Hollow Knight

This seems like the perfect time to write my review, one day before Silksong—the long awaited sequel to this journey—comes out, and maybe clouds my judgement or something, as I plan to play it day one.

Hollow Knight. The indie Metroidvania to rule them all, the game that redefined the genre for the modern era, inspiring many developers for years to come to follow on its footsteps.

This is one of those modern games that I thought weren’t really that big of a deal. I wasn’t much into gaming other than whatever ran on my PSP. For a while I was happy with emulating Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, but well, I thought it would be nice to get into some more modern games, so I decided to buy it on Steam, alongside CrossCode and Axiom Verge—two games I’m yet to properly play.

So, I played it on my laptop for a while, up to 9 hours of playtime, more or less. I even used my PSP as a controller with it, and it worked well enough.

However, playing it on my laptop just didn’t work that well for me, so I abandoned it in the end.

It wasn’t until much later, that I finally bought my Nintendo Switch, and well, I finally felt like giving it a go! I started the game in November of 2024, and I finally beat it a couple days ago!

You are the Knight, an explorer that ventures into the fallen kingdom of Hallownest, a dangerous endeavor, especially when your only weapon is a nail with the smallest hitbox ever.

As you explore, you will find obstacle after obstacle, and enemies that will make traversal difficult, especially in the early hours of the game. However, soon the kingdom will open itself to you, as you unlock new abilities that will let you reach new areas, face against difficult bosses, go through platforming challenges and uncover every corner of this region.

This game is available on every modern platform, I own it on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get into it!

The story

The story of Hollow Knight is not crystal clear, it is not necessarily the focus of the game, as it’s more of an adventure done in solitude.

However, there are a lot of events and lore that you will uncover throughout your quest. Some of it is difficult to understand, hidden in poems and strange texts scathered throughout the lands. The story of how Hallownest ended up in ruins, is something that the player uncovers as the game continues, and it’s actually very interesting.

Every character in the game will have something to say, some of them will follow their own personal quests, and you will find them multiple times in different areas. Some times you can even help them out, or save them from certain demise.

Other characters will tell you stories when you give them antiques or certain items. Even some of the bosses will have something to say, from dialogue, to just their name alone, they will spark questions and make you wonder how everything ended up as it is.

It feels like everything has some meaning, why is this boss attacking like this? What was the original purpose of this area? Why certain enemies only spawn here?

So many clues, riddles and thought-provoking moments can be found. And character moments that might not seem like much at a glance, but are charged with meaning and melancholy.

I found the story here, the lore and the characters to be simply amazing.

The gameplay

This is a Metroidvania, borrowing heavy inspiration from Dark Souls when it comes to its difficulty and world design choices.

You can move around in the map and attack with your nail. There are some hidden mechanics as soon as the game starts, so I won’t spoil them here, it’s nice to discover your movement options naturally.

The health system is interesting. You can recover health by “focusing” soul. Health is represented by masks, and you can increase it by collecting mask fragments. There’s also a container for soul, which you use to focus and recover health. You can gain soul by dealing damage and defeating enemies, as well as destroying statues filled with it. Soul will come handy to use for spells, a variety of extra attacks that will allow for long range and area-based damage, for example.

Health is a valuable resource, unlike games like Zelda or Minecraft where you might lose a quarter or half a heart, here each mask is a full health point, gone as soon as you are hit. And as the game progresses enemies will be able to deal more damage. Your attacks cannot be rushed or just spammy, there’s a timing to how you should move and to how enemies do.

Over time, you face difficult bosses, which you will have to defeat, to unlock more abilities or just get through an area. You can learn more skills with the nail itself later on. Expanding the offensive and traversal possibilities.

The most important aspect of the gameplay is exploration, the areas available are pretty open from the start, but with some sections you can’t reach yet, because you’re missing some skill here or there. The game features a cartographer, that sells you a map of the area you’re exploring, which gets filled as you explore every room within that portion of the map.

The platforming mechanics might be one of the deal breakers for many. Movement speed is pretty slow, and the jumping physics feel weird compared to other games. This is because the jump is slightly floaty (sort of like in Super Metroid) and the jump height varies depending on how much you hold the jump button. Once you get used to it it’s not bad at all, and again, the movement options will expand over time.

The game also features Charms. They are essential to customize your gameplay style and add some variation to the game. Basically, each charm will boost certain stats, or give you a different skill. From more health, wider range of damage, quicker soul focusing, faster attacks, etc. You have a limited amount of slots, so you can only wear so many charms at once.

The save system is based on benches, which are scattered throughout the world, and will replenish your health, also respawning the enemies you may have defeated in the area. Benches are a rare sight, and sometimes their placement can be annoying, especially when a boss fight is far away, and you have to get past all the enemies in the way there after dying.

If you die, you respawn in the lastest bench you were on. However, you will lose all your Geo, the money in the game. You have to go back to the place you died, and defeat your own soul (it only takes 2 or 3 hits) to recover it. However, if you die again before recovering your soul, you’ll lose the Geo forever.

There are a couple of fast-travel options in the game, that will let you backtrack between sections of the map. Some can only go back and forth between areas, and others let you go to any area you have access to.

The art

This game is absolutely gorgeous!

It’s not pixel art, it’s not 3D models or environments, everything in Hollow Knight is hand-drawn, and it looks completely amazing to this day. The game features a few animated scenes, although they are pretty uncommon, when they happen, they are rather cinematic, if simple in execution compared to some titles working with higher budget.

The animations during gameplay are equally fantastic. The Knight’s design and animations are simple and clear, without many flourishes to it. The enemies are also quite simple for the most part, but where Hollow Knight excels is in the boss designs. All of them have pretty cool designs, and their movements and patterns are well animated. Not everything is perfectly telegraphed

There was no game like it among the indie scene in 2017, the details, the animations and design behind everything on it is commendable. Almost a decade later, the game still looks fantastic and dare I say, timeless. Although other indie games have catched up in the art design department in modern times, the way everything fits together in Hallownest is still really well done.

Seriously, this is one of those games where you can tell “That’s Hollow Knight” just by looking at a screenshot, and it’s just as easy to tell “that’s inspired by Hollow Knight” on every game out there that borrows from it.

The soundtrack of this game is absolutely superb, with orchestral and environmental elements to it, words cannot describe it well enough. If you’ve listened to any sort of videogame media, it’s likely you’ve heard to Hollow Knight’s soundtrack. There is an air of melancholy to it, but it’s also pretty elegant, it really is an instant classic.

Finishing thoughts

This is a beautiful game, that introduced a lot of people into the Metroidvania genre, and is considered a masterpiece by many, including myself.

The wonderful yet desolate Hallownest, the diverse regions, and fast-travel mechanics made traversal fun for me, accompanied by the occasional lore drop in statues, structures and characters found along the way.

The power-ups, nail arts and charms really let you customize the Knight to fit a few different playstyles, you can focus on casting spells, or just dealing raw damage, or if you only want to focus on quick traversal and grinding for Geo, you can do it as well.

The music is awesome, and I also enjoyed the sound design of everything, it was eerie and immersive. Enemies have their own sound effects, and character dialogue is accompanied by charming and memorable voice acting (“sigh… Bapanada”).

This is an excellent game to get fully immersed into, it’s a difficult and challenging quest, and there will be many roadblocks and no handholding, but if you can stand until the end, you will have gone through an experience like no other.

The way the world slowly opens up and reveals itself, both in the paths availabe, as in the way the story unfolds, is seriously quite masterful. I really loved this game, and I look forward to a replay, a few years from now.

Compared to modern games, like Metroid Dread and The Lost Crown, and even some older titles in the genre, there are a few annoyances, and missing quality of life features that Hollow Knight doesn’t have. For example:

• The distance between boss fights and benches can be cumbersome, no “retry button” or possibility of reloading a save file.
• The loss of progress when you die twice in a row, while on purpose, can be pretty annoying at some points.
• Death due to environmental damage isn’t uncommon in other games, but paired with the scarce benches, it’s painful.
• The map system pales in comparison to Dread’s, even more so with Prince of Persia’s built-in screenshot feature.
• Some attacks lack any indication whatsoever, or the window is extremely tight, no difficulty options are available
• No life bars. I’m not annoyed by this since I’m used to Monster Hunter, but some people like them.

Basically, it all boils down to how much you are willing to deal with the mercilessness of a Soulslike, in the gameplay style of a Metroidvania game. Honestly, I didn’t mind it at all, and I had a blast playing it, but, as you can tell by the span of time I took to beat it, I had to take breaks and focus on other things from time to time.

In any case, Hallownest always managed to entrap me within its setting and mystery, and I’m happy it did.

The game also comes with a lot of extra bosses and DLC, I completed it to a 100%, but that’s taking into account some of the DLC. The real percentage is 112%, which I did not go for. However, I am more than happy with all this game has for me, and I may try out the rest of the extra content later on.