COMPLETE: Hiiro
Apr. 20th, 2018 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI spent a total of four hours on this game. Two were exploring the world, finding all the collectables, and attaining otherwise-100% completion, and two were spent trying and retrying the endboss battle.
Because there's an endboss battle, you see. Sort of.
Let's back up a bit.
Hiiro is a short, casual, conflict-free relaxation exploration platformer, wherein your job is to wander around a pretty and serene world gathering all the shinies. Anyone who's even passingly familiar with Seiklus or almost anything by Nifflas should take one look at the trailer/screnshots and notice the inspiration. Hiiro is not at all shy about where it came from (Nifflas and clysm are even listed in the Special Thanks section of the credits) so that's fine. At least they're honest. Besides, they took that structure and did something very enjoyable with it. I hundred-percented this game and loved it, and that's coming from someone who tried and utterly failed to get into Seiklus.
This game more than accomplishes its goal of being peaceful. The music is beautiful ambience to the point of almost being ASMR (I instantly went back and bought the 99-cent "Collector's Edition Content" DLC just to get the soundtrack.) The pixel landscapes and settings are gorgeous, too. This is important for a game whose only gameplay is to wander around and explore areas; a lot of the enjoyment hinges on the areas being worth seeing and exploring. Trust me, this more than meets, and even excels in that measure. From the dizzying heights of the mountain and sky areas to the deep blue depths of the sea, and from the lush forests to the gem- and machinery-filled deep caves and mines, every screen was somewhere where I just wanted to set up a nice picnic and marvel at how nice this place is.
There is a minimalist story here, sort of, but not really. There are clues to be gathered from various wall scrolls and cave paintings--something about your people having a utopian society based on these yellow cubes but then something happened?--but it's honestly beside the point.
Gameplay-wise, you're out to gather eight large golden cubes (usually but not always gated behind solving some major puzzle in an area) and about a zillion smaller golden cubes (which helpfully appear on your map the more large cubes you have.) There are also three ultra-hidden books that almost should be more like an Easter egg than part of the 100% completion (more on that in just a moment,) and you'll probably need some assistance for those. On my own, before consulting any walkthroughs or guides, just looking around and exploring as best as I could, I found all the large and small gold cubes (the large ones led me to the small ones) and one book.
There are three endings based on completion. You can get the normal ending by activating the tree in the center of your people's town with all the large cubes but without all the small cubes, and the golden ending by activating that same tree with 100% of all large and small cubes. There's also a secret Easter egg-like third ending you can get by returning all three books to the people in the library in that same town, and then activating a computer in the library's hidden alcove.
There are two major flaws with the endgame. Neither are game-breaking enough to have ruined the rest of the otherwise stellar experience, mostly because I was warned and could prepare for them. Please consider this your warning, so you can prepare for them as well:
1) Once you have all the cubes, activating the tree gives you the golden ending, which means you cannot get the normal ending anymore. It's not much, and you're not out a whole lot if you missed it, but if you're curious and want to see it, make sure to do so before collecting your last small cube. Otherwise, the only way to see it is to erase your entire save file and start over.
2) The secret book ending is a sudden brutally hard bullet hell boss battle.
Wait, what?
Yes, really.
The developers intended for this to be more of an Easter egg than a true ending. By making the books fairly well hidden and not marking them on your map, the intent was to make this part outside the normal gameplay experience, so they could just put a bit like that in there for funsies. The Achievement for beating it is even called "Inside Joke."
However, I don't think they really succeeded in separating this from the rest of the game. The books aren't hidden quite well enough (I accidentally found one of them on my own, though I did need a walkthrough for the other two) and the game does feel like there's a hole there if you don't have them. Thus, it's in an uncomfortable halfway point. You can ignore the books, of course, but they exist just enough that people looking for 100% completion will have this nagging sensation that they're missing something. Especially since there are two Achievements for this (getting all the books, and then beating the boss.)
Of course, if you do want to get everything in this game including that, welcome to a sudden Touhou level that's completely antithetical to the rest of the game's peaceful, relaxing, nonviolent exploration with no danger and no way to lose.
So, I don't know about that.
Still, it's... there. I did it, and I'll take the developers at their word that it was supposed to be a separate experience from the rest of the game, and thus try to judge the rest of the game on its own merits. And what merits they are. Like I said, this is an audio and visual dream, and the perfect thing to calm down and de-stress after, say, a hard and intense bullet hell experience.
Because there's an endboss battle, you see. Sort of.
Let's back up a bit.
Hiiro is a short, casual, conflict-free relaxation exploration platformer, wherein your job is to wander around a pretty and serene world gathering all the shinies. Anyone who's even passingly familiar with Seiklus or almost anything by Nifflas should take one look at the trailer/screnshots and notice the inspiration. Hiiro is not at all shy about where it came from (Nifflas and clysm are even listed in the Special Thanks section of the credits) so that's fine. At least they're honest. Besides, they took that structure and did something very enjoyable with it. I hundred-percented this game and loved it, and that's coming from someone who tried and utterly failed to get into Seiklus.
This game more than accomplishes its goal of being peaceful. The music is beautiful ambience to the point of almost being ASMR (I instantly went back and bought the 99-cent "Collector's Edition Content" DLC just to get the soundtrack.) The pixel landscapes and settings are gorgeous, too. This is important for a game whose only gameplay is to wander around and explore areas; a lot of the enjoyment hinges on the areas being worth seeing and exploring. Trust me, this more than meets, and even excels in that measure. From the dizzying heights of the mountain and sky areas to the deep blue depths of the sea, and from the lush forests to the gem- and machinery-filled deep caves and mines, every screen was somewhere where I just wanted to set up a nice picnic and marvel at how nice this place is.
There is a minimalist story here, sort of, but not really. There are clues to be gathered from various wall scrolls and cave paintings--something about your people having a utopian society based on these yellow cubes but then something happened?--but it's honestly beside the point.
Gameplay-wise, you're out to gather eight large golden cubes (usually but not always gated behind solving some major puzzle in an area) and about a zillion smaller golden cubes (which helpfully appear on your map the more large cubes you have.) There are also three ultra-hidden books that almost should be more like an Easter egg than part of the 100% completion (more on that in just a moment,) and you'll probably need some assistance for those. On my own, before consulting any walkthroughs or guides, just looking around and exploring as best as I could, I found all the large and small gold cubes (the large ones led me to the small ones) and one book.
There are three endings based on completion. You can get the normal ending by activating the tree in the center of your people's town with all the large cubes but without all the small cubes, and the golden ending by activating that same tree with 100% of all large and small cubes. There's also a secret Easter egg-like third ending you can get by returning all three books to the people in the library in that same town, and then activating a computer in the library's hidden alcove.
There are two major flaws with the endgame. Neither are game-breaking enough to have ruined the rest of the otherwise stellar experience, mostly because I was warned and could prepare for them. Please consider this your warning, so you can prepare for them as well:
1) Once you have all the cubes, activating the tree gives you the golden ending, which means you cannot get the normal ending anymore. It's not much, and you're not out a whole lot if you missed it, but if you're curious and want to see it, make sure to do so before collecting your last small cube. Otherwise, the only way to see it is to erase your entire save file and start over.
2) The secret book ending is a sudden brutally hard bullet hell boss battle.
Wait, what?
Yes, really.
The developers intended for this to be more of an Easter egg than a true ending. By making the books fairly well hidden and not marking them on your map, the intent was to make this part outside the normal gameplay experience, so they could just put a bit like that in there for funsies. The Achievement for beating it is even called "Inside Joke."
However, I don't think they really succeeded in separating this from the rest of the game. The books aren't hidden quite well enough (I accidentally found one of them on my own, though I did need a walkthrough for the other two) and the game does feel like there's a hole there if you don't have them. Thus, it's in an uncomfortable halfway point. You can ignore the books, of course, but they exist just enough that people looking for 100% completion will have this nagging sensation that they're missing something. Especially since there are two Achievements for this (getting all the books, and then beating the boss.)
Of course, if you do want to get everything in this game including that, welcome to a sudden Touhou level that's completely antithetical to the rest of the game's peaceful, relaxing, nonviolent exploration with no danger and no way to lose.
So, I don't know about that.
Still, it's... there. I did it, and I'll take the developers at their word that it was supposed to be a separate experience from the rest of the game, and thus try to judge the rest of the game on its own merits. And what merits they are. Like I said, this is an audio and visual dream, and the perfect thing to calm down and de-stress after, say, a hard and intense bullet hell experience.