Absolutely mesmerizing. Hyper Light Drifter somehow achieves one of my favorite narrative journeys in an indie game without a single line of text. Knowing the context of Alex Preston's health as he developed the game makes the themes present even more deep and personal.

The game strikes a great balance of fun and difficulty, and the combat makes you feel like an absolute badass, especially as you get more abilities later on. The combination of the gun and sword combat works so well and allows for a ton of creative freedom. Each environment feels mystical and mysterious in its own unique way, and if you were to look up 'atmosphere' in a dictionary, HLD's picture would be right there. Don't even get me started on the soundtrack, which is one of the most unique, heartbreaking, and powerful that I've ever heard. Hyper Light Drifter is a gift from Alex Preston and Heart Machine to the world.

Hyper Light Drifter é um jogo muito especial, que te marca desde o primeiro minuto de jogo. Seu início pode causar estranheza para quem nunca experimentou um jogo em que não há diálogos e tutoriais com TEXTO, mas à medida em que o jogador vai andando e descobrindo quem ele é neste mundo e o que tem que fazer através dos elementos visuais, junto com uma trilha sonora IMPECÁVEL, vai construindo uma experiência muito única, extremamente imersiva, coisa rara de se encontrar até mesmo em jogos mais recentes.

Eu realmente não tenho medo de afirmar que esse jogo é uma obra prima. Inspirado por Zelda - a Link to the past e Diablo, seus pontos mais fortes definitivamente são as artes (um dos jogos com as melhores pixel-arts que eu já vi), seu combate desafiador e justo, com mecânicas de Dark Souls, e o incentivo constante à exploração, que é na grande maioria das vezes recompensada de maneira satisfatória. Um excelente jogo!

Good:
- enjoyable art style
- fun boss battles

Mixed:
- combat too simple and repetitive
- fighting hoards of enemies is a chore
- level progression feels too basic with little in the way of puzzle and challenges

somehow made me tear up without a single spoken word or even any text that contributed to the story. bosses were all great levels were all great, do wish some of the bosses were a bit less of a pushover including the final boss but honestly even in spite of that it's still the best boss in the game and one of my favs overall. great game hard recommend

edit: i slept on it a bit and there do be some issues worth mentioning but none of them change my opinion on the game. i do really wish the game were a bit longer. even if i think the ending and the buildup to it is perfect as perfect can be, would be nice to have had more time in the world. if i didn't fuck around in the chain dash training room for almost 4 hours this game would have taken me around 6 and a half which is in most cases a bit shorter than i'd like. i also am not too big on how upgrade progression worked, it felt kinda arbitrary as opposed to attaching it to any sort of game progression. also wish you got to try out the skills before you paid for them, the little gif that shows is kind of misleading in some cases. and lastly with skills i do wish there was more variety in potential builds, not saying go full on souls but maybe more like what sekiro did (from my understanding of sekiro).

BUT these downsides i'm realizing don't come without plenty of upsides i've felt in the day since beating it. for starters after doing some reading and sitting on what the game is saying and the way the story is told it's absolutely one of my favorite uses of the medium. telling not just any story but THIS SPECIFIC STORY about coming to terms with your own mortality is perfect and really encapsulates how the journey to dealing with the end of life is all internal. in some cases this might have just felt like a gimmick but the way this story is works perfectly being told this way.

i tend to love moody exploration games where you discover how a world fell to ruin, but i think the approach in HLD took it a step too far for my taste. not having any dialogue to listen to or text to read make it pretty impenetrable for me. this could have been overcome if the combat felt good, but to me it was a bit sluggish and unresponsive. deliberate combat can sometimes work, but for me, in this case it didn't. i think some people will love this game, but i can't recommend it unconditionally.