I just finished the normal ending of hollow knight with 88% completion marked. I have some boss rush content and a few small sidequests to finish up but otherwise I think I'm perfectly comfortable with where I'm at with the game.
This game is amazing honestly! I don't play a lot of metriodvanias so coming back to this was refreshing. But you're mileage on this one may vary, so let's dig into why that may be the case.
Firstly, I say coming back, because at one point a couple years ago I put a solid 20 hours into this game and hated it, but I've almost certainly warmed up to it because in a sense I think my priorities and sense of appreciation for ambient story telling has changed.
I'll return to the ambient exellence in a moment, allow a short tangent on my past perceptions. You see, back then I think I was annoyed, in part because I found the game far too simple and easy, none of the music or art stuck out, and I think I quickly had picked up on the lack of diagonal platforms or general lack of collision platform complexity.
It's also a very slow experience. When you start playing, there's no functional way to put it, the game is boring you can only jump, you walk absurdly slow, and your not bound to pick up a dash for around the first couple hours or so. When you start, you're coming out of a cave, reading some esoteric plaques about the Pale King, etc. And every area to the west of the starting place is fairly unexceptional until you get to the Lost City (which is absolutely breathtaking).
So what kept me hooked this time? Certainly it wasnt my attention span, if anything its gotten worse. The main thing, aside from some company to keep me comfortable during downtime, is actually something that would be a bit invisible to a lot of people. For one, opening up the map and finding secret areas is extremely satisfying in itself. Almost every room has a cove that connects and a lot of the time that sense of exploration actually gives you something better than just the material benefit of saving the Grubs or a Pendant, but instead shortcuts back through and around areas your in. Connecting the map is an incredible gameplay loop, because they seemed to have gone out of their way to make the game as compact and interconnected as possible for this type of game. By comparison a lot of other Metriodvanias, like say axiom verge try to tire you by giving you a giant planetary world, Hollow Knight feels appropriately scaled down, the tram stations, stag stations, and elevators eventually make you realize getting to almost anywhere on the map takes about at most 2 minutes, which is not something you can say about most of these games.
The other reason is far more invisible. The developers were incredibly mindful about the rumble effects in this game. I play a lot of my games on an xbox controller because the rumble effects can be tactile and satisfying, and would usually rather exchange it over better aim or higher button variety in most games, especially since I play a lot of my games lazy from my bed. In this case, whenever you dash a faint small rumble is emitted. Whenever you get hit a very large rumble input is let out, and whenever you are attacking an object a slightly medium sized rumble is released on impact. What this means is, combined with a soothing orchestral ambience, with notably no percussive or juttering beats in the tracks, a lot of being outside combat is not necessarily to avoid dying, since it's fairly easy to get your currency back but instead keeping the percussion as quiet as the music and tone of the game, whenever you get hit its loud and disruptive. In the meantime the very small non attention seeking rumble set off by a dash is so incredibly enjoyable you could simply dash around for hours exploring and have that carry the quiet moments on its own. You're playing as a small bug, so of course your job should be to keep a low profile and not cause too much disruption all at once and your own presence would be bold but quiet. Meanwhile, when you get hit back to back it feels like a small earthquake is happening. In this way the core mechanics of the game build in with the environment and character you are actually playing.
Now I could sit here and gush about how amazing all of the areas of the game are, but this wouldn't provide much utility as a review or memoir of the experience to my later self, not only because it would be far harder to actually read back and reminisce on, but also because I could simply look up a video or open the game in 3 minutes and simply see this to be the case, so instead I'll bring attention to one of my favourite encounters in the game. Underneath the City of Tears, the main City region of the game, is the sewers area referred to as the 'Royal Waterways'. The area is shrouded in darkness and dew, most of the time you hear creatures far before you come into contact with them, and a lot of stuff is toppled over, with your bench in the area being tilted sideways. It's supposed to be messy. Ominous, and foreboding. This all comes to a head when you meet the little bugger asshole called in game a 'Flugenon', a small worm that lets out this nasty frenzied gutteral sound like nothing else in the game, and on sight with you chases right after you as a turret. Once you realize what is happening of course you smack it down, only to then moments later have 2 smaller pieces chase after you, one in the sky and the other on ground. Both making smaller and slightly distinct sounds from the larger version. These zombie worms cover a lot of the darker regions of the sewers, they impress me both because of their enemy movement and attack pattern design feeling so disorienting in how smooth it is, but it also filled me with dread, despite the fact I didn't die to them even once! It just added so much to my experience that these little guys were there.
The reason I thought to highlight these incredibly small pleasantries is that I quite honestly think it's this, and not how difficult or complex a game is, that matters to me more these days. If I were to assess this game on its difficulty I would of course feel disappointed, as even though I did die a lot, I only felt 'challenged' by the Prince Zote level 4+ fight, and some of the Dreamer fights. This is absolutely because the Souls series has warped my perception of how long I should be spending on a boss. I'm generally of the impression if I didn't spend over 20 minutes on a boss, it wasn't a very good boss, this is definitely a sentiment I'd do best to get away from, as by that metric almost all games are going to disappoint. But I hope you can understand its a sentiment that was not consciously cultivated by any means. I should note however this was quite the game to do it, as I felt my encounter with none of the bosses this time around were wasted, I particularly want to give notice to the Lost Kin and Prince Zote fights. Along with a wonderful final boss. These fights were absolutely brilliant with the zoning and focus it requires to take on Prince Zote, and the story that goes along with him, making him likely one of my favorite boss encounters in a videogame in recent memory.
Zote's story and his 62 precepts alone were worth the experience, but a lot of the small cast in this game are great in terms of offering both functional and storytelling purpose. I love the fact that when you hit up many of them with the mind reading device, you find out most of their thoughts are actually as equally mundane as what they express aloud a lot of the time. It's a nice touch, because you could have easily made for example the map makers wife Iselda have a mind completely panicing about her surroundings, but I think it makes a lot more sense that shes actually still just brooding about her husband and giving a small insight into her past life through that, rather than something contradictory. It's very easy to write a lot of thinking dialogue as contradictory or histrionic, and occasionally that is the case, but in reality I think a lot of peoples thoughts tend to reflect their outward presence. There's a charming realism about it. Plus its not exactly like there would be much point to putting on social masks for most of these characters at this point anyway. And the relationship between Bretta and Zote, the 2 most primary in their attention seeking behaviours reflect how futile doing so actually is.
Unfortunately, what stops the game from really being stellar, is when the small pleasantries clash with equally small frustrations. To its effect there's not as many, but they still stick out in a way that takes from the experience rather than adding to it.
For one, the economy of the game is understandably stagnant, so after you get to around the distant village or so, you'll stop having money to actively spend on. Perhaps earlier or later, depending on how mercurial you are, but I cant really see people getting more than halfway through the game without having most of the charms and upgrades bought out or at least the money to do so when they get around to it. This on its own is completely fine, you dont want to ramp the difficulty of the game too hard on grinding and, pairing that in with an economic depression from there being no population and therefore almost no shops left is great storytelling. But there is one exception: Divine. Divine takes your strongest charms (basically the build modifiers) and asks for huge sums of money to make them unbreakable. The issue is she asks for 10,000+ Geo per charm, and you cant get the breakable version back once you gave it to her. But, there's functionally no place to get that much geo that doesnt require large amounts of grinding. I understand shes a greedy prying mantis insect, but it would take me probably about an hour and a half of straight grinding one area to do this effectively, and farming has a lot of narrative issues because I start to treat the game as a calculator rather than as an experience, I know this enemy spawns here therefore I can farm it.
On top of this, the only real purpose of doing this is to exchange one tedium for another, since the character who can repair them is just in a slightly annoying spot on the map you have to go back to every time you die. It doesn't help that the charms in question also are just objectively better than most of the other charms in the game making it no question that unless you're not in the mood you make the run back anyway. I personally almost think this breakable charm mechanic would have been better off not being in the game despite its obvious narrative flourishes around it. Not to mention it makes choosing which charms to equip rather juvenile, you always equip Fragile Strength because it makes you do 50% more damage, making the possibility and build choice space that much smaller ultimately.
Following this, theres also the fact that one of the main powerups you get allow you to go through black laser doors but never mention this to you. It mentions you can shadow dash, but not through the door. I spent quite a few hours not doing much of anything because I assumed I had to do something else first. It seems primarily like a playtesting oversight; they didn't mention this in the blurb on pickup. After recognizing this I played the rest of it with a walkthrough armed. There are also giant coin pouches you have to hit over and over again for Geo, and seperate from the other considerations on geo drops, you usually only get about 30 Geo from each, as an external reward, the benefits of this are so incredibly low its almost not worth doing, I think for some of the later sections of the game they could have increased the coin drop rate from this to about 300, but they remain this same drop rate throughout the whole game.
One last complaint I have is that while the game is great in terms of boss designs, only knowing to top off moves at around 5 or 6 and knowing when to challenge the player with appropriate gap closers on most fights, the game really falls short in terms of its platforming. There's one section of the game in particular that attempts to test your platforming skills called the White Palace. Here, the game tests you by offering several difficult to navigate platforming sections, but the issue is that your vertical fall is not quite floaty or precise enough to support this. I think that your character accelerates vertical speed in the air, which is fine, but it also hits maximum velocity incredibly quickly. This maximum speed is frankly far to difficult to comfortable control. On top of this, most of the platforming involves buzzsaws. My girlfriend joked this was the 'super meat boy section' just because of how many buzzsaws there are. It makes sense in meat boy, a game hostile and arcadelike enough to get away with moving buzzsaws, but it doesnt make sense in a giant palace, even if it is a dream! I think they just ran out of ideas for what an appropriate obstacle to overcome would be.
And to be frank this is an issue I have with metriodvanias in general, but especially this one with the way the art direction is in particular: there is absolutely no way I'm going to passively explore the world for more secrets. The secrets are often hidden behind invisible walls in this game, making the assumed function of doing a full clear for the grubs or random missed goodies and charms, absurd. They make it slightly easier with the limited markers, which I admit are also quite fun to use to chart the map and note difficult/interesting areas to return to. However when it comes to finding grubs and charms, you would be doing quite a bit more wall hugging than you would probably like. I cant imagine pushing up to 97% and then trying to till the whole world for the last 2 relics or Grubs or whatever. They easily could have added a post game charm that makes the process of a clean sweep easier, as it is, this game could never convince me to 100% it, especially not without a guide. Now to be fair, a guide and simply not choosing to elect myself into stupid platforming sections in a game that doesnt support it that well solves both these problems. I also personally don't need the best charms anyway by the end of the game, and they are 'unbreakable' in the dream sections by default anyway, so the lack of external rewards make the difference for divine is not a big deal, but I cant really see myself doing a replay of the game anytime soon.
One last thing before I let you go, there's a justifiable amount of comparisons to be made between the story thematics and general gameplay of this game in relationship to Dark Souls. I don't want to overstate it, but the base ending of Hollow Knight read quite literally as a 'linking of the fire' rehash of Dark Souls. The story being esoteric and told mostly through descriptions and random hidden notes. The general gothic quality and themes of infection and decay. The futility of resurrecting kingdoms, etc. Also, the fact that it uses a checkpoint mechanic similar to the Souls series.
Personally, I think the only part where it drops the ball a bit is on the main ending Hollow Knight fight, I'm not really sure the game gives a proper send off of him as an antagonist despite it being the name of the game, a couple characters in town timid about the guy might have helped, since a lot of the commentary was about the Pale King! It just left me scratching my head. On every other front, I think it's okay to ape the influences of Dark Souls. It shouldn't really disrupt your experience all that much, and personally I just think calling antagonists and areas things like 'Lost Kin' or 'Royal Waterways' just has a certain gothic allure to it you don't see elsewhere. I wish well to more games taking advantage of what Dark Souls brought forward, especially on the point of environmental storytelling, which is monumentally well done in this case as well.
High props to the devs for also making all the DLC free as well! I'm comfortable considering all this DLC content along in my perception of the main game. Despite the game not being mechanically or emotionally challenging, this experience will stick with me for a long time and it ticks off a lot of the boxes for what I tend to be drawn to in terms of game design and atmosphere building in games as an artistic medium. Thumbs up all around!
This game is amazing honestly! I don't play a lot of metriodvanias so coming back to this was refreshing. But you're mileage on this one may vary, so let's dig into why that may be the case.
Firstly, I say coming back, because at one point a couple years ago I put a solid 20 hours into this game and hated it, but I've almost certainly warmed up to it because in a sense I think my priorities and sense of appreciation for ambient story telling has changed.
I'll return to the ambient exellence in a moment, allow a short tangent on my past perceptions. You see, back then I think I was annoyed, in part because I found the game far too simple and easy, none of the music or art stuck out, and I think I quickly had picked up on the lack of diagonal platforms or general lack of collision platform complexity.
It's also a very slow experience. When you start playing, there's no functional way to put it, the game is boring you can only jump, you walk absurdly slow, and your not bound to pick up a dash for around the first couple hours or so. When you start, you're coming out of a cave, reading some esoteric plaques about the Pale King, etc. And every area to the west of the starting place is fairly unexceptional until you get to the Lost City (which is absolutely breathtaking).
So what kept me hooked this time? Certainly it wasnt my attention span, if anything its gotten worse. The main thing, aside from some company to keep me comfortable during downtime, is actually something that would be a bit invisible to a lot of people. For one, opening up the map and finding secret areas is extremely satisfying in itself. Almost every room has a cove that connects and a lot of the time that sense of exploration actually gives you something better than just the material benefit of saving the Grubs or a Pendant, but instead shortcuts back through and around areas your in. Connecting the map is an incredible gameplay loop, because they seemed to have gone out of their way to make the game as compact and interconnected as possible for this type of game. By comparison a lot of other Metriodvanias, like say axiom verge try to tire you by giving you a giant planetary world, Hollow Knight feels appropriately scaled down, the tram stations, stag stations, and elevators eventually make you realize getting to almost anywhere on the map takes about at most 2 minutes, which is not something you can say about most of these games.
The other reason is far more invisible. The developers were incredibly mindful about the rumble effects in this game. I play a lot of my games on an xbox controller because the rumble effects can be tactile and satisfying, and would usually rather exchange it over better aim or higher button variety in most games, especially since I play a lot of my games lazy from my bed. In this case, whenever you dash a faint small rumble is emitted. Whenever you get hit a very large rumble input is let out, and whenever you are attacking an object a slightly medium sized rumble is released on impact. What this means is, combined with a soothing orchestral ambience, with notably no percussive or juttering beats in the tracks, a lot of being outside combat is not necessarily to avoid dying, since it's fairly easy to get your currency back but instead keeping the percussion as quiet as the music and tone of the game, whenever you get hit its loud and disruptive. In the meantime the very small non attention seeking rumble set off by a dash is so incredibly enjoyable you could simply dash around for hours exploring and have that carry the quiet moments on its own. You're playing as a small bug, so of course your job should be to keep a low profile and not cause too much disruption all at once and your own presence would be bold but quiet. Meanwhile, when you get hit back to back it feels like a small earthquake is happening. In this way the core mechanics of the game build in with the environment and character you are actually playing.
Now I could sit here and gush about how amazing all of the areas of the game are, but this wouldn't provide much utility as a review or memoir of the experience to my later self, not only because it would be far harder to actually read back and reminisce on, but also because I could simply look up a video or open the game in 3 minutes and simply see this to be the case, so instead I'll bring attention to one of my favourite encounters in the game. Underneath the City of Tears, the main City region of the game, is the sewers area referred to as the 'Royal Waterways'. The area is shrouded in darkness and dew, most of the time you hear creatures far before you come into contact with them, and a lot of stuff is toppled over, with your bench in the area being tilted sideways. It's supposed to be messy. Ominous, and foreboding. This all comes to a head when you meet the little bugger asshole called in game a 'Flugenon', a small worm that lets out this nasty frenzied gutteral sound like nothing else in the game, and on sight with you chases right after you as a turret. Once you realize what is happening of course you smack it down, only to then moments later have 2 smaller pieces chase after you, one in the sky and the other on ground. Both making smaller and slightly distinct sounds from the larger version. These zombie worms cover a lot of the darker regions of the sewers, they impress me both because of their enemy movement and attack pattern design feeling so disorienting in how smooth it is, but it also filled me with dread, despite the fact I didn't die to them even once! It just added so much to my experience that these little guys were there.
The reason I thought to highlight these incredibly small pleasantries is that I quite honestly think it's this, and not how difficult or complex a game is, that matters to me more these days. If I were to assess this game on its difficulty I would of course feel disappointed, as even though I did die a lot, I only felt 'challenged' by the Prince Zote level 4+ fight, and some of the Dreamer fights. This is absolutely because the Souls series has warped my perception of how long I should be spending on a boss. I'm generally of the impression if I didn't spend over 20 minutes on a boss, it wasn't a very good boss, this is definitely a sentiment I'd do best to get away from, as by that metric almost all games are going to disappoint. But I hope you can understand its a sentiment that was not consciously cultivated by any means. I should note however this was quite the game to do it, as I felt my encounter with none of the bosses this time around were wasted, I particularly want to give notice to the Lost Kin and Prince Zote fights. Along with a wonderful final boss. These fights were absolutely brilliant with the zoning and focus it requires to take on Prince Zote, and the story that goes along with him, making him likely one of my favorite boss encounters in a videogame in recent memory.
Zote's story and his 62 precepts alone were worth the experience, but a lot of the small cast in this game are great in terms of offering both functional and storytelling purpose. I love the fact that when you hit up many of them with the mind reading device, you find out most of their thoughts are actually as equally mundane as what they express aloud a lot of the time. It's a nice touch, because you could have easily made for example the map makers wife Iselda have a mind completely panicing about her surroundings, but I think it makes a lot more sense that shes actually still just brooding about her husband and giving a small insight into her past life through that, rather than something contradictory. It's very easy to write a lot of thinking dialogue as contradictory or histrionic, and occasionally that is the case, but in reality I think a lot of peoples thoughts tend to reflect their outward presence. There's a charming realism about it. Plus its not exactly like there would be much point to putting on social masks for most of these characters at this point anyway. And the relationship between Bretta and Zote, the 2 most primary in their attention seeking behaviours reflect how futile doing so actually is.
Unfortunately, what stops the game from really being stellar, is when the small pleasantries clash with equally small frustrations. To its effect there's not as many, but they still stick out in a way that takes from the experience rather than adding to it.
For one, the economy of the game is understandably stagnant, so after you get to around the distant village or so, you'll stop having money to actively spend on. Perhaps earlier or later, depending on how mercurial you are, but I cant really see people getting more than halfway through the game without having most of the charms and upgrades bought out or at least the money to do so when they get around to it. This on its own is completely fine, you dont want to ramp the difficulty of the game too hard on grinding and, pairing that in with an economic depression from there being no population and therefore almost no shops left is great storytelling. But there is one exception: Divine. Divine takes your strongest charms (basically the build modifiers) and asks for huge sums of money to make them unbreakable. The issue is she asks for 10,000+ Geo per charm, and you cant get the breakable version back once you gave it to her. But, there's functionally no place to get that much geo that doesnt require large amounts of grinding. I understand shes a greedy prying mantis insect, but it would take me probably about an hour and a half of straight grinding one area to do this effectively, and farming has a lot of narrative issues because I start to treat the game as a calculator rather than as an experience, I know this enemy spawns here therefore I can farm it.
On top of this, the only real purpose of doing this is to exchange one tedium for another, since the character who can repair them is just in a slightly annoying spot on the map you have to go back to every time you die. It doesn't help that the charms in question also are just objectively better than most of the other charms in the game making it no question that unless you're not in the mood you make the run back anyway. I personally almost think this breakable charm mechanic would have been better off not being in the game despite its obvious narrative flourishes around it. Not to mention it makes choosing which charms to equip rather juvenile, you always equip Fragile Strength because it makes you do 50% more damage, making the possibility and build choice space that much smaller ultimately.
Following this, theres also the fact that one of the main powerups you get allow you to go through black laser doors but never mention this to you. It mentions you can shadow dash, but not through the door. I spent quite a few hours not doing much of anything because I assumed I had to do something else first. It seems primarily like a playtesting oversight; they didn't mention this in the blurb on pickup. After recognizing this I played the rest of it with a walkthrough armed. There are also giant coin pouches you have to hit over and over again for Geo, and seperate from the other considerations on geo drops, you usually only get about 30 Geo from each, as an external reward, the benefits of this are so incredibly low its almost not worth doing, I think for some of the later sections of the game they could have increased the coin drop rate from this to about 300, but they remain this same drop rate throughout the whole game.
One last complaint I have is that while the game is great in terms of boss designs, only knowing to top off moves at around 5 or 6 and knowing when to challenge the player with appropriate gap closers on most fights, the game really falls short in terms of its platforming. There's one section of the game in particular that attempts to test your platforming skills called the White Palace. Here, the game tests you by offering several difficult to navigate platforming sections, but the issue is that your vertical fall is not quite floaty or precise enough to support this. I think that your character accelerates vertical speed in the air, which is fine, but it also hits maximum velocity incredibly quickly. This maximum speed is frankly far to difficult to comfortable control. On top of this, most of the platforming involves buzzsaws. My girlfriend joked this was the 'super meat boy section' just because of how many buzzsaws there are. It makes sense in meat boy, a game hostile and arcadelike enough to get away with moving buzzsaws, but it doesnt make sense in a giant palace, even if it is a dream! I think they just ran out of ideas for what an appropriate obstacle to overcome would be.
And to be frank this is an issue I have with metriodvanias in general, but especially this one with the way the art direction is in particular: there is absolutely no way I'm going to passively explore the world for more secrets. The secrets are often hidden behind invisible walls in this game, making the assumed function of doing a full clear for the grubs or random missed goodies and charms, absurd. They make it slightly easier with the limited markers, which I admit are also quite fun to use to chart the map and note difficult/interesting areas to return to. However when it comes to finding grubs and charms, you would be doing quite a bit more wall hugging than you would probably like. I cant imagine pushing up to 97% and then trying to till the whole world for the last 2 relics or Grubs or whatever. They easily could have added a post game charm that makes the process of a clean sweep easier, as it is, this game could never convince me to 100% it, especially not without a guide. Now to be fair, a guide and simply not choosing to elect myself into stupid platforming sections in a game that doesnt support it that well solves both these problems. I also personally don't need the best charms anyway by the end of the game, and they are 'unbreakable' in the dream sections by default anyway, so the lack of external rewards make the difference for divine is not a big deal, but I cant really see myself doing a replay of the game anytime soon.
One last thing before I let you go, there's a justifiable amount of comparisons to be made between the story thematics and general gameplay of this game in relationship to Dark Souls. I don't want to overstate it, but the base ending of Hollow Knight read quite literally as a 'linking of the fire' rehash of Dark Souls. The story being esoteric and told mostly through descriptions and random hidden notes. The general gothic quality and themes of infection and decay. The futility of resurrecting kingdoms, etc. Also, the fact that it uses a checkpoint mechanic similar to the Souls series.
Personally, I think the only part where it drops the ball a bit is on the main ending Hollow Knight fight, I'm not really sure the game gives a proper send off of him as an antagonist despite it being the name of the game, a couple characters in town timid about the guy might have helped, since a lot of the commentary was about the Pale King! It just left me scratching my head. On every other front, I think it's okay to ape the influences of Dark Souls. It shouldn't really disrupt your experience all that much, and personally I just think calling antagonists and areas things like 'Lost Kin' or 'Royal Waterways' just has a certain gothic allure to it you don't see elsewhere. I wish well to more games taking advantage of what Dark Souls brought forward, especially on the point of environmental storytelling, which is monumentally well done in this case as well.
High props to the devs for also making all the DLC free as well! I'm comfortable considering all this DLC content along in my perception of the main game. Despite the game not being mechanically or emotionally challenging, this experience will stick with me for a long time and it ticks off a lot of the boxes for what I tend to be drawn to in terms of game design and atmosphere building in games as an artistic medium. Thumbs up all around!
Erato_Heti
1 year ago