I'm rather experienced in roguelikes, but not all games really benefit from this subgenre. Is Hades just another grindy-loop roguelike?

Since many of you have been putting review score aggregates in topic threads, I've had to passively visit here less since I avoid any sort of media or external influence/bias on games I'm reviewing lol

Self-pity bump ICYMI

Also, damn folks, them review scores in the thread titles, I'm actively trying NOT to see them... lmao

I tried this game a couple of months ago, but... Well, roguelikes are not my kind of thing.

It must be really good for people that enjoy them, though...

I can't say I agree with your main criticism of the game.

I've put well over 100 hours into this game and none of it felt like a grind. From the footage, you've shown it seems you stuck with the shield most of the time and that might have been your "error". I usually go with the weapon that has the darkness boost and thus rotate through all of them and it makes for deeply varied combat. Especially once you factor in the different aspects for each weapon and the different builds you can construct with each said aspect.

Also, the Pact of Punishment is a great way of adding difficulty to the game since you can customize where the difficulty is coming from and in return you get more materials to upgrade your weapons making them more powerful and more fun to use, making you want to do another run to test them out. It's a very satisfying loop.

only an 8.5??

Ha, my friend ended up trying it and said the exact same thing! She kind of felt like she wasted the money (she bought it for the Switch even though she has Game Pass because she wanted to play it on the go) because it just wasn't what she expected.  Strange to see nearly word-for-word lol

Oh it's not a "seems", I straight up said it in the review that I used the shield lol... But it's not the combat that was ever an issue, the combat's great as I said.  Instead, let me shift the perspective to using statistics...

By about my 5th run, I finally ran into the hydra, and around then also consequently unlocked the shield.  I started counting by this point, and by my 31st run where I completed my 10th successful escape (mind you I actually did 32 runs, I did another run afterwards for more Persephone dialogue), I had killed the hydra 24 times.  The hydra's variations weren't enough to make this refreshing, especially when the variations only changed the attacks, not the patterns.  Some bounties altered some of the boss fights (yes I completed some of those), but at no point would having a different weapon change the fact that I had mostly memorized every possible fight and how to approach it.  A new weapon would just be another 30 or so runs of mastering that weapon, and the bounty changes simply make things more cumbersome (many of the bounties, as you know, are metadata tweaks).  Also for reference, of the three sisters, I only died to Meg twice, and that annoying rage sister twice (mostly because that low health rage mode caught me off guard).  In fact, the statistical data also this includes the loop timing, too: earlier on, even though I'd successfully kill the hydra, I'd die in the next area to those heroes, so sometimes I would be fighting hydra again in short order, say 15-20 min later!  If you look at it by the numbers, you'll see I'm not talking combat, I'm talking repetition.

In summary, the grind isn't about the combat, it's about the numbers.  The grind isn't based on the difficulty or variations, it's based on repetitiveness.  And perhaps it's my adaptability that is the genuine "error", because I adjust quickly to varying situations making Hades more repetitive to me and hence me having that video on AI adaptability.  If anything, using different weapons would have actually made it worse (runs I did with the bow were significantly slower than runs I did with the shield, and that had to do with more frequent dodging needed between shots; when I cornered an enemy with the shield, I could just whoop on it).

EDIT: The math is bad, I think I actually died LESS to the sisters (I wasn't counting that), because I KNOW I killed hydra 24 times, so I think the sisters may have only killed me twice in total, twice Meg, and once rage sister... lmao I dunno... I admit I already uninstalled it xD

Yes?  I wasn't aware there was a "target" score I needed to hit?