It's less polished and less fleshed out than Hylics 2, yes. But for how much I'd heard this described as a quirky little oddity or throwaway prankster experiment in comparison to its sequel, I was surprised at just how rich and enjoyable a gaming experience it wound up being.
It does, however, lean much further into being a parody of the JRPG genre (while at the same time toying with the genre's mechanics in genuinely interesting and creative ways). Lindroth seems to take a sort of impish, anarchic glee in "breaking" the genre's fundamental systems or rendering them pointless and absurd.
Near the end of the game, for instance, you walk into a room, open some chests, and are suddenly given what for all intents and purposes amounts to an infinite amount of money — a completely random, unearned, hilariously disproportionate "reward" for doing basically nothing at all. The game's biggest laugh-out-loud moment for me occurs when you defeat the final boss, upon which you're again given "999999 BUCKS" (which you now have no reason to spend), as well as "A HOT DOG," and are informed that you've gained "999999 EXP" and that all of your party members have now reached "LEVEL 63." Neither experience nor levels have been mentioned at all in the game prior to this moment.
The implicit message seems to be: none of this matters! You didn't play this game because you want to crunch numbers¹ or to fight repetitive battles until your avatar is as souped up and powerful as possible. You played it so that you could have the experience of being a weird little yellow guy with a moon for a head, wandering around a dithered 8-bit clay world, squashing vegetables, petting cats, watching trippy animations, and listening to NPCs with goofy walk cycles recite gobbledygook flavor text. And on that front? Hylics delivers.
I can't wait for Hylics 3.
¹For an example of weird JRPG parody that goes the opposite direction and leans waaaaay into the number crunching, check out the games of Damien Crawford!
It does, however, lean much further into being a parody of the JRPG genre (while at the same time toying with the genre's mechanics in genuinely interesting and creative ways). Lindroth seems to take a sort of impish, anarchic glee in "breaking" the genre's fundamental systems or rendering them pointless and absurd.
Near the end of the game, for instance, you walk into a room, open some chests, and are suddenly given what for all intents and purposes amounts to an infinite amount of money — a completely random, unearned, hilariously disproportionate "reward" for doing basically nothing at all. The game's biggest laugh-out-loud moment for me occurs when you defeat the final boss, upon which you're again given "999999 BUCKS" (which you now have no reason to spend), as well as "A HOT DOG," and are informed that you've gained "999999 EXP" and that all of your party members have now reached "LEVEL 63." Neither experience nor levels have been mentioned at all in the game prior to this moment.
The implicit message seems to be: none of this matters! You didn't play this game because you want to crunch numbers¹ or to fight repetitive battles until your avatar is as souped up and powerful as possible. You played it so that you could have the experience of being a weird little yellow guy with a moon for a head, wandering around a dithered 8-bit clay world, squashing vegetables, petting cats, watching trippy animations, and listening to NPCs with goofy walk cycles recite gobbledygook flavor text. And on that front? Hylics delivers.
I can't wait for Hylics 3.
¹For an example of weird JRPG parody that goes the opposite direction and leans waaaaay into the number crunching, check out the games of Damien Crawford!