Why Hollow Knight is my #1 game this year, and shame on you for not including it.

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DT9k

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Hollow Knight kicks ass and is unquestionably in my top 3 for this year

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ilserpente

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#52  Edited By ilserpente

@brunothethird: I agree that HK shares a good deal of its world building philosophy with the Souls series, but I was speaking directly to their mechanical similarities, and I just don't think they are very mechanically similar. HK is a much faster-paced game. Attacks comes out almost instantly, there is no stamina to worry about, there is no way to block attacks, there is only one melee weapon in the entire game (though you can slightly change its properties), you can continuously recharging your ability to heal by hitting enemies, there is no equip load to worry about, and you can even cancel your healing animation in the middle of it to avoid attacks. HK is a very snappy game--you immediately accelerate to full speed when you start moving, and your air controls are unlimited. Its combat is very action-oriented.

Compare this to Salt and Sanctuary, which went out of it's way to emulate DS in a 2D style. S&S has an stamina meter that drains as you dodge and attack, it has a ton of different weapons with different attack speeds and properties, it has equipment load that affects your movement, it has shields that work exactly the same as they do in DS (with separate damage reduction and stagger reduction percentages), it has a parry that is functionally the same as DS, and you get a fixed number of healing charges every time you rest.

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BrunoTheThird

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#53  Edited By BrunoTheThird

I don't think the combat is very similar either. It's the best thing about Hollow Knight, and is way better than S&S in that area (though that scissor weapon was glorious to wield, admittedly). I enjoyed the knockback on the attacks, especially; it added feedback that demanded mastering to use as an advantage. I saw some people criticizing that, but it really worked for me.

I used the rapier a lot in Dark Souls 2, and that is an extremely fast weapon. You can even chain thrust attacks together almost instantly, though this obviously is not a common aspect of the combat. Not completely unlike the nail, though, speed-wise.

The Souls games have fairly realistic combat overall; a vast difference. I think I watched a video of a medieval weapons expert commending its accuracy, even.

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Neurogia

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There are way too many top quality games out this year. Hollow Knight is insignificant. Nice opinion piece, though.

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Sergio

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Every Friday, I'm let down that it isn't out on the Switch yet. (My gaming PC is dead, and I can't afford to build a new one right now.)

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geirr

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It's pretty good!

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Wandrecanada

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@brunothethird: It's not the mechanics of the game but the storytelling and characters. The game is decidedly solid as an action platformer in the same way that Destiny is a really solid shooter.

Hollow Knight requires more effort if you want to delve deeper into this mysterious world and what your part you play within it. You need to explore and interact with the various characters both hostile and benign to build a clear picture.

Some players may just enjoy the gameplay and perhaps even the journey but only players who travel through the deepest dark will know the true story of the Hollow Knight.

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BrunoTheThird

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#59  Edited By BrunoTheThird

@wandrecanada: I delved. 50 hours playtime and 96% completion. I kind of obsessed over the game when I was into it, but found myself uninterested in the characters and story once I'd had my fill of the addictive (in my opinion) combat and platforming.

The art direction is far more successful at creating an interesting world than the writing is, for me. That moment when you reach the deepest part of the map made me gasp in awe at this forgotten subterranean realm. It requires much more of your imagination, like Souls games, but they have those moments tenfold and at a higher quality for me, in writing, tragic characters, and environmental storytelling. HK does that all well in its own right, but it didn't stay with me unfortunately, and I haven't thought about it since.

It's a great game, all day and night, though I've realized some great games are only great when I'm playing them, when its hooked me, and for a 30+ hour game, that can be troublesome for my hindsight. You could argue the option of a slightly more linear progression in terms of the game nudging the player to explore each area in the best possible order (if you so wish) would allow you to really stabilize the experience. Being lost in this genre is the worst, as it often detracts from the cool shit you saw. It makes you forget it. More memorable writing would help that, too, but what I'm saying is so subjective at this point it's barely an argument.

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JoeyRavn

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I tried it, but couldn't get into it because it has horrible frame rate and frame pacing issues on my computer. I'm running a GTX 1080, i7 6700K and a G-Sync ASUS ROG PG248Q... but the game goes to 400 FPS all the time without V-Sync, and hovers around 50 to 70 FPS with V-Sync on. The frame pacing is obviously all over the place as well. I can't play the game like that and it seems it's a rather widespread issue, at least from what I've read in the Steam forums.

Maybe I'll give it another try next year, but in this state, this game is not for me.

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Humanity

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Does anyone else experience this weird thing where if you walk too close to the edge of a platform the jump button doesn’t register or something? I played a few bosses in and had to constantly jump off tighter platforms a lot earlier because otherwise I’d walk off instead of jumping.

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musclerider

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@humanity: Happens all the time

I'm currently enjoying my time with the game but it's certainly not without its frustrations. The range of your attacks is absolutely miserable when compared to the length of enemy hurtboxes vs. hitboxes (even with the longer attack range charm). The agonizing pace at which you get upgrades in the early game is also really out of this world. Not in love with the map system either (either sell me a full map or fill it in as I explore but this game wants to do something in between). The dropping your money when you die also just feels so unnecessary when it can be so tedious to get that money back compared to getting souls back in DS games. The lantern at the store costs almost 2000 rocks and you get about 3-4 per enemy (maybe 20 from a miniboss and 50-80 from a boss) at least in the early game and losing 1500 Grimdark Bucks lost me hours of progress when it came to that.

Despite its best efforts it manages to be a slightly above average Metroidvania game. I can see someone really loving this game if they like the world and atmosphere and I'll probably see myself through to the end.

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Humanity

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@musclerider: I would almost go as far as to say that I think it has great presentation but so far as I’ve played not an entirely amazing “world” so to speak. The seams of the metroidvania stylings shine through really strongly at times where I don’t think I’m progressing through an actual world as much as I’m walking through squares.

I think it’s neat and have seen a lot of really strong advocates for it but it somehow Hollow Knight continued to just not pull me into it’s world.

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Lil_Glaceon

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#64  Edited By Lil_Glaceon

Okay, Hollow Knight is not a "Metroidvania", it is a platformer DISGUISE as a Metroidvania. It looks beautiful, but that's just to hide the stuff inside. It's a glitchy mess with terrible controls, especially on Switch. It takes HOURS to get the bare neccesities in the game, like a wall jump, and the dash. The progression is slower than a snail. The name of the game is Back-Tracking, the bosses are shit, and they added an enemy that was just the Medusa Heads from Castlevania, you know, the most bullshit enemy to ever exist! At first I thought the map was interesting, when I was watching people play, but it's a pain. Whenever you go into a new area you have to navigate through the map to find the map guy, and if you want pins you have to use hundreds of your money, and the story just isn't there for most of the game. You know, when I was playing Okami and didn't immediately have the double jump, it was different. Because in Okami you only *needed* the double jump when you got it. And sure, you COULD grind, but it wasn't a requirement. Hollow Knight requires grinding if you want to do something such as get a new nail, or just get enough money for something at the shop. When you upgrade the nail, it barely does anything. Sometimes it'll just make it so it takes 2 hits instead of 3 for some common enemy, but that's it. I want to go on more because I know there's more, but this is already a paragraph, wait, actually, I have something, so in Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight, you have a bow, and a leaf from the start. The leaf is your melee, and the bow is your ranged. In Hollow Knight, you just start with a nail. And it knocks you back a significant ammount, and in Momodora RUTM, it still knocks you back, but you're not fighting to stay on a tiny platform. Sure, you could say this is to add more challenge, but it's just not cool. In Momodora RUTM, when you die, you just go back to where you were. While in Hollow Knight, on top of being back where you were, you have to search for a black soul, not die while getting there, and not die while killing your soul! And this is basically just to make it so you backtrack EVEN MORE. Padding out your game time, so that if you want to refund it, you've already spent too much time on it. Okay I'm done for good now even though I feel like there's more to say.

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redwing42

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That is quite the rant for a first post. Welcome to the site?