Hades - Extreme Measures 4

[Hoot]

What an absolutely terrible design decision for Hades "final boss" mode. Phase 3 of the fight is basically the designer going :-

"Oh you think you're tough? But what if...YOU CAN'T SEE! HAHA!"

Like, seriously. The final obstacle is that you just make the screen dark so I can't actually see what's coming? Just. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Wow.

I would have fired that guy on the spot if I was lead dev and he brought that to me. Absolutely ruins the game. I don't even wanna finish it anymore because of this ♥♥♥♥. It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke.

[Hoot]

For the record, I HAVE beaten it. It's just a chore that I no longer have the patience for. Creating difficulty out of something that you can do nothing about is stupid.

Taking away the players vision in a bullet hell/twin stick game is not a good design decision.

[Valladina]

Hades already gets on my nerves. This sounds like a nightmare!

[Hoot]

Originally posted by LiliK:

Hades already gets on my nerves. This sounds like a nightmare!

It's just a very, very silly design decision because as a player you can't interact with suddenly just not being able to see. It's the cheapest artificial difficulty spike I've ever known, comes close to ruining the game if I'm honest.

[Fourlamas]

yea its cheap plus the healing, rest of the fight is alright imo

[Donathan Cheadledge]

It's kind of the point I think - Hades was a very well balanced encounter in its normal state, extreme measures 4 Hades is designed to be artificial difficulty for when you're used to Hades' normal nonsense.

It is also, however, completely not needed for any game story progress at all. Like, literally, you can straight up ignore extreme measures 4 like it never happened.

[Hoot]

Originally posted by Donathan Cheadledge:

It's kind of the point I think - Hades was a very well balanced encounter in its normal state, extreme measures 4 Hades is designed to be artificial difficulty for when you're used to Hades' normal nonsense.

It is also, however, completely not needed for any game story progress at all. Like, literally, you can straight up ignore extreme measures 4 like it never happened.

It can be ignored, but not if you're trying to 100% as an achievement is tied to it.

Yes, the "normal" Hades fight was fun and balanced but there are ways to increase the difficulty without reducing player agency. At EM4 he already gains a spear attack, a heal, a summon, increased add mob difficulty...all fine...but taking away the players vision? That's garbage.

I can think of 10 different abilities they could have given him to increase the fight difficulty without doing something so cheap.

A targeted AOE similar to EM3 Theseus. A dodge-able damage over time effect. A zoning spell. Etc. The list goes on.

The bottom line is that there is no excuse for the "Now you can't see. Good luck!" approach the developers took with his 3rd phase. None at all.

[Scottbert]

Originally posted by Hoot:

It can be ignored, but not if you're trying to 100% as an achievement is tied to it.

No achievement for EM4, thank ♥♥♥♥.

There is only an achievement for EM3 and beating Elysium

[Fourlamas]

yeah but EM4 is free heat and thats important, Id rather fight three stages of Hades than other bs.

[Husker_85]

Would have made a lot more sense to just make him invisible all through the 3rd phase so you have to watch for footprints and memorize his patterns.

[Hoot]

Originally posted by Isaac Clark:

Would have made a lot more sense to just make him invisible all through the 3rd phase so you have to watch for footprints and memorize his patterns.

As long as I had full vision and there were visible attack/movement indicators, this would have been far, far better of an idea.

I mean, the fight itself isn't that hard once you know the game. If you've got the patience and you know how to make an appropriate build (especially with the shield, you can cheese any fight with the Blitz Disc, Trippy Shot and the "block" mechanic) then it's beatable...it's just not fun.

[Lorska]

Considering you glossed over the fact that the being tied to an achievement was a complete mistake on your part, I assume that removes the relevance of your complaint? Considering every single thing the pact of punishment does is completely optional and you may chose anything you prefer and leave out what you hate?

Ignore it or give a reason why you can't ignore it. It's supposed to be unfairly difficult.

[Hoot]

Originally posted by Lorska:

Considering you glossed over the fact that the being tied to an achievement was a complete mistake on your part, I assume that removes the relevance of your complaint? Considering every single thing the pact of punishment does is completely optional and you may chose anything you prefer and leave out what you hate?

Ignore it or give a reason why you can't ignore it. It's supposed to be unfairly difficult.

Yes, of course, mistaking the criteria for an achievement automatically renders everything else I say irrelevant. Did ya Mam never teach you what they say about making assumptions?

Whether it can be "ignored" or not isn't an excuse for what is a completely lazy design decision. I want to experience as much of the game as possible. That is a valid reason for why I personally don't want to ignore it.

Also, it adds a non-insignificant tally to the HEAT counter while leaving the run itself unaffected until the end. If I'm trying to climb to higher heats obviously it's a no-brainer to have EM4 enabled.

Unfair difficulty I can handle. I've beaten harder games that are arguably a lot unfairer. A game that is built around pattern recognition and timing suddenly taking agency away from the player in the form of removing their ability to see is ridiculous.

[Kratos]

i agree EM4 is poor design all over, I thought so because the first phase makes the adds so tanky that it deletes most builds and weapon combinations from the game. you are forced to play melee or aoe cast because single target cast will always target something else, the adds also just disappear so you can't kill them while they make more adds while vanished, then you have to deal with hades on top of that.
i thought that was worse than no vision, although i thought no vision is also cheap bs, i stopped playing after i beat this thing, and yes i one shotted it my first try with my arthur aspect at 22 heat, I played a few runs after that and a lot of builds just became less viable, i just didn't have fun and quit because climbing 32+ heat was not fun anymore.

[myhr2]

Originally posted by Hoot:

I want to experience as much of the game as possible.

This is your mistake, not the dev's.

[Moon Sprout]

For what it's worth, I enjoyed his third stage. I thought it made it interesting, since it becomes more about managing information and prediction.

It was way less annoying than summoning those boosted minibosses, I would take diminished vision over the minibosses any day of the week.