I played Hyper Light Drifter after hundreds of hours of Nuclear Throne, and damn, HLD is so sluggish in comparison. Dying and respawning is almost criminally slow. Stunlocks everywhere, frame skips you can't turn off, etc. Heck, you can't even walk and shoot at the same time! Compared to the glorious bullet dance of NT, HLD felt distinctly lacking.

That said, the game shines in its own ways that other games can't touch. The art is amazing, best described as a spiritual successor to Fez with random clipart from Evangelion thrown in. Seeing that dead titan hugging the mountain in the distance was one of the best sights in every videogame ever. And then the disassembled one underground was even better than that.

The story, I felt, was lazily told. The NPCs are more like props, they tell you a sob story about an enemy, you kill the enemy and go back to the NPC, and he doesn't acknowledge it in any way. The town is full of people I'd love to talk to, but they all might as well be trees. Huge missed opportunity.

Some people complain about the boss fights, but I thought they were pretty great. They relied on skills carried over from normal gameplay, and some observation to memorize the patterns, nothing more. I'm over 30 and my reflexes are nothing to boast about, but I beat the game on hard without much difficulty.

The density of secrets in this game is really something special. Almost every screen has several secrets to find. There are secrets within secrets within secrets. I spent hours wandering around trying to find 'em all, and loved every minute of it. In this way also HLD is similar to Fez, which I loved for the same reason.

Overall, very good game. Weak storytelling and sluggish combat, but so many other amazing qualities that I'd recommend it to everyone.