This game is so fucking good. A literal perfect mix between bloodborne and fucking bugs life. Hollownest is such an interesting and unique world to be dropped into, almost immediately the atmosphere and the bread crumb storytelling hooked me in. The environmental storytelling is on another level and the few mysterious tidbits of lore that you get keep eggIng you on in search of the next clue or NPC to interact with. And speaking of the NPCs, the world is filled with them and all of them have great story threads to follow. Among other things in the world these side stories are often genuinely depressing and the world constantly lands you in these areas that are tinted with sadness and destruction, ruins of what the world once was but the game manages to keep you going with small moments of wholesomeness and joy to convince the player that hollownest can be saved. The combat is an excellent free flowing reflex based collage of dodging, weaving, slashing and smacking. Aggressiveness is encouraged, especially in the high Intensity boss battles which are ALL great. There was not a single boss i beat and then thought to myself, “oh that boss was annoying” it was always a “fuck yes that was cool as hell weather it was any of the many EPIC main bosses or the equally entertaining secret optional bosses which can be found throughout the world hidden behind breakable walls or secluded passages which brings us to the Metroidvania esc level design which is a fantastic achievement of interconnectivity and area diversity. There are about 14 areas in the base game and my favourite has to be the city of tears where its always raining because above it there is a beautiful blue lake. But all 14 of them have a gorgeous piece of score to accompany them and holy shit the boss OSTs too. There is just such an attention to detail to the way the world is structured and its an absolute joy to explore. The art direction is sexy af, there is not a bad looking frame in this game, The game is also super meaty, its base main campaign took me about 30 hours and i stll have more to dsicover in the world, not to mention all the FREE dlc that this game has, its honestly unbelievable to me that in my playthrough i didnt experience a single bug, crash or any type of frame rate issue. And this poInt is accentuated when you realise that the development team of this game (excluding vocalists and the composer) consisted of 3 people. Its a mind blowing feat for such a small team to outperform most triple A studios. A truly mesmerising experience that i hope to spend alot more time in. Play it.