Well, I finally did it, I finally beat Hollow Knight. A game that has been sitting in my backlog for a few months, but I finally wrapped it up. Hollow Knight is such a weird game to me, because I loved the second half but wasn’t a fan of the first. When you first start the game you don’t know how it works, you don’t fully understand enemy patterns, your moves are limited to simple attacks, making a very tedious first impression. But as you progress, it gets better. Up until the hornet fight I wanted to turn this game off but I kept telling myself “no, I will not drop this game, I will experience it from beginning to end.” 40 hours later and here we are.

Hollow Knight is not only a great game, but my favorite indie game (better than hades yes). As someone who doesn’t like indies after trying dozens of them over the years, I’m glad I was finally able to find one that clicked. The game starts off in dirt mouth, a dying town full of fog and dim lights, with very few remaining life. It already shows what this game is not even 10 minutes in. It is about you, the knight, traveling through this vast dying world to stop the infection from within. The games story is told through Npcs and atmosphere, which does a great job at conveying a depressing tone. The atmosphere is just phenomenal, and the gorgeous artstyle makes it even better. Each area in the game is distinct with its own unique personality and life to it. In the city of tears you are greeted by a rainy/dreary city, with a depressing tune playing in the back. The ancient basin is at the bottom of the world, the place you were born. The eerie and unsettling tone hits you from the moment you enter by showing you the lost souls of your fellow companions, slowly trying to escape their misery and escape to what’s left of the desolate wastelands above. These are my two personal favorite areas in the game, but nearly all of them are great (fuck you crystal peaks). Alongside the atmosphere you have the npcs, which add so much to the overall story and immersion. Every npc has a personality to them and a backstory that you can understand immediately just by looking at them. It’s great. The designs are so great, so unique, so distinct, especially the bosses. The bosses are one of the highlights in the game. While a good chunk of them are tedious (let’s say uhhh.. 40%?), the good ones are some of the best boss fights in any game ever. With Hornet and hollow knight being the best. One thing that’s rare is for me to have fun when dying to the same boss over and over again, which weirdly enough happened in this game. Fights like the soul master, hornet, hollow knight, dung beetle, and more were always fun regardless of how many times I died. Every time I return to a boss room I feel stronger. As you progress through a fight you understand the moves, the weaknesses, the patterns, spots for healing, which makes every try feel different from the last. Most games I die to a boss and go “what a fucking terrible fight” while in hollow knight I can die 20 times and still (mostly) have a great time. The gameplay itself is pretty mid and pretty fucking great at the same time, creating a weird blend. The main part of the game is of course the exploration, this being a metroidvania and all. Before you get abilities like the dash and double jump however, the exploration is very tedious. Even after receiving these abilities there were times where the platforming was just annoying and sucked total ass but it was easy to forgive. And then the combat which is... something. I don’t hate the combat, but it definitely could’ve been better. There’s a lot of customization options to make it better such as charms and weapon upgrades, but even at the end of the game I was still not satisfied with it. Luckily, it looks like silksong will be improving upon it in nearly every way.

The atmosphere, the tone, the story, the gameplay, the characters, the music, all create an incredible product in the end that everyone should play at least once. There are a lot of problems, sure, but most of them vanish as you progress and reach that end goal. And once you reach that end goal, you get an incredibly satisfying and emotional conclusion to an already fantastic game. I still have some things to do before I’m truly done with the game but as of right now all I can really say is

Play Hollow Knight.