Hades’ Mirror Of Night Does Upgrades Right
Am I sure I want to invest in this perk tree? No, of course I’m not, I’ve only just started the game.
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The Mirror of Night in Hades offers you a lot of interesting upgrades. It’s the main source of meta-progression in the game, tucked away to one side in Zagreus’ bedroom. I was well into the mid-game, casually pouring some Darkness into an upgrade before I realised it was in fact a two-way mirror, and all of the upgrades had alternate versions that could be selected. Call me boring, but I prefer the original purple upgrades over their green orange counterparts – the purple upgrades purely make you stronger, while the green ones come at a bit of a price. It’s a fantastic system – one of the best in gaming, in fact – because it’s so customisable. You can reset it for just a few keys, a resource that are easy to obtain, and it refunds all your Darkness so you can respec however you want. I wish more games experimented with progression the way Hades does.
It might seem weird to want to intentionally give up all my upgrades, but in a roguelite like Hades, it’s cool to see how far you can go on game knowledge alone. Strip Zagreus of his powers (and his clothes while you’re at it, please) and venture off into Tartarus with nothing but your wits and the Stygian Blade. If you haven’t tried it yet, do. See how far you can get on a no mirror run. You’ll still have all the gods you’ve unlocked – plus any weapon aspect upgrades, so you won’t be truly back at minimum power – but you’ll be as close to that as you can get without the hassle of starting a new save file.
One of the first things I do in any roguelite or RPG is find out if it’s possible to respec. I appreciate developers giving weight to my choices, but asking me to pick a class or commit to a certain perk tree when I know nothing about the game doesn’t make my informed decisions have impact as much as it punishes my ignorance. Hades circumnavigates this problem by presenting a linear selection of upgrades – go down the Mirror and buy them when you can. It doesn’t overwhelm you with options straight away. Instead, future upgrades are locked behind keys that you collect during each run. This means I don’t shoot myself in the foot saving for endgame upgrades right at the beginning. I buy what I can when I can and I slowly and surely get better – it’s a perfect roguelite progression system.
When I wanted to know how many ranks of Death Defiance there were, I used some keys to get all my Darkness refunded and put all of my points into that perk. I wish I hadn’t – the last rank requires 1,000 Darkness! – but at least I knew and could easily go back to playing with my regular build.
Respeccing offers you the freedom to try out new builds on the fly. In Dark Souls or Bloodborne, if you invest a load of points into Strength but then find a cool Skill weapon you want to try, tough shit mate. Not happening. You picked Strength because that made sense at the time, but the more you’ve learned about the game and your playstyle, the more you regret it. Now your only option is to restart from the beginning or slog through with a build you no longer enjoy.
Other games don’t punish you as much, but they don’t make reskilling easy either. Fallout and Skyrim both allow you to invest in everything, but it gets harder to do so as levels get further away and enemies get tougher. Outriders is the most recent game that fixes the issue almost entirely. In the third-person shooter, you can respec your class at any time, completely free. The only thing you can’t do is change class, but there are only four so you can just make multiple characters. Not perfect, but it’ll do. You never have to worry about this stuff in Hades because all the upgrades are reversible and you’re free to experiment to your heart’s content. Just like Zagreus is free to experiment with Megara and Thanatos, the lucky devil.
This freedom extends to the Pact of Punishment, a masochistic feature that allows you to make your escape from the underworld more challenging by making enemies stronger, adding time limits, and introducing a host of other fiendish difficulty options. You don’t need to use it at all to beat the game, but when you do engage with it, you’re free to select whatever punishments you want. This stops the game from getting so difficult you can’t play, as was the case with me and Dead Cells. I’m all for Alecto and Asterius slapping me around a bit and making me work for it, but in Dead Cells, Boss Cell three isn’t a hurts-so-good kind of pain – it’s just pain. I got so frustrated and burned out I gave up.
While I understand developers have an artistic vision that they want to impart on us, I appreciate when that vision can incorporate freedom, and Hades’ upgrades allow for that. I don’t need to be able to break the game, but being allowed to experiment with upgrades without being punished for trying something new is absolutely something more games should lean into.
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/hades-mirror-of-night-roguelite-progression/