How is hollow knight a good game?

[Don Quixote]

Now I'm not supposed to give my opinion, but hollow knight is a bad game. I own it on switch, and I'm around 35 hours into the game. Something I don't get is: Where is the story? THERE IS NONE. Something I must give it though is that the graphics are amazing, so lets not talk about that. Please, tell me why this game is a good game.
(edit: grammar)

[Don Quixote]

If there is any, I'm not seeing it. Also, how can there be lore throughout the game when I have most of the areas? (at least I assume)

[Ari]

I'm not afraid to say that Hollow knight has the best story of any game i have played. You are really not looking hard enough. Bad games feeds their story to you through huge walls of text and/or long cutscenes. Hollow knight tells its story through the world and character interactions. This is the charm of this game. The more you delve into the lore the deeper it becomes. It's amazing how team cherry made the lore so intricate that it's still discussed 2 years after the game's release.

When you finish the game. Go on youtube and search hollow knight lore and plot explained by mossbag.

[Sunsetter]

^I'd add it's not all about having looked either.

You encounter certain bits of lore that don't make much sense in the beginning, but as you progress you start to see how its all connected and you slowly piece it all together into one glorious whole.

There's a sign near the start of the game with an inscription that made me go "ok that sounds nonsensical and does nothing for me", but when I later came back with a more complete knowledge of the story, it was "ooooooooooohhhh! Now I get it, that's f*cking awesome!"

So yeah, the story is very much there, and I'd argue better written than games of the similar genre. You just might not be used the way its presented.

[Syndiciate]

Well, a few reasons I like it and why I believe others like it is because it possesses the following:

- An atmospheric soundtrack that is considered to be excellent by nearly everyone who's heard it.
- Beautiful backgrounds that clearly show off the artist's and designers attention to detail.
- Characters that are more human hen most actual human characters in games.
- An intricate and well written backstory that is both tragic and complex.

There's also it's gameplay which is designed to give you the feeling of mastery over the world by teaching you how to use your movement skills via specifically designed environments after you gain your abilities and ensure consistent and recognizable attack patterns from bosses.

This gives give you maximum satisfaction from boss encounters since you're initially getting your butt kicked by an unfamiliar boss and its attack patterns before learning them inside and out. This isn't even going into the charm system and the layers of complexity it adds to combat along with the personal satisfaction you get from getting to customize your playstyle.

[Syndiciate]

To go into more depth in regards to the story's quality, here's the backstory for one of the game's characters; THK/PV ( using the initials and spoilers for people who haven't found them yet ):

The Hollow Knight was essentially brought up by his own father to be used as a sacrifice to contain the power of a malevolent god after all his siblings were cast into the Abyss ( likely so that the Radiance couldn't use them against the Pale King or Hallownest ).

Unfortunately, because of an "idea instilled" ( the Pale King showing him fatherly affection at the end of the Path of Pain ) the Hollow Knight came to love his father and see it as his duty to protect the people of Hallownest. The irony is that, because of this, the Hollow Knight was unable to fully contain the Radiance. For years and years the Hollow Knight struggled to keep the Radiance imprisoned as it ravaged his body and mind until he encountered the Knight.

In that encounter the Hollow Knight is being driven to destroy the Knight by the Radiance but we can see flashes of his true self as he uses the moments where he has control of his own body to stab himself in order to help you defeat the Radiance. This means that even after having been left to rot in the Black Egg for years at the mercy of a malevolent god he still only thinks of the duty given to him by his father and willingly gives his own life to see it carried out.

The tragedy of this tale is that the Pale King was willing to sacrifice thousands of his children in order to protect his people, but because he couldn't help but love his son and his son couldn't help but love him back, they ultimately doomed themselves and their people.

Characters like the Pale King and the Dung Defender have similarly fleshed out backstories.

[TamoDogo]

32 hours here, there is so much interesting lore and you learn bit by bit

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

Hollow Knight takes a lot of influence from the Souls games. There is story, in fact there’s a lot, but you have to actively look for it and piece things together for yourself.

The idea behind this is that people interested in story and theory crafting have a lot to discuss and build off of to create more interest. But at the same time, the story doesn’t get in the way of people that just want to play the game for its gameplay.

[fillername]

Most games have trash writing anyhow, even no story is better than something like Xenoblade 2.

[Syndiciate]

I honestly really don't understand question like these. Even if you personally don't enjoy the game, how can you not see the qualities that others would hypothetically like? I mean, I think you'd have to be pretty oblivious to not see the things about the game that most people could enjoy.

[GeminiEclipse]

It's a good game because it has good gameplay.

[Stret]

first of all dont judge a game because of story

and second, there is a CRAPTON of story. It takes a while to get it all while playing the game itself, but like you can just watch mossbag's lore explanation if thats a problem

[Winter cruise]

Originally posted by iamjustatoaster:

Now I'm not supposed to give my opinion, but hollow knight is a bad game. I own it on switch, and I'm around 35 hours into the game. Something I don't get is: Where is the story? THERE IS NONE. Something I must give it though is that the graphics are amazing, so lets not talk about that. Please, tell me why this game is a good game.
(edit: grammar)

Translation: "I'm not smart enough to understand visual story telling pls help"

Obviously you're one of the last few knights in a world that had suffered from some horrible illness that is effecting the wildlife and bringing the dead back to life. I might be wrong but so far in the few hours that I played the game that's what I got. Realistically you don't have to read much to understand that the world your player lives in is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. The very first thing you run into is an empty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ village and if that doesn't scream the world is ending or some other type of grim fate I don't know what does.

Just because a game likes to tell you its story through gameplay and visuals more than explaining everything to you like you're an idiot. Ie: Zelda. Does not mean it has a bad story nor does it mean it has no story.

I'm sorry for calling you dumb but come on man.

[mongi]

Hollow knight doesn’t feed you lore every 2 minutes, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a story. There is one, you just have to pay attention to find it.

[Don Quixote]

Originally posted by Harrison:

Well, a few reasons I like it and why I believe others like it is because it possesses the following:

- An atmospheric soundtrack that is considered to be excellent by nearly everyone who's heard it.
- Beautiful backgrounds that clearly show off the artist's and designers attention to detail.
- Characters that are more human hen most actual human characters in games.
- An intricate and well written backstory that is both tragic and complex.

There's also it's gameplay which is designed to give you the feeling of mastery over the world by teaching you how to use your movement skills via specifically designed environments after you gain your abilities and ensure consistent and recognizable attack patterns from bosses.

This gives give you maximum satisfaction from boss encounters since you're initially getting your butt kicked by an unfamiliar boss and its' attack patterns before learning them inside and out. This isn't even going into the charm system and the layers of complexity it adds to combat along with the personal satisfaction you get from getting to customize your playstyle.

the soundtrack has some decent tracks, the backgrounds, i am agreeing with you on this one are beautiful. if you read the first post, i said that the graphics are good, so lets not talk about that. and with characters being more human then actual human characters in games, how? all there really is in memorable characters who can technically fit that quota if you fit it long enough is the map salesman, he ventures out while his wife does not like that. and a backstory that is intricate, well written, and tragic and complex, where is that? most characters only have like 3 lines that probably don't even mean anything. from your other post with the dung defender, the dung defender is just some guy (spoiler warning, and also i don't know how to make the black bars in front of text) blocking the way to an item that helps you swim through acid, not really that important

[Boksha]

Originally posted by iamjustatoaster:

and a backstory that is intricate, well written, and tragic and complex, where is that? most characters only have like 3 lines that probably don't even mean anything.

I think you're answering your own question here. There's a lot of stuff in the game that's very easy to pass over as just a throwaway line when, if read in context, it just literally explains a major plot point in plain English.

As for the Dung Defender, he doesn't just randomly tell you his life story. That would be silly. How often do you tell your life story to random strangers you just met? In fact many characters in the game will only tell you the absolute minimum to get you to do what they want, even when they're grandstanding about revealing great hidden truths. This applies in particular to a specific bastard royalty in a pink dress. To get more out of it, you'll have to see what characters actually say about each other.