Incline Hollow Knight

[Damned Registrations]

I'm playing through this entire game yet again, and still finding shit that is either new to me, or I've forgotten about but is still an impressive secret. Game is absurdly huge and detailed, I feel like there's so much here I can't even begin to memorize it all. Game is a fucking masterpiece.

 

[sullynathan]

cholo knight. I think I beat the game 87% - 93%, one day I'll replay with all DLC. Was there NG+?

 

[Wunderbar]

Was there NG+?

no.

 

[Ivan]

2nd playthrough. Falling in love all over again .

 

[Damned Registrations]

The latest expansion is easily the best version of a boss rush I've ever seen. Working on the third pantheon now, but the real fun part is individually fighting the original bosses in souped up forms. And the new arenas for that look pretty sweet, feels baller killing a boss while a crowd looks on.

 

[Ivan]

I disagree on the arena bit. Some of the original stages are more beautiful than the arena. However, getting a 2nd chance to listen to the boss tracks is very welcome. Are you going for the 0-hit rank?

 

[Ivan]

Some thoughts, roughly halfway or 2/3 of the way through my second playthrough:

Ahem:

Hollow Knight is a majestic metroidvania.


Strengths:
-physicality behind melee attacks is superb, especially when using it to platform across spikes which in a lesser game would mean instant death/restart
-enemy design (mechanically/aesthetically) is on point, particularly for boss fights
-"Dream" rematches against bosses is a great way to face off against familiar foes with faster reactions and new moves
-the music is outstanding and the art is gorgeous
-navigating the world, acquiring new powers, re-traversing the same areas in new, faster ways never gets old

Weakness(nes):
-Having merchants peppered throughout the world can make having to return to them pretty taxing (having more dreamgates available would have been nice)
-may be a personal gripe, but I see no purpose for the blockage once the you trigger the Infected Crossroads event. I don't recall if you can clear it for it remains that way forever, but I found it to be pretty annoying when traversing the map
-this is a leftover gripe from my first playtrhough, some of the enemies were hard to track down to fulfill the bestiary, particularly the Husk Warrior (surprisingly few encounters with that one)
-camera issues dealing with aerial enemies who are too above or below you, particularly in the Colloseum

Hopes:
-when a new entry is added to the bestiary, it would be nice if the game filtered to that entry automatically
-returning to the physicality of the melee attack, I wish more was done with deflecting steel projectiles. I really enjoyed this mechanic in the Colloseum and would have liked to see a boss that takes greater advantage of this (maybe one of the DLC bosses does, I haven't fully played the Godmaster DLC)
-additionally, I really like how you can bounce off steel floors and like to see this incorporated into a boss fight, maybe an encounter where a boss teleports you over a fractured arena

 

[Damned Registrations]

The new Oummu fight in the third pantheon is brutal genius, a gimmick fight done right. I did a few of the no hit fights (I love the mantis lords, so I went for that one, will probably do hornet and some of the other swordsman type bosses as well when I'm feeling better) but I'm not going to try perfect everything any time soon.

 

[Ivan]

I love the mantis lords

 

[Damned Registrations]

My only fear is that when they inevitably move on to a new project at some point, it'll be weaker for one reason or another, or worse yet, they do the prima donna dev thing and decide to go for a totally different genre and make something totally shit.

I've got high expectations for the Hornet DLC though.

 

[Darth Roxor]

the colloseum of fewls is p. cool

finally some challenge in this stupid game

 

[Wunderbar]

the colloseum of fewls is p. cool

finally some challenge in this stupid game

snob

 

[Darth Roxor]

well what can i say, harro knight is p. casual overall

 

[Walden]

well what can i say, harro knight is p. casual overall

It's quite classical, in a good way, well crafted metroidvania and charming. Is it casual? Yes it is, is accessible and everyone can finish it, as every vidya.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Aaaaand finished. 100% completion killed the radiance yadda yadda.

I had never played a "metroidvania" before so I didn't really know what to expect from this, but I just assumed it was to be some sort of platformer. Needless to say, I was disappointed pretty quickly about the platforming since it's largely non-existent, and the few (well, one) instances where it's more involved/challenging (white palace) are more like an exercise in frustration than an actual challenge, because the controls/mechanics have obviously not been made with pixel-perfect platforming in mind.

So I was left walking around whatever places pressing X to stomp bugs and wondering wtf the hype was all about. Then I went into some more places, pressed X to stomp more bugs, had the occasional slightly more challenging bossfight, and still kept wondering wtf the hype was all about.

Eventually as I lawnmowed through yet another area it hit me - the game's just a murderhobo simulator, and in this regard it's p. cool. The gameworld really is fucking huge and there's a fuckton of places to see and revisit, plus secrets. It also has some Grimrock 2 qualities with regard to its DEEP LORE i.e. cryptic writings, cryptic characters and cryptic scenes that make little sense but which keep the whole deal sorta mysteriooz.

Also the production values are insane. The sounds, teh graphixxx, etc, are all really top notch.

Still, my initial gripes with it more or less stand. Hobo Knight is just way too easy tbhbbq, and there's little, dunno, achievement? to be had from lawnmowing the entire map, which in the long run kinda leads to it just dragging hella, and only my inherent autism forced me to keep rechecking all the places I missed instead of beelining for the final fight once I awakened all the dreamers.

Fun enough I suppose. If overrated. Or maybe the "metroidvania" genre just sucks to begin with - but all I know is that if this is supposed to be its epitome, I'll stay clear of the rest.

 

[Projas]

100% completion

The actual full completion is at like 112% fyi. I think you probably missed stuff like Grimm, Path of Pain or Godhome.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The actual full completion is at like 112% fyi.

i know

but i couldn't be assed to go through with that, especially with godhome

 

[Lutte]

Needless to say, I was disappointed pretty quickly about the platforming since it's largely non-existent, and the few (well, one) instances where it's more involved/challenging (white palace) are more like an exercise in frustration than an actual challenge, because the controls/mechanics have obviously not been made with pixel-perfect platforming in mind.

I'll have to heavily disagree on this. If anything, the rare occasional challenging platform level is easier than in many of the hardcore platformers because the controls are more responsive. Have you played Super Meat Boy, which was the main inspiration for content like the White Palace (the out of place saws everywhere are a rather unsubtle reference) ? SMB is one of those games where part of the challenge is mastering the momentum of the character and you can't easily course correct once you've started moving. Moreover, the level of momentum applied is inconsistent with regard to how much in-action control you have in different situations (on the ground, in the air, climbing walls). I tend to overshoot jumps in the harder levels of SMB more often than in HK for example.

The movement of the hollow knight character has very little inconsistencies and very little physics involved. You stop pressing the jump button and he just stops rising instantly. The dash will immediately bring your vertical movement to a stop in favor of horizontal too. It's as responsive as it needs to be.
That sort of nightmarish design wouldn't really be playable in a hitless run without solid responsive controls (path of pain) :


The thing about Hollow Knight is that they didn't have a middle ground between the sections like the White Palace and DLC/patch content and the extremely trivial main world content. The world doesn't ease you into slowly mastering your character before having to do the actually hard type of level design in platforming. Unlike dedicated platformers like Meat Boy, which start with easy levels and progressively make them harder and make you use more tricks on the character movements before you reach the truly hard part. While you can breeze through most of HK without really having mastered the controls. That accounts a lot for the opinion you've formed on the controls not being suited, IMHO.

The White Palace in particular is also made even easier by the presence of HK's metroidvania mechanics like being able to setup your character with health regen or the fact that you don't have to redo a significant portion of the level when you get hit (the area you respawn to is never that far from the place you got spiked), you only have to do that if you lose your entire health which shouldn't happen if you have explored the world a little before and got some of the situational charms. and the presence of many skip sections where certain breakable walls or jumps can skip a decent amount of the area, further discouraging trying to legitimately master movement in this game.

All in all, I agree with your views on the main game lacking challenge in terms of platforming, but the controls are by far one of the game's biggest and yet largely unused, ignored strengths. I would buy a pure, focused platformer made by these guys if they ever got around making one.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'll have to heavily disagree on this.

Yeah, well, I'll have to heavily disagree too, for two reasons.

In the White Palace, I had the most trouble with two specific places: one was a 'corridor' between two rows of buzzsaws that you had to crystal dash through while sliding down a wall; the other the corridors of spikes that shoot up and down with just a small safe space between them.

First - the fucking crystal dash can't be cancelled once you charge it (or I'm too dumb to figure out a way to do so), so you have to time the sliding down the wall with pixel-perfect precision to get the right crystal dash to get you through the buzzsaw corridor. If you don't get it right, you can usually tell you won't make it... but you're still forced to dash into impending doom, because even once started you can't cancel it fast enough, and the knight will go headfirst into a saw.

Second - if you're going to put in sequences like the spike corridors, you NEED to be able to calculate the exact distance you'll cover with the dash. This is not possible in Hollow Knight, which again changes the sequence into pure trial and error - either you luck out and put yourself in the correct pixel-perfect spot to dash through to the safe spot, or you miscalculate by a pixel and get stabbed. Compare to the classic 2d Prince of Persia games, where trap sequences like this are ubiquitous, but the movement is more or less "step-based", so you can calculate very easily from which place you have to jump, and how (stationary jump, jump from running). All that's left for you is to get the timing.

And these IMO were the only really tough parts of the basic white palace (I didn't go through the sikrit path of pain; didn't find it at first and then I couldn't be arsed to go for it after learning aboot it later), because everything else can be done very easily by jump-attack bouncing to victory.

Anyway, all the rest about the controls is pretty slick, yes - in fact when starting the game I had some trouble with them because they were too perfect so to speak, and my usual misconceptions/prejudices regarding 2d platformer controls often got me killed.

 

[Lutte]

IMHO, the first point is moot by virtue of the fact that the crystal dash will not lock you before the full tudududum animation completes and you should be able to see that you're not in the right alignment and release the button before the locking occurs.

Second - if you're going to put in sequences like the spike corridors, you NEED to be able to calculate the exact distance you'll cover with the dash. This is not possible in Hollow Knight, which again changes the sequence into pure trial and error - either you luck out and put yourself in the correct pixel-perfect spot to dash through to the safe spot, or you miscalculate by a pixel and get stabbed.

Look at the background in spike corridor sections like this one. Think. Think really hard. See the repeated pattern? Think harder. The dash is deterministic it's not some rng mystery. You have a background pattern that repeats itself with same-sized columns. What can you do with that? mmh, dashing from the beginning of the pattern puts you into the middle of the third repeated bit.. think real hard.. Putting your character in front of a section of the pattern will always have him dash into a predictable area of the pattern. A first successful dash will allow you to predict the next step perfectly so long as you understand the purpose.

The visuals are there to make up for the lack of step based controls and it works incredibly well.

 

[Darth Roxor]

IMHO, the first point is moot by virtue of the fact that the crystal dash will not lock you before the full tudududum animation completes and you should be able to see that you're not in the right alignment and release the button before the locking occurs.

Lightning reflexes right there.

Look at the background in spike corridor sections like this one.

After failing it trial and error for like 3+ times, I did in fact go by the background, mostly on a whim of "hey maybe this stupid first column in the background pinpoints the starting location" - which somewhat proves my point that the mechanics don't support the pixel perfect platforming, now doesn't it?

 

[Lutte]

The level design is part of meshing with the mechanics. Would it be an actual problem if there were more sections like these once you learn there are ways to gauge distance through the terrain visuals? the truth is, it's a problem mostly because no content in the game is made with that sort of platforming in mind so when you enter the white palace for the first time it's a curveball.

As for the comment on lightning reflexes.. isn't it more that you're a grandpa? I don't really have the pretense of being particularly fast on reaction times and none of the crystal dash sequences caused trouble for me.

Bits like these :

On the other hand.. I could have gone hollow, and not because of the game fault, I just sucked at maintaining my position and jumping at the right timing. That single vertical spike jump spot was a nightmare for me compared with anything else in the palace.

 

[sullynathan]

maybe the "metroidvania" genre just sucks to begin with - but all I know is that if this is supposed to be its epitome, I'll stay clear of the rest.

play an actual Metroid game

 

[DraQ]

Darth Roxor
You might want to check out Ori and The Blind Forest then - should be more up your alley:

• It's very platforming-centric and rather demanding at that, with combat being an afterthought (especially once you get bash and enemies trying to kill you become your most useful platforming asset)
  
• audiovisual side (including soundtrack) is beyond stunning (if you were impressed by HK's production values you're in for a ride) every frame is a wallpaper and it looks even better in motion with ultra-smooth animations (including transition animations between animations that seem to be governed by rather complex logic to provide the best match) and parallax sorcery
  
• controls are incredibly fluid and responsive (although you might want to either invest in a fagpad or spend time editing configuration file for the ultimate PC master race experience)
• the movement mechanics is just addictive and you get a lot of movement skills, with environments built to challenge them (near the end you barely ever touch the ground)
• the game is incredibly polished mechanically
• the save system is hybrid between glorious PC master race saves and checkpoint system - you can save nearly anywhere (apart from the escape sequences, combat and puzzle areas where you can make the game unwinnable), but it expends resource - the game is fairly generous with it so you can save reasonably often while keeping topped up but you can't just spam quicksave and the resource is also used for other stuff. OTOH you need to save to allocate ability points and can get optional abilities that heal you a bit when saving so the game encourages accepting non-fatal failures.
• the game sort of opens up mechanically as you progress, with new skills and environmental alterations allowing you to traverse previously challenging areas extremely rapidly and with ease (this also applies to secrets and optional stuff so something can be extremely challenging to obtain early (when you want it the most), but progressively easier as you progress.

Of course it's not completely perfect as it's relatively short (10+-2h), more linear (you backtrack, explore and open new passages a lot, but there is predefined sequence of objectives and a lot of gating) and the combat is extremely barebones (at first you just dodge while mashing attack key, later it gets a bit better, if still unchallenging, as you can use most abilities offensively), but in Ori combat is just something you do while going from A to B most of the time.

...and now for something completely different:
I guess the original Soul Reaver can be seen as metroidvania too and it's pretty damn good.

 

[Ivan]

good effort post