Hyper Light Drifter

ten years later and this game is a still a masterpiece, im amazed at how little it event takes up my battery and works perfectly fine on my potato laptop i love its story and gameplay and im so glad indie cross introduced me to this

Despite playing for so little time, this game takes up a huge space in my head. There's nothing quite like it.

The art, the music, the story, the gameplay... everything of the highest quality The game is a beautiful allegory of the fear of death and terminal illness delivered without a single line of legible or understandable dialogue. Everything is shown with imagery and environmental storytelling making it a perfect game for people who love to explore One of those video games that remind you this is an art form and you can feel how much heart, passion and soul went into its making Some people might dislike the game because of the controls or certain design choices but personally I had no problem getting used to playing with both keyboard-mouse and controller and I feel the design choices make perfect sense so it was no problem for me

Атмосферное приключение с прекрасной музыкой. В игре присутствует русский язык, хотя в стиме снова забыли указать.

Данная игра показала мне, что при смертельной болезни нужно колоться, чтобы продлить себе жизнь

TL;DR: The game is enjoyable, but do not expect any depth or mind-blowing gameplay. The strongest side of the game is definitely aesthetics. Pixel art is down the line incredible. Ost, despite being quite simple, fits really well with other elements. I like how developers made a simple yet memorable story without using a single word. This is something very unusual to see in games. Now, the combat.... it’s... uhh... here. I strongly believe that the main problem with the game is the conflict between character design and the way game mechanics are implemented. The entire point of the character is the fact that they’re agile(literally, Hyper Light Drifter). But the character is VERY clunky. You get dashes, chain dashes, heavy attacks, slash then dash, dash-slash, guns, grenades, etc. With such a number of tools, you just want to rush enemies and be stylish about slaying hordes of monsters. And instead, we have very weird cooldowns and endlags for everything: dashes, attack and combos of attacks, guns. Moreover, you have stamina, which restricts you from using all those cool tricks often. And on top of that, if you hit a wall while chain-dashing, you get stunned; if you stop chain-dashing, you slide a small distance, which usually makes you slide off the edge and take damage. This simply incentivizes players to play very passively, constantly backstepping and not engaging in combat fully. Returning to the topic about a rich amount of tools at disposal: This part of the game is just awful. The main thing is the fact that the combat degrades a lot because of the clunkiness and optionality of most tools. You can complete the game just by mashing attack and dash, no issues whatsoever. A good combat system would not make players mash two buttons to win(I feel like most fromsoftware games set the wrong standards for combat systems that everyone follows for some ungodly reason). Take a look at games that completely nail the combat system. For example, Nine Sols: they have parries, holding parries, parries mid air, counters for special attacks, heavy attacks, double jump, etc., all of which are required by the combat system in order to complete the game. This creates a rich gaming experience that is more than mashing two buttons. The funniest part is the fact that there is a cape you can unlock(by chaining an unreasonable amount of dashes) to half the energy consumption by chain dashing, just to never make more than like 5 consecutive dashes ever again. This is hilarious. I feel like the entire upgrade system need a rework, just as the combat system. The bosses have cool concepts, but they are not developed well enough. They really lack some uniqueness in terms of the fight itself. All of them are fought exactly the same: hit once or twice, maybe shoot with a shotgun, run away, wait/dodge, come closer, and repeat the cycle until dead. Would be nice to see some gimmicks, for example, the knight (western boss) could have a blocking move that would require the player to use a heavy attack to break stance and stun them for a few seconds for a good chunk of damage, etc. Level design is mostly ok and it’s generally fun to find secrets on the map. In some rooms, developers tried to incentivize the use of grenades by placing a ♥♥♥♥ ton of smaller enemies, which kinda works, but the problem is the fact that you can kill all of them by backstepping and mashing attack(which is preferable most of the time because the grenades might be on cooldown or general clunkiness when you can’t even throw it after a dash, a attack or whatever.) so it kinda fails the point and just becomes a bit annoying. I can ramble for hours, talking about how this game can be improved and what I would change but this review is already wordy enough. In the end, the game is still enjoyable, and I had fun playing it. It’s simple and short, so it doesn’t get boring, and for this game, this length is perfect.

It's been 10 years since i first played it. And it hasn't aged a day since. Simply put, it's a Masterpiece and everybody should play this game. One of the greatest Games ever made.