Dealing with backlog: Supergiant bundle

Everybody knows Supergiant Games now, right, after the success of Hades? I feel like everybody talked about their earlier games too. I had previously tried to play Bastion in which I loved the art style and the narrator and I had fun with the story, but the gameplay failed to engage me. 

But since each and every Supergiant game is different from one another, aside from being beautifully hand-drawn, I decided to get their other games as well. Hopefully one of them would be right up my alley, right? And I was really hoping to enjoy Hades, despite knowing it's a roguelite and I have a bad history with those.

Here's how it went.

Transistor. It reminded me of Shadowrun in more ways than one, except it was more action-y and not enough TBS-y. Having the combat switch into half-TBS by the press of a button was pretty genius. The story was super sad and the ending almost made me cry. Did I like it? It was alright. For an RPG-girl it wasn't what I was used to and the combat did present difficulties sometimes, but I managed to complete the whole thing. It was alright.

Pyre. This is the game I've heard the least about out of the bunch, and yet the one I was most excited to try. It's like an RPG Tower Defense game and the first time I started it up I found it moderately fun. But it failed to draw me in despite being extremely beautiful and character interaction being on point. The fighting system proved cumbersome, unresponsive and uninstinctive. I got through three battles in my first 1½ hours of gameplay and it just failed to be engaging and was mostly frustrating. In the end I didn't come back to it.

Hades. As much as I was hoping to enjoy this one I didn't expect to end up liking it as much as I did. I had an unreasonable amount of fun with this game for someone who doesn't enjoy roguelites. I got through Tartaros and Asphodel easily enough. I struggled a bit with Elysium, but soon enough I got through Elysium as well easily enough. The Temple of Styx is where the trouble starts. I hate, hate, hate the poison and there's no way to replenish your HP before the final boss. It's basically a gauntlet after you get out of Elysium and more often than not I failed that gauntlet. Once I managed to get past the final boss, but because it's a roguelite the main story still sends you right back to where you started. After 25 escape attempts I was starting to feel kind of fed up with the game. Not annoyed, but just like I was done with it. I got all the way to the end. Didn't complete the story, but man... I don't know how many more times I can keep doing the same thing over and over. I'm starting to think that I lucked out on Boon combos the first time I got through to the end. I'll probably come back to it at some point, because I did have fun, but this isn't a game that I can just play to completion without breaks. I might come back to it just for Thanatos though ♥

Originally, I started this project in January, but then Fire Emblem Engage, Hogwarts Legacy and Atomic Heart came along and stole all of my attention. I returned to Pyre in March after I had finished the aforementioned three games.