I've seen the vast majority of this game, at 96% completion. I never come close to "100 percenting" games, but this one I felt compelled to. It is large and I have 40 hours played. I loved Mario, I loved Zelda, I loved Nier and Horizon and Cuphead and etc. etc. from this year. This game blew me away. There is just something magical about it, everything comes together to make a brilliant videogame. The music is perfect for every area, the gameplay is simple yet extremely tight and responsive. The exploration is maybe the best I've experienced in a videogame along with just amazing art to discover around every corner of the world. I've become obsessed with this game over the past week and really just have a few odds and ends to clear up but I feel safe in saying it is a masterpiece, albeit with a few flaws but nothing major in my eyes.

Did anybody else fall in love with this wonderful game?

God dammit man, I'd just convinced myself to wait until after GOTY to play this but it's staring at me on my desktop begging me to play it. I have no time, and have other games to finish! It looks super rad though and I might jump in this weekend if I have time.

I can see its a good game and i liked it for the first couple hours, but the endless wondering just killed it for me. Just not my thing i guess, game has a nice style though.

The more I play it the more I like it. I'm 12 hours in, and it will definitely be in my top 10. Top 5 probably. Maybe higher when I finish it.

I always like reading when someone is way into a game. It is more meaningful to me than the standard critical dissection of a singular playthrough, because I value that in games most. If you can't stop playing them.

This isn't my type of game though.

I like this game a lot, but after taking a few months off I booted it back up recently and have absolutely no idea as to which of the five or six areas I have unlocked I'm supposed to be working my way through. That's one drawback of the fairly ambiguous progression in the game, I guess!

@rorie: Its very open-ended, five different players could take five different paths through the game. You're not 'supposed' to be going through any specific area, you will wind up getting lost some times and that's part of the appeal... Its the best new metroidvania I've played in the last ten years IMO. So goddamn good.

Absolutely loved this game. Top 5 of the year for me. Great music and very enjoyable combat. I highly recommend it if you have any fondness for Metroidvania style games.

I think it is mine as well. I played a lot of it months ago, stopped because of other games and the good old "I don't want this to end" feeling. Realized it was nearing GOTY-season, so I got in and beat what I suspect is one of several endings at 65% finished.

This is the first game other than Dark Souls that has given me this kind of feeling. The way it doesn't spell out the story, but lets you discover it as you go along, finding out more and more. I love that aspect of it. And when the visuals, the gameplay, the music and sound design in general is top notch as well... that's a GOTY!

Oh, one thing about the final boss I fought: I have only fought the Hollow Knight, pretty sure there are more endings, but don't spoil it! Anyway, the way you approach the boss, shattering his chains was brilliant. Even more brilliant is the way he starts to stab himself as he gets more damaged and more powerful. Then he slowly becomes more weak, until he weakly swings at you, falling over. They managed to make me feel sad for an end boss that never speaks and whom you didn't see until the fight through animation and music alone. This is very well done, I think.

Yeah I got swallowed up by this game for like a week and a half. Ended up getting 104% completion and the true ending. Absolutely adored this game; was always finding shortcuts and bosses, nice little interactions with NPCs, etc. Like you said, it's got fantastic art and a great ambient soundtrack. I think my only real complaint is that I think the difficulty spikes up to an almost absurd degree at the endgame challenges (White Palace approaches Super Meat Boy in it's platforming difficulty, and some of the optional bosses like the White Defender or Nightmare King Grimme are just outrageously difficult). Didn't feel like those things fit the difficulty curve Hollow Knight had set up to that point. Regardless, this is still definitely my favorite game from this year. I haven't enjoyed a side-scrolling exploration game this much...ever, I don't think.

Can't wait to see what Team Cherry does next.

Didn't care for it , and I love metroidvanias

I'm mostly enjoying it. I'm at the White Palace right now and it's sort of turning me off, though. The distance between benches and the reliance on the jutting spikes are really starting to grate on me, especially at the one section I'm in where I have to restart at a bench, travel halfway through a platforming section I've already completed, and then take a newly-opened doorway before I get to the new stuff. It really, really is killing my drive to finish it up.

I'll also say that the combat is generally my least favourite part of the game, but it really started to come together once the upgraded dash ability was unlocked. I understand why they gate it for so long but it made combat, especially the rematch bosses, a trajillion times more enjoyable.

@the_nubster: @the_nubster: Definitely agree about the white palace, that place took me hours and I'm not terrible at platformers. When I said there are some flaws, thats the biggest one for me, but it didn't detract from the rest of the game for me, some of the platforming sections are challenging but fun and rewarding. That place is is a hellscape.

@relkin: Yes the difficulty spikes (especially the white palace and some of the dream bosses) were definitely the weirdest and weakest parts of the game, but I still loved most of the bosses and platforming.

I'm waiting on a Switch port.

I think what I was trying to say is that it does a poor job of denoting what to do when you get a new ability. As it is I'm just wandering around places I've already been since I don't know where on the map I used to be blocked but now I can proceed through. Like, I got the walljump ability not too long ago in my playthrough but had no idea where I could go back and use it, so I just kind of meandered around for half an hour until I found somewhere I could move on. Wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't such a huge map, or if they had map annotations, but I found it a bit frustrating.

Yep, I played it at launch and it's my GOTY. The thing that has stuck with me this whole time was how good the exploration is. There is a real sense of mystery in that world and they managed to hide secrets everywhere.

Understandably so. If I were a character in the game, and had a physical map, I'd just mark those places with a red marker. Like they do in Silent Hill games.

@halodude442: Damn right, this game really is a giant deal in all the ways and way too underappreciated. On the other hand I really dunno why people make a big deal out of Nier, its great but not as good. Also Nier for me is the archtypical epic game, you fight big crazy bosses and the music is superb. Nier kinda nails the whole atmospheric aspect at least when it comes to the music and the fighting animations, like you should go and watch combo videos of Nier, stuffs really awesome looking.

Anyway, to the very least I really hope that Hollow Knight game will be discussed during GOTY stuff and gives the whole competition a good run.

Whats better is that Hollow Knight isn't even realized yet. More add-ons are coming adding lots of stuff, too. For instance one extra playable character, Hornet. Perhaps even new lands and things to explore and more boss fights. We're still talking about a kinda incomplete game here.

@rorie: Yeah I kinda agree, you really have to be a explorative type to spend like 5-15 hours in this game just to "backtrack" stuff. I don't find that its not really backtracking in my opinion as this game is pretty much designed around the notion of visiting previous places all the time judging on how the world is designed and without spoiling too much, some old places will change later in the game, too. I basically visited random places without knowing what I was doing and thats how I progressed while finding secret and sometimes even important stuff like in the process. Also its worth just going back to visit worm-daddy if you find his jar-babies from time to time. I've found like 30+ sons and I'm still not done.

Its still a long game by most standarts. I don't know anyone who played through this in less than like 15 hours. I'm 25 hours in and barely reached the late game parts but I'm sure most would've finished a normal playthrough by that amount of time.

I'm definitely with you on this OP. I haven't decided my GotY yet. In a year with a generation defining Mario game and an equally exceptional Zelda game, it's going to be a tough one to decide. But the fact that Hollow Knight is even in the conversation for me speaks volumes. Do not sleep on this game.

@dray2k Yeah exactly its crazy to think of it as incomplete too, but the two free DLC so far have been cool and Team Cherry apparently wants to make a sequel which is really great.

@darth_navster Exactly Mario and Zelda were both amazing in their own ways and this game is just like "hey guys i was made by 3 people and can do some cool stuff too".

Hand on heart I cannot say Hollow Knight is better than BOTW, but it is still a stone cold classic, and will certainly be placed second on my personal GOTY list. It invaded my dreams, and is one of the few games I have taken the time to fully 100% (which took me about 60 hours - not bad for a 10 dollar game!). It is such a pity it didn’t get more exposure. Hopefully next year’s Switch release (for which it is a perfect fit) changes that. I also hope that Xbox and PS4 releases follow, as this game needs to be played by as many people as possible. I cannot wait to see what Team Cherry chose to do next. Side note: I would love to see GB do an endurance run of this at some point next year...

I've played maybe 8 games in total this year, only one of which actually came out in 2017, but Hollow Knight has hooked me in a way I rarely ever get to experience. It has what I like most in a video game, which is allowing me to explore an expansive yet intricate world and learn all it's nooks and crannies. The combat and perk systems are also a huge advantage this game has. Simple but versatile. This is definitely a game of the year and probably on the big list of games of a lifetime for me. I'm gonna put it up there in my mind next to vanilla WoW, Fez, Red Dead Redemption, and skate for games I just like to walk (or skate) around in.

Oh, and I still love the game, but man oh man, I wish the story and lore of the world would be more than just a dumb remix of Dark Souls. That's actually kind of a big flaw for me. Why make this amazingly looking world, just to be so unimaginative about the story?

Boggles the mind.