After nearly two years, Hades, the story-driven roguelike from Supergiant Games, officially exited early access yesterday. It also received a surprise release on the Switch. No matter your platform, Hades is good—like, stay-up-til-5-a.m. good. But, if you’re playing on Switch, you might find that some of the default controls are a little awkward. So it’s a good thing they’re fully customizable.
This is most helpful with the final unlockable weapon: a fully automatic firearm called Exagryph, complete with a grenade launcher. It might seem anachronistic, given that Hades is set in the underworld of ancient Greece, but the game goes to lengths to correctly describe the gun as a weapon of godly origin that doesn’t belong in the hands of human beings (lest they use it “to conduct their wars”). Still, like a real-world modern death stick, you have to reload it—and that’s where things get weird.
With the standard control scheme, you have to click in the right thumbstick to reload. I immediately switched that up so reloading is bound to the left thumbstick. In Hades, you use the face buttons to perform most actions—dashing, attacking, things of that nature. Moving your thumb down is cumbersome. What’s more, in a fast-paced game like Hades, where missing a dash by a millisecond could mean an untimely demise, it’s risky, too. But, since your thumb is already on the left thumbstick (you use it to move), clicking it requires no extra movement. That remap is a no-brainer.
That’s not the only easy change. Depending on how my loadout is shaping up during a run, I’ll switch my attack with my special. For instance, with the Twin Fists of Malphon, there’s one killer move that requires you to dash (B button, on bottom) and immediately execute your special after (X, up top). It’s called the dash-upper, and it’s enormously helpful. It also requires some serious digitary gymnastics. If I’m building a loadout around that dash-upper—or a dash special with any other weapon—I’ll tweak the controls so my attack is tied to the X button and my special is tied to the Y button (the one on the left). It’s far easier to hit B and Y than it is to hit B and X.
For reference, my control scheme looks like this:
Hades is a hellishly difficult game that will kill you ad infinitum like you’re Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow. But these two button swaps will give you a little extra edge.