Hollow Knight: A simple, yet fantastic game

Let's start off by saying that I am a huge fan of side-scrolling platformers. I am also not a fan of games that are intensely complicated and involve using all 72 buttons on today's controllers. Perhaps the problem is that I don't really have the patience to remember all that and it's quite annoying when i put a game down for a few days and now i can't remember what any of the controls are because there are entirely too many of them. Ok, moving on... Hollow Knight!

I bought the game because it was featured on the front page of Steam, and normally i will ignore those because these are new releases that paid to be featured there. The good thing about Steam (as i am sure most of you gamers out there are aware) is that they allow you to watch several trailers and view the community feedback before deciding to purchase.

Hollow Knight: The Grim Troupe had received an "Overwhelmingly Positive" community score and the trailers looked great. Plus the fact that is was less than $15 meant SOLD.

The first thing you notice about the game is that it throws you straight into the action and it is dark and beautifully animated. The soundtrack is also haunting and perfect.

You start out with very little in the way of offense (just like in any game) but the enemies attack patterns are easy to predict and upon killing anything you end up getting some coins that help you to purchase powerups called "charms" of which you have a stash of dozens but can only equip a few at a time. This means that certain situations call for certain attributes that you may or may not have yet. It is up to you to find / purchase them. In this way the game falls into the "metroid-vania" category, which is a style of game i love.

You are, in many ways, allowed to go anywhere you want on the map, including to areas that you are not at all prepared for or powerful enough to complete. You quickly discover that this is not the area for you and the game kind of forces you to go the "correct" path by making it extremely difficult to pass rather than impossible.

Don't get me wrong, there are many places where you do not yet have the powerup that is required to get up a certain ledge etc, this is how they prevent you from skipping large portions of the game

no matter how hard you try, you will not clear this gap without the powerup that allows you to dash mid jump

The bosses are also huge and sometimes scary, sometimes whimsical and silly. They are also not too difficult, not too easy. If you get to one that kicks the crap out of you, there is a good chance you are arriving at them too early in the game or you need to watch their attacks and learn how to avoid them. There are very few instances in the game where you are simply able to "brute force" your way past.

Here is a wonderful trailer that shows a bit of everything the game has to offer without spoiling it.

credit to Team Cherry for this vid

Bottom line: This game is easy enough to simply pick up and play but difficult enough that you wont be able to breeze through it in a couple hours. The music and storyline are excellent and the game has wonderful replay value. Combine these things with the fact that the game is less than $20 (or $15 if you find a special) and in my mind anyway... it is the perfect game.