Hyper Light Drifter

I finally 100% this game and I am finally ready to make my review on it! Playtime: It will take roughly 8-10 hours or so for a first, full playthrough of the main game, give or take, other content you get for beating it is just added challenge or alternative playstyle stuff and you've likely seen everything the game has to offer by then. This game is stunning, the art and animation is very well made and quite beautiful, Disasterpeace's contribution to the music gives this game a very specific vibe and a very unique OST that fits quite well! The story is [i]show don't tell[/i] and I really appreciate how interpretive it is, it might seem cryptic to some, but the narrative this game holds has given me quite a bit of food for thought, and with added context from the main developer's background, this game is like a nugget of wisdom. I don't think anyone will understand the story completely when they first play unless they're good at that kind of analysis on the go, but that doesn't mean it's bad! It's just one of those stories you think about for a while. Hyper Light Drifter also has a lot of great environmental storytelling and I like looking at all of the little details and piecing things together about each civilization, in true Drifter fashion! One of my favorite little scenes is from the west region, there's two skeletons sitting at a table with some cards and coins, one chair is toppled over, clearly they were playing a game, either they were hanging out and having a good time with each other during their final moments, or someone got [i]really[/i] mad, it's a joy thinking about these things and piecing together the intention! This game is quite difficult and the average newbie will totally die a lot, I sure did when I first played, it isn't shy about being brutal sometimes, not everyone's piece of cake, but it sure is mine. I do enjoy the challenge, it was quite humbling and sort of like a learning experience of refining myself and it's quite satisfying to learn and get better. I think the combat system is fairly well designed, I played with a keyboard and mouse and went through it perfectly fine but controller is often recommended, I'm just way more used to the control scheme of a keyboard and mouse, I play way worse in every game ever with a controller. I think either control scheme can work fine. When I first played Hyper Light Drifter years ago and beat the game, I was left with a few tears and an experience I won't forget, it's fairly high in my personal ranking of games, [i]however[/i] the game isn't perfect and it does have a few flaws which hold it back from me valuing it higher. If you don't care about achievements, about a quarter of this list means nothing to you, but I wanted to point out the flaws with them regardless. [list] [*] There's a lot of inconvenient checkpoints that are placed way too far back, and makes it easy to lose minor progress that's annoying to do over and over again. This is most egregious in NG+ but this can also impact first-time experiences where you'll inevitably die a lot. [*] This game has a stunlocking problem, there is very little invulnerability time in-between hits and it can make for situations where you get hit [i]once[/i] and you are forced to just sit there and die, this mostly happens for large groups of enemies and certain boss attacks. It doesn't come off as entirely intended since punishing the player for making a simple mistake and getting hit once should [i]not[/i] lead from full-health to death. Mind you, this game has an achievement where you have to go through the entire game without dying, and this was the biggest threat to my runs, about half of them succumbed to this out of the 9 total attempts it took to get this achievement. If this game had more iframes in-between hits, it would do wonders. [*] Drifter's kinda slippery, if you turn just right or swing your sword at a ledge, Drifter will fall. I personally wish he was more sticky to ledges. Also sometimes in a certain cutscene that plays out, it's possible for the Drifter to wander off a ledge and when the cutscene is over, he falls and takes damage, it's kind of funny but obviously shouldn't happen. [*] Chain dash is useful, but I think its window for consecutive dashes should be a bit larger, because even though I'm pretty good at it, it's very easy to mess up, there is kind of a learning curve to it. It also doesn't work very well on stairs, it would feel a lot better if it did. [*] Attack + Dash and Dash + Attack upgrades have very little use and are probably the worst upgrades in the game, I often accidentally trigger them when trying to attack and dash away from opponents, which propels me in inconvenient directions and messes things up. These upgrades could be designed better, because they are not worth it and I completely ignore them. [*] There is an achievement where you have to die 1000 times, absolutely no one is getting this naturally and I had to AFK for 3 hours while an enemy killed me over and over to get this achievement. A significantly lower total death count for this achievement would be better, and the total count should carry across saves. [*] Similarly to the die 1000 times achievement, there is an achievement for chain dashing 800 times consecutively, this takes roughly 7 minutes to successfully go from 0-800 dashes and is really boring and sometimes a pain on my hands, it doesn't need to be that high, it would be better if it was lower. Also you need to do this challenge over again on new saves if you want a certain collectible, so this isn't just for the achievement purpose. [*] This game doesn't have cloud saving! Everything is saved locally and my first few saves from years ago are gone since I had a hard drive replacement, and this initially demotivated me from replaying the game because I needed an entirely new completed save to access post-game content again, I finally got a new completed save after a couple of years, but cloud saving would do wonders. You can backup your game files manually but I didn't know that at the time. [*] This game's map is functionally useless, it looks pretty but it sacrifices actual functionality, thankfully it's not really needed too much for navigation. [*] I wish the PC version had the Special Edition content that the other versions have, from what I've heard, the people who implemented it to other platforms wanted to bring it to PC too, but it was up to Heart Machine on whether or not that would happen. This game would benefit quite a bit from some of those additions. [*] There are very minor bugs that don't really impact the main experience too much but can detract from the overall quality. Things like a boss corpse sometimes duplicating, or there being a lack of consistency with what's affected by the sound volume slider, or the menus being a little weird with certain interactions. Small things like that. [/list] Even though this list is a little lengthy, no game can be truly perfect. Hyper Light Drifter is still overall good, and the experience is worthwhile regardless, I highly recommend trying out the game! 🞚

What a stunning game. I can’t believe it sat unplayed in my library for so long. I’ve loved every second of it, so far, and there’s still more to go. Thanks, Alx.