A challenging mysterious tale
Hollow Knight is one of those games that reminded me that I #loveindies. I don't need the big budget part of the industry at all if titles like that continue to crop up. The game has a unique spirit. Tells a story unlike any other. Through it's graphics, music, text and gameplay. Tells it in a way that is very engaging, feeding you tiny bits of narrative, leaving you to put the pieces together yourself, purposefully leaving a lot of blanks for you to fill, unanswered questions that keep the mystery until the very end and beyond, but it still feels cohesive and deliberate throughout. The metroidvania approach of freely roaming the world is reflected in the approach to storytelling, which unfolds freely, not linearly. Figuring out what this world and its inhabitants are about is a game in itself. And what they are about is not just another set of game-story clichés, it's original, it's fresh, they devs didn't pander to anyone but told a tale that they wanted to tell, that they believed in and you can feel it. There's humour, there's darkness, there's seriousness, there's wackiness and weirdness. The gameplay is tight, and will test your intelligence, speed, precision. It's not a game for a lazy afternoon to just go through the motions, it engages you, keeps your brain active, challenged. It requires persistence and frustration tolerance and rewards that with a strong feeling of accomplishment. The only problem is that sometimes it's hard to tell if that difficult part is required to progress or is it there just as a test of skill, for bragging rights, and if those items are important or just collectibles for completionists and achievement hunters.
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