SurfClay
2017
This review contains spoilers
Hollow Knight's main draws are getting lost in the world and challenging yourself to beat the tough-as-nails boss fights. When you’re exploring, there’s always a sense of danger due to the threat of losing your money when you die and not being able to change your charms whenever you want. However, I rarely had trouble getting my money back and you don’t lose progress when you die, so dying never felt like a huge setback. The one exception is when you’re doing a pantheon, and I really have to question why one of them is 40+ fights long. As for the bosses, I found them to be hard but not too frustrating (except for Grey Prince Zote, fuck him) and I could feel myself improving as I started to figure out their patterns and learned how to best use my spells.
An excellent game, and my personal favorite in the series. Pirate's Curse admittedly plays a lot differently from the "standard" Shantae style, but I always loved how the abilities mesh together. The music is incredible as always, and the visuals combine the pixel art style of Risky's Revenge with more anime-esque character portraits. The one thing I don't like is that the pacing can grind to a halt at times for the sake of seemingly random diversions (Rottytops and the Tanline Temple segment come to mind).
Risky's Revenge is a short game (there's only 2 proper dungeons), but what is there is good, if not a little basic. I would call it a better starting point for the series than the first game.
2021
Rough game. The whip range is lacking, transforming is slow and clunky, and trying to get anywhere is a chore thanks to the day/night cycle and terrible screen crunch. The dungeons are nice but most bosses are lame. On the bright side, the music is still great and the visuals were impressive for the GBC.