I rated this 5 stars but it's more like 4.5 because while I enjoyed this game, I do have a few minor gripes with it. The story is very good. It might be stale if you consume a lot of zombie entertainment, but I think they put their own spin on it to make it fresh but familiar. It is definitely a slow burn; the first 10-20 hours might not suck you in but it does get better. Secondly, it ends on a huge cliffhanger & there will likely be no sequel. The graphics are amazing, they really did a great job with the environment. I didn't encounter any performance or technical issues the entire game (i7-8700, Geforce 1070 Ti) at 1080 max settings. The zombies look & act very much like fast zombies, 28 Days Later style. Gameplay is complex enough to be interesting without being overwhelming. The gunplay feels good, the skill system allows for melee, ranged, & stealth approaches. You can eventually max the entire skill tree out. There's a main storyline as well as a large number of side-quests including one involving taking out hordes of zombies. You get a motorcycle for getting around the huge gameplay area, you can also fast travel. It can be upgraded as well. There's a resource system for the bike: fuel, & scrap metal for repairs. There are a huge variety of weapons to unlock via quests & you can carry a primary, side-arm, special, & melee weapon. The crafting system is simple & used to make health items, thrown weapons like molotovs, & other things. There are encampments for sleeping, quests, refueling, turning in bounties, & a simple reputation system for upgrades. While the game is marketed as open-world it's not sandbox-y. There's little reason to just go wandering around, which can be dangerous. You can't hoard crafting materals. It's more like a regular single player game that has a massive world to move around in. I picked this up for $12 on sale and got 82+ hours of fun out of it. If you like zombies, you'll probably like this. Just wish they'd make a sequel.
I bought SoR on Steam when it first came out, played it for about 20 minutes and then refunded it. It just didn't click for me even though I'm a huge fan of both rogue-likes and pixel art games. I bought it again on GOG a year or two ago with the intent to revisit it at some point, but never got around to it. A couple weeks ago I finished a few games in my backlog and was looking for the next one to tackle and saw SoR in the list. This time around I gave it more than 20 minutes and I also gave myself permission to look through the wiki for beginner tips. Sixty-five hours or so later I will gladly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of rogue-likes. While it doesn't have the level of interaction and "TDTTOE" that Nethack has, there is a surprisingly large number of systems interacting together to create some incredibly fun emergent gameplay. ESPECIALLY if you use mutators, which I highly recommend doing once you've played through it a bit. I have earned 100% of the achievements which is uncommon for me as I'm not an achievement chaser. The dev's sense of humor jives completely with my own, so this game was hilarious for me. The huge variety of characters to play, along with the ability to create your own custom characters means there's a lot of replay here. There are a ton of things to unlock (none of which require you to spend real life $$) and the soundtrack is absolutely awesome (this is the first game I've ever bought the soundtrack for). Every situation in the game can be approached differently ranging from full on destroy everything that moves to talking your way/bribing your way through, to hacking computers and robots and everything in between. If you like rogue-like games that remind you of late 80's/early 90's style action/rpg/shooters, along with games like Dungeons of Dredmor, Nethack, etc., you should give this game a chance. If you struggle with the beginning, don't be afraid to read the wiki for some tips and tricks.
Hate the launcher. What's the point? To inform me of Larian's other games? I already knew, and there are better ways to do that without forcing a separate application on me. Oh I see you're also selling merchandise, that might have something to do with it also perhaps? The game's great, it's more of what made the first one great and that's exactly what I wanted. I don't want another pointless launcher. If Larian removes the launcher I'll gladly update my review to the 4-5 stars the game deserves.
I just finished the game for the first time with 62% completion, 13 hours played. I'll try to keep my review brief - if you like Metroidvania games then you'll likely enjoy Hollow Knight. Pros: - Great art style - Controls are very tight - never felt like I died due to controls - Charms are a great customization feature - Story is interesting and unique - Good bang for your buck - Music adds ambience but doesn't distract from the gameplay - Rock solid performance - not a single crash, no slowdowns, no bugs. I might just be lucky, but very well designed game Cons: - Upgrade system provides no direction - gotta wander around until you find stuff - Lots of backtracking but very little help in the way of remembering which areas to return to - Map system is terrible...Metroidvania games need good maps - Save system (benches in the world) needs more benches, especially closer to hard boss fights - Central city hub could've been fleshed out more. - A few boss fights had too much of a randomness factor. Even if you figured out the strategy you could lose due to randomness. - No incentive to see the other endings.
