I’d liken it a lot more to FTL or STS than hades or dead cells. The skill is in the building and planning, not in the gameplay. Making do with the resources available to you, deciding on risking a suboptimal decision now that could payoff a lot more later, and thinking about how to make what you have into a successful run is the focal point here. Whereas with hades, sure perks are nice and add to your power as you play more, but the real skill in hades is your actual gameplay with the character. Both are perfectly valid, it just sounds like you’re a person much more focused on direct action skill.

This isn’t to say that the games I mentioned don’t have that aspect too, but I find in general it’s way easier to for example play a hand in slay the spire optimally or have a fight in FTL optimally than it is to clear a room in hades or a nasty section in dead cells optimally. The skill expression is just kind of focused on a different aspect of the game. Nothing wrong with you preferring one to the other, just wanted to mention that not everyone has the same tastes =D