SuperBunnyhop is now three for three on reviews I'm disagreed on (The Witness, Superhot). Has SuperBunnyhop ever listened to post-rock? Because there's no post-rock in Hyper Light Drifter. The only example he gives that resembles post-rock was Sword and Sworcery.
I started off East and had less issues than if I had started West. The ninjas and frogs that drop projectile waves are fine enough enemies to start on. He says the game would benefit from a different engine to get 60fps which I get. I agree with the platforming quibbles. But the rest like the game needing more conventional storytelling like text to get charming likeable characters is just weird. I got plenty of wonder and adventure, it's like a more horrific version of a typical fantasy tale much like it used to be with dark fantasy films in the 80s (Neverending Story, Labyrinth).
He says the game's enemies don't telegraph their moves as well as Dark Souls, I disagree. They all have wind-ups. I could predict every enemy's attack pattern and know when to dash away. At 2:49, the mistake he made was letting the purple frogs throw down their projectile waves when that room gives you plenty of time to scope it out without starting combat. You can shoot the frogs first and stop them from dropping the projectiles so the screen doesn't become as much of a mess. You can hide behind the pillars and take them out first before tackling the ninjas. Then he wouldn't have gone "what even just killed me?".
Hah, funny you mention the pillars, because every time I see a few of them in a room I already think "I guess I'm about to fight some shuriken frogs".
I really have no issues with the game so far, even the framerate, which is still so surprising to me, because I almost lost all interest in the game when it was revealed to be 30fps, really glad I still decided to check this thread for whatever reason.
THAT BEING SAID, if even Dark Souls has some shit areas, maybe I'm just lucky and East is far better designed than everything else, so I'm still in my honeymoon period with the game, and I'll find major flaws later on.
I support devs to do whatever they want to do, but I really hope what they want to do next is a game that is at least very similar to this one.
Someone else mentioned he talks about "yet another indie pixel art game with vague storytelling", that's also interesting to me because I'm getting less interested in indies in general as well. Back when XBLA was starting to get strong, I was of the opinion that indie games were better than AAA games, period. Now the indie market is so big that I think they're just as bad, in general (which is actually a good thing, as strange as it may sound, since what I may consider "bad" is someone else's GOTY), but this game's quality is amazing.
Anyone else feel like the damage you take from falling kinda discourages exploration?
A little bit, but it's still more forgiving than trying a tricky jump in Dark Souls and dying
What feels a bit cheap is when you fall in places you couldn't even know would be possible to fall while looking for secrets.