After attempting runs two other times over the past three years, I finally actually completed this game this year, and loved it way more than I expected. Every single part of the game sucked me with how simultaneously polished and charming it is. The level design is stunning and rewarding to explore, even many hours into the game, the enemies are sufficiently challenging, with each one teaching you more about how to approach the combat so that you always feel prepared for the next encounter, and obviously the music is perfect. I have listened to both the original soundtrack and the piano versions of the soundtrack many times.
Despite all this, the part of the game that sticks out to me the most is the movement. It's always a good sign in a game when even just moving your character around in an empty room is fun, and I think this is probably the best feeling movement I have ever experienced, and it gets better and better as you progress. At its core, the movement feeling revolves around the way you can finely control both the height and horizontal positioning of your jump. The horizontal control also applies to the air dash once you unlock it, as you can drift a bit during and after to decide exactly where you want to land. On top of your character's own movement skills, the ability to bounce off of enemies and environmental hazards with your nail opens up lots of creativity and alternate routes in approaching navigating through an area. As a result of all of this fine-tuned movement control, whenever I messed up some platforming or a complicated enemy encounter, it never felt like I failed from struggling against the mechanics, instead I knew that I just had to practice and tighten up my execution.

I am satisfied with where I have left off and will be starting other games soon, but I will continue to return to Hollow Knight whenever I am in the mood for it to do more of the side content and just run around to experience the world again. Who knows, I may even learn some of the speedrun techniques! :p

I'm not even sure how many times I've played this game, but this was my first time in a while so I have many thoughts. The most striking thing to me this time was how good the soundtrack is, like wow. I listened to it a lot when I was younger but I forgot how good it was. The second big thing is the variety of level design. Despite the game's length, they continue having fresh ideas all the way through and honestly some of their best levels are right at the end. As usual, the gel area always bogs down for me but that might just be a personal thing (I really just don't like the gels for some reason, I never have). Honestly the only thing that detracts from this playthrough for me is that I don't think the humor holds up personally. It was great when I was 13 or 14 when I first played it but now that I'm almost 23 it just doesn't land and seems permanently stuck in 2011. Despite that though, the voice actors' performances are great and I especially love Wheatley's lines in the final areas. This was the first game I got REALLY into story and world wise and I'd say it still holds it's place as one of my favorites of all time! :)

EDIT: and the co op is amazing too! It makes you approach the levels in a totally different way than in single player and feels almost like I'm playing a different game. The split screen for it on switch was a little awkward at first but once I got used to it it was great to be able to play it on the couch with a friend.

After I finished ds1, I told myself that no game would ever be able to top it, but I think bloodborne has done it. It has all of the elements of exploration and tight, interconnected world design that I loved about ds1, but with even better environmental details and a richer feeling world with many different parties at play with conflicting goals. It felt great to gradually piece together what exactly the healing church was doing and I would spend long stretches of time reading the items over and over. Bloodborne also has the best combat and weapon system I have ever played. I think it strikes a perfect balance with not having too many weapons with each feeling unique, and the customizability of the blood gem system makes it feel much more dynamic than dark souls' system. My only gripe is that I don't believe that blood vials are a perfect system and I found their limited supply frustrating at times, but once I started spending any extra echoes on blood vials at the shop I never needed to farm again. So ultimately it is not a problem and they fit in quite well with the lore. This initial blood vial frustration was originally going to earn it 4.5 stars, but after working through it I don't believe this issue alone is worth docking half a star since this is currently the only thing I didn't absolutely love about it.