Patterns Hades exemplifies

Pattern	How Hades uses it
bonus-with-drawback	Hammer-of-Daedalus weapon-altering upgrades; Pact of Punishment / Vows-of-the-Crossroads opt-in difficulty; Duo boons that lock 2 god commitments.
branching-dag-map	Each biome is a partial-info DAG of chambers; door icons foreshadow the reward type so the player picks the run's shape. Same shape as Slay the Spire's map.
handcrafted-pcg-hybrid	Each chamber is a hand-authored arena; the procedural layer shuffles which arenas connect, in what order, with which rewards. Cheap fresh-feeling rooms.
meta-as-variety-not-power	Mirror of Night (H1) and Arcana grid (H2) lean variety — most upgrades change how runs play, not raw stat numbers.
bounded-roguelite	Hades 1 has a real ending and credits — finite campaign with explicit "true ending" arc, not infinite escalation. Pact / Heat extends post-credits replay.
late-introduced-mechanics	The dialogue tree drips across 30–80 hours; many lines fire at run #50+. Pact of Punishment unlocks post-credits. H2's two-path branch is itself a late drip.
nested-progression-graph	Five orthogonal axes — boon draft (in-run), hammer (in-run), Mirror/Arcana (meta), Pact/Heat (meta-difficulty), Aspect (meta-loadout) — composing per run.
opportunity-cost-loadout	Every boon taken is a slot a different god's boon can't fill. Build commits matter; switching commitments mid-run usually costs you.
card-draft-with-skip	Pick-1-of-3 boon offer with implicit skip via choosing the worst option. Spire's pattern transposed to action combat between chambers.
narrative-driven-roguelite	The series's signature contribution: dialogue triggered by run-events makes failure productive rather than punishing. Few games have matched the writing volume needed to make this work.