Happy (late) New Year! Hollow Knight review!

Yes, this was published long after New Years. But I've been busy with a video game backlog to burn through, and I'm taking college courses so I could actually do something with my life other than make lazy jokes on the Internet and debate the quality of video games and films. But I'm trying to keep blogging at least semi-regularly, and I plan on putting out for things for people to read, either for research, or for casual entertainment. With that said, here's a review of a game called Hollow Knight.

Hollow Knight, developed by indie devs Team Cherry, is a very interesting game. It's an exploration based platformer that can best be described as "Dark Souls with bugs". And no, I'm not cashing in on a recent meme of comparing challenging video games to Dark Souls (looking at you, Cuphead critics!), this game really does give me some very Soulsian vibes. Not helping matters is that there's a character who literally tells you to "git gud" (pronounced "get good").

 

Before we continue, I would like to establish here that I have never actually played a Dark Souls game myself. So why am I making the comparison? The answer is simple! Unlike some other reviewers (R.I.P. Cuphead), I actually did my research on the general style of Dark Souls. People often point to as a difficult video game, but never explain why. Dark Souls is a franchise where every battle is slow, methodical, and requires you to pay attention to enemy attack patterns and get in some pot shots before backing off. Additionally, Dark Souls is a Gothic Fantasy Action-RPG franchise. Cuphead is a shoot-em-up designed to look like a 30's era cartoon. So please, don't say "Cuphead is just like Dark Souls" just because the two games are difficult. It's lazy. But Hollow Knight is a game where the comparison is actually valid. Both games are Gothic Fantasy. Both Games require you to methodically pay attention to enemy patterns and fight accordingly. And both games have a deliberately vague story, with the idea being the player figures the plot out for themselves. Frankly the only thing the two don't have in common is that Hollow Knight is a platformer instead of an RPG.

Title Drop!

 THE STORY!

Cornifer, the Map Making Mosquito!

The story of Hollow Knight is, as previously stated, deliberately vague, and the majority of it comes down to personal interpretation. In fact, for the entire first third of the game the only information you have is an enigmatic poem, and an elderly beetle tells you about what remains of the Kingdom of Hallownest, which fell to a mysterious disaster and is now populated almost entirely by blood thirsty monsters. Oh, and every character is an anthropomorphic insect (the lone exception being yourself). After spending a while exploring the ruins, your character's mission becomes revealed at last... Track down the Three Dreamers, who are the only creatures prevent the disease that destroyed Hallownest from escaping to the outside world, kill them, then kill the thing responsible for creating the disease in the first place. Basically, you gotta do a lot of killing. It makes you wonder if you're the villain all along..?

Yeah, this game can get pretty disturbing at times. Which is another thing Dark Souls does!

Anyway, First thing (of many!) that I will praise Hollow Knight for is emphasis on learning things on your own. The only thing the tutorial explicitly tells you is that you can cast a healing spell by holding A (I've played the Nintendo Switch Port, the game is also available on Steam, and as such, the controls may be different). It gives you a spacious room to experiment with jumping and attacking, then gives you a hall way with breakable walls, subtly teaching the player that attacking certain walls will break them. Shortly after that, it gives you an enemy to fight. After smashing through several walls, your instinct will be to smack the enemy with your sword. All of this is conveyed without a single word. In an era where games are depressingly linear and rely on "hand-holding" to teach the player crucial information, seeing Hollow Knight put enough faith in the audience to figure out the controls puts a smile on my face. And the game keeps this mentality the whole through, only explicitly telling you what button to press when you first gain an item that changes your moveset.

Hollow Knight's story is also interesting, because not only is it told almost completely through background details and optional dialogue with scattered NPC's, the majority of the it comes down to personal interpretation. Is a story of light and dark but with the roles reversed (dark is good and light is bad)? Possibly. Is it a revenge story? Possibly. Is the Knight a villain all along and we've only doomed the insect world to a world of anarchy and barbarism? The world's halfway there, so maybe. 

GAMEPLAY!

Another thing Hollow Knight handles elegantly are it's upgrades. Like any Metroidvania game, the bulk of your play-time is spent tracking down upgrades. But Hollow Knight goes the extra mile to give everything a special audio-visual flair that makes the upgrades seem all the more powerful. In most other games in this genre, a double jump is just that. A character breaking the laws of physics by jumping midair. In Hollow Knight, the main hero (who I will refer to as the Knight) doesn't just do a boring old double jump. He(she?) grows a pair of glowing, angelic wings and uses them to fly straight up. Another, more prominent example are the spells that the Knight learns throughout the game. They all play a satisfying audio cue that can't really be described outside of "Ping! Whoosh!" or other, sillier terms. My point is, most games have upgrades just feel like they're giving you something arbitrarily cut from your moveset for the sake of game balance. Here, it feels like you are genuinely becoming stronger with each find. 

The gameplay itself is simple. You slash with your sword- oh wait, sorry, the weapon the Knight fights with is called a "Nail", apparently. Anyway, you slash with your Nail using the Y button and a directional input. Example, holding up on the D-Pad and pressing Y will have the Knight slash upwards instead of in front of it. You can also slash downwards while airborne to do extend your air-time, a la Shovel Knight. Meanwhile, all the spells, once you learn them, are all tied to the A button and, you guessed it, more directional inputs (left/right = Energy Blast, down = Ground Pound, etc). And finally, you can customize your abilities with Charms, collectible items that either modify the Knight's preexisting abilities or replace them entirely with something else. Example, the Flukenest Charm changes the Energy Blast spell from a long-range projectile to a short-range shotgun-esque burst of damage. The Thorns of Agony Charm lets the Knight deal retribution damage every time it gets hit. And my personal favorite Charm, Sharp Shadow, makes it so passing through enemies once you gain the Shadow Dash ability will damage them. And believe me, you are going to need that Charm because one optional boss, the Traitor Lord, is pretty much unbeatable without it.

On the subject of Charms, my only critique of Hollow Knight itself comes to it's map. The way maps work is they show you the lay out of the entire area that you have explored so far, with you needing to track down Cornifer, the Map-Making Mosquito, and pay him 60-120 Geo (the main currency in the Kingdom of Hallownest) to expand the map for the newly discovered area. The problem with this is you need to have the Wayward Compass Charm equipped so you can see where you are on the map currently. For people who struggle to read map (like me), this creates a few problems, chief among them being you can only have so many Charms equipped, meaning for general play you have to dump a Charm Notch just so you can navigate the Kingdom of Hallownest. Plus, the map doesn't update until you rest at a Bench (read: checkpoint), which I am actually okay with, but combined with the need to have a Charm equipped just so you can see where you are is weird. What makes this worse is that the Lumafly Lantern is an item you can buy early on that lets you see your surroundings in dark and poorly lit rooms, but does NOT count as a Charm. So they could have given the same treatment to the Wayward Compass. But this is a minor nitpick against a game that I feel is going the way of Five Nights at Freddy's and UNDERTALE. You know, being indie games made by very small teams that wind up becoming modern classics. And not having annoyingly obnoxious fan bases. What am I talking about? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be reviewing Hollow Knight.

Although the gameplay is simple, that does not mean Hollow Knight is an easy game. Even now I shudder with horror at the mere thought of getting the best possible ending, as it requires you to (among other things) fight every boss in the game, back to back, with no checkpoints. For a point of reference, doing this perfectly with no deaths will take a minimum of 56 minutes. But for general play, the game is forgiving enough that dying during one of the game's 40+ boss battles does not crush your soul, but rather, motivates you to keep trying, to keep going, to keep pushing forward until the Knight's task is done. Oh wait, that's yet ANOTHER thing Dark Souls does! Are we sure Hollow Knight is not just Dark Souls 4 in disguise? On a more serious note, the controls are fluid, though I have a personal recommendation. If you plan on getting the Nintendo Switch version of Hollow Knight, use the D-Pad to move around instead of the control stick. The D-Pad controls so much better than the control stick, and there were plenty of early mistakes because for some reason, the control stick does not mesh well with this game's control scheme. But other than that, the game runs smoothly, the controls are tight, and the game itself is challenging but fair, with the bulk of the challenge coming from optional objectives not even required to be the game. Seriously, you have to be actively seeking out the tougher enemies, areas and bosses if you want a challenge. Just doing mandatory stuff is easy enough.

Hollow Knight also has plenty of fantastic boss battles, and the way they are handled is also rather seamless. Each boss in the game is carefully placed towards the end of each area, and (usually) guard something needed to progress onward. While there are 42 bosses in the game, only six of the game's bosses are required to be defeated in order to actually finish the game. Well, technically the Dreamers could count as bosses, but the main challenge of the Dreamers is getting TO them in the first place, rather than actually fighting them. In fact, the amount of content in this game that is purely optional is staggering. Additionally, thanks to the Charm System, some bosses that you may have struggled with become trivialized if you have the right Charms equipped. Case in point, Trator Lord. You can probably beat Traitor Lord simply by exploiting the damage dealt by Sharp Shadow. Another example, and this one is more important. During the second battle against Hornet at Kingdom's Edge, if you have Quick Slash (double attack speed), Stalwart Shell (temporary invincibility after taking damage), Mark of Pride (extends the reach of our slashes), Spore Shroom (cover the screen in a poison cloud when casting the healing spell), and Quick Focus (heal twice as fast), you can trivialize the hardest (mandatory) fight in the game. But my advice personally? If you have a hard time on a boss, consider changing your Charms, as some Charm combos work better in certain situations than others.

I should also mention that Hollow Knight not one, not two, but three DLC packs, all of which were released for free. Those being titled Hidden Dreams, Grimm Troupe, and Godmaster. The first one adds a remixed boss fight for the lovable dung beetle that is incredibly fun to quote (see the title of this very blog post for more) as well as the ability to fight Grey Prince Zote, who exists mostly as a joke character. The joke being that you frequently cross paths with a braggart named Zote, who despite claiming to be a nigh-invulnerable warrior who could take on entire armies blindfolded, is actually a hilariously incompetent bumbling fool. But thanks to slandering actual heroes and taking credit for their deeds, he wins the heart of Bretta, an incredibly lonely beetle who desperately wants a boyfriend. Going inside her dreams let's you fight a buffed up Zote, giving you one of the hardest boss battles in the game. Mostly because this fight can be challenged infinitely and each time you win, the next battle will make Zote even stronger. You need to defeat Grey Prince Zote a bare minimum of 10 times for Bretta to realize that Zote is just a faker, which will complete her side-quest. This fight is a perfect example of a DLC boss done right, as it's smoothly integrated into the rest of the game. I legitimately didn't know this fight wasn't in the vanilla game and was added in post-launch until about two weeks ago.

The standout DLC, in my opinion is Grimm Troupe. It's much more elaborate that Hidden Dreams, offering a brand-new side-quest culminating in what many feel to be the hardest boss in the game, Nightmare King Grimm. As someone who spent a very long time on this boss, I can assure you that Nightmare King Grimm lives up to the hype. Grimm is easily one of the most popular characters among Hollow Knight fans, partly because of his gothic design, positively epic battle theme, being based off of a really obscure insect (if you know what a calyptra moth is, raise your hand), and for being the biggest challenge in the game (at least until we reach Godmaster). But rather than just say "it's a hard boss" and leave it at that, allow me to explain why this battle is difficult. Take a boss that already has incredible agility and speed, and double that speed. Make it so he deals double damage with every attack. Make it so that as soon as one attack ends, he combos it into another attack pattern, giving you a fraction of a second to react. And to top all this off, you need to have the Grimm Child charm (given to you at the beginning of the side-quest) equipped, but it's effect (summon a baby Grimm to assist you in combat) is negated for this fight, essentially wasting your charm slots, which in turn limits your customization options. All these things combined make up what was for a very long time the most difficult battle in the game. But I wouldn't call the fight unfair. With enough practice, determination, and muscle memory, you can defeat him and complete the sidequest. But let me bring up the elephant in the room. If you have poor reflexes, hand-eye coordination, or have a disability that interferes with dexterity/reaction time, you are not going to enjoy this game. It's based almost entirely around skill and reflexes, unapologetically so, and considering my best friend IRL is handicapped this way I can tell you he would not find any enjoyment out of Hollow Knight (unless he watches someone else play it). Yeah the game's ESRB rating might be E for Everyone, but the sad truth is Hollow Knight, and video games in this general style (Dark Souls, Cuphead, Super Meat Boy, etc), simply are NOT for everyone. I hate to be that way, and I assure you, I'm not some stuff-up elitist who thinks I'm better than everyone else because of my gaming talents, and I would rather a video game gets an incredibly wide audience, even if it's mostly casual gamers with the occasional hardcore gamer here and there, than a game I like have a small audience consisting entirely of hardcore gamers.

The final DLC, originally titled Gods & Glory but was renamed to Godmaster so Team Cherry wouldn't get sued for copyright (apparently Gods & Glory is the name of a semi-popular mobile app), is just as ambitious as Grimm Troupe, maybe even more so. It too includes a new side-quest where the Knight must travel to Godhome and defeat godly versions of all the bosses he(she?) has defeated. And yes. That includes Nightmare King Grimm and Grey Prince Zote. Also, the "Godly" version of Grey Prince Zote made me laugh because of his description in the Hall of Gods (where you can challenge any previously encountered boss to a rematch without going through the entire Boss Rush). It reads "A False God created by an Obsessive Mind". Even in Godhome, no one puts up with Zote's shenanigans.

The DLC also has seven new bosses, all of whom are fought in the Boss Rush. And as a bit of a dev team gag, the Nail Masters are among the new bosses. If you do some research, the Nail Masters were originally going to be bosses in the vanilla game, the idea being that defeating them will teach you the Charged Attacks (Dash Slash, Great Slash and Spin Slash). Instead, much like the Dreamers, they became unfightable and the challenge became getting TO them in the first place (one Master requires a lot of back-tracking, another requires some difficult platforming, and the third is in a easy-to-miss area). But now they are fightable bosses! Granted, they are very easy and straight-forward.

 

Other new bosses include Winged Nosk, which is literally just Nosk but WITH WINGS! (duh!) There's also the Great Nail-Sage Sly, who is encountered in the vanilla game as a humble shopkeeper. But collecting the Charged Attacks reveals that he too is a Nail Master. As such, Sly's battle uses techniques and patterns borrowed from the other three Nail Masters. After that are the Sisters of Battle, a trio of praying mantis sisters who, true to their name, fight as a team and must be defeated individually. After THAT, we have Pure Vessel, and if you thought Nightmare King Grimm was hard, Pure Vessel is basically Grimm on steroids. Or so I have been told. I haven't fought Pure Vessel yet. And I can't elaborate on who Pure Vessel as a character is because it's a massive spoiler (says the guy who put up a picture of Pure Vessel...) And finally, we have the TRUE true final boss. Which is literally a bigger, faster, harder-hitting version of the regular true final boss. And that's all you'll get from me, because there is no way I will discuss something as spoiler-y as a final boss. At least, not right now. Maybe in a few months when the overwhelming majority of people have played through the game.

On top of all the post-launch content I mentioned, Team Cherry is taking a page out of Yacht Club Games's book and have announced that they are working on a fourth bit of DLC where you get to play as fan-favorite supporting character, Hornet. Why is she a fan favorite? First of all, right before you head off to face the True Final Boss she shouts something in Hallownestian (the language the insects speak in is unknown so let's call it Hallownestian for now) that the fanbase is convinced means "Git Gud!". Hence, half of all Hornet fan-art revolves around her making "Git Gud!" jokes.  But hey, being able to play as Hornet would be cool. Not sure how Charms would work with Hornet, if she even gets access to Charms (I swear if they make her the second coming of Riku...), but her ability to create spider-webs and fight with a spear Needle would be fun. Especially since I have a soft spot for spears, since I feel that swords are a medieval weapon that shows up way too frequently in modern fiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, swords are a traditionally heroic weapon, and they are iconic and instantly recognizable, but I want a game where the main hero uses a more obscure medieval weapon! Like a spear. Or a flail. Or a quarterstaff. Or a scythe. Or a crossbow. Or a tomahawk. Or a battle-axe. Or a morningstar.

PRESENTATION!

GreenPath!

This is the part where we spend a bajillion years gushing over Hollow Knight's art-style and music, because to be quite frank, Hollow Knight is the best platformer ever in this regard. Despite being very much a Gothic Fantasy, Hollow Knight manages to remain vibrant and full of life and personality from beginning to end. Let's start with the first area, the Forgotten Crossroads.

The Forgotten Crossroads are the first (real) area, once you clear the tutorial. The whole area is primarily blue-ish gray in color, and textured to look like the barren rocky surface, and the whole aesthetic of the area conveys a sense of melancholy and loneliness. But head a little bit to the east and reach Greenpath (pictured above the picture of Forgotten Crossroads), and it's bright, green, and full of vegetation. It conveys a sense of wonder and life.

Then we move on to City of Tears, which goes back to the blues of the Crossroads, but puts it in a new context. The sense of melancholy and loneliness is still present (you are exploring a city overrun by undead bug knights), but it also conveys a feeling of majesty and awe. I'm not gonna lie, finding the City of Tears for the first time is probably the most magical experience I've had in a video game. I even enjoyed repeat visits to the City of Tears precisely because the amount of emotion this one area holds borders on "Signature Scene" levels of memorable. Evidently, someone at Team Cherry knew the City of Tears would garner this reception (at least from me) because there's a friendly NPC who recommends going to City of Tears to upgrade your sword nail. Which is also the only time the game tries to steer you into one particular path.

After that we have the Infected Crossroads, a mid-late-game area that is just a transformed version of the Forgotten Crossroads. Upon progressing further into the plot, the entire area gets covered in the very infection that destroyed Hallownest. The orange veins, the bulging boils, and the yellowish mist all capture a perfect feeling of wrongness and horror, almost as if the world itself is disgusted by it's sorry state.

And there are a ton of other areas I could analyze and try to explain why they are gorgeous, but I think I made my point clear. The only area that I didn't enjoy from a presentational stand-point was The White Palace, an extremely late-game area. But the reason why I dislike The White Palace is not because it's ugly, in fact the angelic white and pristine architecture looks beautiful and sets the mood perfectly alongside the equally angelic music. The problem was the sound effect of the various traps playing, which not only overlap way too much,but it drowns out the angelic music. It got so infuriating I actually lowered the volume of sound effects and considered muting my TV.

Hollow Knight is no slouch when it comes to character designs, either. The characters are drawn by hand and rendered in a deliberately slow frame rate (the game itself runs at 60fps, but each animation for the characters consist of at most 24 frames), which makes them pop out against the background. Also, this game has managed to make insects, which are literally the most terrifying creatures on the planet (something about exoskeletons and antennae creep me out), into the most adorable things ever. Granted, the bugs of Hallownest only look cute because everyone is wearing a mask and there's literally an NPC who explains that the insects of Hollow Knight's universe wear masks to hide the grotesque nature of their actual faces. Hey, it's a Gothic Fantasy game, remember?

As far as sound goes, the music in this game is perfect for what it sets out to accomplish. Which is create an atmosphere to compliment the visuals. Which means we got violins, piano, latin chanting, and basically every good classical instrument. And, for some reason, electric guitar! Granted, the electric guitar is reserved for the two most difficult bosses in the game, those being Nightmare King Grimm and the game's True Final Boss. But both times it is GLORIOUS.

Hollow Knight also puts a massive emphasis on sound effects. From the pit-pat of the Knight's footsteps, to the howling of the wind, to even the little things like raindrops and and the Cling! Of clashing blades Nails. This might be the one video game where I consider sound effects to be just as important to it's overall presentation as the music and visuals. Because usually sound effects are boringly generic.

Overall, Hollow Knight is the game that might just be the closest to be perfect across the board. With a strong art direction and a majestic soundtrack, sound effects that heighten the immersion and atmosphere, enough content to keep you busy for over 60 hours, well-executed "show, don't tell" style of story, and a challenging but fair combat system. Hollow Knight is, I feel, the very culmination of it's genre. Almost as if every Metroidvania ever was leading up to this one game. The only major flaw of this game is if you have low dexterity or a disability impeding your hand-eye coordination, you won't be able to experience everything Hollow Knight has to offer. As such, I give Hollow Knight, a 10/10. Go play it. At $15 (last I checked), it's an absolute steal. If anything, Hollow Knight is underpriced, considering the amount of content and the quality of the game overall.

P.S. I've redone my formatting somewhat. I now use HEADLINERS so people can read about the important things (to them) and skip over the rest of the post should they decide they don't care about story or presentation. Also I moved the images to the center because it looks nicer. Hope you enjoy it!