This is very reminiscent of Ori and the Blind Forest, which I greatly enjoyed. (Though also rage-quit on multiple occasions.) Hollow Knight has a much slower start, and requires a fair bit of exploration to start revealing its secrets and how it is likely to play out. That slow start did give me initial reservations, as nothing seemed to be happening and it was a bit painful bashing through the same sections repeatedly.
It's not quite as fluid as Ori (honestly, nothing is likely to be, that game was sublime. Go play it.) but the mechanics are still pretty nice. Fights are frustrating in a good way, and I've not yet found one that has caused me to throw the controller across the room. Some of them are horrible, but very satisfying to defeat.
The world is impressively sprawling, but does tend to be a bit confusing. The map helps, and you slowly acquire a further grasp of how it all fits together, but more save points would be helpful. That's also a problem with how the money works (at least in the early game). Money is dropped everytime you die. You can get it back if you return to your location of death before you die again, but you can lose a few hundred in one go pretty quickly if you end up in the wrong battle unexpectedly. It does get a little annoying.
Where this beats Ori out is in the range of characters and backstory. I've not got through it all yet, but there's obviously a lot going on. It'll be interesting to see where the plot gets to, and what the little guy actually wants.
It has other standards of the form, including shops, upgrades and so on. And it looks like it's going to keep me busy for quite some time. Admittedly, some of that will be because of the repeated (horrible, messy, unecessary) deaths, but also because there really is a lot to see here.
Highly recommended.
Tagged: Game Metroidvania 2D Hard difficulty PC