While pressing X on your pad will slash heartily away and you can advance through the game just fine with this alone, pressing X+A at the same time perform a jab attack. The screen will fade, and you'll be forced to frantically stab at scenery in search of smashable techno-vases with healing techno-potions inside. In other words, you can advance through enemies by hammering the button, but you'll take damage doing it. If you connect your sword with an enemy, your target will be knocked back and stunned just a little, but it's not enough to stop them from getting a swipe in at you. If you hammer your attack button, your swing and slash in an escalating combo of attacks. Whichever weapon you choose to use in a given situation, that precision is important. Either weapon can be fired in the direction you're facing with a button press, while holding the left trigger lets you precision-aim your next shot. In the demo, those come in the form of a single-shot pistol and a burst-fire rifle whose sprayed pellets expand out to a point, then converge again, zig-zagging across the eerie techno-ruins you're exploring. Your swinging swordplay is paired with energy weapons. Here is my feedback: Hyper Light Drifter is great. The build I've been playing was offered as a thank you to those who backed the project, as a means of gathering feedback before a planned release sometime in 2015. As pretty as those initially presented screenshots and GIFs were, the game is twice as lush now. Developer Alex Preston asked for $27,000 and received $645k, meaning the game ballooned from a simple-ish hack-and-slasher inspired by Zelda to a larger, more polished game.
HLD was successfully Kickstarted last year, where "successfully" is a dreadful understatement.
You've got to take your time if you want to go fast, as I've learned through playing the game's Kickstarter preview build. Hyper Light Drifter's cape-wearing main character carries a sword whose swipes and slashes can be performed in rapid succession, but that doesn't mean you can charge your way through its hunched henchman, skittering spiders or gun-wielding grunts.