LogFAQs > #942895613

Hollow Knight - 9.5/10

The first game I've played in several years, Hollow Knight feels like a spiritual successor to the early Paper Mario games. The world of Hallownest is large and beautiful and a pleasure to explore. The Charm system -- Hollow Knight's answer to the Badge system of "Thousand-Year Door" -- allow for a surprising amount of customization.

As a platformer, Hollow Knight strikes a perfect balance between frustrating and engaging, due in no small part to the subdued aesthetic beauty of the world. The combat is fast-paced, brutal, and exhilirating, and each boss fight presents a unique challenge and reward for completion (my personal favourite, for both the fight itself and the reward afterwards, being the Mantis Lords).

The story deals with heavily with themes of guilt, loss, history, and responsibility, and it is through these themes that I find my qualm with the morals: early on, the player receives a journal from a character called "The Hunter", which contains encyclopedia-like entries on the various beasts you encounter across Hallownest, filling in as you "defeat" more of them. It quickly becomes clear from reading these entries that the Hunter is, as the name suggests, some sort of apex predator who delights in killing these beasts indiscriminately. The entries draw a comparison between the Hunter's words and the Player's behavior -- in order to receive the entries in the first place, you must behave in a manner similar to the Hunter. It feels like a critique of the player, without offering any alternative for reaching full completion.

Forcing players to consider their actions in a broader context is by no means a bad thing, but a way of completing the journal without behaving like a blood-crazed killer would have been nice.

This is, overall, a fairly minor qualm with a game that does many things extremely well: even the most frustrating platforming section was still a tremendously enjoyable experience, and I anxiously await the sequel.

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