"I can't imagine it will take long to get the last 4%" he sais... oh boy, buckle up... The last 4% are the biggest challenge in this game (outside of steel soul) Indeed if you first try those 4% you'd only take like 4 - 6 hours I would guess, assuming you haven't found the area yet, maybe a bit less... You won't first try those 4%, I can tell you that much... GL on trying it
@@CobraCodexyeah, it’s a pretty lengthy 4%. That being said, if you like the combat, especially in more difficult boss fights, you’ll like that part of the DLC. My personal favorite part of the game is the bosses and what they introduce takes it to 11. Good luck and have fun!
I feel like the critisism of it being too big or being too long is a bit strange for a Metroidvania. I feel like the average length of a Metroidvania for the main story should be somewhere in that 10-20 hour range for someone who hasn't played before. The fun of it should be the exploration, the sense you're figuring out more of the world and collecting items that may have been a symbol for something lorewise or is just cool and fun to use. No hate but this is just my opinion
No worries, I think Hollow Knight turned out to be a good length overall. I only said that because in my experience most Metroidvanias tend to be on the shorter side so that's what I'm used to expecting. Not to say there isn't room for longer ones, but I remember seeing people say their first save took them 50-80+ hours which is part of what turned me off from my first run which felt like it was dragging around 10 hours in.
The main problem I think hollow knight can improve is the input logic with controller. Casting spell or nail art with wrong direction input is very punishing. I wish there is a way to make spell and nail art no longer require direction input without steam input mode workaround
@neko6193 there is no flaw there, that is a skill issue. this can be easily avoided by literally just not using them in the wrong direction. usually hitting something on the left means you have to aim to the left
@@Mr_turtleman. talk to elder bug and he will give description about an area and the relative location that you can explore if you don't know where to go
This video made me realize how subjective the things that make a game "good" are, since all of the reasons for why you didn't like the game at first are the reasons for why I liked it, exept I had the opposite opinions. I feel like the art is beautiful and distinct for most areas, the music is amazing and feels very iconic and recognizable, the map is big and exploring sometimes feels aimless and I love that. The only thing I didn't like during my first playthrough was how far some of the benches were from the boss fights, but overall I feel like the game is perfect for me, and I fell in love with it from the first playthrough
On my first play I enjoyed getting lost for a while. I discovered most of the areas and had the crystal dash, but was seemingly only finding dead ends which felt discouraging. In reality I was supposed to go fight Broken Vessel but didn't stumble upon it for some reason.
But then you get to the point about whether a really hard, punishing platformer section is even good design in the broader game context, no matter how well executed that idea is. Like should that style of section even be there
Fair enough, though I think the other commenter nailed what I was getting at. To me it felt out of place considering how the rest of the game is designed more for exploration and combat than straight up platforming gauntlets. As much as I love Super Meat Boy, I don't think that style of level design meshes well with the rest of Hollow Knight's systems.
@@CobraCodex that's very fair! I could also be a bit too generous in favour of HK here, because personally I heavily enjoy hard, punishing platforming challenges. However, I can definitely see how it would be more enjoyable for others if there were more checkpoints, like the infinite soul totems you can find in path of pain.
Tbh White Palace exists because there isn't that much hard platforming in the game so the whole point is just platforming and one can argue it doesn't fit well with the game but i think it does as again it IS for platforming and platforming only (tho there is a fair bit of lore in it)
On the topic of the soulslike death mechanic for silksong, we know that it is not going to be a part of the game. Instead, all rosaries are lost upon death, apart from ones you save on strings. I think you can spend rosaries to get strings worth slightly less, encouraging skill.
It’s crazy to me that the little indie game I played back in 2018 has reached a level of cultural significance comparable to that of indies like Undertale, and while that has been really cool to see, I think it has come with some drawbacks as well. Like Undertale was back when it first released, Hollow Knight has been hyped up far too much over the past few years. I say this as someone who considers Hollow Knight my favorite game of all time. There is a pressure from the ever-expanding fanbase of these games that if you play it you must have only positive things to say about it or they will throw a fit and tell you your opinion is invalid, so I'm glad to see none of that in this comments section. I like this video and I find most of your criticisms super valid, even if I personally disagree with most of them, so I’m just gonna scattershot some thoughts I had while watching. About the getting lost point, yes, this is easily the most divisive thing about the game. For someone like me who enjoys Hollow Knight’s atmosphere and environmental storytelling so much that they don’t care whether or not they are “progressing” per se, this is the best part of the game. For players who go into the game expecting it to play out like a traditional metroidvania, even a more obtuse entry like Super, I don’t think it’ll click right away. This is not an diss on anyone who plays the game like this or Metroid games (Metroid Prime is another one of my favorite games of all time and I’ve really hoping to give Echoes and Corruption a try), it’s just that I think the kind of exploration Hollow Knight offers isn’t for everyone. On a first playthrough at least. Like, even before I ever found THK statue or dream nail, I loved exploring the map so much that going a long time without item or story progression never really bothered me. Every time I found some nook in a corner of the map like the 420 geo rock in Kingdom’s Edge or Joni’s Repose in Howling Cliffs felt like drugs being injected directly into my bloodstream. The cool thing about Hollow Knight is that once you get the mantis claw, the amount of different routes you can take through the game is immense, even without things like shade skips or background pogoing. There's a really good video by Game Maker's Toolkit called The World Design of Hollow Knight that articulates this point very well, so if you haven't seen that I would recommend checking that out. Ultimately, though, it just comes down to preference. If you enjoy the game more on subsequent playthroughs where you know where to go, more power to you; I just wish I could wipe my memory and play this game again for the first time every time I start a new file. Yeah, there are totally a ton of QoL things that TC could totally have added that they didn’t. Maybe it’s because their main influences in making this game came out more than two or three decades ago lol. Retaining soul when you die in a dream fight would be really convenient. I was one of those people who took dozens of hours on my first playthrough lol. To be fair I was really bad at video games when I first played it. Yeah, the Grimm Troupe quest is kinda a drag, especially if you get to it late. The boss fights and charms are sick though, so it evens out I guess. About the shades, although I personally never had a problem with this, I know it has been a sticking point for quite a few, especially combined with not having benches before bosses. It really sucks that the shade mechanic of all things is what turns some people away, and even though it serves a cool lore purpose (even though the mechanic isn't strictly canon) I'm glad they're trying something new and much more freeing in Silksong with the cocoon when you die being a non-vital silk refill and rosaries currency system. I can see why you criticized White Palace, as a lot of people have had similar sentiments. I kinda got stuck there my first time because I was bad at platforming, but it did feel rewarding to beat and the lore is cool so I gave it a pass. Maybe its design flaws are because it was a stretch goal on the Kickstarter? Who knows. As far as grinding goes, I've never really understood why people think that refighting the Colosseum over and over again is necessary to buy everything. Most things in the game are reasonably priced by the time you get to them, so I'm assuming that really the only things you might need to grind for are the unbreakable charms or the lantern. Maybe the fountain in Ancient Basin if you don't have 3000 on you when you come across it. Selling relics to Lemm, rescuing grubs, hitting geo rocks, finding the Gorgeous Husk, and getting revenge on Millibelle are all ways that the game rewards you with money for exploration, so if you are observant enough, grinding isn't as much of an issue. Like, most enemies don't drop a lot, even with Fragile Greed, but you really don't need to kill a lot of enemies to gain geo in my experience. Selling all relics alone gets you 21,650 geo. Even if you miss some and/or spend some before lategame, you should have enough to buy unbreakable strength almost instantly. At most, I feel like you would need to refight colo 2 maybe three or four times if you're going for all the unbreakable charms, depending on how you've played up to that point. Idk, maybe it's just because my original playthrough was pretty long and so I was killing more enemies, but I had so much geo by the end I hardly knew what to do with it. My point is, there are a lot of ways to earn geo outside of just grinding colosseum fights or enemies, and if a player doesn't have enough geo immediately, they can always wait until later. I'm glad you came around on the “same-y” point, because I wholeheartedly agree. One time I watched a review of Hollow Knight where they compared its areas to the areas of a Mega Man game, which confused me to no end. They have almost nothing in common aside from the fact that they're both 2D platformers, so I really couldn't understand what point the review was trying to make. Maybe it is the muted colors thing, or maybe it's because people don't consider enemy variety a part of the area design, but I feel like there's more than enough to differentiate between distinct areas in the game, especially considering the more unique design that some areas like Crystal Peak and Deepest have. About the music: I'm sorry but this is the one thing that I fundamentally cannot agree with. I get the sound design covering up background ost sometimes, but I literally cannot imagine playing all the way through the game and not being able to hum at least a part of one track. As a music major who played this game in middle school, I may be a little biased because this game is part of the reason I decided to pursue music, got me into music theory, and made me listen to styles of music I had previously written off as pretentious. That being said, the only perspective I can see this issue with the music cropping up from is that maybe Christopher Larkin's classical and baroque influences made this soundtrack seem too tame compared to the more contemporary sound of some other metroidvanias, aside from the Grimm Troupe stuff. I mean, you basically said as much in the video, but I tend to find that even people who aren't as into those styles of music typically still enjoy Hollow Knight's soundtrack. Oh well. Music is also a matter of preference so I'll try not to hold it against you lol. Sorry for the essay. Tldr, I really really like Hollow Knight, but I can see why it's not everyone's favorite. I’m glad you ended up enjoying it, though. If I got anything wrong, feel free to say so.
I appreciate the passion you have for this game, and I imagine growing up with it during such a formative time had quite the impact on you which is great. To clarify/respond to a few of your points: I enjoyed getting lost for a while on my initial run which is why I ended up putting in 10 hours there. It's moreso that I hit a point where I had enough of the aimless wandering and kept stumbling upon dead ends which was discouraging. I had the crystal dash so what I was "supposed" to do next was fight Broken Vessel but didn't stumble upon it despite having been to ancient basin already. I didn't remember too much in detail from that run, but there was much less aimless wandering this time around which made for a more enjoyable experience. Grdinding geo was primarily for the unbreakable charms, yea. I had purchased everything else pretty early, but despite the thorough exploration I still was lacking in geo to upgrade those. Tbf I wasn't always scrounging for loose change whenever I killed an enemy later on so maybe that would've added up eventually. My point was moreso for those who end up losing a lot of geo due to dying before recovering their shade, especially if that discourages them from exploring as thoroughly. Silksong's death mechanic has me intrigued and I'm glad they're shaking things up in that regard. Regarding the music, it just didn't stand out to me due to how subtle it often was. Lots of swells and pizzicato that had a habit of blending in so well with the rest of the sound design that made it hard to compartmentalize. Aside from the Title theme, the Grimm fights, and maybe some of Greenpath I don't think I could hum most of the other tracks with no reference. That doesn't make it bad by any means, it was clearly a stylistic choice that enhanced the game's atmosphere and for that it deserves praise.
If you were to wait to release this until Silksong has a date you would still have a few more years before you needed to put this out. I do think it’s a great game but it’s not one I’ve been eager to revisit. I think for me the final DLC they did (although free) brought down the overall package by being so incredibly brutal that I didn’t even want to bother continuing it. Still among the greats in the genre imo.
Your first point is exactly why I figured jumping back in now would be better than waiting lol I've only done some of the Godmaster DLC but I know it gets pretty brutal towards the end. Curious to see for myself when I get around to it.
"I can't imagine it will take long to get the last 4%" he sais... oh boy, buckle up... The last 4% are the biggest challenge in this game (outside of steel soul) Indeed if you first try those 4% you'd only take like 4 - 6 hours I would guess, assuming you haven't found the area yet, maybe a bit less... You won't first try those 4%, I can tell you that much... GL on trying it
I don't doubt it, nice to have something to look forward to when I get around to it!
@@CobraCodexyeah, it’s a pretty lengthy 4%. That being said, if you like the combat, especially in more difficult boss fights, you’ll like that part of the DLC. My personal favorite part of the game is the bosses and what they introduce takes it to 11. Good luck and have fun!
I feel like the critisism of it being too big or being too long is a bit strange for a Metroidvania. I feel like the average length of a Metroidvania for the main story should be somewhere in that 10-20 hour range for someone who hasn't played before. The fun of it should be the exploration, the sense you're figuring out more of the world and collecting items that may have been a symbol for something lorewise or is just cool and fun to use. No hate but this is just my opinion
Your opinion is right brother
No worries, I think Hollow Knight turned out to be a good length overall. I only said that because in my experience most Metroidvanias tend to be on the shorter side so that's what I'm used to expecting. Not to say there isn't room for longer ones, but I remember seeing people say their first save took them 50-80+ hours which is part of what turned me off from my first run which felt like it was dragging around 10 hours in.
Elder bug actually give suggestion on which area you can explore but I found on my 7th run
That's a neat detail I didn't consider!
The main problem I think hollow knight can improve is the input logic with controller. Casting spell or nail art with wrong direction input is very punishing. I wish there is a way to make spell and nail art no longer require direction input without steam input mode workaround
@neko6193 there is no flaw there, that is a skill issue. this can be easily avoided by literally just not using them in the wrong direction. usually hitting something on the left means you have to aim to the left
@@neko6193wait I may be incredibly stupid but what did you find?
@@Mr_turtleman. talk to elder bug and he will give description about an area and the relative location that you can explore if you don't know where to go
This video made me realize how subjective the things that make a game "good" are, since all of the reasons for why you didn't like the game at first are the reasons for why I liked it, exept I had the opposite opinions. I feel like the art is beautiful and distinct for most areas, the music is amazing and feels very iconic and recognizable, the map is big and exploring sometimes feels aimless and I love that. The only thing I didn't like during my first playthrough was how far some of the benches were from the boss fights, but overall I feel like the game is perfect for me, and I fell in love with it from the first playthrough
On my first play I enjoyed getting lost for a while. I discovered most of the areas and had the crystal dash, but was seemingly only finding dead ends which felt discouraging. In reality I was supposed to go fight Broken Vessel but didn't stumble upon it for some reason.
I liked this video.
I do however disagree with your white palace criticism. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard and punishing. That's the whole idea
But then you get to the point about whether a really hard, punishing platformer section is even good design in the broader game context, no matter how well executed that idea is. Like should that style of section even be there
Fair enough, though I think the other commenter nailed what I was getting at. To me it felt out of place considering how the rest of the game is designed more for exploration and combat than straight up platforming gauntlets. As much as I love Super Meat Boy, I don't think that style of level design meshes well with the rest of Hollow Knight's systems.
@@CobraCodex that's very fair!
I could also be a bit too generous in favour of HK here, because personally I heavily enjoy hard, punishing platforming challenges. However, I can definitely see how it would be more enjoyable for others if there were more checkpoints, like the infinite soul totems you can find in path of pain.
Tbh White Palace exists because there isn't that much hard platforming in the game so the whole point is just platforming and one can argue it doesn't fit well with the game but i think it does as again it IS for platforming and platforming only (tho there is a fair bit of lore in it)
On the topic of the soulslike death mechanic for silksong, we know that it is not going to be a part of the game. Instead, all rosaries are lost upon death, apart from ones you save on strings. I think you can spend rosaries to get strings worth slightly less, encouraging skill.
Sounds like a cool twist on the formula, hope we hear more on Silksong sooner than later
It’s crazy to me that the little indie game I played back in 2018 has reached a level of cultural significance comparable to that of indies like Undertale, and while that has been really cool to see, I think it has come with some drawbacks as well. Like Undertale was back when it first released, Hollow Knight has been hyped up far too much over the past few years. I say this as someone who considers Hollow Knight my favorite game of all time. There is a pressure from the ever-expanding fanbase of these games that if you play it you must have only positive things to say about it or they will throw a fit and tell you your opinion is invalid, so I'm glad to see none of that in this comments section.
I like this video and I find most of your criticisms super valid, even if I personally disagree with most of them, so I’m just gonna scattershot some thoughts I had while watching.
About the getting lost point, yes, this is easily the most divisive thing about the game. For someone like me who enjoys Hollow Knight’s atmosphere and environmental storytelling so much that they don’t care whether or not they are “progressing” per se, this is the best part of the game. For players who go into the game expecting it to play out like a traditional metroidvania, even a more obtuse entry like Super, I don’t think it’ll click right away. This is not an diss on anyone who plays the game like this or Metroid games (Metroid Prime is another one of my favorite games of all time and I’ve really hoping to give Echoes and Corruption a try), it’s just that I think the kind of exploration Hollow Knight offers isn’t for everyone. On a first playthrough at least. Like, even before I ever found THK statue or dream nail, I loved exploring the map so much that going a long time without item or story progression never really bothered me. Every time I found some nook in a corner of the map like the 420 geo rock in Kingdom’s Edge or Joni’s Repose in Howling Cliffs felt like drugs being injected directly into my bloodstream. The cool thing about Hollow Knight is that once you get the mantis claw, the amount of different routes you can take through the game is immense, even without things like shade skips or background pogoing. There's a really good video by Game Maker's Toolkit called The World Design of Hollow Knight that articulates this point very well, so if you haven't seen that I would recommend checking that out. Ultimately, though, it just comes down to preference. If you enjoy the game more on subsequent playthroughs where you know where to go, more power to you; I just wish I could wipe my memory and play this game again for the first time every time I start a new file.
Yeah, there are totally a ton of QoL things that TC could totally have added that they didn’t. Maybe it’s because their main influences in making this game came out more than two or three decades ago lol. Retaining soul when you die in a dream fight would be really convenient.
I was one of those people who took dozens of hours on my first playthrough lol. To be fair I was really bad at video games when I first played it.
Yeah, the Grimm Troupe quest is kinda a drag, especially if you get to it late. The boss fights and charms are sick though, so it evens out I guess.
About the shades, although I personally never had a problem with this, I know it has been a sticking point for quite a few, especially combined with not having benches before bosses. It really sucks that the shade mechanic of all things is what turns some people away, and even though it serves a cool lore purpose (even though the mechanic isn't strictly canon) I'm glad they're trying something new and much more freeing in Silksong with the cocoon when you die being a non-vital silk refill and rosaries currency system.
I can see why you criticized White Palace, as a lot of people have had similar sentiments. I kinda got stuck there my first time because I was bad at platforming, but it did feel rewarding to beat and the lore is cool so I gave it a pass. Maybe its design flaws are because it was a stretch goal on the Kickstarter? Who knows.
As far as grinding goes, I've never really understood why people think that refighting the Colosseum over and over again is necessary to buy everything. Most things in the game are reasonably priced by the time you get to them, so I'm assuming that really the only things you might need to grind for are the unbreakable charms or the lantern. Maybe the fountain in Ancient Basin if you don't have 3000 on you when you come across it. Selling relics to Lemm, rescuing grubs, hitting geo rocks, finding the Gorgeous Husk, and getting revenge on Millibelle are all ways that the game rewards you with money for exploration, so if you are observant enough, grinding isn't as much of an issue. Like, most enemies don't drop a lot, even with Fragile Greed, but you really don't need to kill a lot of enemies to gain geo in my experience. Selling all relics alone gets you 21,650 geo. Even if you miss some and/or spend some before lategame, you should have enough to buy unbreakable strength almost instantly. At most, I feel like you would need to refight colo 2 maybe three or four times if you're going for all the unbreakable charms, depending on how you've played up to that point. Idk, maybe it's just because my original playthrough was pretty long and so I was killing more enemies, but I had so much geo by the end I hardly knew what to do with it. My point is, there are a lot of ways to earn geo outside of just grinding colosseum fights or enemies, and if a player doesn't have enough geo immediately, they can always wait until later.
I'm glad you came around on the “same-y” point, because I wholeheartedly agree. One time I watched a review of Hollow Knight where they compared its areas to the areas of a Mega Man game, which confused me to no end. They have almost nothing in common aside from the fact that they're both 2D platformers, so I really couldn't understand what point the review was trying to make. Maybe it is the muted colors thing, or maybe it's because people don't consider enemy variety a part of the area design, but I feel like there's more than enough to differentiate between distinct areas in the game, especially considering the more unique design that some areas like Crystal Peak and Deepest have.
About the music: I'm sorry but this is the one thing that I fundamentally cannot agree with. I get the sound design covering up background ost sometimes, but I literally cannot imagine playing all the way through the game and not being able to hum at least a part of one track. As a music major who played this game in middle school, I may be a little biased because this game is part of the reason I decided to pursue music, got me into music theory, and made me listen to styles of music I had previously written off as pretentious. That being said, the only perspective I can see this issue with the music cropping up from is that maybe Christopher Larkin's classical and baroque influences made this soundtrack seem too tame compared to the more contemporary sound of some other metroidvanias, aside from the Grimm Troupe stuff. I mean, you basically said as much in the video, but I tend to find that even people who aren't as into those styles of music typically still enjoy Hollow Knight's soundtrack. Oh well. Music is also a matter of preference so I'll try not to hold it against you lol.
Sorry for the essay. Tldr, I really really like Hollow Knight, but I can see why it's not everyone's favorite. I’m glad you ended up enjoying it, though. If I got anything wrong, feel free to say so.
I appreciate the passion you have for this game, and I imagine growing up with it during such a formative time had quite the impact on you which is great. To clarify/respond to a few of your points:
I enjoyed getting lost for a while on my initial run which is why I ended up putting in 10 hours there. It's moreso that I hit a point where I had enough of the aimless wandering and kept stumbling upon dead ends which was discouraging. I had the crystal dash so what I was "supposed" to do next was fight Broken Vessel but didn't stumble upon it despite having been to ancient basin already. I didn't remember too much in detail from that run, but there was much less aimless wandering this time around which made for a more enjoyable experience.
Grdinding geo was primarily for the unbreakable charms, yea. I had purchased everything else pretty early, but despite the thorough exploration I still was lacking in geo to upgrade those. Tbf I wasn't always scrounging for loose change whenever I killed an enemy later on so maybe that would've added up eventually. My point was moreso for those who end up losing a lot of geo due to dying before recovering their shade, especially if that discourages them from exploring as thoroughly. Silksong's death mechanic has me intrigued and I'm glad they're shaking things up in that regard.
Regarding the music, it just didn't stand out to me due to how subtle it often was. Lots of swells and pizzicato that had a habit of blending in so well with the rest of the sound design that made it hard to compartmentalize. Aside from the Title theme, the Grimm fights, and maybe some of Greenpath I don't think I could hum most of the other tracks with no reference. That doesn't make it bad by any means, it was clearly a stylistic choice that enhanced the game's atmosphere and for that it deserves praise.
If you were to wait to release this until Silksong has a date you would still have a few more years before you needed to put this out.
I do think it’s a great game but it’s not one I’ve been eager to revisit. I think for me the final DLC they did (although free) brought down the overall package by being so incredibly brutal that I didn’t even want to bother continuing it. Still among the greats in the genre imo.
Your first point is exactly why I figured jumping back in now would be better than waiting lol
I've only done some of the Godmaster DLC but I know it gets pretty brutal towards the end. Curious to see for myself when I get around to it.
nice vid love Hollow knight.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed!
@@CobraCodex no I didn't enjoy it I loved it.