Some people think that "roguelike" is a good term for games with no permanent progress, with "roguelite" being the alternative for games like Hades. These peopl

Some people think that "roguelike" is a good term for games with no permanent progress, with "roguelite" being the alternative for games like Hades. These people don't say these terms out loud to anyone, they just post on the internet about it, so they haven't realized why the distinction hasn't exactly caught on. Regardless, most people who have played games on both sides of this split can tell that it makes no sense to wish that a game on one side was more like the games on the other side; they're just different sub-genres. It's like saying that Spelunky has interesting platforming mechanics, but you wish you had a lives system and hand-authored level design. It would just be a different game, made by someone else. In Hades, the majority of the emphasis is on the story and characters, which a lot of people seem to have connected with. This isn't a surprise if you look at the devs' previous games (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre). From that perspective, making a game most people who play won't finish would be a bad decision; upgrading your character enough to eventually win is completely intended, it's how you are meant to reach the end of the story.