Hollow Knight (2017)

I was definitely aware of Hollow Knight over the last decade, but everything I heard about it didn't really interest me. I knew it was hard, and look, I know my limitations as a gamer, and I'm not great in difficult situations. I knew it was an indie platformer, but how many of those exist? And I knew that people had been waiting for a sequel for years, and I couldn't understand why.

But considering the praise Silksong is getting, I decided to finally give Hollow Knight a chance. It didn't take long before I was completely in love with this game, which, yes, is a Metroidvania, but felt so much richer than the games that usually carry that designation. Actually, Hollow Knight reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in how I completely enveloped myself in trying to explore every nook and cranny, picking over this game's every frame. In less than a month, I played over 55 hours, did everything I felt I could possibly do, given my limitations as a gamer, and was completely floored by how much of a blast this game is.

Every time I played, I felt like I was getting better, stronger, and more familiar with how this world worked. One secret would be unraveled, which would send me down a string of mysteries to unfold, characters to find, and hidden items to grab. I didn't really care about the story as much as everyone else did, but what kept me moving forward was just how fun it was to find all the secrets this world was hiding. This is an incredibly designed world, in which there's so much to do, so much to see, and often in a fairly specific order despite the open-ended nature of it, and yet, I never felt like the game was holding my hand, and I never felt lost in this world. It's a stunning testament to great game design, and I still want to keep playing in this world.

Hollow Knight has easily become the biggest surprise for me this year, a game I never expected I would love, and now, I'm an absolute fiend for whatever Team Cherry wants to do next.

This videogame is one of the most acclaimed indie games of its era, a shining example of how atmosphere, challenge, and exploration can come together in near-perfect harmony. Developed by Team Cherry, this Metroidvania plunges you into the subterranean kingdom of Hallownest, a vast and decaying world filled with secrets, danger, and forgotten history. Its hand-drawn art style and fluid animation give each cavern, ruin, and character a unique personality, while the haunting orchestral soundtrack enhances the sense of melancholy beauty that permeates every corner of the game.

Gameplay is centered on tight, responsive combat and gradual exploration. Armed with a simple nail weapon, you fight hordes of insect-like foes and formidable bosses that demand both skill and patience. Progression comes through discovering abilities, such as wall-climbing, dashes, and spells, that not only improve combat but also open up new paths, rewarding curiosity and persistence. This game does not implement a lot of new ideas when it comes to the foundations of it's genre, but the level of quality of the execution is what makes it standout so much that it even makes you feel like this is really reinventing the whole thing.

Not to mention, at the sam time, it drinks a little bit of the fountain of the Soulslike genre. What sets Hollow Knight apart is its masterful use of atmosphere and storytelling. The narrative is told subtly through environmental details, cryptic dialogue, and fragments of lore, letting players uncover the tragic fall of Hallownest in their own way. This sense of mystery, combined with the game’s challenging but fair difficulty, creates a deeply engaging experience that keeps you pushing forward even through moments of frustration.

Some people may consider this game somewhat hard because of the little Soulslike influence, but in my opinion the difficulty level is practically perfect, it is the most balanced game that I've ever experienced, since there are a lot of builds you can mix and match different perks for specific challenges, it is truly a very flexible and complex combat system, even though it looks simplistic at first.

Though it can be demanding, especially for those unaccustomed to difficult action-platformers, the payoff is immense. With its generous amount of content, hidden areas, and optional bosses, Hollow Knight offers dozens of hours of exploration and mastery. Its success has left a lasting mark on the indie scene, raising the bar for Metroidvanias and leaving fans eagerly awaiting its sequel, Silksong.

I highly recommend playing this game to the fullest, enjoy absolutely all of it's contents, go 100% go wild, it'll be one of the best gaming experiences you can provide for yourself. I tried to finish this entirely, playing the DLCs and the hidden secret contents, but unfortunately I'm not skilled enough and I admit that I could never beat the optional boss-rush content, and face the secret boss, which is the considered the hardest one (no spoilers). Overall, this is one of those games that you wished your memory was erased so you can play it all over again for the first time, multiple times, truly one of the best games of all time and a must-play for literally everybody, not just fans of similar titles.

Finished Hollow Knight. It's astonishing to know that one of the best platformer games in the modern era is developed by an Indie studio. Hollow Knight is a masterfully crafted metroidvania that offers atmosphere, clean combat, interesting lore and worldbuilding, and character progression that constantly make the game fun to play. RATING: GAMEPLAY : 8

• One of the best metroidvanias there is in terms of pace, difficulty curve and overall core gameplay.
• There are a few times where you'll be completely unaware what is your next progress. If you are not patient, this may get into your nerves.
• Great overall feel for the game, from combat, platforming and character advancement.

STORY & THEME : 8

• A unique take of how a 2d art Style platformer works. Might need a few sessions to get used to.
• Story kinda is confusing at start, and is nonlinear but overall manageable.
• Atmosphere & Music feels great and is one of its main strengths. VALUE : 9
• (spoiler alert) You will get entertained either on just finishing the main story or spending around Hours to 100% and get all the possible endings available. It's by far the core strength of the game, the amount of content.
• Map of Hallownest is HUGE
• With a general low price of $15, it's extremely cheap vs other AAA Titles.

OVERALL RATING: 8.33 You can watch the entire playthrough here:

Hollow Knight is one of the best ways in the world to spend $15. It's a beautiful game that has something for everyone. A challenging battle system, a fun art style, and an awe-inspiring soundtrack, this game has it all. While Hollow Knight isn't the best game for replayability, I still return to this game every year or so. Play this game if you're looking for a new obsession.

WHERE IS SILKSONG?!?!?!

Currently bashing my head against a horde of those round bugs that roll around. At least the checkpoint is reasonable.

But that fight features some salient examples of inaccessibility. The arena is large enough that enemies can be hidden out of bounds and the only alert of their attack is the sound they make. The screen shake and particle effects when being hit and when killing an enemy and when a new enemy comes to like also compound to make it extremely hard to see anything and I always get when that happens. Similarly, the sound effect when hit, also mutes the sound effect of the attack. I'm now going through .ini files to disable it to see how it goes.

The corpse/boss runs are really getting to me. I work from home because I don't like to commute. And I think that now that I have a substancial part of the map discovered there's too much backtracking. So for ever 1 minute I spend happily uncovering a new area or trying to understand how to beat a new boss, I need to spend 10 minutes going through the same places all over again.

I really liked this game when it was all about exploration, but now that it's all about backtracking I'm not so exited.

After having my first experience with a souls-like, I feel that all the talk about difficulty might be less about that the games are hard, but that the games' systems reward skilled player and actively punish less-skilled players.

If you already know your way with a controller and can learn quickly, then you get to master complex movement sets and get the satisfaction of besting challenging enemies. You also get to explore intriguing worlds with mysterious lore filled with strange new places that also challenge you in unique ways.

If you're not as skilled and need more time and repetitions to learn the subtleties of the game, then you get to eat shit. You get to endlessly backtrack through the same areas in a diminished state over and over again on corpse runs. You get to grind for currency you need to get more powerful only to lose it if you die before retrieving your corpse. And since you get fewer attempts at the boss, you can't get better as quickly, which creates a reinforcement loop of failure and frustration.

So, maybe it's not that the games are hard, but that the games actively prevent less-skilled players to "git gud", further amplifying the skill (and enjoyment) differential.

Very good Metroidvania. Great atmosphere, great level design, great bosses, challenging, but fun and fair. Play it, its like 15 bucks on Steam, you wont regret it.

Also, there are people that call it souls-like and I just want to get the record straight that that statement is completely false. A game isnt a soulslike because it has a dark atmosphere and cryptic lore. I mean, this game is nothing like Dark Souls in gameplay.

I reached the final boss and fell off hard some years ago - largely because those endgame bosses (and the boss rush Godmaster content) were so brutally hard.

It took returning to the start of the game and doing a complete playthrough to finish it and boy am I glad I did. The soundtrack is perfect, the lore is deep and mournful, the gameplay tight and punishing but deeply rewarding.

I'm also thrilled (and of course saddened) by my ending - the third one, if that helps.

More importantly I beat Nightmare King Grimm which I believe makes me ~checks notes~ the greatest gamer of all time.

PROS

• Enchanting art style is somehow adorable, melancholy, and sinister all at the same time
• Evocative soundtrack gives environmental navigation unexpected emotional heft
• Enthralling world and lore
• Intuitive controls and responsive audiovisual feedback make movement and combat a continuous joy
• Huge variety of enemies and awesome bosses to fight
• Massively satisfying character progression; what starts as a dead simple move set by the end has you zipping around like an acrobat
• Gigantic game world is full of surprises and expertly crafted, keeping your sense of wonder and discovery amazingly high for 20+ straight hours
• Charm system adds a layer of strategy to the action
• Combines aspects of metroidvanias and souls-likes to magical effect; this is genuinely one of the best 2D action/adventure games I've ever played

CONS

• Complex level designs make backtracking through completed areas a bit of a chore
• Some side content gets carried away with the difficulty level

Hollow Knight drops you into a dark and mysterious world filled with anthropomorphic bugs, both friendly and hostile. Hearing that, you might be surprised to hear it is one of the most beautiful 2D worlds I have had the privilege of exploring. And that's what I want to talk to you about first - the world of Hollownest.

Exploration

Your journey begins in a small town of three or four buildings with an elderly bug warning you of the dangers that live below. As soon as you dive into the underground, your curiosity will take you through both dark and well-lit paths where you will have to dodge and fight a variety of enemies, from acid-dropping flies to proud warriors defending the husk of their old kingdom.

The mystery of the world is what drove my curiosity to keep exploring. To be completely honest, I had no idea what my purpose was at the beginning of the game. Early on you will find artifacts that seemed to be left behind by some ancient civilization, but nothing indicates what exactly you're supposed to be doing. Both in this game and games like Metroid, the environment does an excellent job of showing you how to progress in the game. For example, you will enter a room that seems to be a dead end and upon retracing your steps back, you find another pathway leading you to a powerup or item that will turn that dead end into a gateway to a whole new region to explore.

The thing is, with Hollow Knight versus Metroid, there isn't just some big baddy like Ridley to chase. Instead, what drove me to keep exploring was a desire to find out what the history and identity of Hollownest really was. The atmosphere is dark and lonely, sure, but there seems to be something bigger at hand. And that mystery is only further prodded along by all the interesting NPCs you encounter along the way.

NPCs

The NPCs are really a delight, and they really breathe a sense of reprieve into a game that is otherwise unforgiving in its difficulty. There will be times after a few fights or obstacles where you're low on health and frantically looking for a save point when all of a sudden you'll chance upon a hot spring and another lone traveler chilling in it. The hot spring will give you a chance to restore your health, but there won't necessarily be a chance to save (again, this game is unforgiving). But the sense of desperation makes these pleasant and surprising encounters with NPCs all the more refreshing. This is something that Metroid games lack for the most part, making this game truly unique.

That being said, the gameplay itself will definitely feel like Metroid. Even some of the powerups seem fairly similar to what Samus gets in her games. But in Hollow Knight, you're a swordsbug wielding your trusty "nail". That in itself is a big enough difference from Samus' beam cannon to know the game isn't a Metroid clone. If you're not familiar with 2D Metroid, expect precise platforming as you scale a vertical or horizontal area, fine tuned dodging to survive devastating boss attacks, and the satisfaction of coming back to an area with a new weapon or toy that will help you blast through enemies that seemed impossible to beat the last time you were there.

I hope this was enough for those interested in either the gameplay or story to get a sense of how Hollow Knight works. It really is a masterpiece in my book.

Difficulty

I do want to address difficulty. Expect to die countless times when going up against boss enemies. Fortunately, when you die, you keep any powerups or items you gained as you respawn at your last save point. However, you will lose ALL of your currency, and the game auto-saves as you die so you can't just turn it off to get your currency back. This can be frustrating, but wherever you die, you leave a "shade" of your past self. And you can can go back to where you died to fight that shade and regain your hard-earned cash. The shade will give you a little fight, but they are particularly easy to defeat.

That being said, the difficulty of the game is what creates the satisfaction of progressing to that next, beautiful region that you had no idea existed or earning that powerup that will open up all sorts of new exploration possibilities. And that simply creates a positive feedback loop where you're almost asking for more challenges, just to see what's next.

While I've had experience completing Metroid games, I would by no means call myself a platforming expert. The game was difficult for me, and I stopped for a bit at one point (or two or three), but whenever I got back into the world of Hollownest, I couldn't put the game down, even if it meant dying 10 times, then 20 times, etc....

Good luck and have fun :)

I'm a huge fan of the Metroidvania genre, and after a slow first hour, Hollow Knight is pretty incredible...for a decent stretch. Unfortunately, I ran out of goodwill for the game about 80% of the way through. It just didn't feel as empowering as other games like it did, and frankly was too long for my tastes. I'm used to a Metroid-style game being maybe 8-10 hours, but this one was getting into 20 hours, which was just too much to sustain my interest.

All of my problems with Hollow Knight are pretty specific to my own preferences, so if you're a Metroidvania fan, this will probably be a 5-star game for you. I couldn't help but feel like the controls weren't as tight as they had to be for what the game asked me to do: the game constantly ate my inputs, causing me to die more than once when it didn't feel like my fault. I also feel like benches are placed way too far apart, and backtracking after dying in a tough area or to a new boss becomes extremely frustrating. Replaying a level after dying is an outdated mechanic that only works if you get to try the difficult part again right away, like in Super Meat Boy. In Hollow Knight, I'd often have to run a good 3-5 minutes just to have another shot at the boss or whatever it was that killed me.

I have to give the game credit for beautiful graphics and a wonderful soundtrack. The sheer number of different enemies you fight is astounding, too. I think I read somewhere that there's like 150 different enemy types?

Anyway, there's a lot here for platforming fans to enjoy. Hollow Knight just lacked that little extra level of polish that would have made the last bit of it more enjoyable.

Amazing game. If you're into metroidvania kind of games - this is a game to play. As far as these kind of games go - this is my very top alongside Ori and the Blind Forest.

Visually very nice looking. Interesting design of characters and locations. Very consistent art style all across the board with a very intriguing atmosphere. Animations are top notch.

The story and the world design are also amazing. It does not go very deep into details but there is a lot of the lore behind it.

Controls are also very tight - it feels responsive and fair. If you miss a jump or get hit - you know it's your fault.

The game might be a bit on the hard side - but it's always fair. All bosses have their tells and can be bitten with enough practice - or enough upgrades.

All in all - this game is a must play if you're into these kind of games. Loved everything about it.