hylics
hylics is an indie rpg made in loving rpgmaker and its about i actually do not know anything about what this game is about. the first person to come to me and accurately explain what the story or anything in this game wins a nobel prize made of stuff for great efforts made towards useless fields of study. seriously look at it. you start playing as the yellow horned forgeter named wayne and go on an adventure through a claymation project of two or three college students on lsd passed through a loving ibm or something for that extra grain. the main selling point of this game is the graphics because if it wasnt it sure as hell isnt the gameplay which seems to have been thrown in as an afterthought which is a shame really this games artstyle could have been used to great novelty effect if it was actually good. also its 3 hours long give or take and worth $3 on steam if you ever want to buy it but if you do this review has failed.
the gameplay of hylics is boring reviews over just kidding but not really. you basically forget around in the world exploring freaky clay universe searching for stuff to uncover or the next boss thing to kill to progress the story or what i think is one. the world isnt terribly big and its mostly one environment due to the games short length and possible lack of additional fitting color schemes but there is a decent amount of stuff scattered about to make loving about okay although not too much since the game is pretty linear and you wont find anything other than more money and items and the environment isnt as charming after a while which i will get to later. i wouldnt say linearity is bad or good inherently and there are like two secret things you have to go forget around to get but as far as i know its pretty lacking which is a shame because its an overworld rpg thing with a bunch of areas but none of them really serve as anything other than story progression arena or gimmick land which is a shame because the game could have pulled out its ass whatever it wanted with the theme it has going.
the actual rpg battle stuff of hylics has the best presentation of anything i have played so far and actually looks like one of the best parts of the game however thats probably the best part of it. actual rpg combat boils down to the same sort of chrono trigger esque heal alternate between healing your party and hitting the bad person mode and its like wow congratulations this is the most bog standard rpg combat of all time and its like why is this in this game when this game looks like that. you have your heal spells and your damage spells and your status related stuff and some useful items and the enemies basically have the same things barring items and you duke it out with them until someones party is dead and you move on. the game thankfully gives you the choice to actively avoid the combat via convenient flee options and no random encounters so most of the time i did avoid it except when it was thrust upon me or i felt like loving around to see if an enemy was different from the others but yeah its basically the same stuff every time until the end with slight variety but not enough to radically change how anyone plays this game. also the dev has intentionally designed all paths the enemies take to have some loop hole so that you can go around them which to me seems like enemies are just blockades you should avoid which is hilarious.
progression in the game is entirely based on killing bosses and theres like 3 i think and the only one that posed some difficulty was the last one but that may have been because i didnt kit my krew out all the way. when i say kitting my krew im putting emphasis on that because there are no levels and combat stats are based off of gear entirely which can cause problems when i dont care about loving around finding all of the gear attaining item sellers. thankfully it allowed me to avoid all of the rpg combat due to lack of grinding mostly although money was a slight problem but every enemy drops like a stuffload of cash further reinforcing the dev acknowledging how bad the rpg stuff in his game is. now you may or are probably not asking but destroyofforget how do i get magic stuff if theres no lteveling up. well my child it is simple you must watch televisions scattered around everywhere and that sounds good because it is and rewards exploration and stuff except most of them are in obvious places that you progress through and most of the spells are useless. all party members learn the same spell after a tv is watched and all of them should share spells except for whatever godforsaken reason the dev decided that party members do not gain the spells all other party members have leaving to a stuffload of pointless backtracking unless you want only one or two guys to do anything of use. this is the worst thing i have ever seen in my entire life ever and is even worse than skelemanias jumping because there is 0 reason to go back anywhere ever except for this and some dumb sidequest no one cares about.
speaking of the whole no reason to go back anywhere thing there really isnt because once you seen everything in an area you arent really missing anything there isnt much to like bind anyone to anywhere except the graphics. like all of the npcs are the same shared between 6 sprites and they make excessive use of a random text generator that usually ends with nothing making sense and me not caring about any of them. by excessive use i mean the dialog of most of them is that or a hint at what to do and then that if you talk to them again filled with words that appear purposely picked to avoid anything used commonly in conversation except absolutely necessary but i dont care how common they are if nothing anyone says is interesting. the environments contain little in the way of functionality other than serving as the path you have to take if you want to get to the boss and they all look similar enough to each other for the art shock factor to diminish significantly as the game progresses. there is nothing unique about any of the go here to progress areas as they are all just filled with enemies and usually some sort of press all the switches without getting killed puzzle which isnt really a puzzle because no higher thought is ever involved. the game really felt like a slog through these areas and this was the main detraction from it because there is just nothing done for me to care. there is like one sidequest which doesnt string anything together because it involves hidden places. there are no shops barring one central hub. the items given are all generic. the tvs are in plain sight. it seems to take a page from older video games in that the world takes a backseat to the gameplay except the gameplay is medicore so this is mediocre.
the graphics aka why people buy this game are loving good though. like really look at this game and say "wow i sure have seen anything else like this before". the answer is you havent or you regularly take trips down lsd land in some sort of clay manufacturing plant. it looks good. looking good is not enough and the game may look good but it suffers from a graphically critical flaw in that once youve seen one area youve seen like all of them. the aesthetic of pastely red/blue/black/yellow/orange is kept throughout the experience and most of the environments are deserts or aridy some other mostly monocolor yellow/red/whatever area. also most of the enemies you fight are just humanoids but gimmicky and nothing truly interesting showed itself in any character design. in short it gets boring to look at and is only slightly changed up throughout. if we take a look at something like space funeral that had a same gimmicky aesthetic albeit one that looked worse it changed it up. you know where space funeral is? decent tier. this is not in decent tier. i hope this game has a space funeral. not really that was too harsh but i hope the dev improves on his next project he certainly has a good artstyle gimmick going but hasnt properly utilized it. maybe he should just like do art exclusively.
the music in this game all sounds like some early psych rock jam session which is much less cool than anyone may originally thing because it translates to some guy loving around on a guitar slowly and like the graphics there is no deviation from this. they could have taken actual guitar music and done so many things with it that would set it apart from other games but they didnt. dont know what else to say here because thats like all of the music oh yeah i forgot sound design exists and isnt annoying break out the forgetin party poppers.
normally i try to put the story and stuff nearer to the gameplay section but the story in the game just doesnt exist. unless you can magically gleam some stuff off the random dialogue and limited actual conversations between npcs which i didnt i have no idea what the forget is going on but im assuming this is the intended effect. i cant actually write much stuff here because i basically cannibalized everything about the story in the intro and that one section about world building. also characterization doesnt exist but that was pretty much a given so dont get too attached to your party members or npcs because you wont actually there is no risk its like saying remember to breathe or do some other mostly automatic bodily function.
overall space funeral was better and if space funeral had this games art style that would be great. instead of this being an enjoyable romp through surreal world it felt like an unenjoyable romp through surreal world but i mean it wasnt actually terrible it was just not too good. its $3 and all the other games ive reviewed were free and many were better so i wouldnt rec buying it or anything. at least its better than off.
essential games
bad tier
yume nikki
unessential games
good tier
profit motive
decent tier
chrono trigger
skelemania
the witch's house
sluggish morss
space funeral
mimicry man
mediocre tier
ib
hylics mogeko castle
extremely unessential games
boring tier
presentable liberty
spookys house of jump scares
lieat
ananke
super columbine massacre rpg
ao oni
inflation quest
hell
worse than Riddler tier
the gray garden
off tier
off
worse than off tier
wadanohara and the great blue sea
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