Board 8 > How is Hollow Knight?

(+) Yeah! (+)

How does it compare to other Metroidvanias?
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Pros:
- Good atmosphere
- Flavorful areas
- A lot of content - surprisingly so from an indie game. Full completion takes around 20-25 hours.
- A lot of freedom - after the first few areas, the game opens up and you're (relatively) free to do it in whatever order you want.

Cons:
- The flipside is that the mid-game can feel a bit aimless depending on the order in which you tackle the areas.
- Some of the bosses are a bit too hard - and even unfair/cheap at times.

Overall a solid Metroidvania that's worth a play IMO.
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Pretty hollow, to be honest.
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It's the best Metroidvania created.

Solfadore posted...

- Some of the bosses are a bit too hard - and even unfair/cheap at times.

This is absolutely false
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If I loved Ori, will I love it?
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I like Ori way more than Hollow Knight. it has some strengths though.
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It's really great. Also a free DLC should be coming out soon so there will be even more content to do
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tazzyboyishere posted...

It's the best Metroidvania created.

Solfadore posted...

- Some of the bosses are a bit too hard - and even unfair/cheap at times.

This is absolutely false

Watcher Knights are pretty damn cheap when one goes high and one goes low. Especially when they both cover the length of the room doing it, which is somewhat preventable but not always easily.
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Hollow Knight is my number 1 indie of 2017. Thoroughly recommend if you're into vastly explorative Metroidvanias with an added difficulty spike.

It's Dark Souls in 2d form if its focus was more on the fast-paced maneuvering as opposed to the deliberate resource management and exploration of Salt and Sanctuary.

It has a beautiful albeit melancholy world that just makes you question it, great music, interesting characters although some of them feel incomplete due to not reaching a pledge goal in the kickstarter, Buuut, if you didn't know that (don't worry you won't notice until you look up the character in a wiki), the game's environs are perfect for worldbuilding. You'll often come upon a setpiece with a vaguely familiar feeling and think to yourself "What must have happened here, I wonder."

The boss fights are more brutal than Cuphead, but are totally doable in time. The writing is okay. And a few things you encounter in the game sometimes subvert expectations in a I Knew You Would Do That kinda way.
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I hate the Dark Souls comparison. how is Hollow Knight at all similar?
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transience posted...

I hate the Dark Souls comparison. how is Hollow Knight at all similar?

Atmosphere as well as some plot stuff to some degrees
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I hate Dark Souls comparisons too, but trust me this is one of the few games that actually make sense to compare it to just because difficulty isn't the only similarity.

As Pirateking2000 mentions, the game starts you in an already dying world. I think you can pretty much guess what happens.
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Pretty good game. Starts off really slow, but gets to be pretty fun after a while. Has a nice complete feel to it.

Simoun posted...

The boss fights are more brutal than Cuphead, but are totally doable in time.

???

You're either really good at Cuphead or really bad at Hollow Knight.
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Hollow Knight takes a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls in it's world building and a couple of mechanics, but it's also an action platformer, so "Dark Souls in 2D form" is a pretty bad descriptor. Yeah, you'll get a similar tone, but the actual meat of the game is significantly different.

Anyway, I did a shitty write-up in my top games topic for why Hollow Knight is the best game of 2017 if TC's interested...
https://pastebin.com/nXZJLufv
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Also, I think the difficulty is being overstated here. Obviously everyone finds different things to be more difficult, but I've never heard anyone else say that the game is "brutally hard". Some of the optional bosses force you to hone your skills, but if you allocate charms properly, it has a pretty comfortable difficulty curve throughout.

One big thing that adds to the atmosphere and makes things more difficult is the checkpoints and maps. Checkpoints are very sparse, and when you buy maps, they're incomplete and can't be updated until you hit a checkpoint. This probably bothers a lot of people, but I found it really added to the feel of the game.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Pretty good game. Starts off really slow, but gets to be pretty fun after a while. Has a nice complete feel to it.

Simoun posted...

The boss fights are more brutal than Cuphead, but are totally doable in time.

???

You're either really good at Cuphead or really bad at Hollow Knight.

I'm both? What's the issue here?

Cuphead is easy. I mean, it's hard yeah but most of the attacks are easily memorized and the hitbox is very generous. The only trouble I seem to have were the gradius levels, and that's because I hate shmups. Plus you get all those cool powerups and up to 3 health.

Hollow Knight requires even faster reflexes, even faster reaction times. And there's no health bar like other Metroidvanias so there's no way to tell if you're doing great. Plus there's that whole if you die you gotta run back every time schtick.
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It's a great game all things considered, but it has some annoying flaws
It isn't "brutaly hard" but rather "cheap hard" sometimes

-Save points are often far from boss rooms
-Map is not updated as you go
-When you die you lose all your money and leave behind a soul (kinda like in Diablo) that you need to kill to get the money back, often it's inside the boss/miniboss room and it's stupid
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I found both Ori and Axiom Verge harder than Hollow Knight. it has a couple of tricky bosses but overall it's pretty straightforward if you have some platforming skills. the map system is the worrrrst. the feeling of the movement and the game's sound is real good though.
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The HK soundtrack is one of the best
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Currently fighting Flukemarm
Now if this isn't "Cheap Hard" I don't know what is
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To clarify, cheap/unfair bosses are few and far between, but there are some.

Crystal Guardian 2.0 is dependent on RNG if you want to beat him legit (and not through stacking up your HP and damage output and facetanking).

Watcher Knights are mostly fair, but if they decide to desynchronize, or if one goes high while the other goes low, you WILL get hit.

Brooding Mawlek is not too bad if you wait for uogrades before killing it, but in a vacuum, one of his attacks can be nigh undodgeable.

This does not apply to other hard bosses, such as NKG, which can be brutal, but require reflexes and pattern recognition, and are therefore entirely fair.
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Ori is hard only in the early game, I think it's easier than Hollow Knight because its skill tree is passive whereas Hollow Knight only has limited slots for abilities
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transience posted...

I hate the Dark Souls comparison. how is Hollow Knight at all similar?

dude play dark souls
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Nanis23 posted...

Currently fighting Flukemarm
Now if this isn't "Cheap Hard" I don't know what is

He's super easy with enough upgrades to kill the adds in one hit, but the worst thing ever if you can't.
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maybe I'll rephrase - what makes hollow knight significantly different than, say, symphony of the night? they're both atmospheric and dark maze games. is symphony of the night a 2d dark souls
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tazzyboyishere posted...

Hollow Knight takes a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls in it's world building and a couple of mechanics

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You used ITS wrong.
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All the more reason I will never be recognized as the greatest writer to ever live.
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Also
Please do not fucking block access to old roads
Why is City of Tears isn't accessible through Fungal Wastes anymore what is this shit
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transcience posted...

maybe I'll rephrase - what makes hollow knight significantly different than, say, symphony of the night? they're both atmospheric and dark maze games. is symphony of the night a 2d dark souls

Plot-wise, Hollow Knight is more Dark Souls because you are dumped into an ambiguous situation and it's up to you to piece together the backstory based on artifacts you find and characters to talk to.

While Dracula's castle is indeed a house of horrors, the scary mood is significantly toned down for the emphasis on action. Hollow Knight while more eerie than scary, plays with this concept in a more serious and melancholic tone. By the time the game starts, whatever evil that's come had already come, and you're left struggling to pick off the scraps and solve the mystery of the disappeared kingdom.

Gameplay-wise while SotN lets you gather exp from creature kills until you level up, Hollow Knight instead has Soul. Soul is used for everything: Healing, Spell-casting, and sometimes powering up the trinkets you find. But unlike SotN if and when you die all your accumulated Soul disappears, forcing you to both return to the place of your death and acquire more Soul.

Hollow Knight also controls more fluidly and so do its bosses, which require a certain speed and the ability to react quickly.
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the two mechanics that seem dark souls-y are the pieces of obtuse lore scattered around the world and the return to the spot of your death thing. I'm probably just being a jerk, but neither of those are introduced by dark souls. I can't remember the game(s) but a lot of older dungeon crawlers use the return to the spot of your death mechanic and the lore thing isn't especially unique (zelda 1 comes to mind, as does any game with flavor text laying around the world).

I do like the shared exp/magic mechanic in hollow knight. I just about never used magic in hollow knight because it felt so punishing to have to dip into my pool of resources. the game is pretty punishing about death because save points are painfully far apart so I played pretty conservatively.

I don't think it was very hard though which seems to be a major point of comparison. I don't think I died on any boss more than 2 or 3 times with the exception of one of the first ones (I couldn't refer to a boss by name if I wanted to).
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iiicon posted...

dude play dark souls

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hopefully it's better than demon's souls
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Great metroidvania. I enjoyed it a lot.
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Demons souls is much better than dark souls
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I haven't played Hollow Knight, but based on the screenshots and videos I've watched its atmosphere seems extremely similar to Dark Souls
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Demons souls is much better than dark souls

The hipster Soulsborne take, ladies and gentleman.
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Also, saying Zelda 1 has enough lore in-game to have scattered lore is extremely generous.
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Best Indie game of 2017. Probably in my top 5 of the year or just outside of it.
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