Hollow Knight is a 2D Metroidvania Action-Adventure game was originally released for PC in 2017, and also for PS4, XBONE and Switch in 2018, which was developed and published by Team Cherry.
The creation of the game originated in 2013 where they wanted to create their own unique game inspired by the classics from the 80's era such as Metroid and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It was partially funded through the Kickstarter which is a crowdfunding campaign raised over A$57,000 by the end of 2014.
Upon the 2017's release, the game was well received and sold over 3 million copies as of 2020 which led the team behind the game's success into creating the follow-up title as Hollow Knight: Silksong is still in development as today.
As a long-time fan of the long library of genre's games like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, this game has caught my attention in terms of haunting presentation, fluid animation concepts, and combat system mechanics which made me get into with this particular style of Metroidvania game combining with Tim Burton's animated films and Metroid being fused together which I consider this idea of concept quite an remarkable things for indie game's standards.
I've picked up a copy of the game for my PS4 comes with nice reversible art cover, instruction booklet, and poster maps which is the reason why I love collecting physical stuff for my gaming collection. So going back to this game, I've spent my hours of playing this and I did managed to enjoy most part of the whole campaign which took me a weeks of fun, exploring, and battling that is what keeps me progressing the game further.
Is this any good or is it not? that's what we gonna find out how the game really holds up well to the today's standards.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game takes place in a quiet and spooky kingdom of Hallownest was once thriving which fell to ruin after becoming overrun with the infection, which drove the citizens into madness and undeath. So you're the nameless knight on the quest to uncover the secrets of an ancient insect kingdom where you will explore through caverns and encounter the dangerous enemies in order to solve an ancient-long hidden mystery.
At the beginning of the game, it doesn't tell you the backstory behind what was going on and why the whole kingdom was being infected after the small minute of opening scene? So the truth is that you will need to progress throughout the game to have a clear understanding of the story can be pieced through different aspects such as cutscenes, dialogues, lore tablets, and entries that are placed in the hunter's journal for each enemy and boss that the protagonist encounters, so these will tell you all the interesting history behind the ancient god created the bug race, the king built the kingdom, and knowing who are the Hollow Knight and the Dreamers before the opening event of the game took place.
It may be sounded too complex at the beginning, but I'm pretty sure you'll get used with the game's narrative throughout the game will help you get your head wrapped up once you've figured it out what it is which adds up the in-depth of the storyline.
Then you have the tiny little protagonist known as uhh what? it's not named as Hollow Knight, it's just called the Knight. Yes Yes I know it's been titled on the game's cover, but why is it called Hollow Knight if it's not named as the same title of the game? oh well, let's just move on with it.
Despite the name confusion, I kinda liked the little fella because it's just a simple looking warrior wore a black cloak and has huge round skull head with two horns and black round eyes which I finding it really cute in the game.
There are several of NPCs in many areas that can aid you during the exploration such as Elderbug giving a friendly advice to travellers, Cornifer that drew the sheet of maps, Iselda is a merchant that sells mapping tools at her shop, The Last Stag is a large beetle were used as transport across the kingdom, Lemm who collects valuable relics and buys them for fair amounts of currencies, the Nailmasters who can teach you to practice skill moves, Millibelle provides her banking services to store currencies, Myla spend time mining for treasure, and Nailsmith that strengthen the weapon.
What I liked about the game is how amazing the overall presentation looks and designed well throughout the areas such as Dirtmouth which is a quiet town filled with rare tufts of grass, many lumafly lamposts, big empty houses, small shops, and transport station.
Forgotten Crossroads is a large dark caverns and roads with pale ferns growing through cracks in the ground. Greenpath has lush vegetation, mossy valleys and broad lakes of acid. Fog Canyon is a misty area filled with bubbles and acid lakes with some areas covered in thorns. Fungal Wastes are covered in mushrooms and caustic pools of acid. Crystal Peak is a mountain of all glittering mines are carved into the peak to obtain the area's precious crystals.
City of Tears is a capital city of Hallownest has numerous large towers with expansive windows, small lifts, and notable divide between the rich and poor part of the area.
There are lot of areas which I find the structure of environmental design is absolutely fascinating to look at in terms of settings gives a solid mix of dark and gothic substances to bright and clear sceneries is very well done indeed.
I also wanted to praise the choice of animation techniques they used in the game's presentation because it gives me a sort of Tim Burton's vibes for its style of animated characters and hand-drawn layouts is looking incredible entirely that the game had managed to pull off the animation so nicely.
Overall, it has complex but interesting plot, tiny cute protagonist, and remarkable style of presentation.
Gameplay
You take control of little one in 2D side-scrolling perspective, as your main goal is to defeat numerous of bosses and 3 dreamers in order to restore and save the kingdom. Your character requires numerous of skills, upgrades, and gaining new ability which allowing you to gain access to new undiscovered areas and being able to defeat tough bosses.
You will have a display at the left-top corner indicates player's health and soul, so you'll start off with basics by controlling the knight that can walk and jump around the area, using his nail as a basic weapon to attack the enemies which you can able to slash upwards on ground as well as downwards in mid-air.
Attacking enemies with multiple times will increase your soul spirit meter while after defeating them will drop down currencies called geo which you will need save these to purchase items. To keep you in mind that you'll lose all your currencies temporary after the first death so you need to retrieve it back at the same location where you've died from, but having a second death without retrieving the stuff you will lose all of these permanently can be very brutal to you, so be very careful not to die again.
Then you have the spells which allowing you to perform skills such as focus requires enough soul to heal your damage.
There are various of skills which can be found and located somewhere in the areas such as spells, abilities, and nail arts. The spells will allow you to perform various of skill moves such as vengeful spirit that will shoot forward and burn foes, desolate dive that strike the ground causing to break through fragile structures, and howling wraiths blast foes with screaming soul.
Abilities that make traversing easier such as mothwing cloak allows you to dash forward along the ground or mid air, mantis claw makes you do wall jumping, crystal heart uses to launch forward at higher speeds, monarch wings uses as double jump, Isma's tear protects you from acidic pools helps you get across, shade cloak helps you bypass the blocked substance lines, and dream nail can be used to reveal hidden dreams or open gateways.
Lastly you will obtained the nail art from the nailmasters such as cyclone slash uses as spinning attack, dash slash strikes ahead after dashing forward, and great slash unleashes a huge slash which deals extra damage to foes.
You can upgrade your nail weapon by visiting to nailsmith's shop where he can mend your old rusty nail by turning into more stronger weapon dealing with increased hit damage makes the enemy feel vulnerable to kill.
Then you have a special item called charms that provide various bonuses and special abilities such as wayward compass which pinpoint your current location on map screen, soul catcher that increases the amount of soul, shaman stone that increases the spells power dealing more damage to foes, dashmaster lets you perform faster dash, sprintmaster increases your running speed, quick slash allows you to slash rapidly, and long nail increases the range of the nail allowing you to strike foes from further away.
So these are all the stuff that not only just benefits the player's overall skills with greater damage system and better combat but also helps the player to being able to past through the platforming levels a lot easier.
We done talked about the combat system in the game, the most important things for the Metroidvania games is the heavy use of exploration where you had a large map of the levels has each set of the locations to discover.
This will allow you to explore around the non-linear areas where you could find stuff in the levels such as hidden passages, collecting amount of geos, solving puzzles, visiting undiscovered locations, talking with NPCs for clues, obtaining abilities, and so forth, but you may need to purchase a sheet of map to display a full map of locations as well as the badges that display map icons first because it didn't fully display on the screen for first visit unless you have a sheet of map which you can get it from someone like Cornifer can be located somewhere in the game and you may also need a badge that display icons can be purchased from one of the merchant's shop.
You can save progress by sitting on the bench which takes you to the same location where you just saved after multiple your deaths, so while sitting down you can also equip and unequip your charms on the menu to pick which ones really suits your combat play.
You can also warp through the locations by using the fast traveling places such as stag station or tramways is the quickest way of traveling that you don't had to walk all the way to the visiting places, so you may first need to obtain tram pass to ride on tram, and of course enough currencies to unlock all many stag stations.
So far, the combat and abilities in the game works flawlessly throughout the quest because I find the controls feels precise and easier to get into requires an straightforward practice to do stuff like jumping, dashing, striking, and parrying really adds the niche playstyle for those who are looking for an distinctive combat gameplay.
I also wanted to point out each of the enemies does have a variation of attacking system such as Aspid Hunters is a flying bug that can spit corrosive liquid from a long-range distance, Baldurs that can roll into a ball towards you, Crystal Crawler that can use their lenses to fire beams, Fungoon is a balloon fungal creatures can attack you by spitting streams of gas, Great Husk Sentry is a big fat guards welds with nail weapon and shell shield dealing with precise guarding and heavy striking, and Mantis Warriors attacks with very quick long-range slash making difficult to dodge, so most enemies A.I are very good with the tactics and behaviour which you will need to focus on your timing while battling against them takes much of the practice.
Speaking of enemies, I got to say the boss battle are very well done because it's all about memorising their patterns and avoiding their projectiles is what keeps me playing the game. You have bosses such as Broken Vessel, Brooding Mawlek, False Knight, Galien, Hive Knight, Mantis Lords, Sisters of Battle, Hornet Sentinel, Gorb, Flukemarm, Watcher Knight, and Vengefly King, so these are the bosses that keeps me engaging with the game pretty well in all thanks to brutally difficulty setting that made the game quite satisfying to play.
There are one part I don't like is that how the enemy and bosses made such instant cheap attacks which deals double the damage than the single hit damage, so I did not had issue with others that I encountered are practically normal for most part, but this sort of situation where these guys just instantly kills you in 2 hits can get sometimes tiresome, so you need to play very perfectly at the battle to know the strategy till you manage to defeat them in the right time.
I had spend a lot of time on the exploration because I love wandering around the large areas of maps and discovering the new mysteries is what made the game quite special. Stuff like platforming aspects such as clinging and dashing off walls without touching the spikes, evading Garpede in dark narrow lined area, jumping up high with bouncy mushrooms, and using their large spikey shell to traverse areas.
I also liked the segments in the game such as rescuing all missing grub, collecting all essences to deliver to Moth tribe member named the seer, and testing your skills with the mysterious fighter named Hornet is what keeps me very busy with the game pretty well, but there's the thing that I finding it bit annoyed is that your map doesn't automatically appear on the screen when visiting to new areas even after had already purchasing the map, so you may need to die in the battle or sit on the bench at the save location in order to have your map fully displayed on the map screen. That doesn't happen to other Metroidvania games from the past where your map instantly re-appearing on the screen when visiting to new areas are so much easier.
So far, I've enjoyed many aspects of the game thanks to combat mechanics with various of upgrades, abilities, and charms really enhanced the overall playstyle encouraging you to play more the better you get. The bosses are brutally tough but very satisfying to play that you'll die a lot of times really adds the ambitious practice to fix the repeating mistakes you've made in the game.
Having a large design of maps is fun to explore things that never gets really old because that's what I loved about Metroidvania stuff like revealing secrets and discovering new locations is what keeps me playing the game more with good old 20 to 30 hours of playthrough.
Overall, it has large map of exploration, solid combat system, and very good enemies and bosses.
Graphics
The graphics in the game is looking marvellous in terms of environmental structure with large buildings, opened wide areas of foregrounds, in-depth background details, and bold and silky textures which they did a spectacular job of constructing the level design to make it look and feel richer to the game's settings.
The use of lighting effects and colours in entire levels feels refined and niche that I consider it as beautifully detailed.
The character's animation for not just the main character, but many NPCs, enemies, and bosses is looking fluid with the use of 2D hand-drawn techniques is what made them quite appealing and likable for entire game.
This is got to be one of the most impressive visual design by indie developers had managed to pull off a spectacular results to prove that the indie gaming in general is doing a better job that keeps the game going forward.
Overall, it has large environmental structure, opened wide areas of foregrounds, in-depth background details, bold and silky textures, and likable character's animation.
Music and Sounds
I got to say that I really liked the original soundtrack of the whole game which delivers the interesting elements of the more gothic and depressing orchestrated music feels like I'm listening to early Tim Burton's films that really fits the darker tone of the game's atmospheres.
It was composed by Christopher Larkin did a such astonishing job on his score providing a exquisite tracks throughout the game.
I also liked the sound design of the game filled with background noises and the range of ambient effects giving a spooky feel to the game's personality, and it did had a randomised voices from most of the NPCs which I don't really mind the gibbering parts during the conversation between the player and NPCs.
Overall, it has astonishing soundtrack, and spooky sound design.
Special Features
The game comes with 4 DLCs such as Hidden Dreams, The Grimm Troupe, Lifeblood, and Godmaster which featured new bosses, new soundtrack, more quests, and of course new game mode with two different new endings which was all included on PS4 and XBONE release as Voidheart Edition.
I also mentioned about the physical copy release comes with nice reversible art cover, instruction booklet, and poster maps which is a fantastic bonus for those who loves collecting all physical stuff comes with extra goodies.
Overall, an outstanding bonuses.
Advantages
Remarkable presentation design
Large map of exploration
Solid combat system
Very good enemies and bosses
Large environmental structure
Likable character's animation
Outstanding DLCs and bonuses
Disadvantages
Enemy's instant cheap attack
Maps doesn't update itself when visiting the undiscovered areas
Final Verdict
Presentation 8/10 - complex but interesting plot, tiny cute protagonist, and remarkable style of presentation.
Gameplay 8.5/10 - large map of exploration, solid combat system, and very good enemies and bosses.
Graphics 9/10 - large environmental structure, opened wide areas of foregrounds, in-depth background details, bold and silky textures, and likable character's animation.
Music and Sounds 8.5/10 - astonishing soundtrack, and spooky sound design.
Special Features 9/10 - 4 DLCs and extra physical copy's goodies.
Overall 8.5/10 - Hollow Knight is a charming indie title offers a solid overall experience that I do not regret playing on my gaming system. With the distinctive combat gameplay, wide range of maps, hand-drawn presentation, and brutally tough bosses is what makes the fun factor of the game so unique to play.
I am happy to say this is the impressive Metroidvania game that is doing something different and I was hoping Team Cherry will deliver a upcoming follow-up title in near future to see if anything improves upon the original, but that being said I really enjoyed my experience.
The game cost around between £15 to £20 for physical copy, where as digital releases are slightly cheaper option just for £12, so please check it out and you won't be feel disappoint to see how amazing Hollow Knight being on the PCs and consoles because it's a definite buy for the fans of the genres.
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