Every once in a while, a video game comes along that goes above and beyond. A title that reaches deep and forces you to reflect on something far bigger than just a game. A title that wants you to think critically about something truly important, whether it be something personal, societal or conceptual.
Hollow Knight is not one of those games, despite how hard it tries to be. Stuff like this is common in film, critics like to call film equivelents to games like this "Oscar bait." You know exactly which kinds of movies I'm talking about, the ones where Martin Luther King, Cleopatra and the Pope meet in a timewarp and spend three and a half hours teaching super Commie Nazis not to hate people by using the power of long winded conversations, introspective monologues and Renoir's art, all to a moving score featuring an orchestra playing alongside whatever douchey indie rock band is popular at the time. This has been happening with film for a while now, but it's a relatively new phenomena in gaming.
You play as a nameless character, usually just called "the Knight," as you traverse the underground labyrinth beneath the town of Dirtmouth in the kingdom of Hallownest. These ruins are overrun by an infection, which for ages have caused their former denizens to go mad and continue their work into undeath. However, it's clear that Hallownest was once a thriving society. Its last ruler, known as the Pale King, attempted to seal the infection away through the power of the void and while he was initially successful, the knight soon discovers the seal is breaking. This sets off a series of events where the knight learns the deep, dark secret of his origins, Hallownest's past and what he must do to prevent the seal from breaking. It's not a bad plot and has some cool twists, though I will reiterate that it trys very hard to be more poetic and thought provoking than it actually is.
As I alluded to before, Hollow Knight is a classic MetroidVania game, you are simply dropped into the ruins beneath Dirtmouth with little direction as to where you have to go. You can explore the ruins and other parts of the sprawling map at will, though you will find your path blocked at various points throughout. It's up to you to find a way around these various roadblocks, whether it be through acquiring a new ability, finding a new item or triggering a cutscene. The map will fill itself out as you explore and you can purchase incomplete maps of the areas to get a head start. It's pretty standard MetroidVania stuff, but it's incredibly well laid out and designed. The map is huge but it's easy to see how it all connects and its very logically created. I never felt like I was completely lost or stuck and it's made very clear which items or abilities you acquire clear which blocks.
While the overall design and layout is great, I do have a major gripe with the mapping system. Unlike the genre's namesake games, the map doesn't immediately expand as you visit new areas. You need to find a save point to have the newly discovered area added to your map. This is incredibly frustrating and unnecessary, it leads to unnecessary confusion that, while it offers additional challenge, greatly detracts from the fun factor. It's also annoying that you have to buy items to display and update the map, though at least these items aren't expensive or hard to access.
This is made worse by the relative lack of save points and transit stations throughout the ruins. This is a big game and you will often find yourself struggling to find one when you truly need it. It's definitely bigger than Metroid, Super Metroid or SOTN, though maybe not if you include the mirror castle. It really needed more of these points and it needed them in more intuitive locations, most of them are pushed to the edges of the map. This also makes it very difficult to revisit certain areas, especially the Deepnest section, which is critical in games like this.
Those flaws were hard to ignore, but they aren't gamebreaking by any means. The only other flaw I can really think of is the jumping, it feels loose and floaty with very little control. Honestly, I find this to be the case in most MetroidVania games, SOTN being the lone exception. The controls are great overall though, they are extremely responsive and the hit detection is solid. Square slashes, circle uses your soul meter to heal or cast spells and other moves are mapped to appropriate buttons as you learn them. It's simple, self-explanatory and functional, so no complaints there.
The enemies are fun and challenging to deal with and the game does a good job of making you use all of your abilities in unique and creative ways. That was one way in which I think Hollow Knight surpassed its predecessors, I often found that those games made you use an item once only to forget about it for the rest of the game. I do wish there was less extreme backtracking, but you have to understand it comes with the territory of games like these and I would rather have the game be too big than too small. I think the challenge is fair, its easy to get hit but its also easy to heal using your soul meter and easy to fill that meter.
And honestly, I'm not really that opposed to the whole "Oscar Bait" thing, at least at this point in gaming history. Truthfully, we need some games with that level of pretention, or at least that attempt that level of pretention, if we want our medium to be taken seriously. It's become tiresome in film, but it's still relatively new for gaming and it still has its merits. Part of what I like so much about video games is the variety the medium can provide. There's everything out there from (what I consider to be) digital art to tests of skill to "blow stuff up" stress relievers to mindless time wasters. Want a deep and moving story? There's a game for that. Want a good, solid, well made piece of entertainment that will help you have fun for a few hours? There's a game for that too.
That Hollow Knight hit the mark of the latter as it shot for the former can't be held against it. It's a really solid MetroidVania game with old school graphics and gameplay. It will certainly appeal to people like me who like this style of game but want to try something new instead of re-visiting the old standbys. However, it is accessible to people who want an entry point into the genre but can't deal with the quirks of old school games. It may not be Oscar-worthy, but you certainly won't see Hollow Knight at the Razzies either.
8.75/10
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