Great pixel art. A number of lovely regulars and songs. Unobtrusive references littered about, from classical literature to web series and animu. World and story are well done, with optional bits and a bit of ambiguity that lends itself to Jill's being a bartender.
Hollow Knight's gameplay doesn't live up to its presentation, nor does its difficult live up to its hype. Intricately beautiful backgrounds, characters indirectly telling a lovely story, the music is just great. The game is not all that difficult, just a series of respect checks. Strike a few times then back off, good for almost 90% of the content. Just a pattern to learn for the rest of it. Yes, the post game content is hard, but if that counts then Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy are series that present a real challenge: ridiculous. For that 10%: after dying you are transported back to your last save location, leaving you weak and with a few minutes of travel to do. This is made all the worse because the mapping philosophy sucks. I was virtually done w/ most areas by the time I unlocked the ability to map them. Maybe the game is considered hard because most people just become 'done' with the game and start playing awfully? The entire map remains relevant through the entire game. Sounds great, but the fast travel present isn't enough. 5 minutes for this NPC, to get to where you can use your new ability to unlock a new area, to get to the nearest fast travel station, IT. NEVER. ENDS. Platforming is eh. Hear a clink that tells you that you should be bouncing? 'Monarch Wings' ability shown to have gone off? Still lose points of health White is also overused for everything. You basically memorize, not see, where different obstacles hazards and platforms are in these areas as everything's just white (also becomes an issue during post-game content). With proper coding these sections would just be another screen in most 2d platformers, but becomes slog in Hollow Knight. A rather fine 12 hour game stretched on a rack to achieve a merely alright 40 hour experience. In short, still hyped for Silk Song, but would normally have quit this sort of game 3 hours in.
Note to Prospective Buyers: The game can be finnicky to run on modern systems. If you have issues look up tools like dgVoodoo. Some minor freezes will occur, especially when moving to new environments, but it is not too bad. Review: Yes, an in-game map would be really helpful. Yep, enemies will repeatedly 1 shot you so quickly that not even blindly firing around a corner will hlep. Oh, and yes, some fights pretty much require you to cheat or stun lock your foe(s). All that said, loved the characters. The world leaves me begging for me. The gunplay between both your mech and human forms is simple but effective. The levels do a good job balancing feeling like a real place and enabling good gameplay (decisions). Hopefully a spiritual successor is made one day, until then I am very happy to have picked Shogo up on sale.
Upon entering the Beyond Good & Evil I found that I was unable to alt-tab or open task manager, this made screwing around with various settings in order to get most cutscenes to be in sync a much larger nuisance than it already was. Just like in many other adventure games, the camera was the strongest enemy in the game. During stealth sections and battles the camera would constantly fight with my commands and/or not show what I needed to see. The story showed a lot of promise that the beginning, but many facets I wanted it to explore were either dropped early, or took cliche turns. Jade's allies are cute, and conduct themselves much like standard cartoon characters. The game is really showing its age in the graphics department, and the map design seems to be (especially in the overworld) focused on wasting the player's time. Definitely worth the playing, though not to the extent you might have heard.
