Hyper Light Drifter is the beautifully crafted, wordless tale of a chronically sick hero dropped into a cruel world. Drifter’s opening cinematic takes you on a bit of a trippy journey that feels a bit like existential Japanese animation meets experimental chiptune music video.
The game’s major appeal I believe are its stunning graphics. This isn’t your normal pixel romp. Landscapes and environments are crafted with deft detail. The world is vibrant and exists as a color palette alien to our own. It has a pretty psychedelic effect, and meshes a post apocalyptic universe with a colorful acid drop. It’s also incredibly well animated. Even when the Drifter hacks up blood I have to stop and tell myself “Damn, that’s a good looking fatal cough.”
The story is pretty obtuse, in fact the entire game is. You head off with no real goal and no real direction. Sure there are little hints here and there as to what you should be doing, but the game gives you even less info about your objectives and the universe than the typical Souls titles it borrows from.
In fact most of the story is told through images that NPCs share with you. More silent sequential art slides than they are pieces of exposition. Most of their stories tell of a mysterious hero that saved them, the same mysterious hero that saved you. So as you go about being a champion of the land you’re drifting in the wake of this other character. Your own avatar, the Drifter, is slowly dying on their journey. Stopping every now and then to hack up blood. It causes you to feel even more finite than the games tough enemies and bosses suggest.
And boy are they tough. Drifter isn’t heavily loot based, like Dark Souls or the Legend of Zelda, and while you’ll be upgrading skills the chances to do so are few and far between. You have to select carefully as to what powers you want in your future forays, as it takes a bit of time and work to get access to in-game currency. This also means HLD’s slew of punishing enemies require you learn the mechanics, learn precision dodge timing, and learn your strike windows as fast as possible. In summation, Git Gud. The game also says a controller is suggested, but I’m more than willing to say a controller is required. I’ve never found this to be true of any title I’ve played on PC, even when it comes to fighting game I could eke it out on a keyboard (true story). Hyper Light Drifter you need that controller. End of story.
That said I believe Hyper Light Drifter’s challenge often got to be just on the other side of fun. It would eventually get to be so that when I saw a room in the game, I might roll my eyes at the enemy setup. Sometimes it felt as though the game was a trial by numbers, throwing as many enemies waves as the room would allow to push me. I love my games hard, but it felt less like a challenge difficulty and more the form of difficulty 3D Action Games such as Tomb Raider or Resident Evil throws at you. Gaffes are more likely just because the numbers overwhelm, not because you actively screwed up.
While the difficulty of the game did annoy me I can say the checkpoint system is at least pretty gracious. You can also pretty easily refund your healing packs and a shortcut back to town is never too far away. In short, it took some of the better lessons from the Dark Souls series then added its own sensibilities. I still would have liked it if the difficulty was scaled back just a smidgen. I don’t want an easy game, but I hate feeling as though the challenge is a vindictive developer and not a sloppy player.
Essentially if you had the patience of say, Titan Souls, you’ll have the patience for Hyper Light Drifter. It’s harder than your typical Souls game, and it requires more exploration than your typical Zelda. In a way this makes Hyper Light Drifter stand out as its own title while hearkening back to its influences, for better or for worse. It’s a game that pushes boundaries in everything it does. Even when it comes to playing with nostalgia, Hyper Light Drifter is more likely to remind you of 80s and 90s MTV and GAINAX animations in terms of aesthetic than it is your typical action RPG pastiche. Though I’m not sure I always appreciated the rather unclear plot and pacing, I do like that the developers were willing to try something unorthodox and experiment well past the frame of what’s acceptable in video games. Just know if you go about playing Hyper Light Drifter it’s going to be a very acquired taste, but if the world and gameplay sound like something that appeal to you it’s worth giving a shot.
