I'll go ahead and admit that I had this game before well in the past but it was a pirate version of the game and the programmers were very intelligent because while they didn't try to prevent this from happening (which I think all programmers are aware is impossible to prevent pirate activity) that had built some things into the coding so that certain aspects of the game would not be available to any pirate versions of the game. These missing features would not be noticeable until a great deal later in the game and while it didn't prevent you from even proceeding, it made the game noticeably more difficult.
So when Hollow Knight popped up as the "free" game this month I decided to jump back in and even though I have played all of this before I can say that this game is absolutely fantastic still.
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It's a side scrolling metroidvania game with pretty normal graphics and an amazing soundtrack. The story to me is a bit unclear but you are the hero that is trying to remove some sort of evil plague that is haunting the land. Not exactly a novel idea but honestly, what else are you going to make a 1 player game about?
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You jump, you smack, you attack with your very short range sword of sorts and as time goes by you gain other abilities that enable areas that were previously inaccessible to be accessed and this is very similar to many many other games that have come before and many that will come after. This is one of my favorite type of games and honestly, in the metroidvania category, I don't think that stellar graphics are really all that important. There are many indie games that are released using this exact premise and I enjoy them a great deal more than far more graphically advanced games that don't use these mechanisms.
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The bosses are interesting and even a bit cute and many of them seem impossible until you figure out their "tells" and once again, this is not innovative in any way but the art style as well as the exceptional music make this very dark game seem so much better than other games that are like it.
If you don't have a PS Plus account you could always buy the game I suppose and seeing as how we are in a transitional period from PS4 to PS5 you can probably get the game for next to nothing. Of course you could always sign up for the PS Plus account which costs something absurdly low like as little as $3 a month depending on the length of your contract.
If you are a fan of metroidvania platformers I guarantee you are going to like this game and the fact that it is several years old hasn't done anything to ruin its appeal. I highly recommend getting involved.