There's nothing jerkish about what you did at all. The whole point of getting more details about a game is to figure out if you want it or not.
Hell no how the hell is genuinely asking if you'd enjoy a game 'leading someone on'? There's nothing stopping you from eliminating all out of progression methods possible but it does severely limit the game so it sounds like the game just isn't for you, a completely acceptable outcome. If you don't vibe with a game for any reason whatsoever, no one should give you **** for it. I'm glad I was able to help either way though
I don't know, I guess I just feel... a little left out, y'know? I mean, not just from Hades. Sometimes it feels like everybody goes nuts for that sort of thing but me. Makes me feel like I'm wired upside down.
Actually, I think I've figured out the way to explain why I feel the way I do about this.
Let me tell you a story.
Have you ever heard of DemonCrawl? Chances are, you haven't. It's Minesweeper, but as a roguelike. And no, that's not a joke. Its tagline is "Minesweeper Gone Rogue". You pick up items that do things like give you more health, reveal the values on squares, or kill monsters (the game's equivalent of mines). Minesweeper frequently has situations where you need to guess - and although a lot of versions force no-guess layouts, DemonCrawl doesn't outside of Easy difficulty. The idea is that those situations are why you need the items.
One of its game mechanics is Tokens, which are basically the between-run currency as opposed to the in-run currency, Coins. One of things you can buy with Tokens Masteries. Basically, by getting certain achievements, you can get Masteries available for sale in the between-run shop. For instance, you can buy Survivor I after finishing a run with 10 or more HP left. You can also upgrade them: so after you finish a run with 20 or more HP left, you can then buy Survivor II.
You can take one Mastery into a run, and each provides different benefits. According to the wiki, a Tier I Mastery gives you a passive benefit from the start of the run (in the case of Survivor, starting with 1 extra max HP). The Tier II version of that Mastery will give you the same benefit in addition to
another benefit (for Survivor, +1 max HP if you're injured at the end of a stage). And finally, the Tier III version of a Mastery gives you both of those, and
also a chargeable activated ability that charges upon completing a stage (for Survivor, every 3 stages it can solve a number of cells equal to your missing health, then heals you to full).
Now, the first Mastery I ever unlocked was Spy I. The Spy Mastery is all about "gleaning" cells. Gleaning means to learn the number on a cell, but you don't get any information on what's
on that cell, just the number of monsters
around it. Naturally, you unlock it by gleaning a bunch of cells in a single stage. It starts off pretty simple at tier I - just gleaning 10 hidden cells after your first click.
So I unlock this Mastery and I buy it. Obviously. I mean, I'm new to the game and I just got to one of its cool unique mechanics, right? Of course I read what it
did, but I don't think I fully understood it. Not until I took it into a run. Now, the first stage in each run is always fairly small. I think the Forest - the first stage of the first quest, and also the one I took it into - is usually 8 by 8. They're also never very dense with monsters, usually only having... what, 8, 10? There's a lot of empty space. I say all this so you understand that when I made the first click, it revealed a decent chunk of the board because of the small amount of monsters. And Spy I gleans
hidden cells.
Suddenly, the entire board is filled with numbers. Or at least it feels that way in the moment. I basically have the numbers of 90% of the squares on the board. And I don't even need them, because you basically
never need to guess on the first stage. I just have, like, twice the information I used to get. It felt like playing on easy mode.
And
why? Because I played the game for long enough, basically. Tokens are easy to get, and I basically just stumbled onto the Spy I unlock. I hadn't even beaten the first quest. I don't know what I
thought the game was up until that point, but in that moment, I think I understood what the game was supposed to be. I understood with terrible, terrible clarity that I was supposed to be getting
stronger, and seeking out better and better Masteries until eventually, I was
strong enough to beat the game.
And I
haaaated that.
I think I lost my run anyway to some stupid mistake or another shortly afterward. I probably wasn't giving it my A-game. After that, I took off my Mastery and returned to doing runs without one. No, maybe that's too mild a way to phrase it. It might be a melodramatic way to phrase it, but I vowed not to use Masteries from then on. I beat the first quest some time afterward, that way. I don't remember if I unlocked any more, but if I did, I didn't buy them.
I didn't beat the second quest before I made a decision. I was sick at looking at Spy I in my Mastery list. The only one I'd ever bought. I wanted to wash my hands of it and prove I wasn't using them anymore. You can't sell Masteries or anything, so I deleted my entire save file and started over. Like I said, the only progress I had made was beating the first quest, so all I had to do was beat that quest again and I'd be caught right back up with my old save with no Masteries haunting me.
Now, I've beaten the fifth and final quest. Actually, once you do that, you unlock the Hard difficulty, and you have to beat the Hard versions of the quests sequentially as well. I've actually gotten all the way past the fourth quest on Hard. When I made the decision, I remember thinking about the phrase "if you don't like it, don't use it". Implicitly, it continues "and it'll be fine", and I think I wanted to prove that part wrong. At this point in the game, it's painfully obvious that it's balanced around using Masteries. If you don't, it turns into "hope you get the right items or die trying". Which sort of lines up with the difficult reputation of other roguelikes, which is the only thing that gives me pause on that. Still, though, I'm reasonably confident that the game is supposed to be far more forgiving than this.
Some people have asked me if I was ever tempted to give in and use Masteries, and I can honestly say no. I've never wanted to go back. Frankly, I only ever got a Tier I mastery. The Tier III Masteries seem completely unimaginable to me. You know what's funny, though? There's one Mastery, the Prophet, which only gives you XP (purely an unlocking mechanic in this game) and Tokens. Mechanically, it's completely identical to having no Mastery except you just get more progression per run. I felt ripped off. Heck, I
still feel ripped off. That's the closest I've come to being tempted, but I didn't use it in the end.
And I
know the idea is "oh, you're supposed to play the game however you want to", but... no, it seems clear to me that me feeling and behaving this way was not something the developers accounted for. As far as I can tell, I'm definitely supposed to be jazzed to get new Mastery and upgrade my new ones and get stronger and I'm
not.
It's especially clear when there are all these
other progression mechanics, too! There are these things called Heirlooms, and they basically allow you to smuggle items into the start of a run, and I'm supposed to be getting all excited about crafting new Heirlooms to get better at the start of runs and I'm
not. There are these Divine variants of items that you can unlock via Beyond quests that you craft with collectible Artifacts, and I'm supposed to be invested in that whole chain of events and I'm
not. You can "favor" items to make them show up more often, and I'm supposed to be doing that and I actually did because I thought it was kind of a cool system but then the whole Mastery incident happened which caused me to swear off all the progression mechanics and now I'm
not. In an update, they added these things called Special Chests and Sigils, and they're some kind of progression thing or another you equip at the start,
and I have no idea what they do, but I'm supposed to be curious and excited to find out and I'm not.
All that detail may seem excessive, but I honestly felt it was necessary because... it's a little funny, right? In a sad sort of way? The sheer
amount of mechanics this game has that's tied to a part of it I don't care about. It just keeps doubling and tripling and
quadrupling down on it and
none of it is landing, and that's something I think you can only see the humor once I describe each of them a little bit.
I know I've probably taken up two computer monitors already with this amount of text, but I just find this such an... interesting topic. It might be the most... opinionated experience I've had with any video game to date. And for all this talk about it being clear to me how I'm supposed to feel... I still don't think I truly understand. I don't know what people see in Masteries. In Heirlooms, and Divine items, and Special Chests, and Sigils. In Keepsakes, and Titan Blood, and Darkness. In out-of-run progression mechanics in general. I
know I'm intended to like them, but I can't imagine...
actually liking them. Like I said...
I feel like I'm wired upside down.
