Hollow Knight

[Leisher]

Where to start?

First, I should let you know I've been playing it for years. Why? Because I was playing it exclusively on Steam Deck during travels and in those moments I was laid up in a hospital or something. I never played it on my PC until last week, which means I played it only so often. That being said, there are people who have played it for years intentionally. There's a lot to do, the world can be very confusing to navigate, tons of secrets, 5 endings (all canon per the devs), and the game's more hardcore players call people who use a charm (I'll explain later) that shows where you are on the map "noobs" or worse.

Hollow Knight is a 2D Metroidvania platformer in the Souls genre with a very strong emphasis on action and exploration.

It's fun as fuck. It's also hard as fuck. Legit HARD AF. (And there are psychos who do "no death" runs...although, I've heard many of them cheat using save files.) Full disclosure: I've reached the FF boss and I'm not sure I want to keep going. Not that it isn't fun, it's just frustrating, takes time (I have to fight another boss first), and my immersion in the story definitely suffered over the years. I also have an optional late game boss available to me that makes me wonder if my twitch reflexes have aged past me being able to beat him. Reading online that everyone, regardless of age, was having trouble made me feel better. But I should also point out that I haven't even seen the Pantheon, which is apparently

The story is deep and exceptionally well told, but also confusing (playing it for such an extended time doesn't help). I've seen lore videos where the narrator basically says, "I don't know what this means" and then they point to the upcoming sequel, "Silksong", as potentially having answers. We'll see.

You are the Hollow Knight and you have a calling to come to this land populated by humanoid bugs and normal bugs. This is shown in the opening sequence, but not really understandable until the end sequence. You arrive in the very small town of Dirtmouth and the adventure begins.

The world is beautiful and expertly designed. So many areas of interest, places that will make you want to chuck your controller, things you just can't do and you know you need to find something and then return, and so very many fights.

The fighting is perfect. Yeah, I said it. Perfect. From the enemy designs to your builds to levels where you fight and so on, it just plays perfectly.

And you can build a lot. You'll get all the standard equipment upgrades, spells, extra health, special abilities, and yada yada yada that you expect from this type of game. However, you don't get it via XP, it's all found through exploration and combat. Even items you can buy in stores must be purchased through money you earn by fighting. The biggest difference from player to player will be in the charms and there are 40 of them. You can only equip as many as your notches allow (11 max notches) and the various charms have different notch requirements. The charms all come in different varieties adding health, power, spell power, dashes, and so on. However, years into it I just found out there are special abilities unlocked with charm combinations. Who knew? I'm at 105% completion (DLC takes the max up to 112%) and still haven't figured out any combos. I did learn I can overcharm though, and unless you're a teenager with lightning fast reflexes, I wouldn't recommend this path as you take double damage when you go this route.

You'll need those charms to get through the many, many boss fights throughout this world. Those boss fights doubling up as once you defeat them, many also have dream variants that are tougher.

There is so much about this game to love, from the moody atmosphere to the graphics to the perfect fighting system to the attention to detail the devs put into it to the seemingly endless hours you can spend in it and so on.

This game would easily be at the top of "Best" lists, it's that damn good, but it can also be that damn frustrating. Exceptional game.