I've been playing this game for like 100 hours at this point. The game is a blast. The movement is incredible, the enemy design and encounter composition is better than anything in the original Hollow Knight, the boss fights are thrilling and challenging in just the right way. It also looks and sounds amazing, plus the characters are loveable little fellas. I will protect Sherma if it's the last thing I do. With that said, I think at around the second half of Act 2, and especially Act 3, the game started dragging out a little in my opinion. There really was no reason to be discovering 7 brand new areas 20 hours into the game, especially when a lot of them do not even offer a meaningfully different challenge compared to what you've already been doing the entire rest of the game. There are some standouts like Mount Fey or Bilewater, but a lot of late game areas are kind of samey in my opinion. The game also has some boring ass fetch quests and grinding that honestly just make the game worse by their presence. You take the pin collecting quest out of the game and it immediately becomes a better experience. It also suffers from the same issue a lot of metroidvania games deal with, which is that at some point in the game you become so overpowered that you can basically trivialize any encounter by just using the right tools. This is a shame because the combat is very good otherwise. I still absolutely loved the game, and I'm patiently waiting for the Godseekers grand come back so I can spend another 100 hours grinding out the Pantheon of Pharloom. :)
