Obviously inspired by Hollow Knight foremost in the design world of Metroidvanias, Haiku earns a good deal of the charm that its primary source of inspiration has peddled on for years while the hollowed out buggy fanbase stews waiting for Silksong. The world of Haiku spans a grand stretch that feels like it goes on infinitely in every direction with each area, each little biome taking on different aesthetic hues and enemy varieties just like in Hollownest. You hack and slash your way through infected enemies previously known to be docile while meeting pockets of quarantined robots with quaint and seemingly flippant goals considering the world's state. You've got chips that are charms, you've got dreamers who are primary programs, and you've got got a tram that's a train. But for every of Haiku's flourishes of grandeur that have been translated well from HK, there are matching fumbles of phrase fastly followed: the sword play fails to differentiate its animations enough depending on the directionality of the swing, so every attack feels less like you're a duelist in a swordfight and more like you're a pulsing hurt box; the enemies have no hurt animations, so even further the combat feels frigid and unengaging; the differing zones have aesthetic palette swaps but are built of much the same angles of incursion and are infested with barely differing types of enemies, making the world's aesthetic differences differentiating areas feel shallow; the upgrades are empowering for unlocking pathways but feel frustratingly simplistic in how they evolve gameplay (largely the grappling hook and dash which already allowed i-frames for dodging at the beginning of the game); the writing bounces off in style completely because of the lack of character differentiation and gratuity of nouns without verb or adjective included in what the player sees - it is descriptive of exclusively unseen and abstract events which cannot be sympathized with. All the little touches which makes Hollow Knight one of the greatest games of all time are completely absent in the xerox here.

It's still a cute little game, and the fact that they didn't copy the 40 hours of play Hollow Knight offers, instead wrapping at a svelte 7 or so for near 100% completion, makes it a much more pleasant experience. I would actually very much recommend it but only if you can deal with feeling like the lack of Silksong is far greater after completing Haiku than before.