Death stopped being a penalty
Six years after launch, Hades still holds a 93 on Metacritic, and none of the 58 critic reviews behind its PC Metascore is mixed or negative. The thread running through them is simple: in Supergiant Games’ roguelike, dying is how the story moves. This is a review roundup of published critic scores; GearChamber has not played Hades.
Our consensus score is the PC Metascore on Metacritic: 93, labelled “Universal Acclaim” and based on 58 critic reviews (58 positive, 0 mixed, 0 negative, as of 3 November 2026). OpenCritic runs a separate calculation, a 94 Top Critic Average with 99% of critics recommending the game, and lists 191 critic reviews overall. Hades launched on 17 September 2020 and costs $24.99 on Steam in the US (price checked 3 November 2026).
The scores, outlet by outlet
| Outlet | Score | Takeaway |
|---|---|---|
| IGN | 9/10, Editors’ Choice | Failure turned into story progress |
| PC Gamer | 90/100 | Combat finally matches the writing |
| Destructoid | 9.0 | Boons and builds; uneven late zones |
| TheSixthAxis (via Metacritic) | 100 | One of the best roguelites of all-time |
| TheGamer (via Metacritic) | 100 | Calls it a masterpiece |
| Guardian (via Metacritic) | 100 | Fighting that puts your heart in your mouth |
| GameSpot (via Metacritic) | 90 | Score only; we did not read the text |
Scores for IGN, PC Gamer and Destructoid come from their own review pages; the Metacritic rows come from its PC critic list, where IGN also appears as a 90.
Failure as a reward
The idea the reviews keep circling is the one our angle rests on. IGN’s Nick Limon says the game “transforms something as fundamental as death from a video game-y failure state into in-game world building,” and writes that after a while “I no longer feared death”.
PC Gamer’s Jody Macgregor puts it more bluntly: “Where other games hand out story as a reward for success, Hades uses it to reward failure.” He contrasts it with Dead Cells — “When I die in Dead Cells I want to quit, but in Hades the sting’s immediately removed.” Destructoid’s Jordan Devore says it in fewer words: “Hades rewards every attempt.”
The combat gets its own applause. Macgregor, who reviewed on Windows 10 with an Nvidia GTX 1060, calls the combat “fantastic”. Devore describes boons that “drastically alter” the six weapons, and TheSixthAxis’ Jason Coles says builds will be “absurdly fluid” from run to run. Rock Paper Shotgun, which gives no score in the page we read, goes further on the whole package: “Supergiant’s action roguelike was already a game of the year contender when it first came out in early access two years ago. It definitely is one now.”
Hades is a one-of-a-kind rogue-lite that does a brilliant job of marrying its fast-paced action with its persistent, progressing story through a vividly reimagined Greek mythological underworld.
Nick Limon, IGN
Where the 93 leaks a little
There is no scoring dissent in the Metacritic PC set, and Destructoid’s 9.0 is the one review we read that spells out gripes. Devore points to “unevenness in the latter two zones” and “an arguable missed opportunity for a larger boss roster”, saying Supergiant “leaned a bit too heavily on variants”. He also warns that the first few hours risk overwhelming players curious about permanent upgrades, which come in several meta currencies.
If you have already followed the series forward, our Hades II review roundup lands at a 94 and has a crafting argument of its own; the 2020 game, by contrast, reads as a settled case.
Our take
We think the consensus has aged well: when IGN, PC Gamer and Destructoid all land on the same design idea, that says more than a score alone. At $24.99 on Steam it is an easy recommendation on the evidence, with the caveat that we are reporting what others found, not what we played.
- Buy if you have bounced off roguelikes because losing felt like wasted time; IGN, PC Gamer and Destructoid all describe dying as part of the story.
- Buy if you want builds that change run to run, which Destructoid and TheSixthAxis both stress.
- Skip if you want a large boss roster; Destructoid says the game leans on boss variants.
For anyone weighing the series, the original is the cheaper way in, and it is the design critics still point at six years on.
