Hollow Knight is the best 2D Metroidvania I've ever played

[javeryh]

I know I'm a bit late to this but last night I finally finished Hollow Knight and the game absolutely blew me away (37 hours total and I finished at 89% out of a possible 112%).  So much to do.  Huge map, tons of upgrades, tons of bosses, tons of secrets, hand-drawn graphics, beautiful soundtrack and it was HARD.  Huge penalty if you die twice so every enemy encounter (at least in the beginning) mattered.  The controls are also perfect (jumping, dashing, etc.).  The story was fantastic too - not in your face (no cutscenes) but you learned as much as you wanted to learn by exploration (think Metroid Prime).

This game is the pinnacle of 2D platforming adventure games, IMO.  It's actually better than Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night.  It's that good.

[thomas_surles]

I absolutely loved hollow knight. Super excited for silksong. Controls were so perfect. I played on the switch.

[opt2not]

It's still high on my game list. I've got a stack to go through, but Hollow Knight is near the top.  Can't wait!

[bigster]

Thanks for the recommendation.  I grabbed it for switch when it was on sale recently and have been meaning to play it.  I just finished yooka laylee and this sounds like a great game to transition into.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[javeryh]

It's still high on my game list. I've got a stack to go through, but Hollow Knight is near the top.  Can't wait!

I'm pretty sure you will like it.  It's hard but totally fair, which is rare to find in modern games.  Every time I died it was because I screwed up or I didn't know the boss pattern well enough.  Bosses that seemed impossible on the first try became completely doable on the 10th try.  Plus, dying really matters (you lose all your money and you need it).  You leave behind a ghost of yourself where you died and to get your money back you have to make it back to the ghost and defeat it and sometimes you are exploring in a new territory with hard enemies so just making it back is tricky.  It's a great way to make you think instead of just restarting at your last save point.  If you button mash you are not going to get far.

I also liked the charm system they implemented.  I think there are 40 different charms that you can find and each one gives you a power up if you equip it.  The problem is that there are only 9 or 10 charm slots and some charms could take up 4 of those slots so you can't equip everything at once.  One of the first charms you find adds an icon to your map showing your location.  It's vital to exploration to know where you are on the (huge) map but it takes up one charm slot.  Maybe you unequip it once you've learned where you are going?  You constantly have to make decisions like that.  I just can't say enough good things about this game - it's like they figured out the perfect balance for a game like this.