Hollow Knight Review

[Guri]

It's really that rare case when a game can be called a masterpiece.

That is empty, then thick

However, during the first hour, the impression can be quite different, if before that you were not interested in Hollow Knight at all and do not know anything about its features. Soon after getting to know the management you will find yourself in a confused location, without any useful objects, except weapons. Going down a couple of floors, you'll want to open the map, but it's not there. Wish to survive, sitting down on the bench, but where it is located - the devil knows. Of the defeated enemies, some currency falls out, and the same coins are often stacked in low heaps, but what is the money to spend?

The game is unfriendly and does not lead by the handle, but there is no desire to turn it off - I want to understand everything. Over time, you find a cartographer who is ready to sell a map outline for coins. But the bad luck: the room you see on it, and your character - no. And any benches and other useful objects on it are not marked. In addition, for each region, its map - as soon as the character gets to the next zone, it is first of all desirable for him to find a cartographer, who left a trace of sheets of paper behind him.

Gradually, you earn and unlock the elements, which in many other "metro-assignments" are available immediately. Here, the absence of familiar things at first seems wild, but Hollow Knight not just trying to be "not like everyone else", but immediately warns of a high threshold of entry. And this is expressed in everything: in the manner of narration, in battles, in the arrangement of conservation points, even in the mechanics of restoring health.

Instead of first aid kits for healing, the souls of enemies are used here, collected when they inflict damage. To regain some of the "lives", you need to hold the button for a couple of seconds, and at such times the hero becomes especially vulnerable. And if in battles with ordinary opponents this is not a problem, then it's rather difficult to be treated during fights with "bosses". These opponents, each time requiring a special approach, very rarely allow them to catch their breath and regain strength - most often all the inputs and outputs overlap when they meet them. And if you perish, you will rise on the bench where you sat for the last time. We will have to return to the same room with the "boss" and fight not only with him but also with his double to return all the lost after death currency.

Everything will be fine

But the more you play Hollow Knight, the better you understand that the world of Hollowest, in which the main character turned out to be, is not so hostile. From one zone to another, you can quickly move around, discovering the corresponding rooms in these locations. Improvements to the map become available soon enough, and after a couple of hours, you will see benches and merchants on it. The sketches depicted by the cartographer are refined by the protagonist after visiting the new rooms - he completes the rooms and corridors found during the study.

At some point you begin to understand that the content in the game is impressive - the general map of the world only continues to increase in size. And at a relatively early stage, you stop being led along the beaten path and allow you to go in almost any direction - where you are, go there and go. Since this is a "metro-assignment", in some areas the players are sure to expect deadlocks - either they will not be able to jump somewhere, or they will not be allowed to go up to the top floor. But almost always you can contrive and try to find a secret passage or try to go on the other side, finding there a lever or an elevator.

At first, the hero does not really know anything - he runs, jumps and wags his weapon in four directions. He receives the most important abilities later: he learns a double jump and can jump off walls and produce shells, spending the souls of opponents on it. The set of skills is almost identical to what we saw in Guacamelee! and other similar games - in this respect, there are almost no surprises. But because of how well all the locations are connected to each other and how many secrets are everywhere, you are happy to return to old places in search of hidden collector's items or something else. You can climb a wall that used to be an insurmountable obstacle, or jump over a spiked platform that you used to avoid.

Knight without shovel

All these opportunities can be used and in combat - to make jerks to avoid danger, and to jump on the walls for an attack from above. While dealing damage, the hero moves to the opposite side, which is somewhat annoying during fights on narrow platforms, but it helps a lot during battles in the air because when you hit on top the character jumps up and can continue dubbing an opponent without touching the ground. If you also take into account that the nail (this is the name of the weapon), a large area of damage, and then it will be allowed several times to strengthen, the fights in Hollow Knight do not cease to please and do not roll down into a routine. A skirmish with the "bosses" certainly will not leave the player indifferent - an episode with the lords of the praying mantis, for example, was especially busy without a pumped nail.

Improving the characteristics occurs with the help of amulets, which the character finds during the journey or buys from the merchants. You can wear them only if you have enough free cells, and their number is subsequently increased. There are very few useless talismans, so there will certainly be situations when you want to temporarily replace one with another. One cell, for example, is taken by an amulet that indicates your location on the map, but in a fight with the "boss" from him little sense - it is better to take the "Fury of the Fallen", increasing the damage at low health, or "fragile force," which makes the hero stronger, but is destroyed at death. There are amulets that allow you to earn more currency or accelerate the attack, there are a lot of options.

Due to the extent to which Hollowest is large and how many secrets it conceals in itself, you can go through the game in many ways, and the "right" ending can be seen only after several tens of hours. Exploring every corner, you will gradually understand the essence of what is happening - there is practically nothing explaining the direct text here. There is a ruined kingdom, there is located over it the town of Gryazmut with bugs that survived the spread of the infection. The Hollow Knight universe is gloomy and sometimes depressive - some beetles deliberately contracted the infection to gain special strength, some mutated or gone mad. Part of the population went down and, when meeting a hero, is ready to return to the surface, opening houses and shops in Gryazmut, and some are in ruins well too.

And all this makes the game very atmospheric - seemingly by screenshots, it seems a nice platformer with a funny main character, but in fact i,t's not at all the case. Hollowest is full of dangers - it is inhabited by hundreds of different enemies, sooner or later reborn in the same places. Enemies, non-gambling characters and surroundings seem to be drawn by hand, and visually the zones are very different from each other: one is strewn with mushrooms, from which one can bounce, hitting a nail through them, the other is a rainy city, and in the third full of vegetation and corrosive living creatures of acid .


Rating: 8.5/10

Reviewer: Michael