The world is littered with the corpses and wreckages of robots and titanic beings, derelict temples and villages, truly giving the world a palpable sense of abandonment and decay, now taken over by bandits, mercenaries and ne’er do wells. The game world is brought to life with some beautiful pixel art. Plus, you get to refine combat skills before you head off to the final region, so this works on multiple levels. From the beginning of the game three zones are open to be explored right away in any order and that freedom is a nice thing to have. Speaking of zones, the game is split into four separate ones, linked together by a hub world. It’s rare for a game to instil that sort of fire, and to do it without cutscenes or dialogue felt like an amazing achievement. One NPC’s pictures showed an atrocity and subsequent enslavement and that got me so riled up that not only did I not die from that point onward in that particular zone, I beat the boss in a single attempt. This contributes to the game’s effusive nature, but it inspires in a way that words struggle with. Hyper Light Drifter has no dialogue and minor characters communicate with noises while major characters communicate with pictures. Along the way he/she meets NPC’s and the like, and this I’m in love with. The main thing I was aware of throughout the story was the player character was suffering through some sort of ailment and pushed through in search of a cure or perhaps redemption. More about the story, more about the world and the people that inhabit it. Story wise, it one of those stories where I’m not fully sure about what’s happening but I wanted to find out. One or two frustrations aside, Hyper Light Drifter is a fantastic game. A world ripe for exploration, a lovely combat system and one of those mysterious stories that’s told through non-conventional means. In fact, it’s a game that’s right up my alley. It’s a good job that second chances are a thing because Hyper Light Drifter deserved one.
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