Minor spoilers for the late-game
Hollow Knight is a game I’ve been wanting to play for a long time, commonly referred throughout the community as the best metroidvania (and sometimes one of the best games of all time), my expectations were, naturally, very high. After fully completing the game, I do think Hollow Knight is quite good, but not for the reasons I was initially expecting.
Hollow Knight’s main strengths for me lie in its atmosphere, story-telling and overall combat system. Each individual area is extremely detailed more often than not giving them their own identity and memorable designs, my favourite being Deepnest and The Abyss. However, there is a bit of a problem with the colour palettes, as sometimes the difference between certain areas blur the line making some parts feel similar. Another problem is that basically every area is large, causing backtracking for previous items (as expected of a metroidvania) to feel sluggish and tedious. Even later on with the addition of mechanics like the stag and the crystal heart, walking through massive rooms can get quite tiresome. Which brings me to my next complaint - there is a complete lack of direction/helping hand. A lot of what this game entails you to do is wander around its gargantuan map trying to find specific rooms to find a powerup/charm/pointless reward, and there is almost zero help whatsoever to find these, which can sometimes be crucial to your progression. The devs are practically intending that whatever you find is of your own volition, without searching anything on Google you could dump multiple hours into just finding an important spell to help fight the next boss, which leads to either a boss becoming incredibly fun (Mantis Lords) or complete fucking horseshit (Lost Kin - which I wasted almost 3 hours trying to beat). Due to rooms within areas having very little change between them, remembering specific rooms where you must return to is a challenge especially when the map also gives almost no hint and leads to random checking of rooms only to find a dead-end. The lack of risk vs reward is also surprising, multiple times I completed some difficult challenge which was usually tricky parkour and my reward would be something completely useless, perhaps a Wandering Journal that I can sell for barely any geo or a lore-tablet that I could understand practically nothing of in the beginning of the game. It all feels so badly designed for a first playthrough, which is why I believe Hollow Knight is a game that gets better on replays (although this shouldn’t be the case in the first place).
The world of Hallownest has a dark story behind it, as such the game is generally melancholic and has a lonely feel to it, but the game strives to not place you in a totally miserable and hopeless situation by brightening up the journey with memorable characters who usually lift your spirits. A majority of these characters only have a few lines, but their design and personality stick with you. As you progress further into the game, returning characters' respect for the Knight may grow, consequently giving further insight into the characters and how they came to be. I find what made me love these characters so much is the pacing at which Hollow Knight operates, occasionally it will stop time to give a bit of breathing space to let you have your final moments with some characters, akin to say a Ghibli movie.
The storytelling on show here is wonderful. At first, there’s a disturbing lack of emphasis on really anything to do with the plot, a myriad of cryptic messages may appear on so-called lore “tablets” that just seem like confusing gibberish at first, but towards the end of the game I was fully engaged in piecing together the story of a once great kingdom. The mystery surrounding the infection was interesting from the beginning and I especially loved how everything was revealed slowly, culminating in an epic final battle.
Speaking of battles, the fights here range from poor-mediocre to some of the best in the medium. The pantheons in the DLC do an excellent job at putting all the fights into perspective, I thought a lot of the bosses I enjoyed in the base game would be impacted by their appearance in a boss rush at a much easier difficulty but no, they were just as incredible. The Pure Vessel, Mantis Lords and Nightmare King Grimm are some of the conceptually brilliant and most exhilarating, perfectly designed fights ever, each making a lasting impact with how much of a joy they are to fight, there’s never really a point where the fight feels drastically unfair or poorly made, a lot of deaths come from the player’s mistakes and that is easy to recognise. There are a fair share of frustrating fights that are difficult just for the sake of it, or some that are just far too easy and effortless to defeat, but overall a majority of the fights are good. I think this is mainly chalked up to just how fantastic the combat and movement system, everything is so damn smooth and intuitive it feels difficult to return to some older metroidvanias. The mapping onto the controller is honestly unbelievable, it fits so well and makes the game fun as hell to play and experiment with a lot of the time. While the combat is just nail swings, spells and dashing, there is magic to the simplicity, it truly makes the fights feel like everything is dependent on your own skill, and nothing feels too complex or cluttered to figure out and use in battle.
While it might seem like I’ve spent a majority of the review tearing into Hollow Knight’s overall design, I actually had quite a lot of fun with the other parts of the game and how effectively it managed to replicate my love for the Metroid franchise. I feel like this is a game everyone should experience, it’s a testament to the creativeness that indie developers have and their vision that contradicts and challenges what the current blockbuster video game companies idealise. There’s not much that feels artificial here, just pure passion and soul for an ever growing medium, and a homage to the landmarks of the industry.
Hollow Knight is a game I’ve been wanting to play for a long time, commonly referred throughout the community as the best metroidvania (and sometimes one of the best games of all time), my expectations were, naturally, very high. After fully completing the game, I do think Hollow Knight is quite good, but not for the reasons I was initially expecting.
Hollow Knight’s main strengths for me lie in its atmosphere, story-telling and overall combat system. Each individual area is extremely detailed more often than not giving them their own identity and memorable designs, my favourite being Deepnest and The Abyss. However, there is a bit of a problem with the colour palettes, as sometimes the difference between certain areas blur the line making some parts feel similar. Another problem is that basically every area is large, causing backtracking for previous items (as expected of a metroidvania) to feel sluggish and tedious. Even later on with the addition of mechanics like the stag and the crystal heart, walking through massive rooms can get quite tiresome. Which brings me to my next complaint - there is a complete lack of direction/helping hand. A lot of what this game entails you to do is wander around its gargantuan map trying to find specific rooms to find a powerup/charm/pointless reward, and there is almost zero help whatsoever to find these, which can sometimes be crucial to your progression. The devs are practically intending that whatever you find is of your own volition, without searching anything on Google you could dump multiple hours into just finding an important spell to help fight the next boss, which leads to either a boss becoming incredibly fun (Mantis Lords) or complete fucking horseshit (Lost Kin - which I wasted almost 3 hours trying to beat). Due to rooms within areas having very little change between them, remembering specific rooms where you must return to is a challenge especially when the map also gives almost no hint and leads to random checking of rooms only to find a dead-end. The lack of risk vs reward is also surprising, multiple times I completed some difficult challenge which was usually tricky parkour and my reward would be something completely useless, perhaps a Wandering Journal that I can sell for barely any geo or a lore-tablet that I could understand practically nothing of in the beginning of the game. It all feels so badly designed for a first playthrough, which is why I believe Hollow Knight is a game that gets better on replays (although this shouldn’t be the case in the first place).
The world of Hallownest has a dark story behind it, as such the game is generally melancholic and has a lonely feel to it, but the game strives to not place you in a totally miserable and hopeless situation by brightening up the journey with memorable characters who usually lift your spirits. A majority of these characters only have a few lines, but their design and personality stick with you. As you progress further into the game, returning characters' respect for the Knight may grow, consequently giving further insight into the characters and how they came to be. I find what made me love these characters so much is the pacing at which Hollow Knight operates, occasionally it will stop time to give a bit of breathing space to let you have your final moments with some characters, akin to say a Ghibli movie.
The storytelling on show here is wonderful. At first, there’s a disturbing lack of emphasis on really anything to do with the plot, a myriad of cryptic messages may appear on so-called lore “tablets” that just seem like confusing gibberish at first, but towards the end of the game I was fully engaged in piecing together the story of a once great kingdom. The mystery surrounding the infection was interesting from the beginning and I especially loved how everything was revealed slowly, culminating in an epic final battle.
Speaking of battles, the fights here range from poor-mediocre to some of the best in the medium. The pantheons in the DLC do an excellent job at putting all the fights into perspective, I thought a lot of the bosses I enjoyed in the base game would be impacted by their appearance in a boss rush at a much easier difficulty but no, they were just as incredible. The Pure Vessel, Mantis Lords and Nightmare King Grimm are some of the conceptually brilliant and most exhilarating, perfectly designed fights ever, each making a lasting impact with how much of a joy they are to fight, there’s never really a point where the fight feels drastically unfair or poorly made, a lot of deaths come from the player’s mistakes and that is easy to recognise. There are a fair share of frustrating fights that are difficult just for the sake of it, or some that are just far too easy and effortless to defeat, but overall a majority of the fights are good. I think this is mainly chalked up to just how fantastic the combat and movement system, everything is so damn smooth and intuitive it feels difficult to return to some older metroidvanias. The mapping onto the controller is honestly unbelievable, it fits so well and makes the game fun as hell to play and experiment with a lot of the time. While the combat is just nail swings, spells and dashing, there is magic to the simplicity, it truly makes the fights feel like everything is dependent on your own skill, and nothing feels too complex or cluttered to figure out and use in battle.
While it might seem like I’ve spent a majority of the review tearing into Hollow Knight’s overall design, I actually had quite a lot of fun with the other parts of the game and how effectively it managed to replicate my love for the Metroid franchise. I feel like this is a game everyone should experience, it’s a testament to the creativeness that indie developers have and their vision that contradicts and challenges what the current blockbuster video game companies idealise. There’s not much that feels artificial here, just pure passion and soul for an ever growing medium, and a homage to the landmarks of the industry.