Hydlide is universally accepted as one of the worst NES games ever produced.  It touts itself as an "action RPG", which is a misnomer since 90% of the time you spend playing this game will be spent doing absolutely nothing, staring at the screen waiting for your hero to heal.  When you're not idling about watching your life bar slowly creep up, you're fighting hordes and hordes of monsters hoping to gain more expeirence.  Even the battles are unsatisfying, consisting of Jim (that's your hero's name) bumping into enemies over and over again until they die.  There's no real story development, just levelling and killing monsters while occasionally coming across magic items that really don't do much of anything.  You do have to find three fairies, but they're located in really weird spots that make no sense whatsoever and you'll want to stop playing the game long before you get to them.

Today, I am playing Hydlide from the beginning to the end.  I am including lots of screenshots and descriptions, so that you can get the full Hydlide Experience (TM) (R) without actually having to play this wretched game.  Enjoy!



We start our adventure here, in a field full of slimes and the occasional hobgoblin.  These guys are pretty easy to beat but still drain our hit points.  It's probably a good idea to kill a bunch of them for experience, but killing slimes is boring work.  Let's explore around and see if we can find anything of interest.



Ooh, a cross!  This should be useful in case any vampires should happen to attack us, which they probably will.  I mean, what else are crosses in RPGs for?


I beat up some slimes to gain some experience, but soon become bored of staying in the same old area.  It's time to adventure!  Moving a few screens over, I come across an unusual forest with no enemies around.  I wonder if there could be anything hidden in those trees?  Let's look...  well, actually there is!  A bunch of really painful wasps.



Fortunately, there was also a fairy hidden inside.



Exploring around a bit more, we find a graveyard full of tough zombies.  Actually, pretty much every monster in the game save for slimes and hobgoblins qualifies as "tough" as this point.  We should probably level up.



Okay, we gained a level!  It only took killing about, oh, one hundred slimes, with lots of resting inbetween.  I think I'm beginning to see why people hate this game.  Anyways, maybe with our newfound powers we can check out this castle dungeon.  I mean, we have twice as much strength now, right?



We run inside, and are quickly destroyed by bats.  Not to be deterred, we come across another dungeon to the north!  Maybe we'll be a bit more fortunate in this dungeon...  well, nope.  This time, we're killed by wisps.  And, it's so dark that we can't even see the dungeon walls!  I guess we just need to be stronger.



Since all the underground dungeons are too difficult, maybe we'll be better off trying an aboveground one.  Moving a few screens to the left, we come across a maze swarming with ropers.  Ropers?  Are those difficult?  As it turns out, our level 2 self is just tough enough to defeat them.



As a reward for our roper-defeating ways, we open a treasure chest containing...  a pot?  What?



Oh, I get it.  Taking the pot opens up a hole to yet another dungeon.  Goody.



Unfortunately, the other dungeon is full of superstrong knights and it's dark to boot, so we're clearly not supposed to be there yet.  I guess we have no choice but to level up and return to the castle dungeon.  Slimes give us about half the amount of experience that they used to, which kind of stinks.  Also, even though we're level 2, our rate of HP regeneration hasn't gone up!  It's about this point in the game when you'll really start to notice the grating background music...  it's just a few notes looped over and over and over again.  Sometime during this second levelling-up spree, I had to mute the volume.  Phew.  Anyways, after getting to level 3, the bats in the castle dungeon are pretty defeatable.  What could be lurking further in?



It's a vampire.  Kill him, and a treasure chest containing a lamp will appear.  Now we can go explore those other dungeons!



The northernmost dungeon with the wisps in it turned out to be hiding a sword.  I tried to take a picture of it, but just missed it!  Anyways, it raises your strength a bit, which is a nice advantage this early in the game.  Watch out for those wisps, though, as they're still pretty brutal.



The only place left for us to go is the dungeon that was hidden by the pot, but the monsters in it are still too powerful for us to defeat.  Remember those zombies back in the graveyard?  We're strong enough to (just barely) defeat them now.  Since the slimes and hobgoblins no longer give us experience, we'll need to go on a zombie-killing spree to level up some more.  Notice that the decayed brown earth in the graveyard will hurt you just by standing on it.  Make sure you don't let your HP get too low while you're fighting zombies, or you could die on your way out!

More Combat!  More Adventure!  More searching for Pot Dungeons!  More...  Hydlide!