Hyper Light Drifter - Opinions

I feel like I enjoyed Hyper Light Drifter for weird reasons. I enjoyed the combat (especially the boss battles), but didn't find the boss rush or gauntlet mode very compelling. I absolutely loved the exploration, but didn't feel the urge to find everything (maybe with notes I would have).

It's probably because I don't consider the rewards to be worthwhile (i.e. no extra story or new content) combined with me not finding either of the main activities intrinsically rewarding. The story (particularly as told through the environment) was mysterious enough on account of having no dialogue, but while that's great for a first-play (very puzzling), I'm not one to dig any deeper into that kind of world (similar to how I feel about Fez). I personally prefer my lore delivered as detailed chunks of text à la the codices from Mass Effect 1 or Doom, but I understand how that doesn't fit into Hyper Light Drifter.

The combat, though enjoyable, was rather too fast-twitch for my liking. Even after I remembered where all my buttons were and when to use them, I still wished I had more time to think about my moves. Getting stun-locked for a single mistake is harsh punishment in any game, but here, I found it happened mostly because I lost track of my animation delay or my own sprite altogether, rather than my plan being inherently faulty.

This is the same reason why I didn't love Hotline Miami: there's time to plan, but no time to adapt. Although it's not as severe in Hyper Light Drifter, I do wish there was more strategy to fighting clumps of enemies other than waiting for their patterns to line up so that it's safe to approach. It always felt like either myself or the enemy was being sent through a meatgrinder, and which one it turned out to be was entirely based around how observant and careful I was at the start of the fight. Maybe I was missing some i-frames, but it always seemed like suicide to jump into more than 3 enemies that were close together, particularly if one or more of them had more than 7 health.

I very much enjoyed iterating on my first encounters with certain enemies, but after that, the combat just wasn't cerebral enough, fast enough, or technical enough to really suck me in. It didn't help that the endgame gauntlets had randomized waves, so you can't even develop a plan beforehand. It occupies a weird middle-ground between action and strategy that I can best describe as a Dark Souls rhythm game.

Overall a good indie-game detour; definitely worth the visit for the soundtrack alone (I like this one even more than Disasterpeace's similar efforts on the Fez OST).