Hyper light drifter. Where do I even begin? When I think of a game that had a big potential but failed to meet it this game comes to mind. At first I really liked this game. I went up from the main area and explored a really cool area with an incredible boss at the end. The best boss fights in gaming are the ones that let you be as aggressive and risky as you can and be rewarded for it. This boss was it and set the standards really high for the rest of the game... which was just okay. The bosses are few, around 9, and except 2 of them they are kind of easy and bland; none of them ever reached the high of the first boss I fought. The exploration is a two sided coin. It's mostly good and I really enjoyed it seeing how the areas were constructed. What I hate the most are the small little squares that you have to look for on the ground, which signify a secret. They are a very "gamey" way to signal something to look out for, but it would be better if you had to look for details in the environment and not just look at the ground to see if there's a weird square. Invisible platforms also feel the same. The dashing mechanic is... weird? If you keep dashing following a rhythm the game lets you chain dashes, but if you chain too many in a row you lose all the stamina and are forced to stop. I don't get why they made it this way; why is the game punishing me for getting the rhythm right too many times? It seems backwards to me. Some might argue that it would make people look less at their surroundings but I don't think that's fair because new players will still look around and at most get the chain dashing wrong. It might make speedrunning monotonous and bland maybe?? I don't think it should work that way. But the biggest thing I don't like about the game is the reward system of secrets or in general how the "pink triangles" are given to the player. Some of them require a small dungeon to get, some of them require enemy arenas, and these are great and I really like them. But sometimes, out of nowhere, if you spot one of the squares, you are rewarded one. This makes them feel almost worthless at times; they are required for progressing through the game and additional challenges and making them as easy to get as looking at the ground, which can also give you something much less important like the game's currency, makes them feel unrewarding. The game has 8 of them each area and since there's that many of them there are bound to have some of them be easier to get, but at the same time they could have had less of them or just, not as easy as some of them currently are. When I go back and fight the boss that got me hyped for the rest of the game, it just feels like I'm playing a totally different one.