Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is one of the best metroidvania style games I ever played so far and it became a favorite of mine. As you get further into the game it will gradually become more and more challenging, you will always have different branching paths to explore as you progress and you will be rewarded with powerups that make your character better equipped to deal with the baddies in the game. I personally love exploration based games like this one and it's been a joy to discover new areas, new abilities and new enemies in this game. As a metroidvania game it fulfills your need for exploration and discovery, and always has you wanting to go on further. Alas, I have one gripe with it. There are framerate issues that keep popping up rather often. I have a rather powerful computer and it's odd that a 2d game would have these types of problems for me. I've read up online and it seems that I'm not the only one with this problem.

The game is pretty interesting, but it has too many bad and intentional design decisions that make the game feel like more of a chore. Save points are very few and far between, and you lose all your money if you die unless you can recover your ghost. This is made much worse by the fact that when you enter a new area, the game doesn't allow you to map it out until you find the hidden map vendor of that zone. And several of the game's pretty difficult boss fights are far away from the nearest save point, making it a huge pain to have to fight your way through several screens of enemies before you can try again. This kind of design just makes the game more frustrating to play, and it's completely unnecessary. Not a fun game.

This is one of the best 2D Platformer games I have ever played. I'm clocking 35 hours so far and I wish I could keep going! but I know the end is near... I got all the map pieces, missing only 8 charms.. found my fav combination of charms to keep. I'm serious on this it just keeps getting better and better. My favorite area so far due to music, danger and atmosfere is Kingdom's Edge. Thank you devs for creating such a masterpiece, for using this platform. Thank you GOG for offering the best price. I wish I had backed this on KS. Now I want the printed map and the HK figurine :)

This game came out of nowhere for me. I hadn't heard anything about it before it was released on GOG. Immediately I was intrigued by the art style and reading the word "Metroidvania" was enough to convince me to insta-buy it. I did not regret that decision. Hollow Knight captivated me in a fashion that rarely any game does (Undertale being another example). It certainly cannot deny its Dark Souls/Bloodborne roots (and that's coming from someone who never palyed either of those). Especially how it tells its lore. While seemingly barren in character and story at first, the more you progress the more you realize there is quite a stunning amount of world-building going on. Be aware there is next to no direct instruction in-game on how things work and where to go. It's up to you to figure out how you wanna tackle exploration. Battles are easy at first but eventually ramp up in difficulty. Thankfully there are plenty of upgrades & equipment that will make even the most impossible seeming boss fight manageable. And if all else fails don't be ashamed to look up a guide. Particularly if you wanna go for "true ending" path. Hollow Knight is beautiful, enthralling, challenging but not unfair and gets a full-hearted recommendation from me.

Pros: Interesting Rewards Exploration Good Music Lots of Secrets Decent Combat Generally Fun Cons: Spend hours walking in the wrong direction to get to a dead end Controlls are slightly off. Feels like it's a quarter of a second to slow from button to execution Uneven difficulty VERY gerneral directions/no directions at all Spend hours being lost On and of frustration