This dlc returns to the old Metro Gameplay. It tells an emotionally touching story. I absolutly loved this dlc and I would say I even liked it better than the main game.
You know some of those games that when you play it it absolutely blows you away? Hyper Light Drifter is one of those games. You start of with little to no explanation. Just a quick overview of the controls. There is actually no text apart from this tutorial in the game. The story is told to images and level design and much like dark souls you have to imagine the story in your head and come up with theories yourself. Because of the lack of explanation you have a different sense of exploration than in most games. Many indie games use pixel optics because they are not able to draw proper graphics and because of time restrains. While this might be true of Hyper Light Drifter, I never felt like it. The pixel look actually added to the atmosphere with the beautiful hand drawn sprites and amazing animations. The electronic soundtrack is also just amazing and sets a big part of the games mood. The combat is very slick it just feels right, for the most part (later more to that), you have to avoid enemy attacks, strike at the right moment and boy, this game is hard! But it usually doesn't feel frustrating because, unlike dark souls, there isn't such a big penalty for death and you start at the beginning of the room. Only in some instances it starts to become annoying, for example when you only have one healthpack left to fight a lot of enemies. So why only 4 stars? While this game is amazing, there are of course some problems: While the controls are responsive and for the most part work very good, there are some engine limitations which make some fight, especially boss fights unfair. For example when you dash out of the way of a big attack and you clearly see you were out of the way but you still get hit. This makes some boss fights a bit of a gamble and you just have to try until you are lucky. Overall I had quite fun playing this game but at some points it really was frustrating. It is amazing but has it's flaws.
I was pretty hyped about this game when it came out, in fact I was so hyped that I bought it for full price what I usually don't do. To me this game was just one huge dissappointment and let me tell you why: Like probably many of you I played BG: 1 & 2, Fallout 1 & 2 and PS:T and I loved those games. They were release before I started playing video games but somehow there is some mysterious magic about those games that I loved. Unfortunatly, PoE has nothing of it: Let's start with the combat: while the combat is fine, the interface is horrible and much worse than in BG but you kind of get used to it. The biggest problem is that you either get completely smashed in fights or the fights are incredebly easy. I don't know exactly what is wrong with the leveling system but somehow the stats don't work like they should. The dialogues written reasonably good and the graphics are beautiful, however there is one unforgiving flaw in this game: The game world and the story are incredebly generic and bland. There is so much lore in this game that half of the dialogue is just explaining about the world. But the lore just isn't interesting: it just looks like a copy of a copy of Lord of the Rings to me. That is a problem also BG had but in PoE it just ruins the game. It's not build like an actual world people would live in and it looks like they made some sacrifices to being politically correct than to create an actual living world. A very good example for a credible game world for me is the Witcher 3 where the fantasy is directly based on eastern and middle european folklore or the very intelligently designed and interesting world of PS:T or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. So if you haven't played any these games: BG1,2 , PS:T , Fallout 1,2 just don't bother spending 40 € on this game. If you played all of the classics and want more the game might still be something for you but certainly not for me.
