Mr.Duck on 28/9/2019 at 18:49
Hmmm....I should get back into Hollow Knight for the final DLC to get my ass pounded by a spike-covered steel gauntlet while adding lime juice on the wounds.
Fun times! :D
Aja on 29/9/2019 at 15:22
I gave up on the last section of Path of Pain. After trying to beat it off and on all day yesterday, it wasn't so much ragequit as sadnessquit, realizing how much time I had wasted without making much progress in my ability. I generally enjoy challenging games, but having to spend an entire day to not get through a 30-second section is disheartening, and now that I've quit, I'll have to redo a bunch of it. I'm very close to the end of the game overall, but after that I've kinda lost the motivation to finish it.
Still, an amazing game as a whole; I just wish they'd catered a bit less to the “git gud” crowd, especially with the DLC, which isn't really separate in the Switch version.
Mr.Duck on 29/9/2019 at 19:42
Well, to be fair the DLC is not stuff you access easily, and often tends to be content that is more on the vein of "So, you want an extra challenge then, eh". True, they could have aimed for some more casual fare in there, but on the other hand, when you find a place called "The Path of Pain" you bet your ass you're gonna git gud or get quit. :D
I just need to finish the final DLC, but I'll be honest: feeling a bit lazy since it's pretty much extended/punishing boss rushes, and the only real incentive for me is to fight the few exclusive bosses in it.
Thirith on 9/10/2019 at 13:49
Has anyone here managed to make the PC version work with an ultra-wide screen? I've tried the suggested fix on WSGF and it let me choose 3440x1440, but the sides of the screen were just black bars.
Starker on 30/6/2020 at 23:31
So, I've been playing Hollow Knight on and off for the last few months and I think I'm now pretty much close to being done with it. I have only the last colosseum trial, the Godhome fights, a few dream variants of bosses, and whatever there is waiting in the Black Egg Temple left to do. Before anything else, I have to say that there's a lot to like about the game. The art style and music are great and there are lots of neat little things I appreciated, like the lamp posts being shaped like snails or having the first boss be guarded by a mini version of that boss. I like it when there's attention to detail like that in a game. It's clearly a labour of love and looks and plays very well as a result.
However, for me the game still managed to wear out its welcome by the end. It has all these neat little scenes and there's all this effort put in to make the areas distinct and memorable and varied, but I felt it lacked some very basic structure to build up tension and to sustain interest, either through basic gameplay or storytelling. Let's take two games it has clearly taken a lot of inspiration from -- Dark Souls and Super Metroid -- as a baseline comparison. Obviously, spoilers will follow...
First, let's look at how Super Metroid begins. Right off the bat you get blaring sirens (like something out of the Alien trailer) and images of dead scientists lying around the titular metroid. Then there's some brief narration to recap where the series left off and the new one starts. Then you get an interactive cutscene where some tense exploration culminates in a boss fight with a space dragon. Finally, there's the frantic escape while everything is being destroyed around you. Only after all that does the game set you down on Zebes and the game proper starts. By that time you are pretty likely to be invested in that character and you have a strong idea who you are and what you are here to do.
[video=youtube;byqCZJwCt3I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byqCZJwCt3I[/video]
[video=youtube;LjLamj-b0I8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8[/video]
Now Dark Souls. The very first thing you do is customise your character, already investing yourself in the game to a degree. Then you get an action-packed trailer of what's essentially the creation myth and Titanomachy rolled in one and your character is introduced into the setting. Then you get a tutorial area where you escape a huge-ass demon (or a huge ass-demon, depending on which way you look at it), get handed the torch to discover the fate of the undead, kick the aforementioned demon's ass and get carried off to your adventure by a giant crow. If nothing else, that's a hell of a memorable experience.
[video=youtube;ZkmsJfMoM58]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkmsJfMoM58[/video]
Okay, so how does Hollow Knight do in comparison? First you get to read an elegy that laments what a wonderful place this had been, then you get a few confusing images with chains and masks and eyes lighting up, and next your character is shown standing in a night-lit street and looking at a set of lights leading to a small collection of homes. Then the tutorial starts where you find some texts with something of an Ozymandias vibe and you finally arrive in a small village after breaking a big crumbling door.
[video=youtube;mp6Dwfslbtw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp6Dwfslbtw[/video]
If you have dealt with storytelling to any degree, then you're undoubtedly familiar with the following graph (or with the bigger version that outlines the first Star Wars movie):
Inline Image:
https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/3848/image003.pngThis is the basic three act dramatic structure that Hollywood blockbusters are so fond of and the beginnings of both Super Metroid and Dark Souls map well to this. Not just by starting the game with a bang, but the openings themselves are like mini versions of this arc. First you have the big attention grabbing start (dead scientists / war of the gods), then the low point (Samus narrates / you're rotting away in the asylum), then you have some complications that up the tension (distress signal, Samus investigates, baby metroid is missing / you escape your cell, boss encounter, enemies to fight) then you have the big finale (Ridley fight and self-destruct sequence / Asylum Demon fight), and, finally, the resolution (Samus goes to Zebes / you take the Crow Express to Firelink). Whatever you say about the formula, it is an excellent time-tested hook and it works well. And here it also sets up the world, your character, and the expectation that you're about to embark on an adventure.
Hollow Knight, I'd argue, fails in this. You get a little abstract exposition in text form ("Wasn't it nice to have culture and civilisation?"), then images that only make sense once you've played the game, then tutorial caves with easy enemies and some more abstract exposition ("Look upon my works, ye mighty!"), and voilà, you've arrived without much difficulty. All thee games use a mix of narration, visual imagery, and interactivity in their opening section, but Hollow Knight feels more like a tone poem to the effect that you're being told to feel sad, being told to feel awe, instead of you yourself being made to feel anything of the sort. Where are the memorable lines ("Even now, there are only embers, and man sees not light, but endless nights... This is your fate.") or images or sequences? How many people even remember there being a poem at the start, let alone lines from that poem? What does it tell you about your character or what kind of adventure is awaiting?
Of course, not all games need a hook -- niche games like La-Mulana can be as retro and obtuse as they want, but that's not where Hollow Knight's ambitions lie. And as far as opening lines go, I'd actually say La-Mulana is has the more memorable ones, though of course it's largely a matter of preference.
[video=youtube;qqxq7ucle5c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqxq7ucle5c[/video]
So, then, it comes down to the gameplay, and to be sure, an addictive enough of a game loop is enough to carry a game all by itself, as my thousands of hours of BoI can attest to. I don't have many complaints with the combat itself -- it's fast and responsive and the enemies are varied enough to keep things interesting. If anything, I'd say the enemies are just a bit too easy to exploit, as most of them become nearly defenceless when attacked from below or above or are otherwise easily baited, but then again I've heard that this is considered to be a very difficult game and I watched a couple of playthroughs where people (Northerlion, Wanderbots) seemed to struggle a lot with the basic enemies, so I might not be the best judge of this. As far as I'm concerned, the game was a bit on the easy side most of the time, especially with certain charms -- for example, Mark of Pride makes your reach so big that you're able to hit a lot of enemies with impunity and little fear of reprisal, Quick Slash effectively doubles your damage output, and Quick Focus lets you heal in nearly every fight (and if you pick the right charms, you can pretty much stand in a boss and heal). My overall impression of the charms, though, is that they are horribly imbalanced and the system seems to be more suited for a roguelike game where you get them in random order each time.
Despite the combat being fine, overall, at midgame things started to really fall apart (about 20 to 40 hours in). I think it's just too basic to carry the game for so many hours. Metroid gets away with it, since the game lasts only a fraction of that time. Dark Souls gets away with it, because it generally has slow, tactical, high stakes combat where you can't afford to make many mistakes, which also helps to make the exploration a tense affair where dangers lurk behind every corner. In Hollow Knight, by the time you're fully upgraded, the vast majority of enemies take only 1-2 hits and a lot of the bosses can simply be rushed down (the only one who has given me any significant amount of trouble so far has been the Traitor Lord, and that was mostly because he does 2 damage and therefore isn't easily tanked). At the same time, you yourself can take multiple hits and heal pretty much endlessly, since you gain soul very easily in combat. Just imagine if every time you hit an enemy or a boss in Dark Souls you got a part of and Estus flask back -- it would be a completely different game.
It's probably for the aforementioned reasons the game starts to focus more on endurance than difficulty at the end, suddenly trying to wear you down with long waves of enemies (Colosseum, Godhome) and Meat Boy style platforming sections (path to Nailmaster Sheo, White Palace), despite the game not really having prepared you for such challenges. The game doesn't really even teach you nail-jumping, letting players figure it out by accident (or by analogy with similar games, perhaps). There is one room where it's kind of hinted you can pogo on spikes, but nothing to the degree of Super Metroid that has NPCs show you how to wall jump.
That leads us to exploration. Again, I don't have too many complaints. It's fine, mostly. The level design is deliberately kept open, especially in contrast with the highly linear and guided Super Metroid (sure, you can sequence-break, but there is a definite sequence that the game expects you to follow and is designed around). In Hollow Knight, you are mostly gated by the upgrades you get (vengeful spirit to get to Greenpath, mantis claw to get to City of Tears, etc) and that leaves it up to you to explore as you see fit. It's not even gated by difficulty, really. You can survive places like Deepnest just fine even without an upgraded nail, especially if you approach it like Dark Souls and don't take unnecessary risks. So that means you are going to explore the same places over and over again, coming back for the things you are able to reach with new upgrades, and at least for me it became a bit tiresome. That also means that if you're not disciplined enough to explore methodically and take notes, the chances are you're going to have a pretty miserable time trying to remember where exactly you saw that rumbling floor or what you are supposed to do with that Magic the Gathering logo that you just picked up. I think I would have preferred if the whole game would have been a more focused and less meandering experience and they could have ramped the difficulty up more gradually instead of it being kind of samey the whole game with a few sudden spikes here and there.
Anyway, that concludes my little rambling rant. There are a few more nitpicks, like the game not telling you that you can converse with shopkeepers, depending on which side of them you stand, but they are more like minor blemishes than real flaws. All things considered, I did like the game, or at least I don't feel like I wasted my time, it's just that it seemed to fall short of what it wanted to be. There were many neat individual moments, but it failed to build things up properly and at the end it just petered out -- sadly that's my takeaway from it.
Pyrian on 1/7/2020 at 04:54
Quote Posted by Starker
...the game not telling you that you can converse with shopkeepers, depending on which side of them you stand...
Wait, WHAT? Lol.
I'm a bit further back, having unlocked most of the maps. I'm having a bit more trouble with the bosses, honestly. The vast majority of the basic enemies are just fodder, little more than opportunities to collect mana (called soul). (The crystal shooting flyers can eff off and die in a fire, though.)
The amount of story I've gotten so far is kind of pathetic. I still have no idea why I'm doing any of this. I mean, I do, but only because I read some of the wiki.
As charming as many of the locations are, all the backtracking and running through the same areas has gotten really old. And I hate the distance from the chairs and the more difficult challenges. I think if a game has super meatboy style platforming, it should have similarly convenient respawns.
Really, I'd've ragequit long ago if my kids didn't ask to watch, lol.
Thirith on 1/7/2020 at 06:41
I'm really sorry you guys aren't enjoying Hollow Knight, because it's very much my favourite Metroidvania game and quite possibly my favourite Soulslike (at least in terms of what it does similarly to the Soulsborne games). I love the game's tone and atmosphere, but I also love the skill progression (though I know it's quite standard for the genre), the difficulty curve, the different areas of the game. While it tells a similar story about cycles of corruption and decay as the Dark Souls games, it resonated more with me - I came to care more towards this world and the characters inhabiting it than I ever did with any Dark Souls game. I love how the whimsy and the darkness come together to create a world I care about.I love how the world fits together and how things that seem merely atmospheric later make perfect sense based on the layout. I love how this world made up of cartoony bugs can feel dark and scary and sad and funny. I love how the penultimate bossfight (the Hollow Knight) changes its tone so effectively, making an insect monstrosity downright tragic. I love how many of them practically have a sense of personality, not least in how they interact with each other in weird and wonderful ways.
Yeah, I think you might say that I like Hollow Knight a fair bit.
Starker on 1/7/2020 at 07:44
Quote Posted by Pyrian
I'm a bit further back, having unlocked most of the maps. I'm having a bit more trouble with the bosses, honestly. The vast majority of the basic enemies are just fodder, little more than opportunities to collect mana (called soul). (The crystal shooting flyers can eff off and die in a fire, though.)
You can actually swing back projectiles like that at the enemies (at least ones that aren't of the exploding type) if you manage to hit it in the air. Like the pickaxes the miners throw and whatnot. Also, it might be a good idea to take down all those annoying flyers (primal aspids, mantis petras and the wizard guys and whatnot) with Great Slash of Dash Slash before they can even start to do anything.
Quote:
As charming as many of the locations are, all the backtracking and running through the same areas has gotten really old. And I hate the distance from the chairs and the more difficult challenges. I think if a game has super meatboy style platforming, it should have similarly convenient respawns.
Yeah, if you just want to sit down and play without taking notes, it can get confusing fast due to the vast open world. As for the bench distance, later you'll get a teleport skill that helps with that.
Pyrian on 2/7/2020 at 01:56
This effing game. I got sick of Deepnest and wandered off on the tram, exploring as much as I could of the Ancient Basin and Kingdom's Edge (I couldn't really get into The Hive proper). Got the dash nail art and the swift nail charm.
So I decided to make my way into the opposite side of the City of Tears, walking clear across Kingdom's Edge and eventually arriving at King's Station, which has a bench and stag bell but they're broken. And then on the left side of that... I died. (HOW much damage does that thing do per hit?) Respawning waaaay back at the very edge of Kingdom's Edge. Because there's no effing benches anywhere on the way. Now I have to make the whole journey again just to get my shade if nothing else. Orrr I could use the vendor that could retrieve my shade buuut there's no working stag station anywhere nearby so I'd have to go all the way through Deepnest to Queen's Station.
FFS.
It's BORING to redo such huge swaths of relatively easy territory to redo a fight.
Starker on 2/7/2020 at 06:07
Yeah, those guys are a pain to the point I usually just avoid and bypass them altogether. They have a ton of hit points and are also one of the few enemies that effectively defend against pogoing and you can't really attack them out of their range. They way I deal with them is to jump over them and hit the shield they hold up with a downwards strike to bait out an attack, then quickly hit them in the back a couple of times as they are in the middle of the swing. Rinse and repeat.