Game

Game

Game

Oh boy.

Hydlide is a game series that’s pretty… easily mocked. And commonly! Ever since I heard about it from AVGN back in the late 2000s, I often hear it ridiculed as a terrible game. But at the same time, there’s a lot of Hydlide defenders out there. Self proclaimed Hydlide Sickos. And when people talk about Hydlide 1, the original Hydlide, they USUALLY actually mean Hydlide for the NES, which is a remake from 5 years later.

“Oh it’s not fair to Hydlide”, they’d say. “The original game out in 1984 on PC88 hardware. It was an innovator for its time. It was certainly good for its time, but when it came out on the NES, it was compared to technical advances like Zelda! It’s really not fair to the original game. The PC88 game is better to look at than the NES game”.

Okay. Well I looked at it. Can I unlook at it, now???

This game kinda blows lol

I TRIED, OKAY?? I TRIED TO GIVE IT A FAIR CHANCE! And I’m a fair and even handed reviewer. I can look at this game in the context of its original release. Yes, in 1984, there wasn’t anything like this. But this just isn’t it, y’all.

In Hydlide, the princess has been split into three fairies by the evil Varalys, and the only person brave enough to stop him is the valiant night, JIM! You play as Sir Jimothy as he explores Fairyland, levels up, collects items, get the three fairies, and takes on the evil fiend to restore Fairyland to its former glory. Simple stuff.

First thing, this game is obtuse. That’s not a thing I’ll hold over its head. Yeah it is pretty bullshit that in order to find one of the fairies, you need to hang out in a random room, get hit by five fire balls the wizards throw at you, then kill a fireball. That is really fucking stupid. And there’s no dialogue or hints in this game. But that IS how it was back then. That’s just what they did. Hasn’t aged well by today’s standards, fine for the time.

Second, the game is like, 90% grinding. I’ll also not be too harsh on that either. Without the grinding this game would be 6 minutes. It’s not a very big game, and we gotta pad to get our money’s worth. That’s fair. Also quite of its time. That hasn’t aged well either, but it’s fine.

But the gameplay and everything… okay, so, I was playing on emulator for Retro Achievements, and the setup that RA forces requires the game to run really fast. But I had it emulating the lowest end PC88 and it was still running really, really fast. I think that’s just how it is??? Unless you intentionally underclock it or something, which is against the rules for Retro Achievements, so I didn’t do it. This makes it really hard to actually react for the gameplay, which is Bump Combat. Ahhh, Bump Combat. A truly innovative nightmare. To do combat, you bump your character into an enemy. If they’re facing you, you fight more fairly, and they usually do damage to you. If you hit them from behind, you can do good damage and not get hurt. But they can do the same to you.

The issue is the game runs way too fast. In the end, I ended up spamming pause to pause buffer everything, ESPECIALLY for the final boss. Honestly it wasn’t TOO bad, until I had to grind for my last two levels against Blackams in the castle? You gain more health and damage with each level, but even at max level, Blackams kill you in like 3 hits. Here’s what my strategy was for the final 2 levels, which was like 400 Blackams killed:

Enter the castle at full health. If you stand in the entrance, they will only spawn from the right exit, so they’ll never sneak up on you. Stand there, running against the wall, until they finally show up. It can take minutes. Once you kill one, you’re at 1/3rd health, go out and heal. Healing takes a minute of waiting. Go back in, repeat. I got bored and changed my strategy a few times. It’s more unsafe, and I died a lot doing it, but you can stand away from the entrance and run up against the wall, and when they spawn, immediately hit them. You then have to quickly get out and leave, during which another can spawn and kill you. This happened a lot.

The other major issue is the final boss. Okay, so there’s one other mechanic I need to explain: Defensive and Offensive Mode. In Defensive mode, you take less damage, but also deal less. Simple. If you go up to Varalys, and even just stand next to him, he will instantly kill you if you’re in offensive mode. He just finds you too offensive. Jimothy is smelly. So you gotta be in defensive mode. Hit him 3 times, you’re almost dead. Walk away, go to the bottom screen, and sit in a little cubby. Every time an enemy runs past the cubby entrance, save, and reload if they run in to fight you, cause enemy pathing is RNG. Sit there and wait for several minutes to health up. Then go out and fight Varalys. This takes A VERY LONG TIME. Like, 8 rounds of healing up. It’s kind of ridiculous, even for the time.

Keep in mind, for the achievement, I had to beat this game without the shield and the sword. But they honestly don’t add as much as you’d expect.

OH, and I also forgot to mention the music. Here it is!

It’s bad!!

Look, this isn’t the worst game I’ve ever played. But the NES game is better. And you know how I know? Because I HAD IT AS A KID. PLOT TWIST! Yes, I own Hydlide on NES, which is actually called Hydlide Special in Japan, because it adds some content. It’s still the same game, basically, but it plays at a slightly better speed, has music from Hydlide 2 (it’s very Indiana Jones but that’s okay), and a magic system. The ONLY flaw is the save and load system, which is janky and bad, and it uses long-ass passwords.

I’mma have to do the set for Hydlide some day.

Anyways, the PC88 version is worse than the NES version. But it IS also 5 years younger than it. I AM looking at it objectively. But jeeze it was not very pleasant to play.

I should play Ys sometime, one of this game’s biggest followers. Never played Ys before.