Hollow Knight, a review

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We have all at least heard of it by now, the game Hollow Knight, but is it any good, is it too difficult, how is the combat, and most importantly, is it fun? 

Spoiler warning!! The spoilers are mild, but I will mention combat, game mechanics and general feelings of the game. 

The observation that jumps out the most to me looking back is that there are no pointless upgrades or abilities, this game makes you use every movement upgrade, and combat ability constantly making you get used to them relatively quickly. This is aided by how intuitive the controls are and by how the game is laid out, as it lets you go through areas that you've already been through but it is faster and easier with each upgrade incentivizing their use. Going through areas that you were able to traverse without any upgrades becomes remarkably fast and significantly easier the more movement upgrades you acquire, and fighting mobs in areas you've already been gets noticeably easier with each upgrade you acquire

The next thing that is the most obvious looking back is that this is a long game. At the time of writing this I have logged over 65 hours in playtime of the game ( it should be noted that I am exploring every area quite thoroughly), and while I am getting quite close to the end it would seem to be only taking longer, but it does go quickly. With hours seeming to pass in minuets, one thing that contributes to this play time is that this game is one that requires a lot of backtracking and movement. There are several instances where I ran into an area only to realize that I couldn't get past it because I lacked a movement skill, proceeded to acquire the skill/ ability multiple hours later, only to have to return to the area in order to access the next room. This can be tedious, annoying and frustrating overall it's not too bad, as there are several fast travel points around the map allowing you to get from point A to point B relatively quickly, but it's still not the fastest. But travel and movement around the map are not what takes the most time that would have to go to the combat

The combat in this game can be quite tricky at first but you get used to it quickly, because your constantly fighting. There are very few areas of calm in the game with those either being healing stations or the starting area with the rest is constantly patrolled by enemies ready to fight you at any moment, and when you first start the game they hit pretty hard, while there are upgrades in the game to increase your health but when even touching an enemy deals an entire mask of damage (masks are the unit of health in Hollow Knight) it can get really annoying, and this is even worse if you go into areas early as the developers expect you have upgrades to you damage that they expect you to find and if not it is functionally a depth sentence and the difficulty problems even more prevalent with bosses.

In Hollow Knight, the bosses will kill you a lot. It is very frustrating, but it makes your final victory over them so much more satisfying, while bosses at the beginning of the game are pretty easy. By roughly mid-game they are quite difficult, and the path back to the fights can get very long and tedious as you're running them over and over again. This does make you really good at running the path, but it is still annoying, remarkably addicting (the amount of time that I thought “one more time” was laughable), and incredibly rewarding.

My final review of Hollow Knight is that it is a very frustrating yet fun game to play, and the payoff is huge. It is wildly addictive and super fun overall. The movement is satisfying and dynamic, and the combat is well-balanced but at times extreme, and it is most certainly a time commitment, but is it fun?

In my opinion, yes. But I could be wrong, it might not be for you, or it could be your favorite game of all time, and the only way to find out is to give it a play for yourself.