My partner bounced off every 'hard' game (souls, elden ring, dead cells) but absolutely loved hades and the sequel.

My first reaction was wondering why an anonymous 55 year old man was watching a movie with your son.

Doctor said "you got about two weeks"

Update - back on the couch drinking Gatorade. The in between was but a fleeting dream.

The speed boost/shine spark puzzles were extremely annoying and seemed like when I did get them it was luck.

The Mawkin enemies were too repetitive, every fight repeated the same moves, just with increased damage, so it's the same challenge over and over with less and less room for error.

The EMMI zones are fantastic. Trying to figure out where to go while these unkillable things stalk you is nerve wrecking and would take a deep breath every time I walked through one of their zone doors.

If you go wander off in the wrong direction, there's nothing that will put you back on track, no NPC you can seek out that provides even a vague hint, no map marker, and with such a bare bones story of "go up", I can't count on the plot to indicate what's next.

I eventually stumbled onto a vent that took me to a boss fight, but there should have been some way for me to rediscover that I was supposed to be there. The level design depends on you remembering what power you just got and being in the place where you're meant to use it.

I'm a proponent of moving away from arrows pointing the player to the next thing, but this game needs SOME kind of way to remind you what you're doing. At one point I walked away from the game for a few days and forgot where I'd been going. The map was unhelpful and I wandered aimlessly for hours.

The plot is nonsense. Yes, I haven't played the previous games, but every story beat is "omg samus you're actually a <insert proper noun>". Every character or named thing in the game is either related to you or literally is you.

Missile capacity as the primary collectible resource upgrade quickly becomes pointless - once I had 50 missiles, that was more than I ever needed and spending all the time backtracking to get the rest of the upgrades felt unrewarding.

The late game groove of understanding how to navigate previous areas with new powers is fantastic, and the progression of your freedom of movement and maneuverability feels earned.