Hollow Knight Review

My steps took me to the ruins of the City Of Tears, the capital where it always rains. As I fought off its armored guards, a different type of foe from the simpler bugs of Greenpath, I reached its top. The Soul Master, a giant teleporting mage bug, made short work of me. I threw myself at it several times, backtracking my steps, only to get squashed easily.

I’d lie if I said thoughts of renouncing didn’t fill my head. However, much of these ruins remained undiscovered, and I remembered that it had been a while since I had visited the Mantis Village. Defeating their disciplined leaders opened a new door into Deepnest, and thus, my purpose was refreshed yet again.

Team Cherry’s first effort, Hollow Knight, is what you get when you take Metroidvania and sprinkle some souls-like elements on top of it. Not much is said about your character or the place you arrive in before you’re thrown into exploring and battling all sorts of bugs. A nail replaces what would otherwise be a sword.

Your character can dash in and out of battle, attack from range, and heal up. Every time you strike, you suffer a small amount of pushback. Thus, especially in areas where battles take place on small platforms or when battling more than one enemy, you need to be careful with your positioning. This rather simple combat experience is built tightly, offering fights that have a rhythm of their own once you learn the appropriate patterns.

Your character can benefit from a variety of upgrades. There’s the typical mechanic where you have to collect fragments of items that increase your health and Soul, an equivalent of mana, which allows for ranged attacks and healing. A special currency is required for upgrading your weapon, and then you’ve charms that empower certain aspects like how often you can dash or the amount of Soul obtained from each kill.

Defeating bosses and mini-bosses, alongside exploring, will yield items that enhance your capabilities, allowing you to double jump or jump off walls, which, in turn, grant access to new areas. Hollow Knight comes with an impressive amount of foes (130, the Steam page states). The majority of them behave differently, requiring you to adapt to different ways of attacking.

Sure, two different enemies may try to jump at you; however, the range and trajectory of the jump may vary based on enemy type. Even the more basic opponents feel different because of the attention to detail they receive when it comes to the visual side of things, as well as the easily distinguishable sounds they produce.

Areas are masterfully crafted, featuring some truly beautiful art. The capital city, host of perpetual rains and dark, spiky buildings, echoes loss and sorrow. The Hive, with its walls that give off yellow luminescence and bees roaming around, reminds us of productivity. A climbing section in Empire’s Edge greets you with falling bodies of dead inhabitants, while Deepnest, with its unlit, unwelcoming tunnels, is bound to unsettle and instill a sense of constant danger.

Hollow Knight’s world easily leaves a mark on its visitors, taking the player through an entire spectrum of emotions as they decide to explore and take in what befell it. Two moments that stuck in my mind were when I found a tall bug in a secluded corner, eating away at something out of sight. It greeted me in a cheery voice, telling me I would always find it there. The childish optimism in its voice mixed with the denial, or lack of desire to get involved with what was happening outside, struck a chord with me.

Similarly, a fountain of a lonely figure asked me to throw Geo, the game’s main currency, into it so that I may learn what the figure had to offer. Regardless of the reward at the end, it had made me curious enough to dedicate time to amassing Geo solely based on its mystery. In the bug-filled ruins of Hollow Knight, I found an allure that I hadn’t run into in a good while.

The lack of handholding felt refreshing at first; however, it did permeate into a lack of sense of direction. I often found myself reaching dead ends, knowing I’d need a mechanic I don’t yet have to progress, yet being unaware of where or how to get it. This led to lots of backtracking.

While backtracking is very common in Metroidvania titles, Hollow Knight has, at times, more of it than is welcome. Save points are often placed way before bosses, which require you to go through several rooms full of enemies that can still be tricky to deal with or difficult platforming sequences.

Upon dying, you leave a dark ghost behind. The said ghost holds all your Geo with it, which is the resource needed to unlock new items. Needless to say, I lost lots of Geo because I couldn’t get back to my Ghost when I either died in an area I didn’t have a map to yet or in situations I had a hard time going through in the first place.

Hollow Knight’s difficulty and lack of directing the player is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it truly makes overcoming a challenging area, or foe, come with a great feeling attached to it. At the same time, I can see players dropping the game due to simply being lost or because of losing too much Geo repeatedly.

I was in that situation a number of times; however, the desire to discover more always brought me back in. There’s great satisfaction to be found in discovering new areas, reading the rather small amount of what’s written on statues, or hearing what certain characters have to say.

This, coupled with a pervading sense of silence and desolation, always drew me back in, even after the worst of ragequits. However, not everyone may be willing to persist in this, and that’s, ultimately, a pity, as there’s lots of beauty to be found in Hollow Knight.

Despite ending up hating having to find the cartographer prior to being able to map new areas, I have to give it credit. To make more sense of why I say this, it’s worth mentioning that in order to highlight save points, quick travel stations and vendors on the map, you also need to buy pins off a vendor.

Furthermore, having your location highlighted equips you with a charm that you can only wear a limited amount of. For those who seek an extra challenge, this option of not mapping out the world, or, at least areas of it, may sound appealing and that needs to be taken into consideration.

Something else to keep in mind is that, while running smoothly for the great majority of the time, when making contact with water, I encountered pretty constant stuttering that can turn an easy fight into an annoying death.

Hollow Knight doesn’t go out of its way to innovate, and that will become obvious fairly quickly. It does, however, play around with Metroidvania tropes, adding a bit of Dark Souls in between. Some of the developer’s choices will certainly divide the crowd and push some people away. I’m thinking about the need to find the cartographer in unvisited areas and buy a map off him prior to being able to access that area’s map screen.

The difficulty spikes, the possibility of losing lots of Geo, and the, perhaps too large, lack of direction may also play a role. Others will find these refreshing, as they add a sense of challenge. At the same time, I cannot ignore the fact that whenever I wanted to quit and never touch the game again, it always drew me back in. The production quality is great across the board. It offers 20+ hours of content for the price of 15$, and I haven’t even reached 100% completion.

Hollow Knight nails down the atmosphere like few other games do, providing some truly haunting ruins and boss fights that, once learned, become akin to a violent ballet that unfurls in front of you. In the end, Hollow Knight is a title that was given much attention and care by its developers and grew into a Metroidvania experience worth going through at least once.