Hollow Knight (2017)

What else can be said about this beautiful game, that hasn’t been said before? This game is wonderful. The art stile, world and music are absolutely top tier. Definitely one of the most beautiful worlds that I ever had a pleasure to immerse myself in. Hollow Knight is the first metroidvania game that I ever played. It opened my eyes to this game genre that I haven’t experienced before.

But is the Hollow Knight a perfect game for you to try? Yes and no. While I absolutely recommend the game, there are some things to be aware of before diving in.

First of all, the game is hard. It does require quite some grinding to beat it. One major flaw that it has is the fact that the game feels the hardest in the beginning. That turns away many players and it also turned away me when I first tried it. I beat the first boss and found my way to the next stage. But the second boss was too hard for me. Especially with the fact that I had to backtrack through enemies all the way to the boss when I died. I put the game away for 2 years and I finally revisited it this year. This time I was a bit more determined to beat the goddamn boss. And I did it. And after that I had a blast. Every upgrade I got, introduced even more fun to the game. And I couldn’t wait to see what area I will unlock next.

But to get to this level… boy it takes long. At the beginning you just jump and slash. Very basic and weak movement. And you get killed all the time. But with different upgrades, that you get along the way, you are pretty much flying around and killing everything that touches you. And this is where the fun really begins. The only problem is that you start to get a taste of that after many hours in the game. I think it is around 10. And 10 hours of potentially punishable and frustrating gameplay is not something that many players are willing to go through.

But unfortunately that’s the barrier that you need to cross in order to conquer the Hallownest. By far the best advice I found on internet in order to beat the bosses and enemies in that game is to first wait and just dodge the attacks at your first encounter. Learn their attacks first and then strike when you see the opening in their pattern. My biggest mistake usually was to just go straight into the enemy and try to hit him as many times as possible right at the beginning.

However you might look at the grinding part from the story perspective. In fact you are just a small bug in a vast fallen kingdom, that no one really cares about that much. And you are being tested at every step to determine if you are worthy to succeed.

But you can do it. And the award is a beautiful gaming experience that will stay in your heart.

Adoration of this game aside, The White Palace could use more benches. I’ve completed it multiple times, including the Path of Pain, but I agree with Mark Brown that this optional part of the game is one of the few downsides of Hollow Knight, or as he put it,

a nightmare hellscape void of misery that’s as hard as anything in Super Meat Boy or Celeste but like, without the super sharp platforming controls of either game.

I wonder how many people resigned themselves to only getting the “bad” ending because they simply didn’t enjoy The White Palace. I hope Team Cherry provides a more balanced challenge in Silksong if they include something like the White Palace again.

For those curious where the Mark Brown quote comes from it can be found at around 35:30 in the following Boss Keys video on Hollow Knight world design:

I'm really glad I saved a lot of stuff from the early parts of the game for later, once my nail's been upgraded twice and I have the Grimmchild to help. Beat The Collector and Mantis Lords in like two tries each, no problems, because I'm just so overpowered now lmao Also managed to finish the second Colosseum trail as well.

Nosk, on the other hand, is a son of a bitch and I'm genuinely unsure if I'll be capable of defeating him. Dude won't stop moving and never gives me the chance to heal. I may just farm Geo so I can upgrade all the Leg Eater's charms to unbreakable and really hammer home my overpoweredness lol

Still having a lot of fun, surprisingly even 25 hours in, and am already starting to run out of things to do aside from boss fights. There's some small things I need to do, like the Grey Mourner's quest and find all the grubs and do the Warrior Grave battles for the Dreamnail essence and whatnot, but yeah, I feel like I've done a good portion of the game already despite still having a handful of bosses left, not to mention the teachers.

Ya know, for 15 bucks, it's ridiculous the amount of content you get in this game.

The problem with the laundry list thing I mentioned in a previous status, is that it rarely works out the way you want it to. Sure, I can come up with a checklist of things I wanna accomplish today, but I might only wind up accomplishing one of those, if I'm lucky, because the way the game is designed, I'm just gonna run into stuff I didn't mean to and get sucked into that instead lol

It's a good idea, in theory, but it never seems to pan out the way I hope. Sure, I still make great progress, but rarely do I walk away with the satisfaction of achieving the few things I set out to achieve. It's an odd combination of annoyance and accomplishment. Today I hope to find The Hive and maybe beat a boss, but I guarantee you as soon as I go into the underground, I'm just gonna wind up finding things I didn't mean to and instead spend my whole gametime exploring that instead.

Yeah, progress will be made, just not the progress I set out to make.

I find myself, every time I load this up, going in with a laundry list of shit to do so I don't just wander aimlessly. At the beginning it was fine, when I needed to uncover things, specifically the map, but at this point, 20 hours in, I now just have a little litany of crap to do so I don't waste time. That being said, I'm still 30 hours ahead of my Steam run, so that's pretty good.

I will say though, the fact that like every achievement in this game is about 5 to 10 points is ridiculous lmao I have 15 achievements and only 95 gamerscore total in the game. Absolutely ludicrous.

My current experience with Hollow Knight is very different from my first. I've been playing it for a week now and I noticed something, I am much further ahead in the game in half the time it took the first time around. I've also noticed that the game feels much more relaxing and myself relaxed while playing than the first time. So I decided to dig up some of the things I felt or wrote during my first playthrough. In one of my first statuses I wrote:

As much as this is a gorgeous game, and that I enjoy lots of aspects of it, I’m at a point where I’m not sure I’m going to keep going with it. It’s beautiful and magical but it’s also flawed and punishing. I’m putting it down for a bit and we’ll see if I come back to it.

I remember feeling like this, and now I can't believe I did. This playthrough has been such a smooth ride that I can't imagine wanting to quit. Perhaps my skills are heightened, or I know what to expect, but something has made this a very chill time. I went on to say in a comment in that thread that

I was just grumpy about one of the challenge rooms with the, what feels like at the time, endless waves of enemies. I just couldn’t beat the room no matter how many times I tried. I took a break and then tried again and did it. I swear it was worse than all of the bosses combined.

I know which room this is, and this time I breezed through it (and every other one like it) without a second thought.

In another post I wrote:

When I am done this game, I'm really going to need something real relaxing to play on my Switch.

And now I'm of the mind that Hollow Knight is the relaxing game I'm playing to enjoy a stress free experience. I'm actually surprised I needed a Hollow Knight detox. At this point I want Sliksong to drop next week so I can move from directly from Hollow Knight to the sequel.

In one last post, I said:

I also don’t have the last nail upgrade because I still can’t pull myself through the Trial of the Conqueror. I’d say that I might not be the best gamer in the world, but I can usually handle a good challenge. But hell if I can beat some of these things in Hollow Knight.

I completed the Trial of the Conqueror the other night, soon after arriving. No shade toward my past self, but boy was it easy. It really didn't give me pause at any point and it felt like a fun invigorating time. Kids, don't let people tell you old age is only downhill. I'm apparently getting better with age, lol.

I also posted that I hated The Watcher Knights three years ago. They were giving me a hell of a time. This time around? One fight and they were down. They weren't even difficult. What three years difference makes I guess.

Well I’m neck deep in and fully committed to a replay of Hollow Knight now. It feels much easier this time around even though it’s been three years since I last played the game. It’s also beautiful on the OLED Switch. I know the Xbox version runs at 120fps, and even higher on Steam Deck if the information overlay is to be trusted but there’s something wonderful about playing it handheld on an OLED screen with rich full black areas. Hollow Knight looks amazing on any screen but especially beautiful on this one. And my newly modded d-pad joy-con really does make the game a joy to play handheld. I can’t recommend it enough.

It was also nice to see Hornet and I look forward to her game very soon 😉

i remember my first playthrough i did deepnest right after beating the mantis lords... this time i tried to put it off as long as possible, and wow! i knew this game was non-linear, but i didn't enter deepnest until finishing everything in every other area except kingdom's edge. cornifer even sold me the map for kingdom's edge before i'd ever entered it for the first time, i wonder what triggers that.

i do take enjoyment out of doing things as late as possible in games.

huh. i beat soul master on my first try. hell, i only got hit twice. i remember this being harder. have i gotten better at video games since... what, 2017? i remember having to make the trek from the bench many times, and how satisfying it felt to win.

crazy. and i think i did it earlier this time too, since I went to the Soul Sanctum immediately after getting the double jump. I think last time I went past the Mantis Lords and fell into the spider area? I vaguely recalled it being a split choice so i tried to do it different this time.

another thing i'm immediately struck by is how much better the map design is than in chasm. i'm trashing on chasm a lot, but backtracking was miserable in that game because the map was a bunch of long corridors that don't connect at all. in hollow knight, you can immediately see how all the passageways loop back around through each other, as opposed to all of them sprawling out in opposite directions.

exploring feels fun because you're like "ohhhh, i see, this part connects to this part..." "oh, so that's what was on the other side of this"... and each thing you explore leads to exciting new areas, as opposed to chasm which is like "okay, i traversed this massive corridor, but there was a dirt block at the end of it with a chest underneath it... i'll come back when i have the shovel and get it"

started a replay of this, because chasm was so underwhelming and made me want a better metroidvania. i think it's been long enough that i've forgotten enough for it to feel fresh.

was immediately shocked the first time an enemy hit me and i saw how intense the damage animation was. i forgot it was like this!

but this is such great design. i love mechanics that communicate things to the player without using words: the damage animation communicates "getting hit is a big deal. this isn't the type of game where you should just button mash the enemies to death and then heal yourself"

Hollow Knight is among my favorite indie games now, its a challenging game which will throw you into a mysterious world full of tough encounters and at each time it will prepare you for the next to come.

The game itself is challenging enough but for those who like extra hard stuff, there is some optional things to do in Hollow Knight that are extremely brutally hard to beat, most of them are DLC content.

The inspiration from the Souls series is noticeable, however they did not just rely on that, Team Cherry did add their own flavor into this one. The story is minimal and its bits of lore and dialogue a very vague story-line which kind of is similar to how Souls series presents its world.

The Music is extremely good, I loved it! amazing OST. Gameplay as i said is challenging, there is a good sense of progression with each area you get a new ability, it has no puzzles but it has hidden areas which add a very cool exploration sense to the game. For me this was harder than any of the Souls series cause of its optional encounters which i did because i like to complete things. (Trial of Fools is super hard)

Sometimes the game feels frustrating when for example you need to jump over spikes or in White palace which made me rage many times, i dont know if i will consider this a negative or not, from one side its not a control issue but from the other side its a system which did annoy me a lot getting hit by a spike and you get to return to the start of the path is an annoying thing, another thing that annoyed me is that if i even touch an enemy i lose a mask. Another thing that annoyed me is how even the first enemies still deal the same damage to me as late game enemies, so its a game which punishes your mistakes and there is no feeling of diving into more dangerous lands. Also another annoying thing is how some bosses force you to adapt to certain set of charms in order to make the battle more fair and smooth.

All those are kinda not definite flaws, but they are a hassle for me, and i didnt enjoy them, even if from a game design perspective they can be considered fine. Despite those annoying things i managed to enjoy the hell out of this game, i enjoyed it a a lot, (i played over 60 hours), and i will only take -0.5 from my final score because of them, not much.

I would like a bit more clear story/lore than what they offered.

Overall Hollow Knight is an excellent game, its the Dark Souls of indie games.

8.8/10 4/5

“If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.” -Pablo Picasso

A bit about myself… I’m a metroidvaniac, as Well-Red calls it, going way back into the 80’s. I beat the original Metroid before I beat 3rd grade. My heart has also been burnt a deep searing charcoal black from playing and beating the entirety of the Soulsborne games. If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you will absolutely love Hollow Knight. If you’re nothing like me, you will still love it 😉 …because this game is insanely good.

It’s my pleasure to be here again at the Well-Red blog to bring you another review, this time on the absolutely gorgeous, hand-drawn, labyrinthine world called Hollow Knight. It’s been classified as a metroidvania, but really, it’s so much more than just an arbitrary category. It’s an experience chock-full of dark and mysterious lore, a painted world of subterranean exploration that will challenge any grizzled gaming veteran’s platforming skills. It picks up the torch of the games of yore and douses it with the fresh gasoline of new game mechanics, unique art, colorful characters and evocative storytelling. The incredible polish and love put into this game is apparent from the start screen and doesn’t let up. It won’t even let you leave either, as there are plenty of challenges and a lot of replayability left after your first run through. Ovid told that Daedalus, the mythological craftsman of the Labyrinth, could barely escape his own contraption due to it’s confounding design, …and I too am yet to escape this one myself. I must be a voluntary minotaur as I’m gearing up for a second bout, so I can get the special ending that I didn’t get my first time around.

How did I come to play this game? I’ve recently had an odd, first-world type of crisis of not knowing which game to buy. As I get higher in levels (currently level 36), I find that my tastes have gotten more specific and it has gotten harder and harder to find games that I can justify to myself to spend the time and money on. I have a small list of games on my Steam wishlist, but I just couldn’t choose which one to buy. Hollow Knight has been there for a while since I heard about it on the subreddit r/metroidvania. Anyhow, after getting a friendly pep-talk from our host Well-Red, I bit the bullet and grabbed Hollow Knight. (Note to young mages out there: leveling-up comes with greater spells, but also greater challenges)

After giving the game an honest play-through, I’m more than happy to say that it blew me away. What a fantastic gaming experience! I am now doing this review in hopes that you too, dear reader, will treat yourself (or someone else) to the opportunity of playing this game. Grabbing it will not only be fun for you, but by doing so you will also be supporting the devs (Team Cherry) on their colossal development effort. Seriously, at $14.99, the game is a steal and I can’t wait for whatever it is they decide to do next. That isn’t to say that the game doesn’t have any flaws, but they are almost endearing in their triviality compared to the overall joy of the whole experience.

Before I break down into the 8-bit review, I will to give you a little background on the game’s development and the dev team. Here we go! Hollow Knight released in February 2017 and has been given a ton of praise, and deservedly so, but who are the people behind this phenomenon?

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/hollow-knight/

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, more similar to the Castlevania entries in the genre. You are small, you have a sword, you have a dash. That should be enough to give you a sense of what the core of the game is.

The high points in Hollow Knight are the boss encounters, there are many and most are very engaging, relying on a good mix between pattern recognition and reflex to clear. You can recover health, but that requires standing still for a second, which adds another "mode" to a boss fight where you're trying to recover health instead of attack.

Hollow Knight stumbles a bit when it comes to guidance, the world is large and there's a lot of places to go, except only a few will lead to progress. In addition, your auto-map doesn't update until you hit a save point, which is very inconvenient and at times frustrating, since you either have to stumble into a new save point or backtrack to one you know in order to just see the map (e.g. to see any paths you missed).

I finished Hollow Knight with 23 hours on my save file.