Now this is more like it!

Compared to the previous Donkey Kong Land game, this one does a much better job at recreating both the feel and the quality of the SNES DKC games. The physics are improved, the level design is more polished, the save system works like the original game, the NPC Kongs are back... this is essentially a portable version of DKC2! And it kinda works!

With that said, this is still a Game Boy game. Just like the first DKL game, the small screen size is the dealbreaker here. It's especially awful in vertically-scrolling levels, like the ones that require climbing ropes or using Squawks. You just KNOW that if you move upwards a second too hastily you're gonna bash your head into a fucking wasp enemy you had no way of seeing. And good freaking luck beating the King Zing boss. Additionally, the absence of the SNES's extra buttons is felt. The team throw is sadly absent, and the animal buddies' special moves require pressing the select button for some reason. I had to search up a walkthrough to even find out the animal buddies' special moves were in this game at all.

Compared to the first DKL game, this is much more like a straight port of the SNES game than its own thing. It's so similar (and directly inferior) to DKC2 that there's no real reason to play this game today for any reason other than curiosity. So unlike DKL1, this doesn't even have that "diehard fans might get something out of it" appeal going for it. But deciding between DKL1 and DKL2 is essentially deciding between a game that's a unique experience but utter shit, and a game that's solid but something you've seen before. I'd personally take the latter game any day. Unnecessary to play today, but for what it is, it's perfectly adequate.

This was the equivalent of seeing a tweet from 2013 from your favorite celebrity.

I'm only exaggerating of course, Hungry Knight isn't as disgusting as a famous person's twitter feed, but it was still pretty painful if you ask me.

But don't be mistaken, the games does have certain value, especially when seen as a historical piece of sorts. It's kinda cute and even cool to play a kind of ''preview'' of what would eventually be one of the most popular indie games and even Metroidvanias of the past decade, and it a lot of ways there already showings of mechanics that we would see on the final product: both the base attack and dash, a round shape meter that fills when you kill enemies, the 2D animation style, the enemy design and the bug-like features, even the three Dreamers masks!.. seeing all these elements in a flash game with music that at this point has been ingrained into my memory after playing so many flash games is kinda surreal.

It's also really funny to me that the Knight, later to be a stoic and void of emotion protagonist, is just really fucking hungry on this one, and in retrospect it makes me wonder if when he encounters food in Hollow Knight he's just thinking this.

Aaaaaaaaand... that's where the good stuff and the funny pretty much end. The premise is kind of cool, having to defeat three big enemies while making sure you hunger bar doesn't deplete, but this task is performed in a barren wasteland with only three types of enemies, with a really unresponsive dash that seems to let you decide if you can attack or not at random and with hitboxes that seem to be different depending the way you look at.

But I mean, of course is not that good, it's just a quick, simple flash game that was made for a game jam and wasn't given that much thought or polish, by all accounts it should only be a mediocre game with not much to tell and show...


...BUT THEN THERE'S STARVATION MODE.

It's amazing how such a simple change, reducing the amount of time you have before the hunger bar depletes from 10 seconds to 5, can make the problems even more prominent, showing just how barren the stage is, how clunky the hitboxes and collission are and how the big enemy spawn being random is just so ANNOYING. This mode does make the experience harder, but only artificially, and it just results its flaws being left open for everyone to see. I really do mus hate myself for subjecting myself at these 20 minutes of pure nothingess, I have no clue why this was added, but it only helps at making the whole thing even worse... at least I can say I mastered.

The fact this is just as boring and bland as it is makes what would come later even more interesting all things considered; now, would I recommend it?... no, not unless you are really curious or LOVE Hollow Knight as much as I do, and you want to see from where it came. As I said, it has interesting stuff on its bones, and the meat and skin would come later, 'cause this... this is only a skeleton...

Speaking of that the final game should have had skeleton bugs, that's the only aspect where this one shines over its successor .