Hollow Knight

Takes me back to the good old days of gaming.

Comprenlo, no se arrepentiran de jugar esta joya

This game has so much going for it. Beautiful art, incredible platforming, exciting exploration, deep lore... All of this is muddled and ruined from the incredibly asinine "difficulty". The game is challenging in many ways. Boss fights are a culm,ination of this but their intricate design is ruined from the simple fact that basic combat is just that; basic. You can swing your sword. Also, you can shoot "soul". That's it. Your sword is weak as hell at every stage of the game, and shooting your soul is a gamble because you need your soul to heal, which takes roughly 3 seconds while standing still and about a little under 2 with a certain charm. Boss fights, because of these extremely basic mechanics, are insanely boring and ruin the pacing of an otherwise top notch metroidvania. I enjoyed every bit of the exploration, looking for secrets and appreciating the variation in level design is wonderful. It's a shame I can't bear to finish this lovely game due to just piss poor combat design, or rather, nonexistant. There are "Nail Arts" (your Nail is your sword, essentially) and it's a simple gimmick. It takes to long to use on bosses and the outcome isn't worth the effort. You're basically never use nail arts, even on overworld enemies. I'm just simply disappointed by this game.

Pros: -Super Metroid/Aria of Sorrow/MMX-style gameplay (breakable walls, up- and downstab (can pogo jump/bounce on enemies), wall jumping, ground- and air dashing, charge attacks, fast movement) -Great art direction and animation overall -Some nice visuals effects (lighting) -Great mid-air control -Good clues for most hidden paths (some audio cues such as from the imprisoned larva kids) Mixed/ambivalent: -More open-ended and less guided than Super Metroid for example -Some one way paths in the short beginning area and later on -Save points (benches - these also restore HP (and MP as well if you collect all charms and buy the blessing)) and a few MP restoring springs - can actually save your current progress anywhere but you'll respawn at the last bench you sat on -Starts out relatively tough (harder than SM/SotN/Cave Story Cons: -Grinding (lose all money when killed and you can't quit without saving (to reload from before you died) plus the small money stashes spread around the world don't respawn - you can go back to where you died and regain some of it from defeating your ghost/shade at least, etc.) -Some control/interface issues (some item descriptions are pretty vague/sometimes confusing in shops, no map markers for the various barriers, have to find the cartographer and buy additional maps for each area before you can see where you are on the map, etc.) -Backtracking (breaking a seal makes a few paths in area 1/crossroads become blocked off, a few too many ability gated areas which you won't be able to access until mid-late game, etc) -Various trial & error/memorization segments -Dropped money from enemies and stashes spreads around a bit - breaks flow until you buy the item that pulls it towards you -Pointless destructible debris all over the place (at first you'll think that you can find money or HP in some of these) PM me for the full pros and cons.

Masterpiece.