Hyke: Northern Lights PS5 review – This year has seen some excellent first-time developers enter the industry, and Blast Edge Games is poised to join that hallowed pack of fellow game studios. Hyke: Northern Lights is a charming top-down action title with a lot of love for its characters and world wrapped around entertaining yet straightforward combat.
Hyke: Northern Lights PS5 Review
A Journey Across The World
You take on the role of Hyke, a young witch on an adventure around the world to find her missing mother. As she explores the world, she encounters other young witches in hiding who are protecting magical items called Ruins. As Hyke defeats them, she learns something new about her mother through the images these ruins create. The witches then end up joining Hyke in her quest.
The world of Hyke: Northern Lights is a rather somber one. The world has been devastated by a war between Humans and Witches. A war that saw the humans’ victories, and witches are now being hunted to extinction. I wish for more context about this war, but most of what we learn comes from the memories Hyke recovers.
The game follows a mission-based structure. You set up camp at your current location, and this becomes your home base for each mission. You can customize the camp, and this is one of the game’s main selling points. Camp customization is fun. You unlock new pieces of furniture to place down by completing missions or buying them at a shop.
Camping And Chilling Out
The campground can be customized to your liking. The setup includes various tents, a campfire, tables, chairs, decorations, and other items. I enjoyed this mechanic as you watch the witches walking around the camp interacting, sitting down, and relaxing.
You can also cook at the camp as long as you have the necessary cooking ingredients, the correct pan or pot, and a recipe. You can cook from scratch, but you risk failing the dish or cooking something unexpected. Cooking provides various buffs when you go out on missions, like increasing item drop rates or increasing your magical damage.
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Other activities of the campground are taking various photos, having personal conversations with your party members, replaying any story mission you want, and upgrading and unlocking new skills for your witches.
When you’re done at camp, it’s time to depart for your mission. Each chapter explores one location in the game, an abandoned amusement park in the middle of a forest, or a jungle village where the robots in the jungle have taken up a tribal appearance and equipped themselves with spears.
Straightforward Exploration
Missions aren’t anything to write home about. You go from point A to point B, defeating monsters and collecting currency and upgrade materials. Missions don’t have any side objectives, and hidden paths are easy to find, which are mostly littered with chests that provide upgrade materials.
Once you finish a mission, you get the reward screen that shows you all the currency you picked up, food ingredients, and, on occasion, new items to place down in camp.
Combat in the game is simple. You have your normal combo attack, and you have two spells you can equip. You can unlock more spells as the story progresses, but you can only equip two spells.
Lots Of Characters and Spells To Slay Your Foes
I found the game a tad too easy at the start, with all my characters killing every monster with a single strike, but as I progressed, things got difficult really fast, and I really had to learn the ins and outs of the combat.
Learning which spells to utilize and which character to use to full advantage was a must. You can switch characters at any time, even during combat, with a simple button press. The issue is that it’s not instantaneous; instead, you have to watch a short animation of them high-fiving each other as they enter the scene.
Though you cant tackle every enemy with each witch, some are just better suited for some encounters. Hyke is the easiest and most straightforward to play, while others take some getting used to.
Upgrade Your Spells And Unlock New Ways To Defeat Your Foes
Riko is a witch who can transform into her stuffed Rabbit and deal significant damage, but can only withstand three hits of damage before reverting to her standard form. The witch Hall Keeper can use elemental spells, such as creating an Ice barrier or placing sigils on the ground, which imbue her regular attacks with the corresponding element.
All the characters share the same materials to upgrade their Health and Attack Power, so you’ll have to distribute them wisely. When it comes to upgrading their spells, each witch has her own unique material to find.
You can use these to upgrade your spells, making them stronger and, in some cases, adding a secondary mechanic or unlocking new spells.
Fantastic 2D Pixel Graphics
Visually Hyke: Northern Lights looks really rather good, with 2D pixel animations are smooth and the characters are all distinct. There is plenty of monster variety, and some spell effects look really nice. It’s just a shame that every location in each chapter looks almost identical and is hard to distinguish.
The game’s soundtrack is also good, but lacks variety. You’ll hear a lot of the same music when exploring and sitting in camp. It almost feels like there are only three tracks because they all sound the same. The game has minimal voice acting, and there isn’t an English dub.
Hyke: Northern Lights is a fun little game with a lot of charm and entertaining characters. It’s a shame that it doesn’t utilize any fundamental RPG elements to help out with its combat, which becomes repetitive really early on. I enjoyed my time customizing my campsite and spending time with all the witches. I wish the game offered a little more. It’s bare bones, but it gets the job done.
Hyke: Northern Lights releases on September 18, 2025 for the PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Review code kindly provided by PR