five hours in, i was really scratching my head as to how this has captured so much love. expectations are hard to control; i went into this knowing it's a lot of people's favorite game, or at least their favorite metroidvania. i pushed through because i'm tired of ten year-old kids looking sad when i tell them i haven't played this game.
it just doesn't feel good to move or interact, especially for the first 5-10 hours without upgrades. the default iframe window makes it possible to get full-combod between enemies and hazards. there is no parry, counter, or escape tool; the shitty dodge doesn't come until lategame. enemy attack animations generally lack unique telegraphs, and since most patterns lean heavily on RNG. you will die many times to unfortunate and unavoidable sequences. ironically, most of the bosses have the same set of attacks! in the end, most combat boils down to rapid zipping back and forth or the occasional pogo cheese for all the enemies that weren't given any vertical awareness.
navigating through the environment is clunky and the map is not polished to support rapid traversal. it's difficult to identify rooms from each other, and there are few landmarks to go by. you'll be checking the map constantly, which often means opening up the full menu to see other neighboring zones. this makes backtracking - the cornerstone of this whole genre - a chore, rather than a satisfying mastery of the environment. meanwhile, movement itself mostly boils down to spam dashing ad nauseum. dashing has a loud, poofy sound effect that quickly wears out its welcome when you're running from one end of a zone to another. after experiencing the pure delight of traversal in Ori 2, this was not a good time.
i love metroidvanias because they're one of the few genres that make you want to poke into every nook and cranny. i love looking at the map and seeing a little sliver of a room i haven't reached yet and scouring all the possible entrance areas. i love using all the late game tools to blast through the early zones that had given me trouble ten hours prior. Hollow Knight just doesn't have enough mastery over its own mechanics or design to provide that experience.
it's not bad. it's pretty decent! it's fine. really. it's. fine. the bugs-all-the-way-down theme is great and the NPCs all have excellent flavor. i'm being a little harsh because on this site, Hollow Knight is in the top 100 highest-rated games of all time - twice. but this genre has been done better before and since.
it just doesn't feel good to move or interact, especially for the first 5-10 hours without upgrades. the default iframe window makes it possible to get full-combod between enemies and hazards. there is no parry, counter, or escape tool; the shitty dodge doesn't come until lategame. enemy attack animations generally lack unique telegraphs, and since most patterns lean heavily on RNG. you will die many times to unfortunate and unavoidable sequences. ironically, most of the bosses have the same set of attacks! in the end, most combat boils down to rapid zipping back and forth or the occasional pogo cheese for all the enemies that weren't given any vertical awareness.
navigating through the environment is clunky and the map is not polished to support rapid traversal. it's difficult to identify rooms from each other, and there are few landmarks to go by. you'll be checking the map constantly, which often means opening up the full menu to see other neighboring zones. this makes backtracking - the cornerstone of this whole genre - a chore, rather than a satisfying mastery of the environment. meanwhile, movement itself mostly boils down to spam dashing ad nauseum. dashing has a loud, poofy sound effect that quickly wears out its welcome when you're running from one end of a zone to another. after experiencing the pure delight of traversal in Ori 2, this was not a good time.
i love metroidvanias because they're one of the few genres that make you want to poke into every nook and cranny. i love looking at the map and seeing a little sliver of a room i haven't reached yet and scouring all the possible entrance areas. i love using all the late game tools to blast through the early zones that had given me trouble ten hours prior. Hollow Knight just doesn't have enough mastery over its own mechanics or design to provide that experience.
it's not bad. it's pretty decent! it's fine. really. it's. fine. the bugs-all-the-way-down theme is great and the NPCs all have excellent flavor. i'm being a little harsh because on this site, Hollow Knight is in the top 100 highest-rated games of all time - twice. but this genre has been done better before and since.