Hollow Knight - Dark Souls Metroidvania... with bugs!

[Riot Guard]

Okay, I got the game and it's good so far. Though fuck the ants and their bullshit diagonal pogo platforming.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Finished the game, it has moments of brilliance but it's just... not very fun. A lot of fuck yous to the player and his time for reasons I can't fathom like double environmental damage, backtracking and enemy gauntlets preceding bosses. It's not a git gud issue since I finish those usually with full health due to how easy healing is, but it increases my chances to choke on the boss itself, especially when it goes through a phase change and then you hope to god you aren't hit by some bullshit extra effect.

Besides this the game is way too grind heavy, I have no idea why gauntlet enemies don't give you money since that would at least make those somewhat rewarding when you conquer them. At least a few hours where spent solely grinding, either for absolutely shit quests or for money to buy shit with. It is also annoying in how little modes of transportations are, especially when you only get warp to fast travel point once you finish most of the quests.

Boss wise the end act bosses are probably the best with the rest being a split, the biggest issues for me were contact damage since that can be massive and chained after an attack drops you unto the boss, and bosses that teleport away, making fighting them going back and forth across the arena, sometimes into them to contact damage which is aggravating.

The combat system feels like a downgrade, you have a lot of tools but are extremely limited with how many you can put so I had extremely little experimentation overall. I stuck to the crest that lets me attack fast which was pretty good overall, as well as the better heal and the bell to prevent taking damage from healing.

The story and atmosphere were overall downgrade, there is no sense of mystery and the religion is cartoonishly evil to take seriously and it just didn't resonate with me, especially in the "I recognized it so I clapped!" moments.

It did make me laugh when I realize the story was the meme of how a story with a male main character is how replaceable he is and how he needs to make sacrifices for the greater goods (HK1) and a story with a female main character is about how special she is and how she can have both her cake and eat it. I am afraid how much porn there's going to be of Hornet and Lace.

It definitely doesn't justify the 7 years dev time, very few actual bosses and too many minibosses. Wonder if it will have the same cult following the original had after the nostalgia goggles wear out.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

very few actual bosses and too many minibosses

I'm still on act 1, but many mini bosses are ironically harder than the real bosses. Take Widow and Sister Spinster, for example. Despite both of them having bulltshit double damage attacks. SS is very straightforward to defeat once you take care of clearing up the ads a,d her attacks are well telegraphed, meanwhile Widow's bells not only fall but also bounce, which means that your srceen can get filled with things that deal damage much more easily (and the floor spikes doing double damage is bullshit)

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Hang on are the memes that Hornet canonically fucks but outlives all her partners true?

I must've missed the text but I keep seeing it online.

 

[Jotch]

It definitely doesn't justify the 7 years dev time, very few actual bosses and too many minibosses. Wonder if it will have the same cult following the original had after the nostalgia goggles wear out.

Let's hope they fix things up based on feedback before that happens. I want this game to be better. I've been having fun despite the difficulty but I haven't come close to finishing it yet so who knows. But given your completion percentage you might not have gotten much of the bonus stuff that might have made things easier.

Also, if I remember correctly, about half of the time spent was spent not developing the game hardly at all, supposedly for family reasons.

I stand firm in that if you don't go into the game wanting to like it, it's not good enough to change your mind. I'm curious how things get shaken up in this game's equivalent of the lifeblood DLC. That shook up hollow knight's combat pretty well. But I agree, the problem really isn't combat as much as it is the maps being designed cruelly. I think if they only made minor map changes to be more forgiving for boss retries and distance to the nearest bench to be closer to the original game, I think 80% of complaints would stop.

 

[Gimmick Account]

Jesus fuck, my controller decided to spaz out and swap left and right inputs at random every few seconds... this happened at the start of the route to the Nameless Village. I did it anyway. Many of you won't know what this means yet, but when you do, think of me and understand that I alone am the honoured one.

especially when it goes through a phase change and then you hope to god you aren't hit by some bullshit extra effect

Man we're playing different games. I remember thinking a couple of times that I appreciated how pretty much all bosses put their cards on the table. Multiple phases are rare and them pulling something new out rather than just increasing the intensity is very rare here, the total opposite of just about any other soulsygame.

Hang on are the memes that Hornet canonically fucks but outlives all her partners true?

It's just this one description. You can read it as her breaking up instead of fucking if you want her to be pure for some reason (PS she gets horrifically and graphically violated in the style of all my favourite Japanese media in this very game).

---

Update: I thought I'd finish off the last few bosses with this controller for fun but I might need to break out the screwdriver for Lost Lace. In theory she can't know what I'm gonna do next if I don't know either, right? In practice that's not how videogames work idiot and it's a highly positional fight despite looking like it'd be pretty easy if I could control my legs.

 

[BlerdBjern]

After a significant amount of deaths, I have defeated that planty bitch in shellwood.

Silkstorm is awesome.

Also, got the wanderer's crest, that's pretty neat...

Unfortunately, after fighting the planty bitch, i ran into this crazy chick in a place made of bells, and she utterly destroyed me... I'm assuming I have to kill her... But I'll come back to that later... Gonna tackle hunter's march first...

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

After a significant amount of deaths, I have defeated that planty bitch in shellwood.

Silkstorm is awesome.

Also, got the wanderer's crest, that's pretty neat...

Unfortunately, after fighting the planty bitch, i ran into this crazy chick in a place made of bells, and she utterly destroyed me... I'm assuming I have to kill her... But I'll come back to that later... Gonna tackle hunter's march first...

I found that the beast's crest works the best aganist here because of the attack speed boost you get after binding and the fact that the down attack shrinks your hitbox

 

[BlerdBjern]

I found that the beast's crest works the best aganist here because of the attack speed boost you get after binding and the fact that the down attack shrinks your hitbox

Well... Good thing I'm going to Hunter's march then...

 

[The oxymoronic European]

Is anyone else kinda miffed about the fact nearly all optional areas are hidden by some random crumbling walls or off camera jumps?
It's just frustrating having to look up stuff just to find huge swathes of the game behind stuff I had no way of knowing was there. I don't know, maybe I just suck at exploration?
I'm pretty sure the only area hidden like that in Hollow Knight was the beehive, and that was added in a free DLC, making it so it couldn't be nearly slotted in.

 

[Gimmick Account]

It's a genre convention, you'd have to take it up with Metroid. At least they're usually an actual cracked wall or suspicious hallway-spanning debris here rather than completely anonymous blocks.
Typically what happens is you fill out the map and start to notice room- or area-sized voids and can make an informed guess on where to investigate, if you weren't paying attention or grinding your sword on every surface the first time.
(Or, in this game, eventually get some quest and/or flea markers that tries to make sure you don't miss it if it's something major.)

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

Is anyone else kinda miffed about the fact nearly all optional areas are hidden by some random crumbling walls or off camera jumps?
It's just frustrating having to look up stuff just to find huge swathes of the game behind stuff I had no way of knowing was there. I don't know, maybe I just suck at exploration?
I'm pretty sure the only area hidden like that in Hollow Knight was the beehive, and that was added in a free DLC, making it so it couldn't be nearly slotted in.

Nah, lots of other areas in the first game were also like that. Just hit every wall that seems to end abruptly

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Let's hope they fix things up based on feedback before that happens. I want this game to be better. I've been having fun despite the difficulty but I haven't come close to finishing it yet so who knows. But given your completion percentage you might not have gotten much of the bonus stuff that might have made things easier.

Act 3 is way easier than act 2, and in act 2 while some power ups and tool spamming would have made my life easier in some areas, some areas are just fucking awfully designed like Bilewater, which is only playable if you found an accessory that makes you immune to parasites as well as a secret bench that reduces a corpse run from the entire level to half a level.

stand firm in that if you don't go into the game wanting to like it, it's not good enough to change your mind.

It's kind the "it's fun with friends" argument that is true for nearly everything.

Man we're playing different games. I remember thinking a couple of times that I appreciated how pretty much all bosses put their cards on the table. Multiple phases are rare and them pulling something new out rather than just increasing the intensity is very rare here, the total opposite of just about any other soulsygame.

It's not constant but stuff like The Last Judge fire explosion can come out nowhere and if you are badly positioned you are going to be hit. I'd agree it's usually well designed enough to be logical extensions and not be completely bullshit (unlike GPU shredding Radhan), but the fear is still there.

Is anyone else kinda miffed about the fact nearly all optional areas are hidden by some random crumbling walls or off camera jumps?
It's just frustrating having to look up stuff just to find huge swathes of the game behind stuff I had no way of knowing was there. I don't know, maybe I just suck at exploration?
I'm pretty sure the only area hidden like that in Hollow Knight was the beehive, and that was added in a free DLC, making it so it couldn't be nearly slotted in.

It is pretty annoying, especially if you don't notice something and that leads to an entirely new area required to finish the game, it can be as much as a tiny gap in the ceiling. I get the sense of wonder of finding a new area through a secret but if you get stuck you are absolutely fucked with how massive the map is. Like I said before, having a "you found everything in this room" QoL system would have been far better, as it stands I just can't see people finishing it without looking for an online map.

 

[Professor G. Raff]

Well, I've finished the game and damn it sure was good. Despite how much I love Hollow Knight I avoided being overhyped for 7 years which was a good thing so the fact that Silksong is probably objectively better in most ways is a very nice surprise. I still gotta process stuff like if I think Silksong has better music or not and if the overall boss roster is better (it probably is in consistency, but I don't think it's reached Hollow Knights individual highs) but as an entire package I think it probably does offer a higher quality experience.

That said there is one thing I REALLY dislike which is:

Spoiler: Very Endgame Spoilers

Lost Lace is such a fucking wet fart of a final boss, my biggest disappointment of the game by far. The final boss is... a THIRD iteration of the same fight? One thing Hollow Knight absolutely clowns on Silksong for is the overall story, I do not care about Lace at all like I do for the lead up to what the Radiance was and what it meant to defeat her and she is also a fucking original boss! If it had to be a rematch it should have been Grand Mother Silk who has fun mechanics but is pretty under-tuned in difficulty. Lost Lace is hard... but for all the reasons I hate. I lose half of my fucking damage to hits registering as parriers which is a big problem with small body bosses. Oh, you pogo'd 3 times as she dashed back and fourth? Well, those are all parries and not hits actually, haha, fuck you. Then the thing that really pisses me off is when she starts shooting void the tendrils and blades cover up a space much bigger than her body and because she teleports you can't keep a beat on her... and now if she re-appears in the void which is the same color as her you can't fucking see her to visually react to which attack she'll do. All this is on top of the fact she just gives so little openings the fight is a slog. One of the worst bosses in the game, Lace 2 was way more fun and not eating up the fucking final boss spot.

I know they have plans for Hollow Knight style DLC which is good because I don't think the likes of Pure Vessel or Nightmare King Grim or Sisters of Battle have been matched. I for sure thought Shakra was going to challenge you, but that seemingly isn't in the game but I am convinced it is pretty much 100% guaranteed in DLC. If they do another Godmaster like rematch thing, which they surely will, I hope to god they remove the pre-boss enemy waves that are built into some bosses... that was another big annoyance, I wanna fight a boss not enemies (this is different then some summoning enemies, btw)

Also as kind of a thing about how I play... I wonder if I'm alone on this.


I do NOT use tools. I do NOT use silkskills. I do NOT use anything that consumes a resource that will change bosses from attempt to attempt if I run out. I fight the bosses with pure pin fundamentals and if I die I just do it again until I win!
(only exception was Groal where I unloaded all my tools because I would do anything to avoid that runback.)

 

[Cactuar King]

Act 3 is way easier than act 2, and in act 2 while some power ups and tool spamming would have made my life easier in some areas, some areas are just fucking awfully designed like Bilewater, which is only playable if you found an accessory that makes you immune to parasites

Wait, there's an item for that?

 

[Gimmick Account]

I for sure thought Shakra was going to challenge you, but that seemingly isn't in the game but I am convinced it is pretty much 100% guaranteed in DLC.

You can duel her, it was fun. I summoned her by (accidentally) hitting her ring stake outside Bellhart after doing her quest iirc.

Wait, there's an item for that?

Yeah it's hidden in Putrefied Ducts. I only found it afterwards and never used it. Just embrace the infestation, decline engaging those dart cunts and cure yourself by cheesing some mosquitos before the boss.
Or alternatively there's a small cave behind a breakable wall above the boss arena with enough silk to cure it (I only found this after the fight too).

Only for the gauntlet though. The boss himself is trivial if you make friends with the maggots again.

 

[Deus Exica]

I do NOT use tools. I do NOT use silkskills. I do NOT use anything that consumes a resource that will change bosses from attempt to attempt if I run out. I fight the bosses with pure pin fundamentals and if I die I just do it again until I win!

Poison knives kick ass. It is just free damage as you wait 12 hours for the boss to stop picking around so you can pogo off their retarded bug heads.

 

[Gimmick Account]

Bosses die easier when you aren't trying to kill them in this game.
Remember to stay natural and relaxed. Quietness is the essence of shaolin kungfu.
Appreciate the ambience. Don't spoil it by cutting things short with purple bug ass grenades.
Because when you have mastered these scrolls you will one-shot every boss, and you'll miss them when they're gone.

 

[Terror Sandwich]

I'm at early Act 2, I'm taking my time since I haven't had a lot of free time lately. If it was a few month ago I'd have put easily over 60h into this game already, but I'm still only at 21h.
Unless it shits the bed hard, this will be my goty, surpassing Expedition 33 (which was another excellent game). It's incredible how much good content is here. I can't stop thinking about it.

And something that has surprised me is how many hidden "time based" secrets are there. I've been watching a vod playthrough of a streamer I enjoy, playing through the parts I've completed already, and I was shocked at how many events can trigger based on the path you took through the world, and which upgrades you currently have.
For example in Greymoor there was a boss fight that happened for me, but not for the streamer. I think it will only happen if you enter the area from one side, and try to exit from the other (but I'm not sure).
I can't wait to finish the game and replay it multiple times to learn off all these secrets and what triggers them.

 

[Newcomer 42]

nd I was shocked at how many events can trigger based on the path you took thought the world, and which upgrades you currently have.

Haven't found any of those yet, but the timer starts when you meet the events. Some NPCs can die or disappear if you take too long to visit them.

Spoiler

Your boss is probably that annoying moth. It disappears if you go there with the fleas, but he comes back later.