ZeldaFan
Welp
That’s the second time a video game has made me tear up
That’s the second time a video game has made me tear up
2012
Hmmm
Might play this again
Might play this again
This review contains spoilers
Basically security breach but more polished, next to no bugs or glitches, more linear, more focus on an actual threat throughout the game, and for the first time in forever, barely a scent of William Afton…………well there’s the mimic thing but it’s a separate entity at least.
I fucking love this series
2007
This game was fucking awesome, and the switch version is such a good port to
Two games in and we’ve already potentially hit the peak of the series
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a fantastic follow up to the first game, the game is more challenging, more varied, more tense, and overall just more fun to play, while also greatly expanding the lore of the series and just all around giving people a really damn good experience.
Let’s start off with the general gameplay, and this time there’s a hell of a lot more to it, you’re far more vulnerable this time thanks to the fact that there are no doors, and your only means of protection is a Freddy mask, but luckily the Freddy mask makes the animatronics confuse you for one of their own, so I guess you can just wear it the whole night………one problem though, foxy, he can see right through your disguise and will kill you even with the mask on, so you have to flash the flashlight on him a bunch of times to make him go away, so now you’re thinking “ok, just a little hurdle, but I can still stay in the mask most of the time” yeah no, that’s where the music box comes in, you gotta go on your camera and wind this music box up a bunch, this leaves you vulnerable on the cameras and can lead to many deaths either from a surprise animatronic appearance or the puppet coming out herself.
Another thing this game does expertly is the sound design, listening out for an animatronic entering the vents or the hallways, hearing how close balloon boy or mangle are by their audio cues, it’s all used very well and adds another layer of strategy to the game.
All this feeds into a great gameplay loop that doesn’t really overstay its welcome, and it leads to a pretty tense and scary experience, I’ll still admit that the jumpscares themselves are goofy, the atmosphere succeeds in making you feel fear, so thankfully the jumpscares can be kinda excused.
Now let’s talk about some lore, this game greatly expands it with some reveals and answers for the first game’s questions, but also adding more mysteries for us to solve, firstly this game marks the very first appearance of the one, the only, William Afton, known only right now as the purple guy, murderer of the children, the death mini games each help to emphasize the tragedy of Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria and the absolute monster Afton is, in one mini game he kills a girl who would later possess the puppet and put the five children’s souls into the animatronics, in another you can see Afton watching foxy run to the dead kids, in anther he can very rarely pop up and dismantle Freddy, it’s a great way of setting him up, I’ll say for now he’s a phenomenal antagonist.
This game also shows what we can only say was a theory in the last game, that being the children’s souls possessing the animatronics, we now know why they attack, cause they mistake you for Afton.
I love how the lore is built up in this game, and with how much build up Afton is getting, I feel he’s soon going to take center stage in a game……….wink wink nudge nudge
Overall, FNAF 2 is a fantastic entry in this series, building and expanding everything almost perfectly compared to the first game.
Now onto FNAF 3
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a fantastic follow up to the first game, the game is more challenging, more varied, more tense, and overall just more fun to play, while also greatly expanding the lore of the series and just all around giving people a really damn good experience.
Let’s start off with the general gameplay, and this time there’s a hell of a lot more to it, you’re far more vulnerable this time thanks to the fact that there are no doors, and your only means of protection is a Freddy mask, but luckily the Freddy mask makes the animatronics confuse you for one of their own, so I guess you can just wear it the whole night………one problem though, foxy, he can see right through your disguise and will kill you even with the mask on, so you have to flash the flashlight on him a bunch of times to make him go away, so now you’re thinking “ok, just a little hurdle, but I can still stay in the mask most of the time” yeah no, that’s where the music box comes in, you gotta go on your camera and wind this music box up a bunch, this leaves you vulnerable on the cameras and can lead to many deaths either from a surprise animatronic appearance or the puppet coming out herself.
Another thing this game does expertly is the sound design, listening out for an animatronic entering the vents or the hallways, hearing how close balloon boy or mangle are by their audio cues, it’s all used very well and adds another layer of strategy to the game.
All this feeds into a great gameplay loop that doesn’t really overstay its welcome, and it leads to a pretty tense and scary experience, I’ll still admit that the jumpscares themselves are goofy, the atmosphere succeeds in making you feel fear, so thankfully the jumpscares can be kinda excused.
Now let’s talk about some lore, this game greatly expands it with some reveals and answers for the first game’s questions, but also adding more mysteries for us to solve, firstly this game marks the very first appearance of the one, the only, William Afton, known only right now as the purple guy, murderer of the children, the death mini games each help to emphasize the tragedy of Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria and the absolute monster Afton is, in one mini game he kills a girl who would later possess the puppet and put the five children’s souls into the animatronics, in another you can see Afton watching foxy run to the dead kids, in anther he can very rarely pop up and dismantle Freddy, it’s a great way of setting him up, I’ll say for now he’s a phenomenal antagonist.
This game also shows what we can only say was a theory in the last game, that being the children’s souls possessing the animatronics, we now know why they attack, cause they mistake you for Afton.
I love how the lore is built up in this game, and with how much build up Afton is getting, I feel he’s soon going to take center stage in a game……….wink wink nudge nudge
Overall, FNAF 2 is a fantastic entry in this series, building and expanding everything almost perfectly compared to the first game.
Now onto FNAF 3
2019
This review contains spoilers
…….Wow
Outer Wilds is beautiful, plain and simple, it is a one of a kind experience that you truly can’t get in any other piece of media out there………and I absolutely love it.
Before I say anything else though, let me make one thing clear, PLAY THIS GAME BEFORE YOU READ ANY REVIEWS, the less you know, the better it is, come back here and read once you’re done
This is a game that truly does not tell you anything, other games elude to this idea, but most of them do have something that clues you in, even the soulsborne series has some general pointers and some sort of indicators on where you should go.
This game doesn’t even have that, it lets the player discover things completely on their own, it lets us go do anything on our own accord, want to go to those two planets circling closest to the sun? Go for it, want to go to the planet with a black hole in the center, sure why not? Want to go to the giant green planet with tornados and a massive ocean, do it! Want to go to hell, oh I’m sorry, I mean Dark Bramble, why not? It goes so far with not telling you anything that the game doesn’t even tell you about the supernova that occurs every 22 minutes…………WAIT WHAT. dies in a blinding blue light
………….wakes up huh, that’s neat, I guess this brings me around to the time loop mechanic, which I think is very well utilized, 22 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, shit it’s the amount of time it takes me to get up and get coffee in the morning, so I can only imagine what our 4 eyed buddy has to go through when searching for ancient artifacts of a long dead civilization.
However, despite how short it sounds, it’s almost always enough time to do things in the game, much like Majora’s Mask, every loop basically forces you to make a plan to explore something, whether that be the hanging city in Brittle Hollow, the quantum training tower thing on Giant’s Deep, the sunless city on the ember twin, there’s a lot to do and you most plan accordingly, of course your first few loops, you’ll have no idea what you should do, hell most of my early loops were either me careening into the sun on accident, me crashing into planets at a very fast speed, or falling into brittle hollow’s black hole over and over again, but no matter what happens to you, you learn, you learn how to avoid the sun and careen into it, you navigate around the black hole in brittle hollow, you learn that you should STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM GIANT’S DEEP AND ESPECIALLY DARK BRAMBLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME, and a lot of other lessons, skills and smart thinking are what you’ll need in order to explore this solar system…….ah, a nice bright day out isn’t it……………wait, it’s the evening, why is it bright our?……….OH SHIT dies again in a blinding blue light
…………wakes up WHATAHAT………very odd, very odd indeed, anyways, speaking of the solar system, let’s talk about it, the game’s separate planets and worlds are just perfect, holy shit I love each of these places, each one serves a vital role in the game’s story and role, and it makes use of all of them, the hourglass twin planets are fantastic, I love the rising sand mechanic on ember, and the uncovering of ash that happens throughout the current cycle, Timber Hearth is a cozy little starting area, it’s a nice little planet that still has plenty of secrets to uncover, brittle hollow is a very interesting planet, the discovery of the planet slowly falling apart as the cycle goes on, it’s very cool, and that’s just the beginning, there’s so much to explore underneath the surface, and I’ll just leave that discovery to you all, Giant’s Deep is probably my favorite of all the planets, a planet that’s 80% ocean, 20% land, 1000% tornadoes, visually it’s just gigantic, completely daunting, but you start to pull back the layers and see more, whether that be the islands that frequently launch into space, the tower hidden in the planet’s largest tornado, or the cannon hidden in its core, you certainly have a lot on your plate in this place…………..and finally there’s Dark Bramble.
Dark fucking Bramble, I love this place but I also hate it, it’s a fucking terrifying planet, like giant’s deep is scary at first but then the fear kinda goes away, but with Dark Bramble, nah, fear is constant here, why is it terrifying, I’ll tell you, out of every place in the ENTIRE (base) GAME, this is the only one that has enemies, not just any enemies, giant fucking anglerfish, let me tell you about the anglerfish, they hide very easily with the lights emitting off the nose entrances, so you never see one until it’s too late, and once you’re near them, let me tell you even more, they’re 1. Bigger than you and your ship, 2. Faster than you and your ship, and 3. Can very easily swallow you and your ship whole, leading to instant death…….but they do have one weakness, they can’t see shit, so just be quiet around them……….Dark Bramble is fucking scary and it is a great addition to the solar system.
There are other small things too, the sun station is a cool lore place and pretty terrifying being that close to the sun, the interloper is in the grand scheme of the game’s story, completely optional, but it does show how the nomai ultimately went extinct so that’s cool, another completely optional thing that I only realized was optional after beating the game was the Quantum Moon, a moon that teleports around the various planets in the solar system, and served as a trial for the nomai to go through, you can barely count it as optional considering how much the wall tablets mention it, so naturally you’d become morbidly interested in it like me………..dies again in a blinding blue light
………..wakes up I BARELY EVEN SAW THAT ONE……………anyway, I guess I’ll get into major spoilers now, I recommend really clicking off, there’s been a spoiler here and there but I’ll be talking about the deeper lore and the game’s finale, so click off now.
This game’s lore is fantastic, the story of the nomai is super captivating and phenomenally told, basically these guys came to the universe seeking refuge and after a thing later dubbed the “eye of the universe” had called out to them, however their Vessel ended up crashing into Dark Bramble, as it was going in, three escape pods launched out, one landing in a different node of Dark Bramble, another landing on Ember Twin, the last one landing on Brittle Hollow, the nomai on the Dark Bramble escape pod eventually perished, but the other two pods of people flourished, making multiple things in an attempt to reach the eye of the universe, stuff like the ash twin project, the black hole forge, the probe cannon, the sun station, and many other things.
Through the writings left behind by the nomai, you learn about what they built, their dreams of reaching the eye of the universe, and ultimately finding out why they were drawn here……….however failure struck them multiple times, the ash twin project and sun station were a dud since the sun couldn’t be manually supernova’d, and that made the ash twin project basically useless to them, and alas, they ended up meeting their end when the comet dubbed “The Interloper” came into the solar system, and when they tried to explore it, it ended up releasing ghost matter across the solar system, and wiped them out.
But, ultimately with all their information at hand, you push through, ultimately putting the pieces together where the nomai couldn’t, and you find out that with the warp core of the ash twin project, the coordinates inside the probe cannon, and the power of the vessel deep in Dark Bramble, you finally learn the way to the eye of the universe.
Now here’s my experience with my final loop of the game, I rushed over to Ash Twin to get into the project and get the warp core, after several minutes of waiting, I got into the project and took the core out, once I got back to my ship, a triumphant mix of the time loop near end theme started playing, with that burst of motivation from the song, I quickly flew to Dark Bramble, said fuck it and went straight into the nest node without even marking the vessel location, after a very close call with the anglerfish, I made it to the vessel, put the core and the coordinates in, and was taken to the eye of the universe……….I get off the vessel and go to the eye’s surface, and………..what’s that blue light in the distance? OH SHIT THE SUPERNO—………oh wait, that ain’t reaching me now, HAH!
I continue on into the darkness, I will say that along with the discovery of the anglerfish and the first time entering the quantum moon, this is one of the most ominous parts of the game, but I push through and fall into the giant………hole? I think, in the sky, leading me to what I think is the insides of the eye…………then I’m transported out of the universe…….or am I? Cause next thing you know, you’re in a forest…….you end up exploring a bit until a campfire appears, and one of your friends along with it, you explore the area more and get more of your friends to join around the campfire, once all are there, a song is played, which creates this……..uh, circular vortex? Which then blasts you and your friends far away, and after a bit of silence and pitch blackness………BOOOM, a Big Bang basically happens.
Over 14 billion years later, it shows a new solar system forming, and with that, the game ends.
Ah……it’s simply wonderful, Outer Wilds is a one of a kind experience, I didn’t even talk about everything I adored, the game’s art style is beautiful, the soundtrack is just so fucking good, the atmosphere is top notch, and much much more man………..but I’ll end it here, now I sit in my room, with a bittersweet feeling, while there’s a sadness knowing I can’t experience this game a second time, there’s an ultimately happy feeling as well, one that’s so happy that he got experience a piece of media like this one.
Outer Wilds is beautiful, plain and simple, it is a one of a kind experience that you truly can’t get in any other piece of media out there………and I absolutely love it.
Before I say anything else though, let me make one thing clear, PLAY THIS GAME BEFORE YOU READ ANY REVIEWS, the less you know, the better it is, come back here and read once you’re done
This is a game that truly does not tell you anything, other games elude to this idea, but most of them do have something that clues you in, even the soulsborne series has some general pointers and some sort of indicators on where you should go.
This game doesn’t even have that, it lets the player discover things completely on their own, it lets us go do anything on our own accord, want to go to those two planets circling closest to the sun? Go for it, want to go to the planet with a black hole in the center, sure why not? Want to go to the giant green planet with tornados and a massive ocean, do it! Want to go to hell, oh I’m sorry, I mean Dark Bramble, why not? It goes so far with not telling you anything that the game doesn’t even tell you about the supernova that occurs every 22 minutes…………WAIT WHAT. dies in a blinding blue light
………….wakes up huh, that’s neat, I guess this brings me around to the time loop mechanic, which I think is very well utilized, 22 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, shit it’s the amount of time it takes me to get up and get coffee in the morning, so I can only imagine what our 4 eyed buddy has to go through when searching for ancient artifacts of a long dead civilization.
However, despite how short it sounds, it’s almost always enough time to do things in the game, much like Majora’s Mask, every loop basically forces you to make a plan to explore something, whether that be the hanging city in Brittle Hollow, the quantum training tower thing on Giant’s Deep, the sunless city on the ember twin, there’s a lot to do and you most plan accordingly, of course your first few loops, you’ll have no idea what you should do, hell most of my early loops were either me careening into the sun on accident, me crashing into planets at a very fast speed, or falling into brittle hollow’s black hole over and over again, but no matter what happens to you, you learn, you learn how to avoid the sun and careen into it, you navigate around the black hole in brittle hollow, you learn that you should STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM GIANT’S DEEP AND ESPECIALLY DARK BRAMBLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME, and a lot of other lessons, skills and smart thinking are what you’ll need in order to explore this solar system…….ah, a nice bright day out isn’t it……………wait, it’s the evening, why is it bright our?……….OH SHIT dies again in a blinding blue light
…………wakes up WHATAHAT………very odd, very odd indeed, anyways, speaking of the solar system, let’s talk about it, the game’s separate planets and worlds are just perfect, holy shit I love each of these places, each one serves a vital role in the game’s story and role, and it makes use of all of them, the hourglass twin planets are fantastic, I love the rising sand mechanic on ember, and the uncovering of ash that happens throughout the current cycle, Timber Hearth is a cozy little starting area, it’s a nice little planet that still has plenty of secrets to uncover, brittle hollow is a very interesting planet, the discovery of the planet slowly falling apart as the cycle goes on, it’s very cool, and that’s just the beginning, there’s so much to explore underneath the surface, and I’ll just leave that discovery to you all, Giant’s Deep is probably my favorite of all the planets, a planet that’s 80% ocean, 20% land, 1000% tornadoes, visually it’s just gigantic, completely daunting, but you start to pull back the layers and see more, whether that be the islands that frequently launch into space, the tower hidden in the planet’s largest tornado, or the cannon hidden in its core, you certainly have a lot on your plate in this place…………..and finally there’s Dark Bramble.
Dark fucking Bramble, I love this place but I also hate it, it’s a fucking terrifying planet, like giant’s deep is scary at first but then the fear kinda goes away, but with Dark Bramble, nah, fear is constant here, why is it terrifying, I’ll tell you, out of every place in the ENTIRE (base) GAME, this is the only one that has enemies, not just any enemies, giant fucking anglerfish, let me tell you about the anglerfish, they hide very easily with the lights emitting off the nose entrances, so you never see one until it’s too late, and once you’re near them, let me tell you even more, they’re 1. Bigger than you and your ship, 2. Faster than you and your ship, and 3. Can very easily swallow you and your ship whole, leading to instant death…….but they do have one weakness, they can’t see shit, so just be quiet around them……….Dark Bramble is fucking scary and it is a great addition to the solar system.
There are other small things too, the sun station is a cool lore place and pretty terrifying being that close to the sun, the interloper is in the grand scheme of the game’s story, completely optional, but it does show how the nomai ultimately went extinct so that’s cool, another completely optional thing that I only realized was optional after beating the game was the Quantum Moon, a moon that teleports around the various planets in the solar system, and served as a trial for the nomai to go through, you can barely count it as optional considering how much the wall tablets mention it, so naturally you’d become morbidly interested in it like me………..dies again in a blinding blue light
………..wakes up I BARELY EVEN SAW THAT ONE……………anyway, I guess I’ll get into major spoilers now, I recommend really clicking off, there’s been a spoiler here and there but I’ll be talking about the deeper lore and the game’s finale, so click off now.
This game’s lore is fantastic, the story of the nomai is super captivating and phenomenally told, basically these guys came to the universe seeking refuge and after a thing later dubbed the “eye of the universe” had called out to them, however their Vessel ended up crashing into Dark Bramble, as it was going in, three escape pods launched out, one landing in a different node of Dark Bramble, another landing on Ember Twin, the last one landing on Brittle Hollow, the nomai on the Dark Bramble escape pod eventually perished, but the other two pods of people flourished, making multiple things in an attempt to reach the eye of the universe, stuff like the ash twin project, the black hole forge, the probe cannon, the sun station, and many other things.
Through the writings left behind by the nomai, you learn about what they built, their dreams of reaching the eye of the universe, and ultimately finding out why they were drawn here……….however failure struck them multiple times, the ash twin project and sun station were a dud since the sun couldn’t be manually supernova’d, and that made the ash twin project basically useless to them, and alas, they ended up meeting their end when the comet dubbed “The Interloper” came into the solar system, and when they tried to explore it, it ended up releasing ghost matter across the solar system, and wiped them out.
But, ultimately with all their information at hand, you push through, ultimately putting the pieces together where the nomai couldn’t, and you find out that with the warp core of the ash twin project, the coordinates inside the probe cannon, and the power of the vessel deep in Dark Bramble, you finally learn the way to the eye of the universe.
Now here’s my experience with my final loop of the game, I rushed over to Ash Twin to get into the project and get the warp core, after several minutes of waiting, I got into the project and took the core out, once I got back to my ship, a triumphant mix of the time loop near end theme started playing, with that burst of motivation from the song, I quickly flew to Dark Bramble, said fuck it and went straight into the nest node without even marking the vessel location, after a very close call with the anglerfish, I made it to the vessel, put the core and the coordinates in, and was taken to the eye of the universe……….I get off the vessel and go to the eye’s surface, and………..what’s that blue light in the distance? OH SHIT THE SUPERNO—………oh wait, that ain’t reaching me now, HAH!
I continue on into the darkness, I will say that along with the discovery of the anglerfish and the first time entering the quantum moon, this is one of the most ominous parts of the game, but I push through and fall into the giant………hole? I think, in the sky, leading me to what I think is the insides of the eye…………then I’m transported out of the universe…….or am I? Cause next thing you know, you’re in a forest…….you end up exploring a bit until a campfire appears, and one of your friends along with it, you explore the area more and get more of your friends to join around the campfire, once all are there, a song is played, which creates this……..uh, circular vortex? Which then blasts you and your friends far away, and after a bit of silence and pitch blackness………BOOOM, a Big Bang basically happens.
Over 14 billion years later, it shows a new solar system forming, and with that, the game ends.
Ah……it’s simply wonderful, Outer Wilds is a one of a kind experience, I didn’t even talk about everything I adored, the game’s art style is beautiful, the soundtrack is just so fucking good, the atmosphere is top notch, and much much more man………..but I’ll end it here, now I sit in my room, with a bittersweet feeling, while there’s a sadness knowing I can’t experience this game a second time, there’s an ultimately happy feeling as well, one that’s so happy that he got experience a piece of media like this one.
2019
So fucking good
If only 3/4 of Saejima’s story and 1/2 of Haruka’s story didn’t suck, I’d definitely rate it higher
Also that finale is perhaps the best in the series, and that final cutscene with Haruka was a heartwarming tear jerker
If only 3/4 of Saejima’s story and 1/2 of Haruka’s story didn’t suck, I’d definitely rate it higher
Also that finale is perhaps the best in the series, and that final cutscene with Haruka was a heartwarming tear jerker
2017
This review contains spoilers
God damn
For years I’ve been in and out of playing Hollow Knight, basically since like 2018 or 2019, I’ve played a bit of this game, but didn’t get like super far, before this playthrough the farthest I got was like the first Hornet fight, but I always stopped cause I guess it didn’t really click with me
Until this playthrough of course
You’ve heard it from everyone else and you’re about to hear it from me too, Hollow Knight is a fucking masterpiece, an absolutely punishing but satisfying adventure from the little town of Dirtmouth all the way to the void beatdown of the radiance, the bosses are fantastic, the level design is superb, the combat is flashy and fast and oh so good to pull off, the game looks just absolutely breathtaking, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and the lore is straight up fire.
As both a Metroidvania AND a soulslike game, it is of course incredibly difficult, taking the exploration and level design of Metroid and Castlevania, while also having the combat and death system of Dark Souls, it is superb, it’s fast and will often punish you but it just feels so damn good to master.
You can’t have amazing combat without some amazing fights, luckily this game delivers, bosses like Hornet, the Mantis Lords, the Watchers, Grimm, The Hollow Knight itself, The Radiance, and so many more, aside from a few slip ups here and there (I’m looking at you massive moss charger), it’s overall just a great line up of bosses.
I mean bro, JUST LOOK AT HOW GOOD THIS GAME LOOKS, it feels like this game took every fiber of the atmosphere from Dark Souls and Metroid and combined them into one, the game has an incredible style, truly immersive atmosphere, and no matter where you are in the game, it just looks so pretty.
The soundtrack adds to this, shit is an absolute bop, I especially love the city of tears’ theme, the kingdom’s edge theme, and the theme for the Hollow Knight boss.
Everything in this game is all tied up together with some of the most detailed, well put together, and super interesting lore I’ve seen in a minute, Hallownest is a tragic and broken place, no matter where you go you feel like you’re only seeing remnants of what it once was, warriors and civilians who have either gone mad or have just died are scattered all throughout the kingdom, so many characters going through so many tragic scenarios, it’s beautiful.
Of course it isn’t all doom and gloom, there are plenty of funny little moments throughout, there’s the funny map guy, Zote, the dude who helps you on the Uumuu fight, the one guy who brags about how he’s an ultimate fighter throughout the whole game and then once you do your first coliseum tournament, you can literally find his corpse in the kingdom’s edge, I would feel sympathy for him but ngl when I saw his body kinda laughed my ass off.
My two favorite characters have got to be Hornet and The Hollow Knight, Hornet is such a mysterious and interesting character, I love the few moments you see her throughout the game, it really builds her up and it such a satisfying moment when she swings in and staggers the hollow knight long enough for you to either finish him off or enter its dream, and speak of the devil, the hollow knight himself is probably one of the best written characters I’ve seen, he completely symbolizes the tragic nature of hallownest, born only to be a vessel to keep the radiance sealed, he ultimately failed cause he wasn’t fully hollow, he had a love for his father, the pale king, and this ultimately leads him to basically being the Radiance’s little torture subject, when you find the hollow knight, he’s just nearly gone, a husk of a proud knight, who quite literally stabs himself just to end his torment, you can kill him and take his place which would end his suffering, but the more satisfying option is to head into his dream, fight the Radiance, and finally corner it, which leads to a great final sequence where you get to beat the shit out of the radiance in your shade form, and it’s even better cause moments earlier the hollow knight himself was the one who opened the weak spot on the Radiance, it’s such a satisfying narrative and gameplay pay off, I love it.
Hollow Knight is a work or art, a beautiful game from beginning to end, I highly recommend it……..if you can handle difficult games.
Now to wait for Silksong…………..ah fuck.
For years I’ve been in and out of playing Hollow Knight, basically since like 2018 or 2019, I’ve played a bit of this game, but didn’t get like super far, before this playthrough the farthest I got was like the first Hornet fight, but I always stopped cause I guess it didn’t really click with me
Until this playthrough of course
You’ve heard it from everyone else and you’re about to hear it from me too, Hollow Knight is a fucking masterpiece, an absolutely punishing but satisfying adventure from the little town of Dirtmouth all the way to the void beatdown of the radiance, the bosses are fantastic, the level design is superb, the combat is flashy and fast and oh so good to pull off, the game looks just absolutely breathtaking, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and the lore is straight up fire.
As both a Metroidvania AND a soulslike game, it is of course incredibly difficult, taking the exploration and level design of Metroid and Castlevania, while also having the combat and death system of Dark Souls, it is superb, it’s fast and will often punish you but it just feels so damn good to master.
You can’t have amazing combat without some amazing fights, luckily this game delivers, bosses like Hornet, the Mantis Lords, the Watchers, Grimm, The Hollow Knight itself, The Radiance, and so many more, aside from a few slip ups here and there (I’m looking at you massive moss charger), it’s overall just a great line up of bosses.
I mean bro, JUST LOOK AT HOW GOOD THIS GAME LOOKS, it feels like this game took every fiber of the atmosphere from Dark Souls and Metroid and combined them into one, the game has an incredible style, truly immersive atmosphere, and no matter where you are in the game, it just looks so pretty.
The soundtrack adds to this, shit is an absolute bop, I especially love the city of tears’ theme, the kingdom’s edge theme, and the theme for the Hollow Knight boss.
Everything in this game is all tied up together with some of the most detailed, well put together, and super interesting lore I’ve seen in a minute, Hallownest is a tragic and broken place, no matter where you go you feel like you’re only seeing remnants of what it once was, warriors and civilians who have either gone mad or have just died are scattered all throughout the kingdom, so many characters going through so many tragic scenarios, it’s beautiful.
Of course it isn’t all doom and gloom, there are plenty of funny little moments throughout, there’s the funny map guy, Zote, the dude who helps you on the Uumuu fight, the one guy who brags about how he’s an ultimate fighter throughout the whole game and then once you do your first coliseum tournament, you can literally find his corpse in the kingdom’s edge, I would feel sympathy for him but ngl when I saw his body kinda laughed my ass off.
My two favorite characters have got to be Hornet and The Hollow Knight, Hornet is such a mysterious and interesting character, I love the few moments you see her throughout the game, it really builds her up and it such a satisfying moment when she swings in and staggers the hollow knight long enough for you to either finish him off or enter its dream, and speak of the devil, the hollow knight himself is probably one of the best written characters I’ve seen, he completely symbolizes the tragic nature of hallownest, born only to be a vessel to keep the radiance sealed, he ultimately failed cause he wasn’t fully hollow, he had a love for his father, the pale king, and this ultimately leads him to basically being the Radiance’s little torture subject, when you find the hollow knight, he’s just nearly gone, a husk of a proud knight, who quite literally stabs himself just to end his torment, you can kill him and take his place which would end his suffering, but the more satisfying option is to head into his dream, fight the Radiance, and finally corner it, which leads to a great final sequence where you get to beat the shit out of the radiance in your shade form, and it’s even better cause moments earlier the hollow knight himself was the one who opened the weak spot on the Radiance, it’s such a satisfying narrative and gameplay pay off, I love it.
Hollow Knight is a work or art, a beautiful game from beginning to end, I highly recommend it……..if you can handle difficult games.
Now to wait for Silksong…………..ah fuck.
God damn
Sister Friede fight is three of those stars
It’s pretty mediocre without her
It’s pretty mediocre without her
Literally fucking perfect, half light is a pretty weird boss, but the demon prince, darkeater midir, and ESPECIALLY Gael make this more than worthwhile
It had a weak start, but became infinitely better as it went along
Final boss was great too
Final boss was great too