Did you know that despite having reviewed over two hundred games there were moments where I was wrong? Whether that be the direction I took to covering a game, or presenting inaccurate info. We can all collectively agree that video game journalists and critics shouldn’t always be the go to source for what we should think, but I wonder how many journalists and critics can admit they are wrong sometimes. That’s why on the front page of my website I openly admit that my readers don’t have to agree with me. An opinion is a personal belief, and if you solely believe the information you are being told is wrong then you don’t have to believe it even if it’s true under certain circumstances. I want to clarify again that not everything I say is right or fully accurate. My thoughts on Yakuza 0 back in 2020 were really wacky, but other people’s thoughts could vary if they were veteran fans of the franchise. Risk of Rain 2 is not one of my favorite roguelikes, but a lot of people consider it one of the best due to its cathartic gameplay loop. Then there was the time I wrote a new review on Sekiro, because the original review went from the point of looking at it as if it were a Souls game and the new review went from the approach of fully understanding it for what it was. I’m not always right, I admit that, and one of several circumstances where I can admit I wasn’t fully right was my Hylics 2 review. A game that I love, but certain points I made during the review were inaccurate. If you don’t know what Hylics is then let me explain.
Hylics is the child of Mason Lindroth. He’s a solo indie developer who made the entire game all by himself, but what makes Hylics and Lindroth’s work so interesting is the art direction. Using an assortment of clay, Lindroth creates characters and obscure creatures far from our world. He then takes pictures of the clay characters he molded together and converts said pictures into a usable character sprite for his games. The backgrounds for Hylics I believe are all hand painted (don’t quote me on this), and the combination of cool colors and riddle-like writing creates what is one of the weirdest games ever made. Where you can’t tell what is what, where you should go next to progress the story, and what the story is even trying to say. Hylics is a game that is mainly driven by its art direction and style, but it’s a game that manages to present itself so well that all the flaws are ignorable. Hylics doesn’t make sense, but you just take the game for what it is and experience what is basically a drug trip in video game form. It’s charming, soothing, and has that feeling you can’t get from other video games. Hylics is somewhat of a niche and I will admit the only reason I heard about it was through a youtuber named Nitro Rad, otherwise named James. He makes great content on lesser known games, so go check him out if you can. Anyways, I one day checked out Hylics 2 and it blew my mind. It’s not one of my favorite indie RPGs, but it is one that I think about a lot. I think my coverage of the game was good, but one thing I wished I did was know a little more about the first game. I made some assumptions about the first game during the intro sequence and looking back at it now I’m kind of ashamed. From how inaccurate I was when bringing info on the first game, and the fact that I took a lazy writing method to construct an enticing intro.
Eventually I thought, “Why not check the first Hylics?” and so I did. Bought the game during a sale when it was only three bucks and managed to beat it within a day. The first Hylics is a really flawed game, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was Lindroth’s first game, and being a simplistic RPG Maker game he was still trying to figure his way around game design. He then learned from his mistakes with Hylics 2, and seeing how significant of a leap forward it was from game design to visuals it meant Lindroth put a lot of time and care into addressing the flaws. My experience with the first Hylics is similar to that of playing the first Uncharted. There were a lot of rough edges, but it was nice seeing the roots for where the property started. I like the first Hylics, and despite the sequel being a better game I still think this game is worth checking out almost eight years later. Today we’ll be talking about Hylics and why it deserves your attention.
Story
Our tale takes place in a world similar to our own, but it’s inhabited by weirdo individuals. There is a mad tyrant who lives on the moon, Gibby the King of The Moon, and he plans to take over the world using the many henchmen he hired.While he’s plotting out his evil schemes we cut to a small shack located on a ring shaped isle. The shack is inhabited by a crescent shaped head man named Wayne. He’s just chilling in his, watching TV, and watching his cat crawl around on the floor. Then he hears news of the evil moon king and decides to venture out. However, he does not have much to defend himself and when defeated in combat he’s sent to a place known simply as the Afterlife. From there he can resurrect himself, and he comes to the conclusion that he’ll need a bit of help to bring down Gibby. He ventures into the town and he gets some direction on where he should go. Atop the nearby mountain there is an archaeologist named Dedusmuln, and he’ll be quite useful for what is to come. Wayne also locates his close friend Somsnosa who is chilling in her own shack, and later down the line they obtain the help of Pongorma who is a skilled warrior known across the land. Wayne has a full gang willing to f*ck things up with him, and together they will cut down Gibby’s forces and save the world from his tyranny.
Gameplay
Hylics is a turn-based RPG similar to that of classic JRPG titles. I mean a good chunk of players consider this an Earthbound influenced game, but a lot of casuals say that about practically every RPG Maker game. Whatever, you explore the land and whenever you bump into an enemy you engage in combat. Each turn you select what attacks or abilities you want to perform, and then you perform said actions. The enemies then perform their attacks, and it’s constant back & forth interaction until all of the enemies are defeated or all your entire team is dead. Whenever you win a battle you gain Meat, money, and an assortment of consumables. Meat is basically your experience points. Whenever you die you are sent to the Afterlife and here you can spend the Meat you obtained to increase your maximum health, which is called Flesh. You can also select one of eight crystals to fast travel to specific areas in the game. That is if you have unlocked the fast travel point, so good luck finding them. Money can be used to buy better gear or items, and you’ll want to do that since this is an RPG where your other stats don’t naturally level up. The only thing you can level up is health, nothing else.
Stats include attack power, defense, speed for which characters perform their actions first, and then there is Will which is basically your MP. Will can be used to perform special actions during a battle. Whether that’s performing an attack that hits all enemies at once, inflicting an ailment, or healing your party. Will can be used up easily so you’ll want to use Juice Boxes to restore it, washing yourself up in a bathtub, or resting in a bed which also fully restores your health as well. Consumables in Hylics can be quite useful when used at the right moment, and the game does not discourage players from using them considering how many are handed out at the end of each battle. Every attack and action has a cool animation and it creates some of the most mesmerizing combat I’ve seen from a turn based RPG. Not some of the best mechanically, but one that is just to look at and play. Besides that there’s nothing else I can really talk about besides my criticisms for the end. It’s as straightforward as it goes if you can understand what to do, and hopefully you can make your way to the moon, defeat Gibby, and of course save the entire world.
Thoughts
This review is probably going to be shorter than I expected, so I’ll just say this. I really like the first Hylics despite the sequel being the superior game. I have a lot of criticisms and most of it comes from how the sequel innovated, but it’s still worth checking out. Especially since it’s really cheap these days and it doesn’t take all that long to complete. Let’s get what I like about the game out of the way first. The art direction will always be one of the highlights of these two games. From the beautiful backgrounds, the oddly designed characters, and how every moving thing is animated. Not a lot of games have captured the look Hylics has and it’s probably because of how long it takes to make. Hylics 2 spent almost five years in the oven, but the original was made within a year which is shocking. Combat is rather simplistic, but it is fairly challenging at first. Trying to take on a fight all by yourself is difficult, because most likely you’ll get ganged up on and killed within a single turn. This then leads you to explore the world, find your allies, and take on fights when you think you are ready. There are even some points where you have things slowly, grind for Meat, and level up. Normally I don’t like grinding in RPGs unless the combat is good, in this case it’s fine, but I didn’t mind it in Hylics because it doesn’t take too long. I love the animations that play when you perform actions during combat, and the music to this game is great. It feels like a chill jazz album from the 1950s, and you just gotta kick back and let the colors flood your vision. Enjoy the drug trip you are being taken on. That’s not an encouragement to get high by the way, but if you want that feeling then play this game.
That’s everything I love about Hylics and the pros are so great that they me ignore the flaws, and there are a lot of them. This is where we move into what I thought was fine, or what the sequel would improve in. I said a few moments ago that combat is fairly challenging at first. That’s because the difficulty nose dives once you rack up enough Meat, level up your health, or buy a Berry Shield for every party member which jacks up your health and defense. This completely trivializes combat in the game as you are near impossible to kill. This is easily achievable once you get all four party members, visit previous areas, and kill every enemy in them. I also notice that enemies don’t respawn once you kill them. This creates quite a few problems. One of which is that the difficulty and danger of navigating areas is lost once you clear them out. If you need more Meat to level up your health for a difficult boss, especially the final fight then most likely you don’t have any more, because there’s only so many enemies in the world to find. The game gets really easy, but you will not believe it when I say it curves around the graveyard. With foes that can drain your Will, and a final boss that goes on longer than it should. I wouldn’t say it was too hard, but more like the game was pulling cheap tactics to make it slightly more challenging. The second game does improve this by having more challenging encounters early on even when you have a full party, and having enemies respawn in the world no matter how many times you kill them. It allows the player to grind for as long as they want and not have to wait for another area for when they want to continue leveling stats. Another pet peeve I have is how getting to the Afterlife works. The only way to access the Afterlife is by dying. That means if you want to fast travel you need to purposefully die, and this is made more annoying by how fast travel works. You select one of eight colored crystals and off you go, but after a while you forget where each crystal leads to and you may end up warping to the wrong location. Sure you can just save and load for when you select the wrong one and need to fast travel again, but that’s just inconvenient. Hylics 2 fixes this by allowing you to access the Afterwhile through pools throughout the world and showing a list of places you can fast travel instead of having obscure colored crystals.
Another thing Hylics 2 improved on was the stop motion animation. One of several inaccuracies from my Hylics 2 review was the assumption the first game was fully stop motion animated and the second game used RPG Maker, or that’s what I remember at least. Hylics 2 uses Unity, which makes a lot more sense seeing the amount of things going on. The only stop motion animated things in the first game are character sprites in the world, and actions you perform during fights. Nothing else, and in some ways it goes to show the limitations of the RPG Maker engine. You just stare at enemy sprites during combat, and that’s less enticing than watching them move about like in the second game. There’s also nothing moving about in the environment and even the water, which heavily populated the world, is still a blue sprite. The game manages to avoid these problems with how great the art direction is, but this is coming from the opinion of having played the second game first. There’s also not a lot of verticality to the world and level design, and that’s something Hylics 2 heavily expanded upon. One problem that does continue across both games is knowing where to go. Everyone speaks in riddles and there’s no quest log hinting where you should possibly go next. This leads to you just bumbling around, and I wouldn’t be surprised if players struggled to find all their allies within the first hour. That’s certainly what happened to me and it wasn’t fun at first, but I will say there is some excitement to be felt once you finally figure out what to do. The joy of getting a new ally, knowing where the next boss lies, and initiating the next act of the story. There’s a linear path forward, but a sense of freedom of what you can do. The first Hylics is still worth a look and I can say I recommend it just to see where the second game improved, but if you do want a better game I strongly recommend you play the second instead. In fact, playing the first game made me appreciate Hylics 2 more and I may consider replaying it for fun someday. In the end I'm giving the first Hylics an 8/10 for being pretty good.
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