Hollow Knight

There's never a low point. Only the desire for more. [Issue #35 – September/October 2018, p. 17]

Its epic story and own mythology, its easy but extremely strategic and meticulous gameplay and its perfectly tied soundtrack with the feelings that the visual style brings up makes Hollow Knight a must-have game for anyone who has a Nintendo Switch.

Hollow Knight is an incredible achievement that combines smart game design, a rich world, and sharp combat, with an enthralling insectoid world and a story just begging for you to find it. Team Cherry’s title is a high watermark for Metroidvanias, as the satisfying abilities and countless collectibles add variety and meaning to exploration, rewarding every discovery. Yet, while the challenge is a rewarding part of the process, I do wish that the title made some concessions and shone a bit of light in the darkness for those first fledgling steps.

Hollow Knight is absolutely a masterpiece. The art style is fantastic, the level designs are outstanding, and battles are challenging and fun. If you enjoy Metroidvania games, don't hesitate trying it.

Hollow Knight is a great adventure action game with essence of the classics metroidvania. Its beautiful art style, the big variety of enemies and epic battles against the final bosses are one of the most important values of the game.

A must play on Switch. It includes all content released post launch for the PC version right from the get go. Team Cherry has done a superb job and once those issues are ironed out, this will be a perfect version of a fantastic game.

Dark and beautiful, you’ll come for Hollow Knight’s visual appeal, but you’ll stay for the challenge and responsive combat.

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Good metroidvania game with charming art and ambience. Exploring the interconnected maps felt very rewarding. They way they interpreted the different factions of bugs to fit the setting is brilliant. However, it really needs an easy mode for people who don't want to bother with combat. Willingly making an experience frustrating does not make a game better, unless it is confined to some specific challenge. Also the dark fantasy not-telling-you-anything lore in this kind of games has become a bit stale.

Hollow Knight has beautiful art direction and an impressive world to explore (10/10 for that). However, the difficulty spikes and long backtracking sections often made the experience frustrating. The map system can also feel unnecessarily punishing. While the atmosphere is excellent, the gameplay sometimes feels overly demanding for the kind of exploration it encourages. A very polished game, but not one I fully enjoyed.

Just as any other metroidvanias, it just tries to do its best to waste your time. Empty locations with trivial platforming. Then trivial boss with 3 moves and horrendous hitboxes. Another 10 empty locations with trivial platforming. Three hours of pure slog. Atmosphere is... there. Completely ruined by almost absent gameplay. And no, I won't waste my time beyond first three hours just because "it opens up later". If it needs more than 3 hours, it's not "opening up", it's sunk cost and Stockholm syndrome are kicking in.

With such a highly thought of game I really wanted to like this one. I have given it several tries but I just can't waste time not having fun with this game anymore. The main issue is that the combat is awful. And with combat being such a huge part of this game it really makes the entire game an unpleasant experience. What is wrong the combat? First your attack range is incredibly short. Second, many things you attack move towards you after being hit. You only dash forwards. Everything you try to attack is more than likely to hit you in return. So you spend the entire game running away for the things you are trying to fight. Then, after nearly every enemy, you have to stop and heal. You can't wait until you're really low on health because you can only hold enough magic to heal 3 hits and you have to stand there defenseless for a good second for each health point. So just with trying to keep your health up you never really have the flexibility to use your magic for other things. There is an equippable upgrade that's supposed to increase your attack range. But it really doesn't make a noticeable difference. I think that the world they made is interesting and the art is nice. So I give it as high of a score as possible for that. But the game has to be fun to play as well. With so many other options out there I just can't give this one my time anymore.