At the best of times I enjoyed Hollow knight quite a bit. I love the snappy controls and bouncing on enemies feels very nice, not least because of the beautiful art. Ultimately, though. I was left with a more sour taste than I would have liked. I saw a video discussing the game, which stated that the game's biggest problem is its pacing and I shared that experience in two ways: Firstly I agree that the game takes too long to give you your full moveset: What you're given at the start doesn't stay exciting for very long. Secondly, and this is my biggest issue with the game, I don't like how long the walks back to the boss fights are. I don't know why the decision was made to make them that long, but to me it just feels like a waste of time. The final boss makes you go through an easy, but not entirely trivial pre-boss every time you die to it, and that was a little too much for me, so I gave up at that point. I do have to qualify that second point by saying that I am of fairly average skill when it comes to this kind of game. I imagine somebody much better than me might enjoy the tension that a greater penalty to failure adds. Me, I need a few attempts to get the patterns down and the long walks make that a frustrating experience.
I enjoyed this game, but it did have some shortcomings: There is a strange stutterung issue that happens which somewhat spoils the otherwise good graphics: https://steamcommunity.com/app/330020/discussions/0/2292842508227179463/ The combat is mostly fun, but there are some headscratchers. I don't want to get into details, but there where some moments where I thought "Really?, that's how the game goes?". Like going through the early levels with the archer being just a little too mindless or having to wait for your abilities to recharge, because there are just a few too many enemies on the screen. The combat was also a little sluggish for my taste, which I think had mostly to do with the dodge, which didn't feel 100% responsive. There's probably someone out there who will tell me "oh, you just weren't doing it right!", but I often found myself in the situation that I was sure i hit dodge in time for an enemy attack, only to find myself being hit anyway. As for the story: It's charming, if you're into that kind of thing but for me it's not compelling enough to carry the game on its own. Anyway, I still think the game is fun, but considering how competitive this genre is nowadays, I'd tell myself "wait until it drops in price or the stuttering is fixed" if i could make the purchase decision again.
