Hollow Knight came out about 8 years ago. For me, it just flew on by. I didn’t even notice it. I’m sure I saw ads and awards but… they just didn’t register.
Having a conversation the other day at work, a co-worker told me to go back and revisit it, as it’s one of the best Metroidvanias ever. I guess it was a free game on the PS network because I already had it downloaded and I finally fired it up for the first time.
Holy cow, it’s a good game. It hits all of the notes you expect. Extremely limited starting map area sprinkled with stuff that makes you say “if I could wall climb, I could get up there” or “if I had a dash move, I could get across that water”. And you fight a boss and get a tool that lets you wall climb. You fight a boss that gives you a cape that lets you dash. And you get new and different areas with each new move the game gives you.
There’s a ton of fun areas. The swamp, the crystal mine, the sewers… Each one feels different and is populated with different creatures trying to kill you.
There is a mechanism that will be familiar to anybody who plays soulslikes where, when you die, all of your money goes into the final resting spot of your previous death. So you’ve got to trudge back and get your old ghost back and then you’ll get your money back too… but, if you die a second time, whoopsie, your money is gone away.
The good news is that there is a bank for you. You can squirrel away “geo” (currency units) at the bank and this will give you some elbow room to explore. “I don’t want to lose 200 geo!”, you will say and feel good about it being there for you later. This will help with the early part of the game where re-finding 200 geo is a major chore and it’ll help you save up to buy the stuff in the shops you’ll need.
The bad news is… well, you can learn about the bad news on your own.
If I have a complaint, it’s one of those complaints that someone else might read as a compliment: The game has a *LOT* of secrets. So if you do a playthrough the first time, you’re going to miss a *LOT* of stuff. I had 3-of-4 collectables that, when I got a fourth, would give me an extra hit point and I couldn’t find the 4th to save my life. I checked out a guide and, of course, I had missed two.
So I went back and got them.
I also sometimes wonder what area is the one I need to go in next and it feels like it could be any of two or three but I don’t have a double jump yet or I don’t have a long jump yet and I don’t know where to go in order to pick up the next skill. So a guide helped me with that too.
If you’re not too proud to google up a guide, you should pick this game up if you’re even remotely positive toward Metroidvanias. It’s a darn good one.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat the Mantis Lords and have my opinion go from “this game is great!” to “this game is BS.”
So… what are you playing?
The first major relase for POE2 (0.2.0) landed last week… and to everyone’s amazement player power was nerfed more or less across the board.
I won’t re-rant my rant from 0.1.0 … but the salient point for those of us old enough to remember the pre-Streamer days of developers interacting with their players is that we were treated to a very healthy dose of, ‘you have to understand that you’re not enjoying the game correctly’ from the lead designer (Jonathan).
What’s changed? Instead of forum warriors whose influence is unknown (or game journalists whose influence is bought), games now have to contend with streamers who have a following semi-independent from the game itself and who can’t be accused of not understanding how to play. Plus some of them are very nearly charismatic — or at least able to communicate within the milieu.
Anyhow, all of a sudden the fawning reviews of 0.1.0 went ‘red’ immediately. Now, as my past rant suggests, I have no idea why everyone thought 0.1.0 was good (it’s sh*te) — I assume the new shiney was just too overpowering — but seeing the massive backlash for 0.2.0 is mildly gratifying.
This interview with ‘Zizaran’ is literally cringe as the lead designer has to talk about why his baby is less than celestially beautiful (Zizaran isn’t even combative — these are basically comments from Steam). What makes the interview interesting (for those who care) is that the second lead designer, Mark, takes an engineering (vs. artistic) stance and can acknowledge that perhaps some things are, um, not at the moment in whack.
https://youtu.be/YiFLwjFI4S4?si=vtVphS0Yr3g1icXX
Towards the middle, Mark just starts saying, yes… that thing is probably bad, I’ll fix it today. He says it a lot. The next day? 7GB patch with a lot of the changes that Jonathan was defending on ‘Artistic Vision’ ground were altered.
The game is still mostly sh*te with far too many bad Lead Designer Vision issues… but I’m almost (but not really) hopeful that the ‘Vision of POE2’ will be broken so that POE1 may be upgraded into a better game, which was supposed to be the point all along.
Until then, at least Last Epoch’s 1.2 release is next week… I’ll play that instead.Report
Yeah, fighting the mantis lords and… this game is BS.Report
It’s been so long since I played that I had to google them — and yes, I hated that battle. I believe I got a lot of exploring done in the rest of the map while avoiding them.
Re the main post, I could tell while I was playing that there was more to the game than I was getting to, but there’s something deep within me that stops me from ever looking at a guide. Reading your posts does make me kind of want to fire it back up though.Report