitive and there are no shortage of helpful references included within. Everyone will have their own style of how to approach the game. When starting out I recommend finding out your preferred way to play rather than going online to copy a winning strategy. Trust me, it will feel more satisfying that way.

Overall 9/10

Cursed to Golf Review

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Golf has never really been my thing. The game doesn’t move fast enough for me and the gameplay didn’t translate well onto the video game screen. The only exception to this has really been the Gamecube Mario Golf which was rather good. I figured this one could change things since it has the whole rogue genre going for it so I figured that would entail some fun gameplay. Unfortunately while there are a lot of gimmicks and items here, none of them really help to make Golf any more fun than it usually is. Instead I dare say that it may have been weaker than normal.

There is a general plot here which is that the main character was about to go and win the world championships when unfortunately he died and is now in the underworld. He will have to try and climb his way back to the surface but the only way to do that is to complete the 18 hole set in the underworld. If he can’t get the golf ball into the hole fast enough in any of the holes then he will be sent all the way back to the start. The stakes are high but hey the main character has his entire after life to figure this out. So he definitely has time on his side.

The general gameplay is your classic Golf of course. You have to use one of your 3 clubs in order to hit the ball into the hole before all of your turns are done. You may start with 10 balls for example, then that means you have 10 turns to sink it. Your clubs each have different specialties. One is good for ground balls, one to launch balls in the air, etc. Using them effectively will really determine just how far you get here. If you mess up then that will be it for you.

You will want to take a good look around the stage though or you may end up hitting your ball into the water or a ditch. If that happens then you will have really wasted a turn. You also have cards which work as special abilities. These cards can grant you extra turns, stop time, split your ball into multiple copies, etc. There are a whole lot of possibilities here so you will want to use them efficiently. As you progress through the stages you will bump into shops where you can buy more items or get other bonuses. Then there are the boss rooms which have a lot of holes and you have to figure out which one to use. This is the one I couldn’t figure out though. You have unlimited balls so running out isn’t a concern but I felt like I used every hole more than once and I still couldn’t win. There’s probably some kind of trick to it but I wasn’t a big fan.

You really need to like Golf to play through this game though because otherwise there isn’t much to keep you focused here. It’s really just golf with a bunch of items and special abilities but that makes things more chaotic without solving the main issue of making golf more fun. I would put a lot of the blame on how long each of the levels are though. It takes forever to actually get through each level and that’s a problem. I’d rather start off with half the balls but the levels are half length. That would be a much better balance. The length of the levels here make the whole game a lot more daunting than it really needs to be. It would take so many different attempts to win the whole thing and losing at the end would be absolutely demoralizing.

In general I’ve always been very pro check points though. Keep them coming fast and often. That is the best way to handle a game like this. It makes the whole experience better, maybe they could do that for a sequel. In the meantime to beat this one you will need a lot of training because the game is really difficult. Unless you get a lot of permanent upgrades which to be fair is standard for a rogue title, you are going to be in a lot of trouble here.

The graphics are really good though. It’s got that cute indie style which works well and all of the character models are sharp. The backgrounds all look sharp and I like all of the effects. The soundtrack is a bit more on the forgettable side though. It’s fairly calm and that works well with the golf gameplay but I’d definitely have preferred something with a lot more energy to it. That could have helped to energize the gameplay at least a little.

Overall, Cursed to Golf is a game with a really interesting premise but that’s enough to carry it to safety. The actual gameplay is just not very fun and the levels are way too long. Mix that in with the very heavy penalty of having to start from scratch when you lose and that’s it. The all time best rogue game has easily been TMNT Splintered Fate but I’ve heard good things about many other titles over the years. I just haven’t played many games in the genre but so far they’ve all been pretty solid except this one. This one I definitely do need to give a thumbs down to. Of course if you like Golf then you should definitely check it out.

Overall 4/10

Superman vs Rogue

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Suggested by X Man Fan Rogue is very powerful and one of the most impressive X-Men out there. That being said, she isn’t quite ready to take on someone like Superman just yet. He’s still one of the absolute strongest fighters in all of comic books. He would be fast enough to evade her touch and can also win this from long-range with his heat vision. Rogue has a lot of good feats of her own but they’re just a step below his. Superman wins.

Rogue vs Ariel

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Suggested by iKnowledge Ariel is definitely a tough mermaid, but does she have enough skills to stop Rogue? It’ll be a very tough battle for her since she’ll need to win without making direct contact. I don’t think that will really be possible for her. Also, Rogue does have her natural super strength and speed which will really serve her well. Rogue wins.

Has Been Heroes Stats and Records

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Stats time!

Play Time 4h 3m
PS4 Trophies 7/27
Completion Rate 21.5%
Games Record 2-15
Endings 3/12
Heroes 5/36
Most Damaging Strike 409
Biggest Multikill 21
Overall Damage Dealt 189692
Overall Souls Collected 2276
Overall Gold COllected 3809
Doublekills 5
Triplekills 1
Quadkills 0
Pentakills 1
Hexakills 0
Epic Kills 6
Crossroads 22/48
Regions 8/12

Has-Been Heroes Review

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It’s time to look at what is likely my first Rogue game. The genre is definitely pretty interesting since it’s so unique compared to others. Here if you die you lose everything. Forget about keeping things like items, level ups, money, etc. If you die you start from scratch with nothing to show for it. It’s an interesting dynamic. Honestly I think I would prefer it if you got to at least get level ups or something since you would eventually be able to power your way to the end. Still, it’s steady stream of quick levels can be pretty addicting and you’ll find yourself wanting to keep playing “1 more round” over and over again.

The plot is pretty basic. There are a group of heroes who used to be quite impressive back in their day. Unfortunately for them they have grown old and people barely even remember them anymore. Well, they’ve been given one last mission. They have to escort these two princesses over to another kingdom. That should be easy enough but the world is overcome with monsters so maybe this won’t be quite as easy as they thought. Don’t worry about the plot much though as it doesn’t return again until you’ve beaten the game 6-7 times as you get the true ending. The rest of the endings don’t even finish the plot as they just unlock another character.

The gameplay uses a 3 lane system. You have a hero on the top lane, middle, and bottom. Each one can attack when his gauge is full. This is how you drain away at enemy’s stamina and then their health. You have to time it just right so you finish off the stamina and then damage the opponent in order to chip away at the gauge. Otherwise you won’t be making a whole lot of progress in the fights. It’s a very interesting system for sure and a complex one. Throw in the spells and then you’ve really got a lot to think about during the fights. Fortunately you can pause the game to think about your options but pause too often and you’ll just be taking up too much time. That’s the way I see it at least.

One nice thing about the game being so complex is that you can feel yourself improving as you go through the game. I lost my first 10 games before finally reaching one of the endings. From there it took me about 5 more tries to get the 2nd ending and then another 3 or so for the third one. There are 12 endings but if I kept up that pace maybe it wouldn’t have taken much longer. At the same time, it’s like Pac-Man as the more endings you get the longer the game becomes. That’s because the levels stack on top of each other so at first the game is 3 areas long, then 4, then 5, etc until it reaches 8. Naturally you can see why losing when you’re at area 6 or 7 during a late playthrough can be pretty rough. The bosses shuffle each time so you never really know who you are going to be up against.

There is also some luck involved as the shops and chests change each playthrough. On my final victory playthrough I got a good line up as I got the mind control spell, 2 water spells, and 2 little minions who would help me blast the enemies. On other playthroughs I just didn’t have enough money to do much of anything so I ended up falling behind the curve. My best recommendation is to fight as many battles as you can on the way to the boss to stock up on money so you can get as many items as possible. If you run out of money then you’re basically sunk. Always have a plan when going into a boss fight as well and don’t be afraid to pause if necessary. How you start a fight could very well determine how you end it. For my tip of the game I would recommend getting any spell that does direct damage to the opponents like the water blast. It’s incredibly different and can make all the difference in a fight.

The graphics aren’t bad. I like the illustrations we get for each ending. There was a reasonable amount of skill put into the drawings. The actual animations during gameplay aren’t anything amazing, but it looks pretty clear. You can usually tell what is happening. The only exception is the status effects that play whenever you hit a villain. There are way too many words and they go too fast so you can’t really tell what they are saying. That seems to maybe be intentional but certainly worth mentioning. The soundtrack is actually quite solid though. It has a good variety depending on the levels and is soothing enough to enhance the gameplay experience. The later levels seem to decline a bit based on the tracks I heard online, but it’s still quite good all around.

Naturally there is a lot of replay value here. If you want to get all 12 endings prepare to be here for over 20 hours. It depends on how quickly you get used to the gameplay and learn the tricks of the trade of course, but I wouldn’t expect to get the hang of it too soon. I can’t stress enough that this is a pretty difficult game. It’s no walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. You’ll learn best through trial and error. There are also bonus modes like Challenge Mode, Seed Mode, etc. Getting through with everything will take a long time. I believe I got this game for around 10 bucks so that’s a lot of value for that price.

Overall, Has-Been Heroes is a pretty fun game. The story certainly takes a back seat as this is the kind of game that barely even has a plot, but the gameplay is the main thing here. The gameplay is smooth and a lot of fun. It may not be the most enjoyable experience at the very beginning if you just don’t get what you have to do, but as soon as you figure it out the sky’s the limit. I’d be up for trying more Rogue games out, but I still believe that they would be more fun with some actual progression. I want to feel like I’m getting closer to the goal with in-game features as opposed to just mastering the style more and more. It makes the whole experience just feel more rewarding.

Overall 7/10

Wonder Woman vs Rogue

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Rogue is one of Marvel’s main power hitters from the heroines. A while back I would have said that she was The heavy hitter, but Ms. Marvel gives her some competition for that title nowadays. Rogue is powerful and her ability to absorb other powers is very useful, but I definitely give this round to Wonder Woman. She’s an expert hand to hand fighter who will be able to easily parry Rogue’s attacks and the gap in their actual levels of super strength is very vast. Wonder Woman also has the edge in speed so what this leads to is a big blowout. Wonder Woman wins. (And is more than a match for any Marvel character)

Original image by K-Bol. Link to the original is below.

http://k-bol.deviantart.com/art/Commission-WW-vs-Rogue-372115640

Rogue vs Thor

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Rogue is back and this time she’s up against Thor! Thor’s been winning a lot lately, but he may have met his match in this round! Rogue has the powers of many characters and by using them all together she can take down nearly any comic character! She already has Thor’s powers plus the Avengers, Xmen, Brotherhood, and others. She’s just too powerful! Rogue wins.

Rogue vs Bass

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bass5

Rogue has super speed, strength, endurance, etc. Because of this she’s one of Marvel’s strongest fighters, of course Bass isn’t quite marvel level! He’s unstoppable! None in all of media can take him down when he’s trying. Bass is just far too powerful. With one blast he can take down any being. Bass wins.