Indie Hollow Knight

[Maf]

Well then I’m impressed. I thought everything non-critical was too hard to find and then even more difficult to do and it bought the game down for me. I never managed to do the White Palace at all.

[radiofloyd]

@mfnick

 

That’s funny, I only did one playthrough but I also finished with 86% (after 47 hours). This was back in 2017 so I guess they have added content to the game since.

[Jimboxy]

@mfnick
the real Hollow Knight is the friends were made along the way

[mfnick]

@radiofloydYea this is the Voidheart edition. They added extra combat challenges and a couple of weird delivery missions and some extra enemies if I’m remembering right. 

[Maryokutai]

Booted this up earlier, not necessarily to properly play it or start a new game (which I will have to do eventually because I have no clue what's going on anymore) but moreso to check if I was at least a little bit in the mood for this. On that front, yeah, I think enough time has passed to give this another go – not right now, not in a few weeks, but maybe still this year. Unfortunately it looks quite bad in Switch 2 handheld mode, every sprite has pixelated outlines around them because it really is just blowing up 720p images to 1080p. I guess now that Silksong is out there's probably little reason to expect a Switch 2 patch for the first game but jst throwing it out there that it would be nice if they did one.

[OCH]

On 19/06/2021 at 19:50, OCH said:

You know, this and Blasphemous I really enjoyed when I first got them. But haven't touched either in the longest time. I really should get back to that at some point? ?

Four years later...

 

There was a save file. Over seven hours, in Deepnest. So all the buzz about Silksong has made me want to start again with this. I think I'm stuck already🙄 I've literally explored everything I can with my limited initial abilities. There's a sub-boss that shoots pellets at you and goes into his shell if you go near. This, I remembered is easily offset when you get your shoryuken.. I just can't remember where?🤔

[OCH]

On 23/09/2025 at 19:44, OCH said:

I just can't remember where?🤔

Cue glaring "Boss Fight Icon" I was apparently blind to, in the middle of the map.🙄

Decided not to follow Hornet in Greenpath and see if I can sequence break a little. 

[one-armed dwarf]

After kinda figuring out that maybe Super Metroid is the only one in that series I might be into (I ragequit on Dread when I saw those fecking robots), I loaded this up again for something more labyrinthine. I've been put off this game loads before by the Soulslike stuff, and it's still not my favorite thing about it, as well as how grey and repetitive it can look. The art is great but pretty monotonous I find. 

 

But in spite of this I think I'm really enjoying it much more now that I've gotten charms unlocked and have figured out that 50% of the game is cartography, where you can place markers on your map automatically or manually, so it activates those Ultima Underworld neurons. You even have to buy a compass to show up on the map, and if you want to be more powerful you can just go without the compass and bring more charms that do combat stuff, and rely on your orienteering skills to explore rather than an icon of you on the map. They have signs in the world pointing to different vendors and utilities so you can work it out if you pay really close attention, and triangulate your position from context. I do wish though that I could write actual notes near my manual markers, so I must come up with a scheme for each colour for custom POI

 

The other 50 percent is movement, bouncing off enemy heads and knowing when to dash or just create some space or fireball a line of enemies and what the enemy behaviours are, ie, how they react to your spacing. One thing I feel is that using the healing move in combat may be a trap cause your magic damage just seems really high and they share the same resource, and heals can turn things into a drawn out battle of attrition

 

Ultimately my appetite for the game will live and die on the pace of its discoveries. I got the move that lets me slam the floor with my ass, so new things to discover with that

 

edit and I got the crystal dash thing, and did a really annoying obstacle course that unlocked a new move from a painter. The pacing is strange in that it starts so slow but then you get over the hump and you are constantly unlocking stuff so I wonder how long that will last. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm at this point in the game now where I can get 'essence' for my sword, by fighting these ghosts. Beaten two so far, one was easy one was a bit of a pickle, that one being the Scythe user in Deep Nest. I had to fight a literal piece of shit to get to him and he was a bit of a nuisance as well, though no boss so far has been particularly rough. The mechanics have been pretty obvious it's just been about trying to orbit around all the spicy projectiles and things on screen and snipe those openings as they come

 

There are also 3 super bosses on the map to locate, which reminds me of the Lordvessel section of Dark Souls. I got to the point in Deepnest that I was near the icon of one of them, but fell off a ledge and went off somewhere else. 

 

I found this Guts bug, so I got to find him and beat him up. There are a lot of these bugs so I suspect that the majority of time will be spent finding these fuckers and smacking them around. 

 

 

Spoiler

 

In terms of vibes of the world and lore and stuff, I'm pretty checked out on this side of things. I think if I played it back when it came out I'd have been all over it, but these games about dead worlds and ancient myths and ghosts and whatever have been done a lot now. But I really like how the map interconnects. I've got a lot of fast travel links opened and a tram as well, though I find that I'm going around manually a lot. It's satisfyingly non-linear in how you choose to go about it, I did manage to sneak into a part of the crystal mine that clearly expected you to have a double jump, which I don't have, by enemy stepping off a projectile thrown by a miner. Though I couldn't repeat something like that for the rest of the room that I was in, so I just died and went back to the bench.

 

One thing I feel is that money doesn't matter that much, and I wish it had more varied visuals than dark blue, black and grey. This is what holds the exploration back for me, the art is just repetitive I think. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The boss fights are sort of boring. There's a lot of them, I beat a spider called Nosk. Also beat some Elder guy who slammed hammers all over the screen. The combat is good, focused on fundamentals, I don't think there's any problems there. But the fights are often about a very simple but annoying pattern you have to learn, you do that by hitting your head against a wall for 40 minutes, then you figure it you and you manage to kill it. 

 

The one thing I think I really like a lot is its map layout, and how many different orders you can probably go about completing its content. But even that is sort of problematized by the environments all being so grey. You have to go through these areas a lot, and in principle I respect this, but they aren't interesting to revisit and that's a problem. 

 

I think that so many Soulslike games over the years have maybe obliterated the synapses that could be popping off at some of the things this game is doing. It's a very well executed take on something very very familiar in modern games imo. Probably the 2D platforming is the best part, and what makes it stand out a bit. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Got through the annoying spidery area and 

Spoiler

found the 'beast', hit it a bunch and it 'died' in a cutscene interaction. Subversive, but I was hoping for a good boss fight, cause so far it's been a bit middling in that regard. Lots of charm and personality in how some of them are designed but not interesting to fight so far. 

 

I went and read some spoilers and I'm near the end of the first sort of 'ending', I think, so I think I'll beeline my way to the other two 'things' I have to do and just see that part through and hope it has some crumb of motivation to see the 'real' Hollow Knight. But I might drop the game and just try Silksong, cause the combat in that looks so much more kinetic and the boss fight interactions deep and interesting. 

 

Wednesday edit, I got to a new area and it's yet again a dusty, cobwebby mouldy place full of flies buzzing around and things with orange bits on them. I initially thought I wandered back into Deep Nest but no, this is some other place just like it. This game is just shit to look at, it's the same fucking thing over and over, it has nothing of the cursed majesty of Lordran or any of those types of places

 

At least I unlocked a fart charm, got to look at the positives I suppose. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Between this guy and the Deep Nest spider I think the game is trying to teach you not to run away from bosses, cause this guy jumps across the entire room on top of you if you do. 

 

 

They give you a double jump just before this fight but it feels like a trick, cause you get frame trapped by his movement and attacks really quickly. 

 

I turned down the graphics to the lowest settings during this fight cause the particles on hitting enemies are too much. They're still a lot, but the lowest settings are slightly cleaner and clearer I think, have also modded screen shake out cause fuck that

[Maf]

Oh, yeah, that’s a guy right there. I remember that guy. That guy sucks 

[one-armed dwarf]

One of the issues I had with the traversal was the lack of a 'mark->recall' fast travel mechanic, and now

 

Spoiler

I just unlocked that, lol, with all the essence from that fight. It's called 'Dreamgate', charge up the dream nail to mark a point to FT to. So that fixes that issue

 

I guess I can use this to skip boss runbacks as well

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm going to look at guides to follow the rest of the game, I've been wandering by myself but the environments are too similar and grey to want to spend much more time in this world. When you are unlocking new paths and charms and finding new NPCs, Hollow Knight can be really really good. But it loses that moreishness when this isn't happening. It's just far too long, I think it should have been denser and that could maybe help solve the visual repetition a bit

 

I know now where to go anyway. One cool thing about the new ability I got is I can use it as a map marker to find out what room I'm in, as I'd been playing without the compass. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Beat it now, looked up how to get to the fog place and fought a Metroid, unlocked the last boss and did that. Well, I know there's multiple endings and other content but I don't feel that interested in seeing it. There's a lot of good here but in a post Souls-fatigue world it's hard to get the same impact that I think people must have had with it in 2017, and I sort of wonder if the polarised response to Silksong reflects this as well a bit. I wish I liked it more, but getting around its world takes so long and they don't make that fun enough I found. I really liked unlocking the teleport spell later on and so I think it needed to give you more powerups like that, and more interesting shortcuts. 

 

Saw 72 percent of stuff according to the inventory screen

[one-armed dwarf]

On 22/06/2021 at 07:38, mfnick said:

Completed, 23 hours (wow, wasn’t expecting it to be that long when I started it) and 65% complete.

 

Absolutely fantastic game. But most of you know this already.

 

9/10

 

I understand there’s multiple endings so might go back and knock a few more percentage off and try and get some more. There was 1 boss I know about who I ended up leaving due to basically not being strong enough when I first challenged them

  Hide contents

(Hornets second encounter).

So that’s where I’ll start. Some black barriers I couldn’t get by either so hoping defeating her will give me the ability to get by them and open even more areas up. 

 

Double post, but reading this back I'm so interested in the different progression paths here

 

Spoiler

I was under the impression you had to have the Black Shade in order to get to the fog world and defeat the Metroid looking boss, to get the last Dreamer. But the map guy says you can get in another way, past some acid, but I tried that and it seemed impossible. 

 

But you got in without the Black Shade, as you're saying here you didn't beat 2nd Hornet which I did in order to go down to the abyss and get shade. 

 

That's the thing I'll give HK lots of credit for, it's got super interesting non-linear progression mechanics

 

[mfnick]

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember any of that haha! Terrible memory isn’t limited to this game though unfortunately. Pointless playing them really!

 

Regardless though, yea it’s pretty impressive just how open the progression is in this.

 

Silksong is much more linear in that respect. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Just an interesting distinction. 
 

 

[Pikman]

Started this for the 2nd time after saying I would try just one more time. I am enjoying it a lot more than before!
I'm on what I think is the 4th section (with these annoying jellyfish things) and I can't yet figure out how to progress. We'll see if frustration wins out before I find out what to do 😅

[one-armed dwarf]

Reading back that earlier post I made about wanting Hollow Knight to be 'denser', it's weird that Silksong has been exactly that for me.