Recent reviews by super0cat

Talking actual game design problem;
You cannot kill a skeleton on certain levels of incline, the skull rolls away and you cannot catch it before it gets back up.

I know this game is about positioning but I've been here for an hour and I cant fight anywhere else Capcom PLEASE.
I know your busy doing damage control so this isn't important but i beg, beg, BEG.
Make skeletons have an upper limit to re-spawning or make skulls not roll as much.

Genuine softlock tier moment.
No, I will not rollback to last inn save, that'd be cringe AF.

It is,
in fact,
a good game.

Finally, parrying estoc.

9/10.

amogus



















It is good though...

Epic game.

Overall a very good game, for those who search for the controls.

*NOTE
If you don't like difficult games, wiki games, or games that give little direction to the player then this game is not for you.
If none of that matters to you or is of slight inconvenience to you then I do recommend this game to you.

My thoughts:
The music is good and fits every scenario.
The aforementioned controls work well if you understand them, emphasis on the "if" there, make of that what you will.
The use of pixelart is superb and should be praised as there is never a time where a pixel is off axis (sprites overlap with the background at a ratio of 1:1, always).
The difficulty... Asthetic. It's a hard game and that's ok, you may ask yourself "what were they thinking" but I assure you that the difficulty IS intentional.
The story is good and there is plenty of locational lore if you want it and its all completely optional, very nice.

I hope my thoughts are of use.


Some fun facts:
You play as slugcat who is delicious, or so I'm told.
You can tame lizard friend, but you still smell very tasty.
You should probably read the pause menu.
You can throw rocks at people, as in real life it is a great way to NOT make friends.
You cannot hibernate with food to store it for later, as slugcats loud snoring drives it away.

Gotten over 160 hours clocked in with this game, enjoyed every moment.

Hollow knight is a game in which you, the knight, traverse the abandoned insectoid kingdom of Hollownest in order to fufill the knights unknown role with the kingdom. Along the way you will; see/traverse many of places, cut down loads of enemies with your sword "nail", collect a bunch of upgrades, meet a few friendly characters, and inevitably find out your part in all this.

What this game has going for it:

• Good metroidvania: For some thats all they need to hear, if you like the genre then i'll tell you that its prety faithful to the nintendo one in terms of progression and secrets.
  
• The challenge: Hollow Knight can be made easier or hard depending on how much you explore so it's fairly easy to put self imposed difficulty onto yourself or make it easier depending on your preferance. That being said, by default this game is difficult and will ask a lot of you. The path of pain and the final pantheon may steal your soul but are completely optional, you have been warned.
  
• Big world: After maybe ten hours or so you'll hit a poin where you say "it looks like im prety far into the game and it must end soon" but then the game throws you a curveball by continuing for an aditional twenty or so hours with more great new content. Then after you think you've seen it all the game hits you with the completion meter and you realize even at the end of the game you've only done perhaps 50-60% of everything there is; this game has substance.
  
• Nice pictures: You may be spending a while playing this game so it helps that it in fact looks nice, the game has a 2D hand drawn style that is consistent through and through and with the varried locals you will frequently see somthing new.
  
• Controlls that fit: It's vague to say that a game has "tight controlls" as a games like super mario world have tight controlls, but not everything the game asks of you may feel like it was designed with the controlls provided in mind. This game has controlls that while are not perhaps slick or versitile fit the game exeedingly well; the knight instantly accellerates, stops on a dime, has a sort of jump delay (hard to explain), a dash that covers an exact distance, a hit that makes him recoil backwards after striking an enemy, and a hefty accent/decent speed. On paper it sounds clunky but as far as what the game asks of you it keeps the controlls you are given in mind and every obstacle can clearly be traversed/defeated by using them in tandom; it has controlls that fit.
  
• Smooth sounds: This game has music to spare and a track for nearly everything, all well made and add to whatever it may be your doing.
  
• No nagging: Hollow knight only tells you how to attack, jump, heal, and use an ability you pick up; any aditional way you find to use them or stategy with them is discovered by the player and never explicitly stated. It's not that the lessons arent there, as this game has a property called "game design" where in a situation an ability or strategy may be used for better results but is not explicitly stated but instead presented in a way that may make the player experiment and "accidentally" discover it in a natural way leading to a feeling of self accomplishment. This is my personal favorite part of this game and it's done to wonderful effect throughout the game.
  
• Play your way: Through the use of abilities and character augmentation you will create a play style that is unique. If you watches someone else paly this game it is probable that their play style may be drastically different to yours, you would have to wach maybe twelve or so others play the game to find someone who plays closely similar to you and even then they probably wouldn't match you completely.
  
• Extra content: As of this review each DLC has been released with no plans of more in the future, the game is done. The DLC was free and comes with every coppy of the game, it was nice to see developers intent on releasing the best product they could and then do even more. I wont go over here what the DLC is but if you ever wonder what it is there is a list somewhere on this page and in the games main menu.

I went into this game blind and expected somthing special given its review but wow, this game.
10/10
A must try game.

Be aware:
If you like this game to the point that you'd concider 100% completing it depending on what you concider "completion" you may have a wildly different difficulty experience as some of the "completions" for this game are insane; and when i say insane i dont mean it's tedious, frustrating, or grindy, it's pure unadultarated difficulty distilled to its most potent form. This is the only qritique i have for this game but the ultra hard stuff is completely optional.

Context for why its difficult: The final pantheon is a boss rush containing every boss in the game plus a few extra that must be defeated without dying, it takes about 50-80 minutes depending on self imposed bindings. For comparison, the path of pain was the most challenging part of the game requiring you to do some not-so-simple platforming perfectly for a large strech of terrain; it was in fact painful but was absolutely nothing compared to the final pantheon. After completing the final pantheon and attempting the path of pain it wouldn't suprise me if it took 15 minutes compared to the likely 5-6 hours it would take to complete it the first time.

Example: In order to reach 112% completion (current max) you do NOT have to complete the final pantheon but you do have to unlock it and you could then say that you have "completed" the game without beating it as you would obtain the 112%. In order to complete every achivement you must complete the final pantheon, this single achivement is insane and there is a high probability that you or somthing you own will be broken. In order to say that you've "done everything" aka "completion" you may complete the final pantheon again at an even higher difficulty, you could do this but please don't; im sure that if there was an achivement on steam for this the global statistics would be 0.00%.