The long wait was worth it, I felt the need to fully play through this game and absorb everything it had to offer before selling it my soul, from playing the first game it was apparent that just like it, this game was going to have its 'surface level' content, where anyone who hasn't dived into the genre or previous game before to a full extent was going to miss out on a lot.

The Map, The Exploration
Now let me tell you, they missed out on ALOT.
This is one of the greatest exploration experiences you'll ever get to have, it's a one time thing for it to truly feel wondrous and feel that endless sense of scale this world produces, so please do yourself the favour, explore. This game felt like it was not going to stop growing, the world became bigger and bigger and it just felt like it'd keep going I felt in awe, the constant finding of secrets to new areas, to literal secrets that lead to entire new areas, it was ridiculous in all the right words, the endless fulfillment of constantly discovering, being awarded for looking closer at every turn, it is like Team Cherry knew exactly how to place everything because they just knew where players would look and where they wouldn't. In comparison to the first game, which i love dearly to my heart, which I also had endless joy and wonder in exploring its every corner, this game makes it feel tiny, this is a scale unmatched but a scale with no filler attached. The feeling of discovering this world for the first time will be something I'll never forget, it is above anything else.

The Combat, The Bosses
This combat is a greater emphasis on agility, dodging ability and rewarding the player for being able to hold out with a more immense healing amounnt in return, the idea of making hornet heal more and more instantly at the cost of it being a lot harder to build up helped to shape the combat in its own way that made it feel a lot different in its approach to bosses than its first game, due to the quickness and higher amount of healing, the bosses in this game offer a much more constant set of pressure and not as much attack patterns like in the first game that often were there to provide potential long healing windows. This offers more of a pick ur right moments, alongside its crest and tool system, it offers a lot of differing creativity from the previous game, though for myself I did find myself at home using the crest that was very close to the first games style of attacking, but im excited to try out more and see what others come up with and I think that will be a very fun and interesting part of this games future in the community and offers more replay value than the previous. I believe that the right boss fights in this game are generally glorious and insanely fun, the more intensive dodging and pressuring with hornets own agility and differing arsenal(s) can come together to create moments where you legit forget how to breathe until the fight is done. However at the same time I also find that while this can be the case there is various bosses I found to just have not fitted this games combat system or certainly didn't help to enhance the experience of it, some could very much be fitted into the first game and play off a lot better, I think theres moments where some movesets of bosses and enemies are just fit towards how hornet is to be played allowing engaging them to be a smooth, fair yet tuff challenge, and moments where thats not the case and I feel like ive reverted back to playing like the knight but now with a harder chance of surviving the encounter due to the healing system. Insanely high highs, some very sloggish lows and not in the way of they were hard, there is some bosses that are very much easy but just aren't engaging with hornets architecture.

The Characters, Atmosphere & The Story
Perhaps they'll grow on me more over time, I certainly love and enjoy hornets development and gained a great amount of love and respect for them and their story here, not really finding much interest in them in the first game. Though I adore The Knight, for me that character saying nothing at all and the moments in the game made him at the same time say so much to me personally, Hornet is a character I can enjoy for sure, but my love for the knight is just too bias to say she is anywhere close.
I certainly find charm in various characters like Sherma, Shakra and Garmond & Zaza, due to the overall nature of Pharloom and its story, unlike Hollownest, these characters very much are meant to feel like they're doing exactly what your doing, exploring and trying to reach places across the land, while its certainly great to come across them, unlike a lot of Hollownests NPCs, I feel there is alack of NPCS who are directly more intergrated and connected into the land who have the same charm as the ones mentioned, it was harder to become interested in pharloom and its different types of people as there wasn't as much representation of it or not any characters I felt made me interested in such, while I certainly loved exploring this kingdom, hollownest had enough npcs across its land who I found to be fun and interesting to give each respective area its own personality and charm, pharloom sometimes feels less like a kingdom than hollownest and can feel a bit too wild at times, despite the fact hollownest was supposed to very much be a kingdom far more in ruin and crisis, it had plenty of life still around to make you attached and wish for its liberation, I can't say I get the same sort of pride in helping pharloom in its struggles, well until a certain act of the game completely flips that on its head where the atmosphere the felt of crisis and overall feeling of taking action just feels so much more there than before the act, that whole section was 10/10, amazing and due to a certain attachment and INSANE REVALATION which I personally really connected to and found such beauty in, this game brought me to tears as it closed. Yes I know the wording is very vague, I dont wish to spoil, I just hope those who have played a lot will understand what I mean and if not I can always explain elsewhere.

I've thrown in some criticism for sure, I wanted to play the game to its fullest and truly be honest with what i felt worked and didn't, but I'd like to emphasis that these flaws of the game were not massively hurting my experience, the flaws weren't so prevelant or at a high scale that it ruined elements of the game at all, I think the scale, the map, the movement, the overall pacing of this game was so unbelieveably smooth and natural and just a unreal experience that will stick with me for a long long time, but perhaps the now weird to say 'smaller' scale of hollownest (still a big place) helped to create a world that atleast at the time of writing this I felt a much greater connection and care to and found the motives of its characters to be intriguing, conflicting and interesting to dive into. Both are spectular, both are the best of the best. I don't know if I will ever be able to decide which is my favourite, that idea is terrifying to even think about. I love Hollow Knight.