While having charming graphics that reminds me a lot of Adventure Time and a very good soundtrack, Minute of Islands doesn't have anything else going for it. The gameplay is lackluster at best, just a few platforming parts and puzzles here and there, otherwise it's just walk in the direction your magic wand indicates and watch a few cutscenes until the end. Even if the story does have its moment, I don't find it particularly interesting and I would have preferred watching it as a 30 minutes short or even a movie rather than this game deprived of any depth in gameplay.
Hyper Light Drifter (that I will refer to as HLD for short) is a game that I didn't really know what to expect. I've heard about this game a while and I bought it without even looking at some gameplay for one particular reason: the music. The first time I listened to that music, it was too good to be real. That dark electronic music with a nice Debussy vibe made me want to buy this game blindly. And I absolutely don't regret that. Let's talk about the graphics first, I love those kind of minimalist pixel art that still manage to be as beautiful as less retro-styled games. Those graphics combined with the music create an amazing dark, dystopic and yet beautiful atmosphere. As for the gameplay, it's amazing as well. A mix of action based combat, RPG, exploration and a bit of platformer. The whole is pretty hard but really fun. An amazing and beautiful game overall. The OST is my favourite part of this game.
I got this game from the event Ubi 30 on Uplay a few years ago and, given that I hadn't played any Rayman game before, I didn't know what to expect. When I first launched the game, I was impressed by the beauty of the graphics and the music. The more I progressed in this game, the more I liked it, it quickly became my favourite game ever. The difficulty made me want to finish the game more than any other one and I achieved to finish it 100% a few months ago. As far as the level design is concerned, it's fantastic. The levels are very diverse and become more a,d more challenging (and sometimes frustrating but that's not an issue for me). The Tricky Treasure levels are great examples of funny and hard as well as the level unlocked after finishing the Tricky Treasure ones. So, this is an incredible game, probably the best one to start with the Rayman franchise and, in general, I'd recommend it to anyone.
