"The greatest indie metroidvania"—so here's the 8/10 it deserves.

The main thing Hollow Knight has going for it is of course its massive size and true nonlinearity. When I was deep in the process of exploring, finding secrets, getting lost, finding my way again, seeing how different regions link up—these were the times when I thought I was playing one of my favorite games. The charm system is pretty cool as it is, but it along with all the other goodies in the game gives plenty enough reason to explore every nook and cranny (and overlook some pretty bad Super Meat Boy-esque spike maze level design along the way). There's so much to admire in how distinct each region feels and how elegantly they all fit together, and the amount of freedom you're given after a certain point is something few games arrive at even when they strive for it.

But.

The issue is that Hollow Knight's very scale tends to emphasize one of its genre's inherent limitations. Backtracking is built into the genre's DNA—and this is no bad thing, in fact it's kind of the whole point: revisiting areas with new tools and with a new purpose develops a much more organic relation to space than is usually the case in more linear games. The tradeoff is repetition: not only is the space itself usually unchanged, but obstacles are usually static as well. In a game this big and this long, in which backtracking is therefore not only mandatory but extremely time-consuming, seeing the exact same enemies respawn in the exact same places over and over again starts to feel like a drag—much moreso in a 40-ish hour game than in a 10-ish one like Super Metroid. Moreover, Hollow Knight, like Super Metroid, wants you to be immersed in a massive and seemingly "alive" world, but the world and its inhabitants are essentially static, existing only as a backdrop to the player's "hero's journey." Having no internal dynamics or logic of their own, they change, if at all, only in response to the player's actions, and then only rarely. (I was almost ecstatic when I first got to the Infected Crossroads, and then massively disappointed when I realized that other areas of the game would not get the same treatment.) Size aside, the difference between the two games is that only one of them came out in the same year as Rain World: a game that shows us how the player-game relationship can be reimagined in the context of a 2D platformer with a massive persistent world, and how decentering the player character can result in a more rewarding and immersive experience.

There are other aspects of Hollow Knight I'm ambivalent about. The "soulslike" elements are a decidedly mixed bag, and despite the variety within the player's toolkit, the core moveset feels kind of generic. Samus may have fewer abilities at her disposal, but the ones she does have define her as a character to a far greater extent than... (wait, what's the little guy's name again?). I also have to admit that I balked at the endgame boss rush, but that's more because I took a long break between getting the three thingamugugs and facing the Titledrop Monster, and completely lost any momentum in between. I may return to Hollow Knight—some years down the line—but if I do it'll be from the very beginning.