Hollow Knight -- Team Cherry

Experiencing the show/album/game…

Hollow Knight, a Metroid-vania Souls-like, is an aesthetic pinnacle of 2D platformers. The objective of the game isn’t clear from the beginning, heck isn’t even clear 50% through the game but that seems to be the entire point of the game. The player must carve out their own path and find out the purpose themselves. There are various regions in the game, each of them is locked, either behind an ability or an item obtained from exploring current region. Each region has its own unique mobs and not to forget, beautiful soundtrack on loop.

My experience with the game was mixed initially but as I unlocked more and more abilities, my interest started growing, being at it’s peak midway through the game. However, I ended up taking a rather difficult route in which I took a grudge against a difficult boss (Watcher Knights) at an earlier stage which severely hampered the rate at which I was progressing, albeit I could have skipped but my ego didn’t allow me to. After enormous amount of effort, once the Watcher Knights were beaten, the rest of the game was almost a breeze for me.

Progress aside, the scenery/art style and the beautiful OSTs were definitely something that were always beautiful. They kept me hooked throughout and kept me wanting to moving forward. It took me 68 hrs 30 mins to complete the game (62%), of which it took me 3 months for the first 38 and 3 days for the next 30 hrs. Overall, towards the end, I didn’t look forward to playing the game as much as I did to finishing it.

The theme it revolves around

Hollow Knight’s narrative is not apparent in the playthrough. External resources need to be consulted to understand the story. The overall theme of the narrative is based around worshipping and attention. It’s a fight between 2 beings of control, one comically villainous and the other, a flawed hero. Unfortunately, that is where it the story’s theme ends. The game however, has the theme of exploration and finding a sense of purpose around it. As players, one of the objectives of the game becomes to find the purpose apart from just exploring the various regions. It’s a classic Metroidvania in that sense.

The thoughts I had after completing it

The thoughts I had after completing the game were rather dull. Lack of a strong narrative, coupled with a heavy magic element, I was left with the question of, “okay what was the point of all this? Why did the creators of the game come up with the story?” The game had a “because I told you so” vibes when it came to the giving explanations to certain events of the game (especially when it comes to the Void and motives of the gods)

Negatives

Hollow Knight has its own set of flaws in my eyes. The biggest one for me is the lack of a theme (which questions my beliefs sort-of theme) across the story. Everyone seems like a bloodthirsty character in the world and for no justifiable reason. The linear thought process of mindlessly killing bugs/mobs wasn’t the most appealing motives to continue

Another complain would be unintuitive mechanics at times. Having a tiny few walls which are breakable is never even subtly hinted in the game but it is expected that you somehow learn about it yourself. So are the other endings, where a random object at a random place can change your ending with no apparent reason as to why

Finally, I had a very personal problem that the controller input wasn’t being detected all the time, missing every 1 out of 10 button presses which made boss battle extra hard and frustrating at times.

Ratings: 7/10

Music and the Art carries the game where story and the theme doesn’t