Hollow Knight review

Reviewed on: PC

There are franchises we love and always eagerly await new installments of. Games like Metroid, Castlevania and Dark Souls are acclaimed for their depth, setting and complexity, and Hollow Knight draws inspiration from and pays homage to these memorable works and the genres born from them.

Since I discovered my passion for Dark Souls years ago, I have wanted to see mixes of its main elements in other genres. Salt & Sanctuary was very well received in 2015 for incorporating several elements of the Souls series into a platformer and, for many, it was an almost perfect translation of the acclaimed series into 2D space. But Hollow Knight achieves something even greater, incorporating and mixing mechanics and techniques from several genres to form an identity of its own that is still quite familiar.

Story: 9

In Hollow Knight, the player explores a tiny world populated by strange creatures and insects in search of a secret hidden in the depths of the ruins of a lost civilization. The plot is quite vague and open to interpretation, and the player has to look for clues about the world and its history in dialogue with characters, in details of the scenery and also by reading item and ability descriptions… A format clearly inspired by the Souls series, but masterfully executed by the studio Team Cherry.

Special mention must be made of the characters. Each has well-crafted styles and personalities, besides being bizarre and surprisingly charming – very much in the style of Tim Burton.

You will hardly understand the whole story or be able to follow each character’s motivations playing only once, but that makes the whole experience more personal: this is your story, not just a story told by the game. It may not be a presentation that pleases everyone, but those who know how to appreciate this style of storytelling will find deep and very rewarding material.

Mechanics: 10

Hollow Knight is a hard game to describe. There are countless layers of complexity to discover and master as you progress. The best term I can use to fit it into a genre would be Metroidvania, since there is a gigantic world at your disposal from the start, with certain areas blocked by the need for some special movement ability. The protagonist has a map that fills in as you explore the rooms and corridors of the world’s ruins, and everything unfolds quite naturally.

The controls are incredibly precise and the game runs fully smoothly even on average PCs. You can see an enormous dedication from the studio to ensure a satisfying combat and movement experience. In a few hours of play you will be bouncing off walls, dodging through the air, dancing between shots and blows from enemies and completing your map with the new information you have gathered.

Each hit landed on an enemy fills your Soul reservoir a little, which is an energy used to heal and also to activate more powerful attacks. There is constant tension to keep your (little) health intact, allowing you to use special attacks without having to worry about saving souls to heal.

The game should please those looking for a good challenge: the (apparently) simple and easy controls give the developers freedom to create devious encounters and passages. The game is fair, but quite punishing. Resources are scarce and there is little room for error: following the trend set by the Souls series, dying leaves a ghost at the spot, which keeps all your money and also a fragment of your energy vessel.

Hollow Knight offers an extensive and varied selection of abilities and items to customize the character’s gameplay to your style. You can equip more defensive and conservative abilities or equip abilities that improve your mobility and navigation, for example. The core mechanics are simple and well grounded, allowing a surprising degree of variety in what you can do with different combinations of powers.

Audiovisual: 9.5

Whether for the player or for a curious spectator, Hollow Knight is a spectacle. The art direction hits the balance between the macabre and the enchanting dead on, and the hand-drawn art and animation running at 60 frames per second are a feast for the eyes. The environments are rich in detail and there are countless elements to interact with, destroy and/or study in the scenery.

The music doesn’t stand out individually, but it perfectly complements the game’s atmosphere, providing moments of mystery, fear, curiosity and tension as orchestrated by the developers.

Final Thoughts:

Hollow Knight is a game about exploration, curiosity and imagination… But it is also a game about technique, persistence and self-development. Its world rewards those who dare to explore it, but its mechanics punish those who don’t concentrate to fight and to move. All of this together with its singular art style, setting and cryptic story establishes it as a jewel of the Indie scene: a game you have an obligation to know.

SCORE

Story = 9
Mechanics = 10
Audiovisual = 9.5

OVERALL: 9.5

To finish, I’d like to leave here a record of the moment I got my favorite ability, still in the first hours of the game. Take the chance to appreciate the mystery and oppressive tension of the world around me, and share my curiosity and will to keep moving forward… Consider there is a slight degree of spoilers, and please forgive me for not being a complete master of the controls!

[youtube link=”https://youtu.be/19vctKWtwgU” width=”800″ height=”480″]

PC version