@ciremo2:
Sure! I'll do my best.
So firstly, my initial hour with it was off to a really bad start. I have a music degree, am a professional programmer, and have made games. One of the first things I'll notice in a game is the audio implementation - and Hollow Knight's is really bad. For an example, listen to the footstep sounds. For one, they are mixed extremely loud. For two, they used about 2 samples, which are repeating all the time. For three, these samples have zero randomization within their pitch (which is very standard practice when using a small amount of samples), so they get so repetitive that it is distracting. That's just the footsteps. There's also a huge variance in sample quality. Some of them sound like they came out of a library, whereas others (specifically the worms and a few other things) sound like it was some dude recording him making face-sounds with his cell phone. It 100% broke the immersion for me, and since it was like that from the very start, coloured my whole experience.
From there, I felt the gameplay was really bad. I had just come off of playing Steamworld Dig 2, which controls like a dream and has a compelling gameplay loop. Though I think HK does some cool stuff (specifically being able to heal yourself), there were too many caveats for me to enjoy it. The currency you collect was extremely fickle in its behaviour (I had some fly right through me), the jumping feels imprecise (I had a really hard time judging my jumps), the attacking feels imprecise (is my weapon going to hit? It looks like it is, but it didn't seem to), and movement in general didn't feel "good" to me (again, especially after playing SD2). Beyond that, I didn't really like the enemies. Yes, the boss designs were varied and fairly cool; but they weren't fun. That and the fodder enemies felt pointless, they were overly simple for the most part. I also think the death penalty was perhaps a bit too harsh, but I'm sure that just makes me sound like I'm "mad because bad" - but that was just a feeling on game balance.
This one is all me (and is 100% subjective); but I also really, really, really didn't like how it approached its whole attitude. It was really self-serious with its "grimdark" thing, and it felt like it was trying too hard. As someone who has played in numerous metal bands and watched people trying to "out-brutal" each other for like a decade, that whole thing is really old to me. Hollow Knight felt like it had that same attitude. "I'm going to try to be super dark and be trve kvlt." It made me roll my eyes more than anything else.
There is more, but they are way more nit-picky and minor. Hopefully that doesn't come across as bitter, it's sincerely how I felt about the game, and why I severely disliked it.
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