Indie Game of the Week 463: Hylics 2

During the (momentary) twilight years of the turn-based RPG around the mid- to late-aughts, there was a small but devoted crowd of Indie developers keen to preserve the genre and specifically the subversive charms of Shigesato Itoi's Mother series with RPG projects like OFF: a typical throwback turn-based RPG, in purely mechanical terms, with a very atypical approach to storytelling and worldbuilding. Those games in turn went on to partly inspire Undertale and many more like it, and I can't help but feel Hylics and its sequel Hylics 2—I'm covering the latter today if you happened to skip past the title; hey, I get it, you see a new Mento user article and you just gotta click, man—are also part of that lineage, along with drawing from equally dreamlike games such as Yume Nikki. Created by Mason Lindroth, a game developer and artist both, Hylics 2 drops you into a world that almost dares you to try to understand it; rather, it feels the intent is to submerge you in its eccentricity until you glean enough of a semblance of what's happening to reach the ending. You play a creature called Wayne—it's not your name, per se, but that of your species; you just happen to be one of the older and more competent Waynes out there—and recruit others to stop an ancient tyrant, Gibby, from being resurrected via a villain's ritual.

Though Hylics 2 whacks you over the head with its strangeness like a cudgel right from the start, the actual gameplay is relatively familiar and has the sort of measured consideration to difficulty curves and making every battle feels like a self-contained challenge that you'd frequently see from a Zeboyd joint. You and your eventual team use a selection of skills (called gestures, as the game uses rotoscoped hand motions to cast them) that are either inherent and unique to that character or are obtained from computer consoles out in the world; in the latter case, everyone on your team acquires it at once (including those yet to join). These gestures might inflict status effects, buff your allies, or allow you to spend a turn charging to get more bang for your buck with the next move. Your enemies, in turn, all have distinct attack patterns and techniques they like to use; prioritizing those who, say, heal their friends or endlessly multiply is usually the best plan, though as new enemies arrive your tactics may vary. One enemy will douse the entire field with sleep spores when hit, which makes it much easier to keep other enemies sleeping and inert while your team (once the sleeper enemy has poked them back awake) focuses on whichever is the biggest problem. Navigation outside of battle uses a slightly slanted, slightly axonometric perspective reminiscent of Super Mario RPG—likewise, it enjoys hiding secrets behind walls and pits obfuscated by this perspective, with plenty of them to find in towns and dungeons alike. You quickly acquire a traversal ability that lets you glide for a set distance: though the game hints there are more of these, this was the only one of its kind I ever found. It's enough though, since the platforming gets much easier once you have it.

Ha HA, get your soul crisped! Dedusmuln comin' for ya, you armless jackass.

In addition to the exploration and combat, the game will also occasionally switch formats to something else for a while, and these are presented as mini-games that aren't truly essential to progress but will help in procuring rare items and cash. One is a side-scrolling platformer that offers maze-like levels with plenty to find, though is equally as perilous given the way enemies can spawn right on top of you with a considerable amount of knock-back (like an older Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden, for example) and another I found involved filling in paths as I walked down them, creating multiple branches that I had to remember to circle back around and follow to their terminal points for possible treasures. These mini-games aren't quite as compelling as the core due to many annoyances in their design (for example, if you bump into a monster encounter while on those paths, it resets all your path progress after the battle) but they do at least offer a refreshing change of pace. The battles themselves are likewise irksome at times due to the type of arbitrarily cruel choices you've probably seen in any archaic RPG of this type: every enemy deciding to pick on your healer that turn, for instance, or healing themselves way too often. On the plus side, death in these fights simply sends you to the afterlife: a destination that isn't quite as final as it seems, given it's linked to the game's fast travel system, and you can cash a certain item drop—simply called "meat"—into a processor unit to obtain a permanent boost to HP. That might mean fighting battles until enemies start to overwhelm you, dropping as much meat into this heavenly sausage grinder as you have on you, and jumping back into the fray with a lot more health to back you up. Since every normal enemy drops these permanent stat boosts, they're understandably all one-and-done encounters: once you've cleared a place out don't expect to get attacked there again, unless there's some secret area you hadn't found yet.

Hylics 2 was definitely a game I had high hopes for after booting it up for the first time: as with a few other Indie RPGs I've played, like Virgo Versus the Zodiac, there's something almost aggressively alienating about the way it comports itself and I can't get enough of that obtuse, rebellious spirit in a genre that's seen far too many played-straight imitations over the years. It's true for any genre that the developers with new ideas to offer are those that are going to lead it to new heights, even when they're full of weird plasticine people talking about flesh and will and accretion zones and pneumatophores. Conversely, I found much of the game kind of a chore to actually play: I've mentioned that none of the mini-games really appealed, even as palate-cleansers, and the combat starts to get real spongey towards the end as you spend whole rounds chipping away at a single enemy's immense health reserves before moving on to its three or four friends and hoping your supplies and/or patience lasts out. That said, I may have done myself a disservice here by missing out on the game's main healing gesture found at the starting location; no idea how that happened but then it's often hard to make out anything in Hylics 2's environments. You can initiate a battle with a glove slap against an unaware enemy for a bonus to your will, the MP stat, but I found this feature very temperamental and would often hear the sound effect but not see the animation before a foe was on me, joining the battle absent the buff. Plus, even with the glide, actually navigating some of the dungeons and the blobby platforms with their unclear contours was frequently an exercise in frustration I wouldn't wish on anyone.

No, no, I quite agree. If, in the past, I ever intimated in any way that I disagree with this stance, that is very much not the case.

Overall, as an RPG the game is merely so-so. As an experience? It's remarkable in its wholly original approach and it's evident that a great deal of craft and vision went into all its lo-fi rotoscoped special effects, its many hand-crafted stop-motion entities, and the vast amount of almost nonsensical worldbuilding. If you were a big fan of what The Neverhood (or I guess ClayFighter) was doing, if not necessarily a big fan of actually playing it, then I think Hylics 2 will give you a similar jolt to the system. Best to just jump in and let its universe submerge you in some cask-strength Brothers Quay idiosyncrasy, taking the time with each new area to make the most of the enemy encounters and environments to stay well stocked in decent equipment (all gloves and ponchos for the most part), healing items (surprisingly normal food items, like burritos and cupcakes), currency (just called "bones" here, which is indeed a real life slang term for cash but I suspect it takes on a more literal meaning here), and gestures to add to your repertoire. I managed to defeat the final boss and his endlessly respawning minions (always a fun mechanic) but I suspect I missed quite a bit that would've made the fight more manageable: there's apparently a first-person dungeon-crawler mini-game and a three-part side-quest to unlock the strongest gesture? If only I cared enough about actually playing the game to go back in to look for them (or if it encouraged such a thing with achievements; Hylics 2 has none, almost like it's embarrassed to be a video game). One that's definitely worth a look for the vibes and style alone, all the while keeping in mind that your tolerance for old-school and occasionally capriciously mean turn-based RPG combat will be sorely tested.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (3 for the gameplay, 5 for the presentation.)

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