Choose Hades for fast, room-by-room combat, short repeatable runs, randomized builds, and a tightly authored story hub. Choose RuneScape: Dragonwilds for survival pressure, gathering, crafting, base building, persistent character growth, quests, and multiplayer. The “new medieval crafting game” in this comparison is RuneScape: Dragonwilds, the survival-crafting game identified by PC Gamer as the current match for that description. The two games can both involve fantasy combat and progressive power, but they are built around very different session rhythms and rewards.
Hades and Dragonwilds answer different gaming questions
Hades asks whether you can turn the opportunities in one dangerous escape attempt into a workable build. You enter a sequence of authored rooms, fight monsters, choose among randomly offered upgrades and rewards, defeat an area boss, and eventually return to the hub. A failed attempt is not wasted: permanent improvements, relationships, story events, and other hub progress make later attempts different.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
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Hades - Nintendo Switch | $59.47 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Hades II - Nintendo Switch™ 2 Edition | $49.94 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Hades Limited Edition (Nintendo Switch) | $62.00 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
![- Hades - [PlayStation 5]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fwy58kArL._SL160_.jpg)
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- Hades - [PlayStation 5] | $26.28 | Buy on Amazon |
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RuneScape: Dragonwilds asks how you will keep a character and a settlement alive in one continuing world. You gather materials, craft equipment and facilities, develop skills and weapon proficiencies, complete story quests, explore a handcrafted map, and prepare for raids and dungeons. Death leaves a gravestone containing your inventory to retrieve, and the comparison data records no experience-point loss.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →That distinction determines almost every answer in this comparison. Hades is the better fit when the activity you want is concentrated action that resolves in a run. Dragonwilds is the better fit when the activity you want is building a life, a base, and a long-term character alongside other players.
#1 Best Overall
- Battle out of hell in Hades, recipient of more than 50 Game of the Year awards
- Includes a download code for the Hades Original Soundtrack, by composer Darren Korb, best known for his work on developer Supergiant's past titles like Transistor and Bastion.
- Also includes a full-color 32-page character compendium booklet, featuring beautiful artwork of the game's colorful cast of gods, ghosts, and monsters, all by Supergiant's art director Jen Zee.
- Defy the god of the dead as you hack and slash out of the Underworld in this rogue-like dungeon crawler from the creators of Bastion and Transistor.
- As the immortal Prince of the Underworld, you'll wield the powers and mythic weapons of Olympus to break free from the clutches of the god of the dead himself.
Quick comparison
| Category | Hades | RuneScape: Dragonwilds |
|---|---|---|
| Core format | Room-by-room 2D action with randomized rewards during each attempt | Survival exploration and crafting in a persistent handcrafted world |
| Session structure | Repeatable runs that end in death, completion, or a return to the hub | Continuous world sessions; progress remains in the same world |
| Combat focus | Responsive fights, room clearances, boss encounters, and build adaptation | Combat integrated with exploration, equipment, survival needs, raids, and dungeons |
| Run-based randomization | Random upgrades and rewards shape each attempt | Not a roguelite run structure; preparation and world development carry forward |
| Permanent progression | Hub advancement, story and relationship progress, and lasting upgrades | Skills, weapon proficiencies, stats or abilities from some proficiency levels, gear, resources, quests, and construction |
| World and building | Authored rooms, bosses, characters, and a central hub | Handcrafted map, crafting from storage, structural integrity, facilities, raids, mounts, farming, fishing, and creative mode |
| Survival systems | No survival meters are central to the run loop | Thirst and starvation are adjustable and enabled by default |
| Multiplayer | Do not assume equivalent multiplayer for the original game from the available comparison | One to six players, with crossplay listed |
| Modes and settings | Run modifiers and build choices define variation | Custom difficulty and creative mode are listed |
| Platform note | Not established by the comparison data used here | Listed as Steam Deck Playable |
| Listed price | Not stated in the comparison data | $30 listed by PC Gamer in 2026 |
How Hades structures combat
Every room is a tactical decision
Hades presents combat as a sequence of compact encounters. You move through rooms, defeat groups of monsters, and choose rewards that influence the rest of the attempt. The immediate goal is survival, but the more interesting question is whether the rewards you accept can work together. A weapon, ability, or upgrade that is merely adequate by itself may become valuable when it supports the rest of the build.
This creates a deliberate tension between consistency and experimentation. You can value a safe improvement that makes the next few rooms easier, or take a more specialized reward that could produce a much stronger build if the later offers cooperate. Because the available choices change from run to run, memorizing a single optimal route is less useful than learning how to evaluate the options in front of you.
Bosses provide clear checkpoints
Each area culminates in a final boss. The boss is not simply a larger room encounter; it tests whether the build and habits you developed through the preceding rooms are coherent. You need to read attack patterns, manage positioning, and use the strengths your upgrades created. Reaching a boss with a powerful-looking reward is not enough if the build leaves you unable to deal with the boss’s movement or damage windows.
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When an attempt ends, you return to the hub rather than losing all meaning from the run. Permanent hub progress and story developments give the next attempt context. The result is a two-layer progression model: temporary power belongs to the current run, while selected improvements and narrative progress persist between runs.
That model is why Hades can make repetition feel purposeful. A failed run still teaches encounter patterns, reveals which combinations suit your play, and advances the hub. A successful run is satisfying because it reflects both execution and the build decisions made along the way.
How Dragonwilds handles combat
Fighting is part of survival preparation
Dragonwilds does not isolate combat into a chain of self-contained attempts. You fight while exploring, gathering materials, traveling between locations, completing quests, and defending the progress you have made. Equipment, facilities, food and other supplies matter because they support the wider survival loop, not only a single boss encounter.
The result is a different kind of combat pressure. In Hades, the run itself is the organizing unit and combat occupies most of the play space. In Dragonwilds, combat competes with logistics. You may need to decide whether to continue toward a quest objective, return materials to storage, improve a weapon proficiency, or prepare for a raid before taking a riskier route.
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Raids and dungeons add planned danger
Raids and dungeons give Dragonwilds more concentrated combat objectives inside its persistent world. They are still approached through the survival game around them: gather resources, craft and improve equipment, and coordinate with companions if you are playing in a group. A poor outcome does not normally reset the whole character to the beginning of a new attempt. Instead, death leaves a gravestone with the inventory available for retrieval.
Survival meters change the cost of mistakes
Thirst and starvation are adjustable and enabled by default. These systems make travel and exploration a preparation problem as well as a fighting problem. You must account for supplies and the settings chosen for the world. Players who want less pressure can adjust the relevant difficulty, while players who enjoy logistical constraints can keep the default survival emphasis.
Does Dragonwilds have runs like Hades?
No. Dragonwilds is not built around roguelite runs. Hades gives each attempt a beginning, a sequence of changing rewards, and a clear reset when the attempt ends. Dragonwilds keeps you in one persistent world. You gather, craft, build, complete quests, and improve the same character and settlement over time.
Rank #2
- Battle beyond the Underworld using dark sorcery to take on the Titan of Time in this bewitching sequel to the award-winning rogue-like dungeon crawler.
There can still be short-term expeditions in Dragonwilds. A trip to collect a rare resource, a dungeon excursion, or a raid can have its own risk-and-return shape. But those activities are player-chosen outings inside a continuing world, not automatically generated runs that replace your build when you die. Your decisions are about route planning, equipment, supplies, and when to return home rather than which random reward will define the next 20 minutes.
If you enjoy Hades because every attempt is a clean tactical puzzle, Dragonwilds will feel slower and more self-directed. If you find Hades’ resets tiring and prefer to see a base, inventory, and skill profile accumulate, Dragonwilds’ persistent structure is the attraction.
Progression: temporary builds versus a growing character
Hades has two progression layers
Hades separates what belongs to the current attempt from what belongs to the broader escape effort. Random upgrades and rewards are temporary: they determine the weapon and abilities available in that run. Hub advancement is permanent: it carries progress into future attempts and supports the game’s story and relationships.
This layered design gives Hades a strong risk-reward loop. You can experiment with a run-specific build without permanently damaging your character. At the same time, the hub prevents the game from becoming a sequence of disconnected matches. New conversations, improvements, and relationship developments make the repeated journey part of an authored progression.
What Hades II adds to the hub model
Hades II documents the same broad separation while expanding the hub layer at the Crossroads. Its progression includes ability upgrades, crafted Incantations that unlock features, weapon acquisition and upgrades, and relationship progression. These systems illustrate how the Hades family can add long-term goals without removing the run’s temporary build decisions.
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Those Hades II features should not be read as a promise that every system appears identically in the original Hades. They are useful for understanding the series’ direction: runs supply immediate variation, while the hub supplies continuity, unlocks, and narrative context.
Dragonwilds makes progression persistent
Dragonwilds ties progression to the tools and crafting benches you use. Relevant activities grant experience in skills and weapon proficiencies. Some proficiency levels add statistics or new abilities, so improving is not only a matter of finding a better item. Your character becomes more capable through continued use and development.
Main story quests drive world progression, while sidequests provide optional bonuses. Gear, resources, constructed facilities, and the settlement itself remain part of the same long-term project. This makes the game feel closer to an evolving campaign than a sequence of disposable attempts.
The practical difference is visible after a setback. In Hades, death ends the current build but can advance the hub. In Dragonwilds, death interrupts an expedition and creates a retrieval task at the gravestone; it does not replace your established world with a fresh run.
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Dragonwilds is organized around a handcrafted map
Dragonwilds offers a handcrafted map rather than a chain of small combat rooms. Exploration is therefore a navigation and planning activity. You identify resources, locate quest objectives, decide where to build, and create routes that make future trips more efficient.
Rank #3
- As the immortal Prince of the Underworld, you'll wield the powers and mythic weapons of Olympus to break free from the clutches of the god of the dead himself, while growing stronger and unravelling more of the story with each unique escape attempt.
- The Olympians have your back! Meet Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, and many more, and choose from their dozens of powerful Boons that enhance your abilities. There are thousands of viable character builds to discover as you go.
- A fully-voiced cast of colourful, larger-than-life characters is waiting to meet you! Grow your relationships with them, and experience thousands of unique story events as you learn about what's really at stake for this big, dysfunctional family.
- New surprises await each time you delve into the ever-shifting Underworld, whose guardian bosses will remember you. Use the powerful Mirror of Night to grow permanently stronger and give yourself a leg up the next time you run away from home.
- Permanent upgrades mean you don't have to be a god yourself to experience the exciting combat and gripping story. Though, if you happen to be one, crank up the challenge and get ready for some white-knuckle action that will put your well-practiced skills to the test.
Crafting from storage reduces one common survival-game chore: you do not have to carry every ingredient to the bench if the required materials are already stored. That convenience matters as your base expands, because it lets storage and construction function as one connected production system instead of forcing repeated inventory shuffling.
Structural integrity makes construction consequential
Buildings are not only visual decoration. Structural integrity means the way you support and expand a base matters. A design that looks attractive but lacks adequate support can create problems as it grows, while a carefully planned structure can make crafting, storage, farming, and defense easier to manage.
More than a combat sandbox
Fishing, farming, and mounts broaden the reasons to explore and improve the world. Creative mode provides a different relationship with the construction systems, allowing players who are primarily interested in building to reduce or remove some survival constraints. Custom difficulty lets a group tune the pressure rather than accepting a single fixed level of hunger, danger, or resource management.
Hades uses authored spaces for variation
Hades’ world is more concentrated. Its authored rooms, bosses, characters, and hub give the game a strong narrative and mechanical identity without asking you to maintain a settlement. Variation comes from room sequences, reward choices, weapons, and the build you assemble, not from placing structures across a map.
Which game has better combat?
There is no universal winner because the games use combat for different purposes.
- Choose Hades combat if you want rapid encounters, precise movement, frequent decisions, and a build that changes during every attempt.
- Choose Dragonwilds combat if you want fighting to be connected to exploration, equipment, survival preparation, raids, dungeons, and a character that keeps developing in one world.
Hades puts the highest concentration of its design attention into the feel of each encounter and the relationship between movement, attacks, enemy patterns, and reward selection. Dragonwilds asks combat to coexist with gathering, crafting, travel, and world management. A player who calls Hades “better” may be prioritizing responsiveness and encounter density; a player who prefers Dragonwilds may be valuing preparation, context, and the consequences of a fight for the wider settlement.
Which game has better progression?
Hades offers the cleaner progression loop for players who want frequent resets with meaningful permanent advancement. Every run provides a compact arc, and hub progress gives failures a purpose. The temporary-versus-permanent split also makes experimentation relatively safe: an unusual build can be tried without permanently changing the character’s direction.
Dragonwilds offers the deeper persistent-project loop. Skills, weapon proficiencies, equipment, resources, quest progress, and construction all accumulate in the same world. Its progression is more satisfying when your goal is to look back at a developed base and a capable character rather than to optimize a single attempt.
| If your preferred reward is… | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A stronger build for the next attempt | Hades | Random upgrades and rewards directly shape the current run |
| A permanent hub improvement or story development | Hades | Run failure still advances the central hub and its relationships |
| A higher skill or weapon proficiency | Dragonwilds | Use of relevant tools and benches grants persistent progression |
| A larger, better-equipped settlement | Dragonwilds | Construction, storage, facilities, and structural planning remain in the world |
| A new quest milestone | Dragonwilds | Main story quests drive progression through the persistent map |
Solo play, co-op, and session length
Dragonwilds is designed for groups
Dragonwilds lists support for one to six players and crossplay. That range makes the game viable as a solo survival experience or as a shared project in which players divide gathering, crafting, exploration, and combat responsibilities. A group can also make raids and dungeons less dependent on one person’s preparation.
Crossplay is a practical advantage for friends using different supported systems, but the exact platform combinations and account requirements can change; check the game’s current store information before purchasing for a specific group. The comparison data also lists Dragonwilds as Steam Deck Playable.
Rank #4
- Die Macher von Bastion und Transistor präsentieren einen actiongeladenen Dungeon Crawler im Rogue-likeGewand.
- Nutze die Kräfte und mythischen Waffen des Olymp, um aus der Unterwelt und seinem Herrscher höchstpersönlich zu entkommen.
- Mit jedem einzigartigen Fluchtversuch wirst du stärker und entdeckst mehr der Geschichte.
- Diese Edition enthält die folgenden Bonusinhalte: Einen Download-Code für den epischen Hades Original Soundtrack von Darren Korb – ein zweieinhalbstündiges Fest für die Ohren. Ein 32-seitiges Charakter-Booklet mit Artworks von Jen Zee, die die kunterbunte Riege an Göttern, Geistern und Monstern zeigen.
Do not assume Hades offers equivalent multiplayer
The available comparison does not establish equivalent multiplayer for the original Hades. Treat Hades as the solo-focused choice unless you verify a separate, current multiplayer feature for the edition you intend to play. Its repeatable run structure is designed around one player’s movement, build choices, and execution.
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Different ideas of a “session”
Hades works well when you have a defined block of time for one or more attempts. A run gives you an obvious beginning and end, even though the hub persists afterward. Dragonwilds is better suited to longer sessions in which you may start with one task, get distracted by a resource vein or quest, return to improve a building, and continue from the same world later.
Survival settings, difficulty, and accessibility of the two loops
Dragonwilds enables thirst and starvation by default, but these values are adjustable. That matters when choosing the game for a group with different tolerance for survival management. A player who wants exploration and construction with fewer interruptions can tune the world; a player who enjoys strict preparation can retain the default pressure. Custom difficulty and creative mode provide additional ways to shape the experience.
Hades expresses difficulty through combat and run decisions rather than hunger or base logistics. The challenge is concentrated in reading enemies, surviving rooms, selecting rewards, and defeating bosses. If you want the game to test your moment-to-moment execution, Hades keeps the relevant variables close at hand. If you want difficulty to include planning a trip, maintaining supplies, and protecting a settlement, Dragonwilds exposes more systems to adjust and manage.
Price and practical buying considerations
PC Gamer listed RuneScape: Dragonwilds at $30 in 2026. That is a listed price, not a claim that every region, storefront, tax, sale, or future edition will use the same amount. Confirm the current price and platform availability for your region before buying.
No comparable price is established here for Hades, so a direct value-per-dollar conclusion would be speculative. The relevant practical question is how much of your play time will use each game’s defining loop. Hades’ value is concentrated in replayable runs, build experimentation, boss learning, and hub progression. Dragonwilds’ value depends more on how much you enjoy gathering, crafting, construction, survival settings, quests, and playing alone or with a group in one persistent world.
A physical Hades-family product documented in the available material is the Nintendo Switch edition of Hades II, released in November 2025. That fact concerns Hades II rather than the original Hades and should not be used to infer the original game’s physical-edition availability.
Decision guide: pick the loop you will repeat
Pick Hades when these statements sound right
- You want to start playing immediately without gathering materials or constructing a base.
- You enjoy making a new build from random offers every attempt.
- You prefer short, clearly bounded sessions with bosses as milestones.
- You want an authored hub story and character relationships alongside action.
- You are comfortable with a failed attempt resetting temporary power while permanent progress continues.
Pick Dragonwilds when these statements sound right
- You want your equipment, skills, resources, quests, and buildings to remain in one world.
- You enjoy deciding what to gather, where to build, and when to return home.
- You want survival systems such as thirst and starvation to be part of the challenge, with adjustable settings.
- You want raids, dungeons, fishing, farming, mounts, and structural building around the combat.
- You want to play with up to six people using listed crossplay support.
Choose based on your tolerance for repetition
Hades repeats a designed route but changes the tactical problem through randomized rewards and the skill demands of each room and boss. Dragonwilds repeats tasks such as gathering and crafting, but the continuity of the world gives those tasks a cumulative purpose. If repetition is enjoyable only when the tactical puzzle changes, Hades is the safer choice. If repetition is enjoyable when it strengthens a place and a character, Dragonwilds is likely to hold your attention longer.
Common misconceptions to avoid
- “Dragonwilds is Hades with crafting.” It is not. Dragonwilds is a persistent survival-crafting game, not a room-by-room roguelite.
- “A Dragonwilds death starts a new run.” Death leaves a gravestone with inventory to retrieve; the established world and progression continue.
- “Hades progression is completely lost after death.” The run build is temporary, but hub advancement and related permanent progress continue.
- “All Hades II systems are in the original Hades.” Hades II’s Crossroads features demonstrate the expanded family progression model, but they are not evidence that every feature exists in the original.
- “Six-player support means every platform combination is guaranteed.” The listed information says one to six players and crossplay; verify current platform-specific requirements for your group.
Bottom line
Hades is the focused action game: enter a run, adapt to the rewards you are offered, defeat rooms and bosses, and bring what you learned and earned back to the hub. RuneScape: Dragonwilds is the persistent survival project: gather, craft, build, develop proficiencies, pursue quests, survive raids, and keep improving the same world, alone or with up to five other players. Neither replaces the other. Your choice should follow the loop you want to repeat most often—combat runs with temporary builds, or long-form survival progression with a growing settlement.
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