Hyper Light Drifter |OT| We On A HyperLight Beam
- Thread starter More_Badass
- Start date
Balmung421
Member
YES! It is such a bummer. Not sure how yours happen but I notice mine happen going up stairs. Between crashes this game just plays so damn well 👍🏼
Just started and I'm pleasantly surprised. I guess I was expecting for the game lean on its visuals to carry it but the combat and exploration more than matches it. It's pretty lenient with how each area is essentially allows infinite retries but that first boss fight up north was a lot of fun. It not only demanded pattern recognition but timing your dodges to cancel the attack animation.
I hope this pops up at a GDQ event.
Got a couple questions though.
1) Do you ever get abilities that allow you traverse new areas or can you access everything right away? It doesn't seem like it but I want to know so I don't try to brute force something that requires an ability. Sorta related to that, is there an in-game way to vaguely know what your missing and where it could possibly be?
2) For the chain dashing test/challenge,
Timing your attacks to kill the diving birds while also damaging the boss felt great too.
Got a couple questions though.
1) Do you ever get abilities that allow you traverse new areas or can you access everything right away? It doesn't seem like it but I want to know so I don't try to brute force something that requires an ability. Sorta related to that, is there an in-game way to vaguely know what your missing and where it could possibly be?
2) For the chain dashing test/challenge,
is there any trick to it other than keeping the rhythm after initiating it and going around in a circle? I got the 100 dashes in a row but more often than not what ruins me slamming into a wall rather than messing up the rhythm. I don't know if I can keep it for looks like 500+ dashes.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Damn, game is tricky. I went north first and only got two red triangle things. Can't even seem to find where the other two are.
Multi Dash is the only upgrade you need.
You do need the
Laser Rifle
Yeah, that place is stumping me a bit. I can't remember what upgrades you pick up when, but something to keep in mind is that you can always come back and upgrades from other places will help you find new secrets. Although, I'm not actually sure if it's designed so that you can get all the triangles straight up, without any upgrades. Areas do tend to sort of blend together after a point, and it's hard to remember exactly where you've been and what you've done, which leads to a lot of random running along walls.
Took me 20 hours to collect almost everything and then beat the final boss. However, this doesn't include New Game Plus, and I was still missing a few items. If you're going to do the absolute minimal amount of collection, it would probably clock in at 6-8 hours.
About 6-8 just doing the zones normally with a little exploration. Probably double that going back to each zone and trying to find everything
For example I'm at 3-4 with 2 zones down and some exploration while doing them, as much as I could at the time but skipping stuff I didnt know how to get.
Permanently A
Junior Member
If you're playing with a gamepad I don't know, but if you're playing with mouse and keyboard you can
just mash space while keeping the cursor between the two dash points, which will allow you to dash infinitely without having to go around in a circle.
I think you get the achievement when you get enough to upgrade everything.
It makes sense that there are more in the game than are needed for upgrades.
Wow thanks! That turned it into a joke. I would feel bad
if the reward wasn't a palate swap.
Thankfully the combat arenas are mostly single screen but yea, when the camera pans as you move around it's really noticeable.
Thats actually great to know.
I'm actually starting to feel sick after about 30 minutes of play, gonna be a long playthrough this one.
Same. I've found way more than I needed to fully upgrade everything, and I got the achievement for finding them all when there were obviously way more around the world. However, I now have 2.75 full ones (with everything fully upgraded) as well as all keys, monoliths, and costumes but no Hoarder achievement. Has anyone at all gotten the Hoarder achievement?
Just finished. This game ended up being so much better than I expected. Simply the best combat of this kind I've ever played. Some actual challenge to require proficiency at it too. I don't think I have it in me to run around everything I've already done scrounging for secrets, but I will keep an eye out for whatever this team does next.
Weird, I think the achievement popped before I had enough to upgrade my last weapon. That's a bit unfortunate though as it means we kinda don't know how many are in the game.
Yeah I guess I didn't expect them to hide that many out there, but it makes sense especially considering some just drop from mobs.
Interesting. I still don't quite have everything yet so I'll see what happens. The bummer would be if you need to get all the stuff on NG+ for that achievement/100%.
That's the core story wrapped up for me too.
Final boss was giving me some serious trouble around that last 1/8th of his health bar, but I actually managed to pull off my own little action-hero moment when I realised that we were both only a hit or two from death but I wasn't going to be able to get close enough for a shotgun blast.
Biggest sigh of relief ever.
So, final status:
• North - 5/8
• East - 5/8
• West - 7/8
• South - 5/8
--------------------------
• 4 x Keys
--------------------------
• Pistol, Handcannon, Rifle and Shotgun found
--------------------------
13 hours logged on Steam
Might take a break and go back for the other bits and pieces later. Long story short, fantastic game and easily one of the best I've played in 2015. Ori and the Blind Forest/Axiom Verge tier right here.
Final boss was giving me some serious trouble around that last 1/8th of his health bar, but I actually managed to pull off my own little action-hero moment when I realised that we were both only a hit or two from death but I wasn't going to be able to get close enough for a shotgun blast.
He was gearing up to do his 3x dash attack when I suddenly remembered that I'd equipped my pistol - that un-upgraded little peashooter from the very beginning - in my second weapon slot. A few quick shots from that and down he went.
So, final status:
• North - 5/8
• East - 5/8
• West - 7/8
• South - 5/8
--------------------------
• 4 x Keys
--------------------------
• Pistol, Handcannon, Rifle and Shotgun found
--------------------------
13 hours logged on Steam
Might take a break and go back for the other bits and pieces later. Long story short, fantastic game and easily one of the best I've played in 2015. Ori and the Blind Forest/Axiom Verge tier right here.
Messofanego
Banned
Seriously, is the thanks to Kanye West in the credits and OT subtitle some in-joke I'm not getting? XD
XANDER CAGE
Member
And just like that, I'm cold on the game again. It frustrates me in a way I've never been frustrated by this kind of game before and I'm not sure why. I've been trying to put words to it, though.
Basically, I'm caught between two perspectives. I love a lot of traditionally appreciated "difficult" games - Castlevania, Ghouls n' Goblins, Mega Man, Souls games, etc etc - and relish their challenge. I love learning games and overcoming tough encounters. I definitely disagree with the frankly childish Rock Paper Shotgun article about Hyper Light Drifter that attacks a hard-game-loving strawman with this silly attempted takedown:
This is ridiculous for many reasons that I don't need to get into, but most of all what bothers is is how it pretends that designing easier encounters is a simple matter. It's not. It's essentially asking developers to double their workload and design two versions of everything. While basic accessibility is important and should always be considered, games are meticulously designed machines and demanding they make concessions instead of learning them yourself is asinine.
So, as you can plainly see, I like hard games. However, there's another issue at play here.
Difficult does not always mean well-designed. There are a lot of hard games that are hard for stupid reasons, or frustrating reasons, but because they're hard and lots of people love a good challenge, lots of people beat them. Well designed hard games and poorly designed hard games share more in common that bad and good easy games. A good hard game will be just as unrelenting and insurmountable as a poor hard game. Both work actively against the player.
It's really to dismiss criticisms of difficulty because any challenge overcome is validating, regardless of the quality of the mechanics involved. That is to say, it's incredibly easy for hard games to get put up on a pedestal. For example, look at any Souls game OT - they are littered with comments from mid-playthrough posters stating how the game was fun up until X thing but X thing takes the difficulty too far and is actually poorly designed compared to the rest of the game. Are they wrong? Do they just need to git gud? Do they actually have a point sometimes? Aside from the unanimously hated Bed of Chaos, criticizing Souls amongst Souls fans is a prickly matter, especially mid-playthrough on a new game. The experience of besting the Hard Game Fuck Yeah I'm So Elite!!! is fetishized, and it's easy to simply say that anyone who can't beat a hard game just doesn't "get" it. Full disclosure: that's basically where I am in Hyper Light Drifter. I haven't beaten it; I have been bested by it.
I have a litany of criticisms of Hyper Light Drifter, and I am unsure which ones are fair and informed criticisms of the design, and which ones are simply my own failings. Here's where I'm at though:
I think the excellent basic combat is marred by spotty, haphazard encounter design. So many fights just feel like enemies were slathered all over the screen, with no reasonable way to manage their various tells or projectiles. This is especially a problem in the East.
I think the map is terrible. It's useless for navigation because the landmarks it depicts are... well, landmarks. I can see them and go to them, and the map doesn't actually show what their entry/exit points are or where you actually are - it just shows your icon sitting on the warp pad closest to where you are, which is somehow more useless than just being a map with no player icon. It also doesn't list opened/unopened doors or track the gear bits on the underground/dungeon layer, which is just mind-boggling to me.
I think the short loop between encounter/death/respawn actively makes the game more aggravating, and that it's bullshit that it doesn't at least fill your health bar when you respawn. If you get to an area with one health, good luck pal. This is, oddly, a case where tighter checkpointing is actually more difficult - it feels like aggressive save-stating in an emulator fucking you over in cases where starting fresh would both take the pressure off of an increasingly frustrating fight and give the player a chance to learn the game better and return with more health at the ready.
Related to that, I think that some of the visual flair, such as the lengthy death/respawn animations and visual overhangs (trees, walls, etc etc) are style pieces that actively work against substance by getting in the way. If the game insists on checkpointing so much for quick iteration, forcing me to watch the death/getting back up animation over and over and over again feels like a huge oversight. Likewise, as gorgeous as all the animation is in a vacuum, the game is just unreadable to me in larger group fights. I am red/green colorblind, so that might have something to do with it, but it's still incredibly mushy and hard to pick out a lot of the time.
Finally, what bums me out the most about this game is how all of these frustrations eat away at the incredible atmosphere and tone in the game. The art, sound, and environmental storytelling are all beautiful and powerful. The music especially is so emotionally potent; somber, swelling, mournful. However, I'm bashing my head against a fight against eighty thousand frog assholes throwing ninja stars at me all several frames apart while an exploding plant is running at me while a bunch of toads are shooting bullet hell fuck shit at me from every corner of the screen. At this point I'm not ruminating on the sorrowful world anymore, I'm just angrily bashing my head against a wall having zero fun.
I'll keep at it tomorrow. I want to love it. I feel like I know I should love it. But right now I just can't believe in this particular Cult of Difficult.
Basically, I'm caught between two perspectives. I love a lot of traditionally appreciated "difficult" games - Castlevania, Ghouls n' Goblins, Mega Man, Souls games, etc etc - and relish their challenge. I love learning games and overcoming tough encounters. I definitely disagree with the frankly childish Rock Paper Shotgun article about Hyper Light Drifter that attacks a hard-game-loving strawman with this silly attempted takedown:
This is ridiculous for many reasons that I don't need to get into, but most of all what bothers is is how it pretends that designing easier encounters is a simple matter. It's not. It's essentially asking developers to double their workload and design two versions of everything. While basic accessibility is important and should always be considered, games are meticulously designed machines and demanding they make concessions instead of learning them yourself is asinine.
So, as you can plainly see, I like hard games. However, there's another issue at play here.
Difficult does not always mean well-designed. There are a lot of hard games that are hard for stupid reasons, or frustrating reasons, but because they're hard and lots of people love a good challenge, lots of people beat them. Well designed hard games and poorly designed hard games share more in common that bad and good easy games. A good hard game will be just as unrelenting and insurmountable as a poor hard game. Both work actively against the player.
It's really to dismiss criticisms of difficulty because any challenge overcome is validating, regardless of the quality of the mechanics involved. That is to say, it's incredibly easy for hard games to get put up on a pedestal. For example, look at any Souls game OT - they are littered with comments from mid-playthrough posters stating how the game was fun up until X thing but X thing takes the difficulty too far and is actually poorly designed compared to the rest of the game. Are they wrong? Do they just need to git gud? Do they actually have a point sometimes? Aside from the unanimously hated Bed of Chaos, criticizing Souls amongst Souls fans is a prickly matter, especially mid-playthrough on a new game. The experience of besting the Hard Game Fuck Yeah I'm So Elite!!! is fetishized, and it's easy to simply say that anyone who can't beat a hard game just doesn't "get" it. Full disclosure: that's basically where I am in Hyper Light Drifter. I haven't beaten it; I have been bested by it.
I have a litany of criticisms of Hyper Light Drifter, and I am unsure which ones are fair and informed criticisms of the design, and which ones are simply my own failings. Here's where I'm at though:
I think the excellent basic combat is marred by spotty, haphazard encounter design. So many fights just feel like enemies were slathered all over the screen, with no reasonable way to manage their various tells or projectiles. This is especially a problem in the East.
I think the map is terrible. It's useless for navigation because the landmarks it depicts are... well, landmarks. I can see them and go to them, and the map doesn't actually show what their entry/exit points are or where you actually are - it just shows your icon sitting on the warp pad closest to where you are, which is somehow more useless than just being a map with no player icon. It also doesn't list opened/unopened doors or track the gear bits on the underground/dungeon layer, which is just mind-boggling to me.
I think the short loop between encounter/death/respawn actively makes the game more aggravating, and that it's bullshit that it doesn't at least fill your health bar when you respawn. If you get to an area with one health, good luck pal. This is, oddly, a case where tighter checkpointing is actually more difficult - it feels like aggressive save-stating in an emulator fucking you over in cases where starting fresh would both take the pressure off of an increasingly frustrating fight and give the player a chance to learn the game better and return with more health at the ready.
Related to that, I think that some of the visual flair, such as the lengthy death/respawn animations and visual overhangs (trees, walls, etc etc) are style pieces that actively work against substance by getting in the way. If the game insists on checkpointing so much for quick iteration, forcing me to watch the death/getting back up animation over and over and over again feels like a huge oversight. Likewise, as gorgeous as all the animation is in a vacuum, the game is just unreadable to me in larger group fights. I am red/green colorblind, so that might have something to do with it, but it's still incredibly mushy and hard to pick out a lot of the time.
Finally, what bums me out the most about this game is how all of these frustrations eat away at the incredible atmosphere and tone in the game. The art, sound, and environmental storytelling are all beautiful and powerful. The music especially is so emotionally potent; somber, swelling, mournful. However, I'm bashing my head against a fight against eighty thousand frog assholes throwing ninja stars at me all several frames apart while an exploding plant is running at me while a bunch of toads are shooting bullet hell fuck shit at me from every corner of the screen. At this point I'm not ruminating on the sorrowful world anymore, I'm just angrily bashing my head against a wall having zero fun.
I'll keep at it tomorrow. I want to love it. I feel like I know I should love it. But right now I just can't believe in this particular Cult of Difficult.
Seriously, is the thanks to Kanye West in the credits and OT subtitle some in-joke I'm not getting? XD
I suggested the title and it was a unanimous decision to make it the OT title. The Kanye West mention is all them. Just a coincidence.
I think you just need to, you know... get gud Xander :3
As someone who is shit at Dark Souls games but loves them, and uses summons without a care in the world because he's shit, I fully understand anyone having potencial problems with this game. I havent ran into too much trouble yet, I cleared the north and east zones, which are probbaly the easiest, I had to restart the bosses a few times but not too many
the "arena rooms" are obviously the worst, but you usually respawn near enough. I kinda treat them as mini-bosses, as I tend do die a few times in them and then figure out the paterns like it was a boss and clear them. The health issue, I mean, there are medkitts everywhere, im always leaving some behind so I havent run into any health issues
please dont ban me Im kidding
As someone who is shit at Dark Souls games but loves them, and uses summons without a care in the world because he's shit, I fully understand anyone having potencial problems with this game. I havent ran into too much trouble yet, I cleared the north and east zones, which are probbaly the easiest, I had to restart the bosses a few times but not too many
the "arena rooms" are obviously the worst, but you usually respawn near enough. I kinda treat them as mini-bosses, as I tend do die a few times in them and then figure out the paterns like it was a boss and clear them. The health issue, I mean, there are medkitts everywhere, im always leaving some behind so I havent run into any health issues
I'll preface this post by saying that I'm not good at games. I've played games online and with friends for most of my life, and there's never, ever been a game that I was the best at. To this day I shy away from hard games, and even the relatively accessible Bloodborne was proving too difficult for me until I found the item duplication exploit. If I'm associated with any cult, it's the cult of put-multiple-difficulty-settings-in-your-games-please.
So anyway, I know what you're saying about the encounter design; those clusterfuck rooms crammed with foes frequently had me putting the controller down and staring at the screen in disbelief.
Ultimately, the only way I was able to deal with those rooms was by stepping back and looking at them like a puzzle. Okay, so there's a ton of little critters harassing me right off the bat, a charge-slash would probably take down a bunch in one hit. Next I better focus on the gunners, so I'll dash up there and kill those guys, maybe deflect some shots back if I need to. Then there's some heavy hitters to take care of, my ammo is charged now so I'll hit them at close range with my shotgun and dash out of range when they hit back. And so on.
I realise that comes across as not really useful at all, but I'm categorically not good at games, and that process worked for me. Often I'd have to re-run rooms multiple times over until I found a strategy that worked, and then run them a bunch more times before I could pull it off without taking too many hits. My instinct with games like this is to try to play them like a twin-stick arcade game, but that will absolutely not cut it in a lot of HLD's scenarios.
A lot of your other criticisms are on-point IMO. The map is barely useful, the visuals (including overhanging visual elements) can sometimes be difficult to parse (or straight-up get in the way of the gameplay), the long death/respawn animations are aggravating, etc. I think it's a fantastic game, but it certainly isn't a perfect one.
If I had to give some advice, I'd say you should hunt down as many of those gold chips as you possibly can. Each upgrade adds a new tool to your repertoire, and the more tools I got the more manageable the combat became. My total playtime is about five hours longer than many others in this thread, which might be due to how much time I spent scouring the areas for more gold chips.
I know what frustrates me about this game more than anything else is the lack of invulnerability frames.
1 health left, I hit Q to heal up, whatever hits me while the animation is going off = I'm dead. Whatever hits me after the initial animation has gone off = I'm down to 3-4 health.
The respawn animation was bothersome too, but at least it is now possible to speed it up. Keep the button pressed when the screen is black and you're already back up once the image comes back.
XANDER CAGE
Member
Yeah, the sort of hunt-and-peck approach is how I've handled combat so far. It's definitely the way to do it; it's just getting less doable (for me) as time goes on. I have the reflect projectiles ability and the dash stab, which are both pretty useful. I'm also doing the pistol/sword cancel to get double damage up close, which is cool.
Yeah, this bothered me for a while too. That's another one that's in that "I'm not sure if I can criticize this as bad design or if I need to get over it" category for me.
I think I just stumbled on some of the stuff you're talking about on the Steam forums:
Absolutely unreal. The thought processes going on are just... they sure are something.
Dr.Sanchez
Neo Member
Almost have every upgrade. Anyone finish the challenge arenas? Just unlocked them.
supernormal
Member
Ok so how is it that I equip my new "gear" after completing the dash challenge. Plus what's the next best upgrade to get? I got my eye on the one that allows you to reflect projectiles but IDK if some of the other might be more useful.
For equipping gear, there's a few computer terminals along the back wall of your house (immediately up from the city warp pad) that will let you swap out cloaks, drones or swords.
For upgrades, the ones I found most useful were the charge-slash and the bullet deflect. Either of those would be a good starting point.
supernormal
Member
Thanks
I think I spent more time exploring each area so I don't miss any collectables than progressing the game.
I wish there was some kind of collectable counter for each area, so I know if I've missed a collectable or not. I know there's 4 keys, 4 monoliths, and 8 power nodes in each area but the amount of coins or other items to collect in each area are random.
Maybe, I'm just wishing that the map was more useful.
I wish there was some kind of collectable counter for each area, so I know if I've missed a collectable or not. I know there's 4 keys, 4 monoliths, and 8 power nodes in each area but the amount of coins or other items to collect in each area are random.
Maybe, I'm just wishing that the map was more useful.
Yeah this is my main issue having completed the game
aside from the music
It's particularly frustrating in the western zone due to its sheer size. I'd already be happy if they just marked areas you've 100%ed in a different color.
Welp I basically got everything, at least until I know what the leftover gearbit count after upgrading everything is, if that even matters (I have 8 leftover/2 complete). Don't have the DLC and didn't do it on NG+, so maybe doing all that gets The Hoarder achievement?
Out of all the outfits, I gotta say the White and Bumblebee ones are my favorite.
Out of all the outfits, I gotta say the White and Bumblebee ones are my favorite.
PeterVenkman
Member
Haven't found a single key and I'm well through the north and east. Normal? Should I be doing anything special to pick them up?
EDIT: I say, finding my first key. It's not possible to slash them first, and not be able to get the key right?
EDIT: I say, finding my first key. It's not possible to slash them first, and not be able to get the key right?
They're hidden really well for the most part, you'll need the
railgun
I feel you 100% on the "I'm not sure if this game is bad or if I'm bad" issue. I'm not the best at twitchy action games with lots of options and often when I try playing some I just get stuck in the mindset of "Ughh I'm not having fun but maybe I'm not getting something about the game? Let's play more" and then I play a lot of game while still not having fun.
But at least in the case of Hyper Light drifter, 99% of the times I died I was extremely confident that it was totally my fault and that I could have done better. I can't tell you exactly what I did to clear the multiple enemy rooms (and I doubt it would help anyway) but I believe wholeheartedly that the encounters in this game are well designed and you just need to figure something out about them.
Of course, that might never happen for you. In that case it doesn't matter if the design is "good" or not, sometimes you just don't get a game.
PeterVenkman
Member
Sweet, just beat east so with that knowledge I'm gonna go back north and do another sweep. Missed three triangles there anyways.
Maybe I'm spending too much time reading this thread and the offical Steam forums for the game, but I have the exact opposite impression. The hype is going strong, and word of mouth will probably make it very big.
Or at least I hope it does, because it deserves it.
Messofanego
Banned
When I was jumping right into encounters without surveying, I could share your view of them being haphazard or not being readable. But once I took my time with each encounter, especially using the sniper rifle to look further away, I realised the encounters could be planned and executed with precision. I haven't seen enemies just spawn out of nowhere. The south robots are nestled into the ground, as are the plant enemies in the east. The frog ninjas you're having trouble with that throw ninja stars only take two hits, so it's easier to just stay back, lead their ninja star throw, and then dash in for the kill. Really have to just manage them one by one. Even the green goblins can be a bother when you have more than one of them charging to jump at you, so with time you'll recognise their telegraphing for attacks. As for bullet hell, deflecting projectile upgrade is incredibly useful. Each encounter doesn't feel like the devs throwing enemies at you because once you take it slow, it's actually only 10 enemies at most. When you factor in encounters with turrets or crystal traps, those require the most patience and planning as you have to navigate past three or four of them and it's best not to fight with them active but to get to corners and crowd manage at your own pace.
I'll totally agree on the map just being bad. Although the black map is better, it's still confusing to see what place connects to where especially when you're quadrant hunting.
I'll also agree that I've been in situations where I've had to go through stretches of games with just one or two pips of health with nary a medkit in sight. Those just seem unfortunate mistakes.
Thankfully, they patched it so you can quickly get up after dying which makes for boss fights to be less frustrating.
There are some bits where I can get stuck on geometry and that will end up being the death of me, but now that I've completed the game, I realise there aren't many areas where the geometry stopped a section from being unreadable.
I'm no good at hard action games. I play Souls games and give up. I don't care for roguelikes. Those kind of games have too much time between deaths and it feels like I'm wasting time in trying to get back. Souls games have garbage framerates and sometimes unfair hit detection which take me right out, and it's why I gave up on Bloodborne after 20 hours once the city changed to become nightmarish. But for Hyper Light Drifter, I knew once I have the patience, I can get through any area. I have great mobility at my side. Unlike others here, I've never wanted for invincibility frames at any point. So it doesn't feel frustrating or daunting to me compared to other games.