A gorgeous game, from the story, to the gameplay. But in particular, I must add a note to the design and look of the Hyper Light Drifters art style; for being only what I can describe as one of the best looking uses of the pixle art medium I have ever seen. Besides the art howerver, Hyper Light Drifter does almost everything else almost perfect as well. The gameplay is tight, and seems relativly fair, with bosses being capable of stunlocking you pretty good if not careful. Such being, from time to time, a slight annoyence, but not to such a degree that is ruins the experiences of fighting. Overall, A must play game.

This title was a lot of fun. Each area was brimming with atmosphere, and I anticipated what challenges waited around every corner. I especially enjoyed the gunplay, as each weapon was fun to experiment with.

The game can be extremely vague about certain things. This is mostly due to a lack of dialogue, as all mechanics are explained using images or context clues. This is usually great, but that does mean it's easy to accidentally ignore certain features. For instance, despite knowing they existed, I never got used to chain dashing or stamina management. The game also likes to hide secrets just out of view. It can be incredibly fun to notice a strange wall that leads to a secret tunnel with upgrade material, but it can also be frustrating when the collectible required for progression is hidden behind a wall inside a jail cell that you walked past on five separate occasions.

Very good top-down hack 'n' slash with a deep atmosphere and enthralling music and visuals. The pixel art is very good, although i found it to be too messy in boss fights to understand every blow. Gameplay is a bit on the hard side but weapons are crazy funny and strong. They can compensate pretty easily any lack of skill you might have against bosses or certain enemies. The only issue i have is that the dash is too restrictive in its timing to concatenate multiple ones reliably, especially in boss fights. The story is one of the most poignant pieces of silent media ever, masterfully crafted in both image composition and music.

Best version is the Switch one. Extra weapon, dungeon and boss are really worth it.

First hour: I don't really get this, the setting is cool though I guess.

Next 3-4 hours: oh I'm done and it has been an entire day, woops.

When it gets it's hooks in ya, it really gets it's hooks in ya, y'know?

Wife’s Reaction:
“Major Adventure Time and Dead Cell vibes. Creepy and awesome.”

The Fast and the Furious:
One of those indies I had on my radar and never got around to playing. Immediately, Hyper Light Drifter hits with a wild opening, then leaves you to wander and figure out what to do and where to go. It’s fast and challenging and has awesome vibes and style.

Well this game was tough. I bought it I dunno how many years ago on Switch and over the years the developer has just kept putting out games or trailers for games that I also wanna play so I finally decided to commit and beat this.

After I beat this I looked up some info about it and the dev was inspired by Diablo and A Link to the Past and the world is inspired by Nausicaa. Put that together with how I saw someone musing that the gameplay feels snappy in combat like Hotline Miami and yeah that's basically this game.

You drift around a land that's worn and you can tell just by the imagery and atmosphere that it was once a prosperous place and then it was ravaged by something. More can be gleamed from the environment as you go through each of the four distinct connected lands and beat their dungeon-like areas.

Combat was punishing for me. You start with a sword, a gun with four shots, a dash move and five units of health. You build up shots for the gun by hitting things with the sword. It doesn't have to be enemies though which I used to my advantage at one point and just smacked breakable objects in the world to get more shots. This actually pretty cleverly ties into the collectibles aspect of the game as there's bits to collect and as you get four of them they make one currency unit. You then build up enough of those and THEN you can buy upgrades for your items/movement/health in the hub town.

I did some searching around but ultimately got probably a fourth of the upgrades total so my playthrough was subsequently that much more difficult. It's a game where you advance in a screen and enemies notice you. If you aren't methodical with it you get ganged up on and die and go back to where the room started. There was a trick to this that I learned while playing is that if you enter a room and die, you go back to the start with the same amount of health and health packs. However, if you clear an area and go back through the door then go back in, it'll save the progress of how many enemies you killed so far. It was this way that made my playthrough more tolerable without getting every upgrade.

That's about as helpful as a fourth bear in Goldilocks for boss fights though. It's here that I felt the difficulty was a bit disjointed though it could be due to the game letting you tackle the initial areas in whatever order you want. Each boss was a definitely test of skill up to the point you got to them and even with upgrades the game still wants you to be able to use your skillset to the fullest. It took me quite a few tries (and docking the console and using a controller because fuck playing this in handheld mode) but I was able to best all of them and while they initially felt disproportionate to the area leading up to them (usually) I found myself enjoying the battles overall. I'd go as far as to say the final boss is its own reward too as it had a moveset and fighting style that just felt so satisfying to contend with (after I went out and got one more upgrade).

Hyper Light Drifter is a satisfying game that wears its influence on its sleeve. You get as much out of it as you put into it where upgrades can make or break your enjoyment and the environment does the heavy lifting for the story. You can engage with it to the fullest or go through it quick for more of a challenge but I think either way you end up with a good experience. Recommended to fans of maybe SNES era Nintendo games, neat environments, and a bit of challenge. Definitely looking forward to playing their next game soon.

all of the content from the original game is as perfect as always but i was disappointed to find out the special edition content was not made by heart machine but instead a completely different studio (abylight studios) and mostly only consisted of one 5-10 minute area with a boss fight at the end of it which was way harder than literally everything else in the base game. they did add a couple new guns which were cool (even though you can't upgrade them for some reason) but the fact that it was all stuff made by a different team of developers made it feel like i was playing fan-made modded pieces of content as opposed to experiencing new officially added components of the game. regardless though hyper light drifter still is a fantastic game at its core, with tight, fast gameplay and rewarding exploration set against an absolutely beautiful backdrop, and despite the lackluster new additions of this edition itself, i would still recommend any version of the game to anyone any day.


unless it was like a evil version of the game or something that'd be a different set of circumstances