First things first, let me clarify that I do love Hollow Knight. It’s one of the greatest indie games I’ve ever played.

But saying “love” doesn’t mean I am having fun playing it… Well, I do enjoy it to some extent, but the elements of unfair/unfun keep resurfacing and ruining the whole experience.

To sum up on why I gave it a thumbs down: basically, this is not a leisurely exploration/puzzle-solving/metroidvania game; but it is actually an action-pack souls-like game with unfair punishment, especially for players with lower combat/platforming skills.

If you think this is a metroidvania game, prepare to be disappointed. Yes, overall it kinda feels like one: a huge interconnected map with meaningful shortcuts, coherent lore w/o hand-holding storytelling, branching paths that allow multiple ways to progress and/or backtrack, etc. I have to admit that the game is truly a masterpiece in this aspect.

However, if you look closer, the game leans much, much, MUCH more into souls-like territory: when you die, you temporarily lose all your accumulated money; but you can recover it by returning to your corpse — here’s the catch, if you die again along the way, your money is gone for good.

This is a unique design in the souls genre, which has its own perks and quirks:

On the plus side: the player is encouraged to return to their post-mortem location rightaway. Since the memory of your death is still fresh (traps, enemy patterns, etc.), there’s a high chance you’ll successfully recover your belongings and also pushing through that sub-area to the next checkpoint.

On the downside? if your crime-scene happened in a boss room, then you’ll be stuck in a “git gud” loop where you’re likely going back to the boss to die over and over. It is a psychological by-product from this punishing design choice.

This issue is amplified by the map design: every checkpoint is placed far from every boss room. So “try again” turns into a tedious chore of terrain-traversing, which is a completely different skillset from fighting the boss… IMO, the game should just respawn you right in front of the boss room (with the exit door open.)

And man… the bosses in this game are super punishing to the point of being downright unfair.

Like any other games, you can heal when your HP is low. In this game, there’s no concept of healing potions; instead, you need to channel your soul (mana) to heal, which you must stand still on the ground and hold the button for 1~2 seconds to heal per health tick. Seriously, such healing mechanic in an intense one-screen arena where the boss(es) is constantly attacking you, this mechanic is practically non-existence. Heck, trying to heal often punishes you even more: you get in an animation-locked, fail to heal because receiving boss damage, and lose your precious mana that could’ve been spent on offense spells.

Again, this issue is amplified by the souls-like mana-bar system: a full bar heals 3 ticks, but if you die without retrieving your corpse yet, your maximum mana is reduced so you can only heal 2 ticks. Also, on respawn, you’ll start with zero mana and need to hunt down some before going back to the boss room.

Lastly about this: see the additional DLCs, there’s more punishing boss-rush mode for you to achieve…

For me, these souls-like mechanics are just too much, and I bet many players would prefer an option for a less punishing experience. At least, the game should feature the assist mode like in Mario Odyssey (2017), Celeste (2018) or TUNIC (2022), where you can enjoy the story/exploration without being blocked by brutal combat/platforming.

In fact, I never actually completed the game when I first played it on the Switch almost a decade ago (and I guess I also won’t complete the replay here on Steam). Once I had explored every nook and cranny on the map, discovered important secrets, and collected almost every collectibles, I was just done with the game. The three Dreamers are still sleeping soundly in their sanctums!

Apart from the annoying souls-like frustration, the game also lacks polish in controls. For example, there’s no input buffering where it should be: you can’t hold (L2) while airborne to signal that you wish to charge the superman dash at the moment that you’re touching a wall (in the real gameplay, you need to touch the wall first for 1~2 frames before you can start hold down the charge button.) With that in mind, I don’t think the game has “tight controls” at all… This is especially annoying for later DLC that requires precise platforming.

So, if you’re not really into the souls-like genre and just want a cozy exploration experience… Hollow Knight might be fine, but prepare to curse its unfair combat/platforming by a lot during your playthrough. Otherwise, you might wanna check out TUNIC (as mentioned above), Toki Tori 2 (2013), A Short Hike (2019), or Animal Well (2024) instead.

But if you’re souls lover who seek punishing/challenging combat, then yes, go ahead, this game is perfect for masochist like you.

Originally published on: Steam

neizod

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