Hollow Knight Review

Finish style:

Done with 74%

Time spent:

36 hours

Who should play this game:

Fans of difficult games, fans of Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night, fans of 2D exploration/metroidvania games

Who should avoid this game:

Gamers who tend to throw controllers at TVs

Thoughts:

First impression: Hollow Knight is absolutely gorgeous, and the music is incredible.  I don’t know that I’ve played any game, let alone a 2D sidescrolling-type game, that looks this good.  The colors are often understated, yet beautiful.  Like this:

 

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on the “vania.” I say that because, much like Alucard or Simon Belmont, your character (the eponymous Hollow Knight) is heavily limited in his abilities. For example, in Castlevania, your character flies across the screen, often becomes welded to the floor (such as right after an attack), and is just generally sluggish. Hollow Knight doesn’t fly back, but is otherwise similarly limited in ability to move.

For some, this may be desirable, but to me, it’s irritating. It’s a sort of artificial way of making the game more difficult, much like breaking your leg before trying to run a marathon. I often found myself saying (screaming), “You’re too slow to do that!” To react, to move, to string movements together, whatever it is. Once you’ve pressed a button, you’re basically committed to that action, plus a half second after of dead time. I much prefer games where the character moves fluidly and responsively, and the game challenges you in those abilities, rather than hamstringing you.

I’m not a huge fan of the map system either. You need to purchase maps for various regions. In order to see where you are, you need to equip a compass, which occupies an incredibly valuable slot that could otherwise be filled by other powerful upgrades. The main problem with the map system is that purchased maps are incomplete, so you need to fill them in by visiting areas. But visiting areas without the corresponding map doesn’t get you anything, in terms of map visibility.

Moreover, you often only find the map after having explored the entire area. I can’t understand what in-game logical sense there is to a map system where visiting an area unlocks that area on your map, only when you’ve bought the map, even though the map doesn’t include any indication that area even exists. It’s just the lack of internal consistency that bothers me: either have the map fully filled in, or let me fill it in without purchasing the map item.

Those are my primary complaints about the game. Otherwise, the story is decent if somewhat difficult to understand. Crippled character issues aside, the gameplay mechanics are good. The amount of areas to explore is absolutely massive.

Many bosses were fun to beat, a few felt like they had really cheap attacks, but overall, with time and practice, they were all beatable. I think the hardest boss I found took me around 40-50 attempts, over about an hour and fifteen minutes, to defeat.

I can’t say I loved this game or that it’s in my top anything. But it kept me engaged, and I was genuinely excited to come back and play again each time I played it. It’s pretty solid, I might play it again someday. But I definitely won’t be doing new game plus. Permadeath with harder everything? Nope.