LogFAQs > #951357810

#9. Hollow Knight (2017, PC)



I'm not really sure which direction I want to go with this writeup, so I'm just going to start talking about Hollow Knight and see where that takes me.

When I first heard of Hollow Knight, the idea seemed cool, as I am all about the Metroidvania games, but I wasn't sure about the aesthetic. I had seen a couple images, and it looked kind of dark and full of bugs, and I pushed the game aside for a bit. I heard some friends say they enjoyed it though, so I finally gave it a shot.

Seeing the style of the game in motion, it works a lot better. A lot of the backgrounds were subtly beautiful, there are areas with a fairly wide variety in color and feel, and there are a lot of interesting bug characters to see. I was glad that I was able to improve my opinion on the game there.

Hollow Knight starts off with a very old school feel, as you just venture underground with no idea where you're going or how deep you're going or what true dangers lie ahead. The first real challenge is finding the map, so you have some means of getting your bearings. I could see people finding this part frustrating, but it had a nice old school feel. It reminded me a bit of say, the original Metroid, but not in a massive world full of same-y screens. It was still navigable and even helped tell me that the game wants me to keep track of where I'm moving and searching.



The lack of guidance in the first area was actually very important, because as you set off on the larger journey, you'll enter a new area, but with no map for this new area. You have to kind of poke around and explore until you can get a map for here. And the same thing with each area after. It's often a scary feeling, carefully wandering about in an unknown setting with no map to guide you back to safety. Sometimes I felt like I was in a pool, dipping my toes in the shallow end of the water, knowing that I would find what I needed closer to the deep end. But that early design decision is there to tell you, Hey, you're gonna have to do some exploring, taking a path you may not be entirely sure about, but that's how you'll find things you need.

As you get more comfortable with this idea of just setting in a direction and exploring a little, the game will throw some more branching paths at you. It won't be clear which to take, so you'll just have to pick. Maybe you want to go as deep as you can, maybe one is a cool looking cave with crystals, maybe one just seems less intimidating. Whichever the case, you'll start going... and then hit another branch. You'll try to go towards your original goal by taking one of these paths. Then another branch. You'll make a note to come back to what you don't take, and keep going. And another branch. And another. Then you find a new area, a save bench, a shop, an item, more branching paths, new areas, new items, something mysterious you'll have to come back for, more branches, and maybe a new map. Then you pull up the map, and whoa, you have gone all over the place.

Hollow Knight is not too ordered in where you need to go, so you can just set off in a direction and explore. Everyone's experience will be different. And I really like this. The game encourages moving along and finding what's out there. There are lots of choices, but every path can feel like the right path. And the world is pretty massive too. At one point, I decided to just go as far down into the world as I did. And I finally went as far down as I could go. It was pretty far. Then I went back to the last path branch, and realized, that way goes farther to a new area. Then I hit the bottom of the world. It was a dark area and very deep. I looped back up to the top for a while, then later returned to the bottom to fill out my map. But then, I realized there was another new area, deeper still. And that's how Hollow Knight is, just always more places to go, farther to travel, new sights always ahead.



Fun exploration is just one reason why this game is so fun. Movement and combat are both top notch. Early on, neither might seem that special, but later on, you get a lot of abilities to make it fun to travel anywhere. There's dashes and long flying dashes and wall jumps and slash jumps and whatever more. It all feels very fluid and makes bouncing around through both large areas and small crowded areas feel fun. And then you can equip a limited number of charms that enhance abilities some for movement, some for battle, some just for quality of life upgrades. You can really set up a character that feels good to maneuver. And then for battle, there are some real challenging battles, both among regular enemies and bosses. Nothing feels unfair or impossible though, it's all within reach to learn. It just takes hard work and focus and practice. There's also a colosseum that's stupidly hard, but so much fun to try.

Hollow Knight just ended up a pleasant surprise from top to bottom, and in more ways than I'm covering here. It's a game where you set out to see where it will take you, and enjoy yourself along the way. And as I mentioned at the start of the writeup, I wasn't sure which way to go with the writeup, so I just started writing to see where it took me. I only knew how it was starting and how it was ending. The path there was uncertain, but I knew I'd find my way. It just seemed a fitting way to talk about this game.

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