I'll be honest, it took a while for me to warm up to Heart Machine's Hyper Light Drifter. It has a lot of problems on the PS4: incredible slowdown in almost every area where there's a lot going on, some awkward and unintuitive controls once it's handed you all the tools (which doesn't take long), and some deliberately obtuse level design that is meant to conceal a lot of passages and areas for the sake of keeping its secrets well hidden but often comes across as overly busy and garbled. In that last regard, as well as with much of its pixel art and chill synth music, it has a tone and atmosphere equivalent to PolyTron's Fez. There's a deeper mystery to the game beyond what we're seeing on the surface level, though nothing quite as meta as Phil Fish's one non-Twitter-related dive into insanity.

Hyper Light Drifter on the whole shares more of its DNA with a Legend of Zelda or a Secret of Mana. The game is top-down, and has you move through areas in a not-always linear fashion to reach a boss and activate an important-looking arrow-shaped block. You're given little context as to why, but rather brief flashes of a coyote-like animal guide, shadowy murderous horrors and glimpses of how the world used to be shortly before it was annihilated by these grisly Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind "God Warrior" titans, whose enormous corpses make for some striking imagery while exploring. The game is very light on actual script though - the only time it deigns to explain anything in English is when you activate a warp shortcut. Beyond that, characters talk in ideograms, new abilities to purchase have little animations to demonstrate what they do rather than lines of description, and the game is filled with an imaginary language that - given the prominence of ciphers in Fez - I'm semi-concerned I'll have to decipher at some point.

That isn't to say the game's obtuse to the point of vexation. After a while you pick up on certain cues, like specific symbols on the ground where there's secrets to be found. There are other discoveries too (some of which don't rhyme), but I'll maintain the secrecy for the sake of giving you all who have yet to play the game the enjoyment of unwrapping the game's layers of mystique. Suffice it to say I still haven't figured it out all yet, as close as I am to completing it. The game also has an open world approach where you can take on its four "dungeons" - each of which leads off from the main hub town in the four cardinal directions - in any order. I've found some regions to be easier than others, but then by the second and third locales you'll have a few upgrades and a better grasp on the combat and traversal so it's hard to say what the difficulty balance is truly like. As of writing, I've completed three of these dungeons.

Speaking of the combat, that's probably the stand-out aspect of HLD. You begin with a dodge and a melee slash, and quickly gain a gun. The gun's ammunition is finite but replenished by sword slashes, though those sword slashes have to hit something to count. This leads to situations like running in close for a slash before dashing backwards and shooting them before they can retaliate, or leading with a gunshot just before slashing to take advantage of the lack of delay between those two actions. Keeping up a rhythm where you can alternate safer bullets with the riskier sword slashes required to reload is key to surviving the game's many skirmishes, though it's also helped immeasurably with a few purchaseable upgrades like a grenade or the ability to deflect enemy projectiles. You pay for these with little golden "toolkits" that have to be constructed out of four smaller items: these fragments make up the brunt of the game's hidden items, and will also regularly (but only one time at pre-determined points) drop from enemies. As well as new sword and gun abilities, and improvements to the dash, you can also spend these points on increasing your stock of healing items. Your character never (naturally) expands past their initial five hit points, but can restore them a set number of times with medipack-looking green squares. These can be found in the environment but are also pretty sparse, requiring the player to stay cautious when in low-health situations. The game checkpoints, but only at area transitions and after certain key items are acquired, so it's possible to lose a good 5-10 minutes of progress if you're sloppy and that includes any collectibles you've found. It can be a demanding game, punishing and rewarding in equal measure, which is why the slowdown and how it deleteriously affects certain split-second abilities can be such a bummer. If it'd been optimized better, I'd no doubt be in love with its flow of shoot-slash-evade engagement.

I think I like Hyper Light Drifter, but it's certainly not one of the better games I've played for this feature. Its serene yet ominous post-apocalyptic world is beautiful, as is the idea of its mix-and-match fast-paced combat, and I'm a sucker for any game that prioritizes exploration, discovery and a central narrative enigma to be uncovered. (I'm also definitely a sucker for any game inspired by Secret of Mana, hint hint Indie devs.) All the same, its technical issues (on a regular PS4, I'll reiterate) and those few grating game design decisions are what's holding me back from giving it an unconditional recommendation.

Rating: 3 out of 5.