Hyper Light Drifter

Easily the best Indie i have ever played. The music, the art, the controls, the enimies are all spot on and I've played it three times, going on four. The bosses are amazing to fight and each section of the game offers new enemies and cool new looking places. Do not let the absence of dialogue fool you, it is amazing to let your imagination to lead the way in this thrilling game. BUY IT. You will not be disappointed! Thank you Heart Machine Team!

Game is charming. Nice atmosphere, good music, interesting graphics and art style. The world isn't developed enough to be interesting as the atmosphere. The story is dull and useless. The game is hard, like really, really hard. But it's not a "Dark Souls"esque type of hard, where it's always fair to the player. It's not, at all. It's needlessly frustrating and irritating. Mostly because of the HORRIBLE controls. M+K is basically unplayable, due to weird color choices, mouse pointer is almost invisible in the nicely colored enviroment, and the control scheme is really badly thought out, in a way where you often do something completely different than what you were trying to do (leading, obviously, to your death). This happens all the time with the dash ability, you dash toward your (almost invisible) mouse cursor, and the angle at which you dash depends on the pointer position to the character. This is *extremely* confusing and the n°1 cause of deaths. A dash in the movement direction would have solved this problem. Bottom line: The terrible control scheme kills a potentially interesting game.

I loved the atmosphere of this game, the graphics are wonderful and the music sublime. You can wander around, exploring ruins, trying to understand what happened. Some says that the story isn't developped. I would say this it isn't true. In the 80-90's, game were not as developped as they are now, and we used a lot our imagination to make a story with the different elements of the game. This one is better, it gives us plenty of elements to tell the story or to help you make you one, your own story. You are free to start wherever you want, to beat bosses in the order you want, you decide what upgrade you want. This game is a poetry, and it would be perfect if there was not those controls... Hell, this doesn't work (I played with mouse and keyboard as my controller was down). Gameplay looks interesting and nervous, but when you encounter ennemies, your character is suddenly paraplegic 1 second out of 2. I succeeded in the 800 dashes challenge at 2nd try, but i couldn't perform any correct chains of dashes when ennemies are there. Shield never happened for me outside the shop, or maybe once. Some ambushes can randomly turn harder than the bosses. And bosses aren't easy. Controls are not reliable, what you can easily do when you're alone become random when ennemies are there. For an action game, we are very far from the feeling of Dead Cells. The game isn't that hard, it's just random and that's a big problem. It's could be a 5 stars with better controls. Fortunately, you can accomplish your quest and I still recomend you this pearl. Don't be lazy, live your own experience and make your own story

A lot of good things have been said about this game, so I'll try and tell the things I've personally enjoyed: The story bits told by images and sounds, as if the population in that world had forgotten their language and culture. It may not be like that, but feels like it, and builds the atmosphere. The not knowing, but keep exploring. A game that doesnt throw a predigested story to the face, is getting more and more enjoying for me. The kind of abstract comunication with the controller. It vibrates reacting to the world, when you are on certain spots, pulsing harder or softer, it certainly feels different. Like a radiation emited by that technology, maybe related to the character's illness. This game comunicates with the player, in different and new ways. Very recommended.

This game nails almost everything. The atmosphere thanks to the graphic style and soundtrack is stunning and the combat is challenging but very fair. Actually it's very rare to see such a refined, almost flawless combat system with reliable controls. This is a game for people who enjoy exciting and challenging (boss) fights which force the player to learn from their mistakes. The difficulty is not too frustrating, but enough to prevent the player from winning by accident. During the course of the game some skills can be acquired to make certain situations much easier(and combat even faster). The dungeons and environment are often pretty linear and straightforward, but have many small branches leading to items and other small secrets. At the beginning some things seem a bit confusing as the game uses symbols to explain almost everything, but surprisingly it's enough because all mechanics and hints follow the same clear patterns. Keyboard controls are pretty bad, but that's the only criticism I could come up with. This is probably not a game for everyone, but for me it's one of the greatest titles I've ever played.