 Steam Drunk Over the past seven or eight years or so There's been about a gazillion Metroidvania games made some good some bad some feel like boring rehashes some have original qualities The thing is for better or for worse their term Metroidvania is becoming a catch-all term being used to the point where it can come across like a Corporate buzz phrase like synergistic management or core competency My point is with so many Metroidvania games nowadays the term implies that the games all play the same way and it does games like Hollow Knight a huge disservice to say Hollow Knight is merely the latest in the Metroidvania craze suggests that the game is purely Derivative and has nothing else to offer other than being a modernized version of what some people say has become a cliche And that is not true at all This game is so much better than your standard open-world 2d platformer Everything from the sly way the game reveals its world to the art design to the music to the story and how it's told Hollow Knight transcends its influences and is more than the sum of its parts in other words It's just a damn good game. I do admit It's a tad on the odd side though for one thing the story doesn't just come out right and tell you what's going on with blunt exposition You're just a little bug dude with a nail for a sword exploring what used to be a densely populated kingdom of insects But now Hollow nest as it's referred to is mostly empty So what happened you have to go back to how this entire world was created through what's called the radiance an old God who's referred to as the founder of all bug kind in ancient times They operated as one giant hive mind fighting against a dark energy called the void eventually another ancient being came along the worm Who died at the edge of the kingdom and was reincarnated as the pale king? He becomes so powerful. He supplants the radiance as the one true bug God I guess granting all bugs sentience and freedom and he built hollow nest as a monument to his power However, the bug simply couldn't just forget the radiance and often referred it back to their hive mind ways So to remedy this the pale king had no choice but to draw upon the powers of the void and create a capsule to seal away The radiance and in addition three powerful bugs act as a seal to keep him inside this giant black egg Hey triple protection for triple freshness can't beat that. Anyway, the game doesn't outright tell you any of this You got to piece it together with bits and pieces that you pick up here and there and hollow night Does such a great job of telling a story without hamming it up with bad dialogue or voice acting Most of it is told through the settings music or even the gameplay itself as you can see this orange stuff spraying out from certain enemies Huh, what's that all about? Well, it turns out the radiance can't be sealed so easily after all But I don't want to spoil too much here I'll just say one of the big strengths of the game isn't just the story But it's the way it's told and the way it's open to interpretation without being ham-fisted or eye-rollingly pretentious As for the gameplay it's extremely player-friendly especially as far as games of this nature go your jump range is huge Your attack range is consistent and just about everything is intuitive and easy to figure out I love that to replenish health all you have to do is hold one button down for a couple seconds No cumbersome menus or anything your potions or what the game refers to as soul is contained in a fluid container in the upper left Which you can fill up just from regular combat But if you're holding the button down and get hit by an enemy like during a boss fight for example You lose out on that amount of soul. So yeah, it's a handy mechanic to have but the game does not let you abuse it It's really well done when you die you respawn at the last bench You've saved at and you have to fight a shadow version of yourself to get your stuff back and if you die again before getting there It's gone for good. There's a lot of exploration. So of course the maps are pretty big But still this game has an efficiency to it that I appreciate It's big but not sprawling and it's not a huge map for the sake of being a huge map It strikes a good balance between the type of player that wants to take their time and explore absolutely everything And there is plenty to find and between the player that just wants to get to the point and fight the next boss I will say the biggest flaw in Hollow Knight is that it gets off to a slow start It doesn't make the greatest first impression in terms of gameplay The enemies and bosses are pretty straightforward and your abilities are the same as you'd find in many other games Remember Lufia and the Fortress of Doom for Super Nintendo at the very beginning of that one You're playing in a flashback sequence as a party of super-powered warriors fighting huge intimidating bosses Just to give you a taste of what the game will eventually be like if you're willing to put in the effort I wish more games did that I'm just saying I wish Hollow Knight did a better job at hinting at the depth this game offers from the get-go But yeah, the game does get better and better the more you uncover both with the gameplay and with the story for that matter That soul stuff I referred to earlier can also be used as a fireball among other things You'll also uncover a double jump, a dash, a super dash among lots of others And you'll need as many as you can find because the enemy design here is as smart and as clever as I've seen in any game in the last several years But again it may take a while to get to that point There's also a huge rage of charms you can collect, equip, and unequip when necessary depending on what part of the world you're in And depending on how you like to play One charm allows you to heal faster Another increases your nail attack Another poisons enemies when you take damage But again the game is designed in a way that you can't abuse any of these abilities Each charm takes up a certain number of notches The more powerful the charm, the more notches it requires So you can't just equip everything and be overpowered to the gills You have to be smart about how you want to approach things And there's over 40 charms you can find So managing those are almost like a game unto itself I could go on and on about Hollow Knight The game's fan-made wiki page is up to 379 articles and over 12,000 pages But I'll keep it somewhat short This is just a video to explain why Hollow Knight is better than what the term Metroidvania might suggest Not just because it does the open world platformer genre better than most But because of the sheer depth of the gameplay The management required based on what tasks the game asks of you The way the visuals and music are integral to the story Which is pretty friggin incredible and something I rarely see And it would be redundant to tell you how gorgeous this game is You can see that for yourself And also the flexibility this game offers is fantastic You can play as a tank, a quick strike assassin, a heavy magic user Or even a crazy person who has their damage boost through the roof The lower their own health is Hey, if that's how you want to roll, this game lets you do that And now not only does this all unfold organically Everything is very intuitive Hollow Knight is one of the very best games of the last few years Regardless of genre I know it's easy to let your steam backlog build up and go ignored But if you see this one buried in there somewhere Go play it, it's well worth it Hollow Knight is also available on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One And I want to thank you for watching and have a good rest of your day