HYKE: Northern Light(s) review

Akatsuki and Blast Edge Games’ HYKE: Northern Light(s) begins with a poignant premise. The game’s protagonist, a white-haired witch, sets out across a war-ravaged landscape to seek her missing mother. Unsurprisingly, the storyline that follows incorporates themes of legacy and loss, as you discover more about a conflict between humans and witches. While the plot isn’t without some familiar tropes, the drip feed of recovered memories and the encounters with other witches guarding forbidden zones does a decent job at keeping you engaged.

The Enchanting Power of Pixels

Visually, HYKE’s pixel art is polished and expressive. While there’s some obvious asset recycling, enemies, environments, and your fellow witches convey personality and exhibit detail. Hyke herself is a charmer, as she darts through devastated zones leaving a dust cloud every time she dashes.

Meanwhile, switchable allies like Riko carry a giant pink bunny backpack with her. Largely, animations are smooth, with vibrantly colored spell effects contrasting against the muted backdrops, which provides visual clarity for the fast, but not breakneck action. That said, some environmental hazards don’t signal their injurious capacity.

Cozy Campsites Amid the Callousness

One of Northern Light(s) notable qualities is the game’s mixture of action and relaxation. Between missions, you return to a campsite that you can customize. Once unlocked, you can place tents, decorations, cooking pits, and even kayaks. Remarkably, downtime is more than cosmetic: meals cooked at camp provide buffs, and the ambience gives a chance to breathe between combat missions. It provides a cozy “rest stop” for the witches that breaks up the somberness of Hyke’s journey.

Spellcraft, Sword Swings, and Switching to Secondaries

When it comes to action, Northern Light(s) offers a relatively simple but serviceable combat system. You have a basic combo attack and two spells to equip (with more unlocked later), and you can switch between playable witches any time mid-mission. Each of the game’s seven playables has their own style, which encourages experimentation and adapting to different enemy types. That said, I definitely favored some characters more than others.

Missions Can Be a Grind

Still, combat grows shallow over time. While fights feel brisk and responsive at first, confronting the same kinds of enemy types becomes repetitive. Initially, adversaries use the same kind of attack patterns, making them easy to slay. But later on, the balance shifts revealing difficulty spikes that sporadically seem punishing. To a lesser extent, character switching isn’t as graceful as it should be, disrupting the flow of battle.

Another problem is found in HYKE’s mission structure. Assignments tend to follow a cycle of defeating enemies, collecting materials, and you move toward a stage exit. Although hidden paths and chests can be located, they rarely provide much reward beyond a bit of currency or some healing. Sure, the sense of navigational freedom helps a bit, but the lack of worthwhile secondary objectives can make exploration feel underdeveloped.

Witch Upgrade to Choose?

Fundamentally, Northern Light(s) upgrade tree is serviceable but too simple. Upgrade materials are shared among your witches, providing some weight to distribution. But customization doesn’t really evolve a character. Like the game’s campsite’s it’s a cool concept, but one that feels underexploited.

HYKE: Northern Light(s) is a mildly charming adventure that occasionally integrates bittersweet storytelling. Its detailed art and decision to show its characters’ downtime are undoubtedly worthwhile. But ultimately, the experience is hampered by shallow combat, somewhat repetitive mission design, and limited customization. I’m always up for an evocative trip through a ruined world, especially with a crew of cute witches. But HYKE’s inventory of minor issues prohibited the game from casting its spell over me.

HYKE: Northern Light(s) was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.