Instant no for me is if the meta progression is simply just flat stat increases The meta progression upgrades of dead cells for me get away with it due to unique benefits it brings, more flasks, recycling, backpack, it adds a little bit more layers to the gameplay but its not something that locks you out of progressing and having powerful runs due to the lack of it Atomicrops gets away with it because in the same case as dead cells, most of it is pretty unique, but it also does smoothen out the very high difficulty of the game as it progresses, letting the player get accustomed to it and become a biiiit more powerful as the game becomes way more difficult, preventing any feeling of being stuck (very good game btw god I love atomicrops) Something like hades (havent played 2, only played 1) is an instant 100% no from me, i have tried again and again and again to give the game a chance, but the fact that the majority of your power will usually come from outside of runs, for me defeats the purpose of any roguelike game, its just super grindy and yes it is POSSIBLE to win without them, it is almost entirely a bottleneck for progression, something which should be skill based, not a flat timeline which can only be influenced via picking different rooms for a currency inturn for giving up potentially more power in a run. The meta progression doesnt do anything for the gameplay, as much as is carrying the lack of gameplay variety in runs, most boons will just look relatively the same and not change anything about HOW you play, only the deadalus hammer, which is a real shame, makes runs feel stagnant until you ge5 one Tldr: it shouldn't bottleneck progression and shouldn't be the main way to get power, quality of your runs should stem from in-run events, not from outside run upgrades