What Sekiro is to Dark Souls 3, Nine sols is to hollow knight. Its an extremely parry focused game with a more engaging and complex core combat system, at the cost of less exploration and build variety. Like Sekiro, it also has a real engaging, explicit story unlike hollow knight which lays a lot of the more interesting story details behind 40 minute YouTube videos and obsessively dream-nailing things.

In some ways, I wish Nine sols would just leave behind its obvious holly knight inspiration. The game didn't really have a great sense of actual real exploration and the jade (charm) system and death system were obvious carry overs from hollow knight that frankly I don't think fit the game that well: very few of the jades are actually interesting and honestly seem like some of them get in the way of what the core combat system wants you to do, of parry and apply talismans.

Really the game seems to be a metroidvania to support your relationship with a few characters. And while two of those quests end pretty uninterestingly, the 2 human characters have pretty good conclusions to their quest lines that feels satisfying after putting the effort in. Regularly checking in with the boy as you naturally go back to base was also enjoyable and a lot of that dialogue was more thought provoking and enjoyable then I expected. The story itself is pretty good for a game of this type and never annoyed me too much when it came into focus: Yi is also a protagonist with a fairly unusual personality which I really do enjoy.

The game definitely has flaws, but the highs of its boss combat and how beautiful and engaging the combat in makes it hard to put down. If you only liked hollow knight for the exploration or atmosphere, pass. But if you were the kind of guy who enjoyed a lot of the combat, and the way the levels felt exploring individually, and you can enjoy story, this is a high recommendation. A great title!