But you're still hungry.

You can tell it’s a very early NES game and we're just trying out different ideas — the graphics are not great^tm (it looks like Zelda) and the mechanics are...interesting. The random encounter rate is indeed ass. All battles are 1v1. You cannot put enemies to sleep until pretty late in the game, but they can...Also, if you select an action (e.g. item) you cannot cancel it! Even if you want to actually attack! You use up your turn and the enemy attacks. Love that it’s “seamless” open world because all the towns are on the map, only houses need to be entered. But on the topic of houses...man, doors need to be better marked. Durability for everything sucks! Constantly need to be going back to the village. Combined with the high random encounter rate, it’s pretty hard to get anywhere.

You’ll spend a lot of time running away from battles until the end. (Sometimes, you HAVE to run away from a boss to advance past it temporarily to get to an item you need to beat it.) For many battles, especially at first, you’ll just use the appropriate “magic” item (which uses up your HP...) because your sword does no damage. Also, having only 9 items at once is really hard to juggle. How do you know if an item is going to be used later? You just discard it and pray XD Also for weapons — you can carry 3 weapons at a time and they’re not counted in your inventory, but you have to drop a weapon to add another.

It plays, well, like any old RPG, but set in Greece. Hades has kidnapped Aphrodite and is unleashing monsters onto Greece, which is NOT a torus! It has edges! Everyone either tells you nothing of substance (Hello!) or a hint. Most of the world is inaccessible at the start because you don’t have a ship, monsters are too hard, etc. So I think it was straightforward in the sense that you dindn’t have too many options. The loop is like go to town –> learn about XYZ to go to or advance –> go to a dungeon and find an item –> helps you get to next town.

The end credits imply a sequel, since Hades is not permanently defeated...