One moment marvel at the beauty of the world and creatures, the next kill all the larvae that burst from a defeated enemy's chest.

One of the best metroidvania games I've played. It offers a large game with a lot of extra content and lore to discover with extra boss battles and side characters you can run into in your journey that reveal more about themselves or their journey as you meet with your meetings possibly effecting their and your endings. You can equip a wide variety of powerups/modifiers that help you adjust your character to fit how you like to play or you. Beautiful world and backgrounds with well designed, and often grossly beautiful, enemies with a nice lore book to fill that gives you more details about the setting. Combat is quick and responsive with some varied and tense boss fights.

A standout feature of the game is the freedom it gives you in the possible routes that you can take through it. Most medtoridvania style games are almost completely linear other than side or extra content you might discover or have to backtrack for. Hollow Knight can allow you to conquer multiple possible areas in different orders both through casual exploration that can give you a few routes but those choices are increased by just understanding how the game and its systems work by default, allowing some players to get to areas early that might not seem accessible in the early game. Both allowing for potentially interesting ways through the game for those that don't follow a more obvious path as well as interesting paths for challenge or speedruns.

Hollow Knight's soundtrack can match the beauty of its world with City of Tears being a highlight and one of the better tracks I've heard in a game and the bench resting theme Reflection standing out as a memorable sanctuary area theme that is up there with Resident Evil 4's Serenity.

The only minor complaint I have is the odd way it seemed to want to get on the Dark Souls bandwagon where they make poor use of the FromSoftware style mechanic where you lose resources when you die unless you get to your body in one life to recover them. This hasn't even been an interesting or meaningful mechanic in FromSoftware's own titles since Demon Souls. In Hollow Knight you aren't even losing experience, just what is essentially money that you can spend on equip-able modifiers. At one point you will need to buy a lantern but nothing else is ever important and certainly not needed for completion, so it ends up being little more than a potential waste of time if you just lost your resources and were delayed in trying some alternate strategy or upgrade out. I never ended up dying outside of boss fights so I never lost anything but I suppose if you were really doing poorly at the game you might need to farm a little to buy that lantern which could make it more frustrating.

One moment marvel at the beauty of the world and creatures, the next kill all the larvae that burst from a defeated enemy's chest. One of the best metroidvania games I've played. It offers a large game with a lot of extra content and lore to discover with extra boss battles and side characters you can run into in your journey that reveal more about themselves or their journey as you meet with your meetings possibly effecting their and your endings. You can equip a wide variety of powerups/modifiers that help you adjust your character to fit how you like to play or you. Beautiful world and backgrounds with well designed, and often grossly beautiful, enemies with a nice lore book to fill that gives you more details about the setting. Combat is quick and responsive with some varied and tense boss fights. A standout feature of the game is the freedom it gives you in the possible routes that you can take through it. Most medtoridvania style games are almost completely linear other than side or extra content you might discover or have to backtrack for. Hollow Knight can allow you to conquer multiple possible areas in different orders both through casual exploration that can give you a few routes but those choices are increased by just understanding how the game and its systems work by default, allowing some players to get to areas early that might not seem accessible in the early game. Both allowing for potentially interesting ways through the game for those that don't follow a more obvious path as well as interesting paths for challenge or speedruns. Hollow Knight's soundtrack can match the beauty of its world with City of Tears being a highlight and one of the better tracks I've heard in a game and the bench resting theme Reflection standing out as a memorable sanctuary area theme that is up there with Resident Evil 4's Serenity. The only minor complaint I have is the odd way it seemed to want to get on the Dark Souls bandwagon where they make poor use of the FromSoftware style mechanic where you lose resources when you die unless you get to your body in one life to recover them. This hasn't even been an interesting or meaningful mechanic in FromSoftware's own titles since Demon Souls. In Hollow Knight you aren't even losing experience, just what is essentially money that you can spend on equip-able modifiers. At one point you will need to buy a lantern but nothing else is ever important and certainly not needed for completion, so it ends up being little more than a potential waste of time if you just lost your resources and were delayed in trying some alternate strategy or upgrade out. I never ended up dying outside of boss fights so I never lost anything but I suppose if you were really doing poorly at the game you might need to farm a little to buy that lantern which could make it more frustrating.