Hollow Knight

I bought this on a sale for a cheap price and I was expecting some 5 hour beautiful puzzle game. But what I got was some combination between Cuphead and Metroid. I was so proud that I finished Cuphead a while back since I thought it was the hardest game the last decade. But, I may have been wrong. This was definitely as big challenge as Cuphead, and some parts was even harder (Geez, that White Palace drove me nuts). Now I sit here 76 hours later and 102% game completed and I'm feeling this kind of Cuphead proud again. Hollow Knight is super well balanced and for the first time in my life, I kind of use all items in the game and all spells. Usually I find something that works and stick to that until the end, but in this game, I really had to try every single charm at least twice because it was kind of required. The only thing that bugged me was that I was playing this with an Xbox controller on a PC and there seem to be some kind of input bug in this game while using xbox controller. A little bit now and then, I suddenly see the start menu bar on Windows overlapping my game, waiting 5 seconds with that menu, the game minimizes itself and it's impossible to start it again and it freezes and crashes. Makes me have to restart the game. So I was always super nervous that it would happen during some complex scenario (which it did a lot of times and I had to do it from last bench save). Some kind of solution was when the start menu appears, click all possible buttons on your controller at the same time and 50% of the time it disappears and you can continue playing the game. Kind of destroyed the whole gaming experience. But, I kept on playing even with this bug since the game was so good!

Let me start off with the fact that the game hates you. I wouldn't quite put it on par with games like Super Meat Boy, there are definitely design elements that I must imagine the developer having a Troll Face when designing. I also want to chime in and agree that all the traversal necessary to get back to a tough boss fight is quite a pain. This is a difficult, frustrating game. It's also a richly rewarding game with fascinating exploration; at one point I feel like I fell off the map and wandered in strange tunnels through land after land before I found myself somewhere recognizable again. I lost 20 hours to this game, and I know for a fact I got the least impressive ending and that I could do a lot more with it. It's a very tightly designed game with great combat, great traversal, rewarding difficulty curves, fascinating mythology and this sense of a living world. So while I understand and share the frustration I see in other reviews, I would argue this is a classic, and absolutely worth your time and money.

And no, the title isn't a reference to how it short it is, far from it, I still haven't finished a single playthrough and been at it for months now - definitely a must play for anyone into challenging platformers. Here's my full take on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8oYHyzzrwc Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still trying to find my way to the Dreamers... Because I keep getting sidetracked by the absurd amount of things you can chase on this game! Bring on Silksong!

I knew almost nothing going into this game other than "Emo bug themed metroidvania." This game absolutely blew my mind! It's difficulty was perfect, with normal enemies being easy enough to allow smooth traversal through the world, while bosses were fast and precise, and beating them gave me a very similar feeling to beating a difficult song on guitar hero. The games world is absolutely MASSIVE. It was the first time in a really long time that I played a game that just kept going, and going... and going... and going, and I loved every minute of it! The art is beautiful, the music is fantastic, and I really just enjoyed existing in the world of Hollownest for a bit. Probably my only complaint I have is some of the secrets don't feel "hidden," as much as they're placed in areas that you would never check if you didn't already know they were there. Similarly, there's a lot of lore which apparently only triggers under certain conditions, but you'll never know you missed them unless you hear about it later online. This game instantly made my short-list of "best games of all time," and reminded me just how rare it is to find games that are this high quality.

Hollow Knight is, quite simply, one of the best metroidvanias I’ve ever played. For the asking price and the amount of polished content in it, with great replayability, it is truly incredible. It offers huge beautifully interconnected world, a lot of player freedom on how you want to explore it, great lore, exploration and snappy, fast combat. Devs also added 4 major free updates, altrough they focus mostly on combat. That said, I do have two gripes. First, the runbacks after dying can be highly frustrating. Games like Elden Ring have shown that you don’t really need to pad difficulty with long treks back to the fight. The other big issue is contact damage. It is a mechanic I absolutely hate and will never stop complaining about. When touching an enemy hurts you, movement itself becomes an attack. This feels cheap and limits how you approach fights. Despite those problems, HK is an absolute mustplay for fans of the genre. It's gorgeous (with amazing soundtrack!), challenging, rewarding, and truly worth being called one of the greatest metroidvanias of all time.