I remember it like it was yesterday afternoon, I was watching the E3 Nintendo Direct of 2018 and checking out the cool games they would announce for the Nintendo Switch. I wasn’t really into gaming at that time. When I was younger and lessed experienced I mostly played only platformers and a few first person shooters. However, I always tried to motivate myself to try out new games from other developers or part of other genres. One of the many titles I saw during the E3 direct was a strange indie game known as Hollow Knight, a hand drawn metroidvania that I heard of quite a few times on the internet. I had no idea what Hollow Knight was and why everyone loved it so much, but much like everyone else after the direct I bought the game to try it out on my Switch. It was during this period in time that Hollow Knight started to gain popularity since the Nintendo Switch was one of the biggest selling consoles at the time. It would be no surprise that marketing a small indie game on that system would help improve sales since the Nintendo Switch is the perfect way to advertise these types of games.
Hollow Knight cost at least fifthteen dollars, which I found to be pretty affordable. I waited for the game to download, hopped right in, and was thrown immediately into a world I've never seen before up until that point. I was amazed with what Hollow Knight had to offer to me,. From it’s colorful visuals, fantastic soundtrack, and sprawling map with secrets to discover. At first I assumed I would just play the game until I got the basic ending and never picked it back up again due to the high difficulty curve everyone was describing to me, but my mind was blown from what I just experienced within the first fifthteen hours. Even when I finished the game I wanted more, so I loaded up my previous save file and decided to one hundred percent the game since I was told that reaching one hundred percent or reaching that point was the only way to obtain the true ending. I tried not to use a walkthrough while playing the game, and let my own drive to explore freely take me to new places. I slayed powerful bosses, met interesting side characters, and felt more immersed in the world I was in any other game. Once I beat the final boss I felt like I achieved something great, like Hollow Knight was there congratulating me for conquering everything single monster and foe that stood before me. Completing Hollow Knight for the first time is probably one of my most favorite memories in gaming. The many moments Hollow Knight has brought me is something I cannot describe so easily. Even though it has been a year since I last touched the game, I still remember the fond memories I had with the game.
Hollow Knight is one of the best video game experiences I had in recent memory and is a game I would go far to say is beyond a 10/10 score. So to congratulate Team Cherry and their wonderful piece of work I decided to take the time to talk to you all about why I believe the little metroidvania Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and what other developers can learn from this game. I know youtubers and critics like ScottFalco, Rusty the Superforge, and Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation have dove deep into this game and gave it the fair amount of criticism it needed, but I wanted to talk about my opinions about Hollow Knight and why I love it so much. So here we go, an entire essay about one of my favorite games of all time. If a Team Cherry employee is reading this I hope they enjoy the many praises I shine onto their game. If you have not played Hollow Knight yet I recommend doing so, because this long essay spoils some of the characters and events that happen later in the game. Please play Hollow Knight. It is so worth it. Anyways, enjoy this analysis of why Hollow Knight is such a masterpiece.
Developing The Kingdom of Hallownest
I can imagine what Team Cherry was thinking when they were developing the game. The original concept for Hollow Knight was a small flash game published on Newgrounds known as Hungry Knight, which followed a simple formula of collecting three items around an open area to bring your boned friend lying in the center of the map back to life. It wasn’t a very complex game, but the design of the main character would go on to become the little ghost we play as in Hollow Knight. A small stubby little creature with a hollow shell with antlers for a head. Everything in Hollow Knight was hand drawn and animated with perfect framing, and seeing how Team Cherry would have to program an entire game out of their designs and animated characters sounds like a challenge to me. So being like most indie developers at the time they fled to Kickstarter to get the funding they needed for their big future project. By the gods of Kickstarter themselves, Team Cherry gained the fundings they needed for a majority of the goals they set up including ports to future consoles, DLC expansions, and even a sequel starring one of the other characters. However, development on Hollow Knight was complicated.
Animation is difficult, the process is tedious and it takes a really long time to animate a minute of a scene or story. That’s why most indie games use pixel graphics or rendered 3D models, because they're much cheaper and easier to program. Team Cherry wasn’t afraid to embrace high standards, so they took the time to animate and program each asset of the game. Luckily by 2017 they released the final version of Hollow Knight on Steam. I think the game would have sold relatively better at launch if it was sold at a different time, because it came out around the time of big anticipated Triple A titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Yakuza 0, etc. It didn’t mean the game was bad, people who found this golden gem of an indie game got to play it before I did and some companies even nominated this game for awards. It’s good to know hard work pays off in the end, especially if it took months to perfect each design choice. Cuphead for example was a game that took almost ten years to make, but personally some design choices didn’t really work. Actually it was focused more on being difficult rather than being both challenging and fair. It took Team Cherry less time to make Hollow Knight, but that time was spent perfecting each design choice, and making the game actually fun to play.
The controls were tight, level and world design was sprawling and rewarded the player for exploration, the 2D combat was intense but had depth and complexity to it, player upgrades and abilities really affected how the player approached fights, the story and history of the world delved into philosophical themes about ideology, and much more. Currently Team Cherry is working on the sequel to Hollow Knight named Silksong and I am extremely excited for the follow up to what I have been calling this whole time a masterpiece. It’s probably my most anticipated game right now besides Doom Eternal and Hades which is still in early access and probably won’t be coming out for a long time. Shall Team Cherry expand upon the beloved universe we know? Only time will tell. What is Hollow Knight about and what makes it’s world so interesting? Well…...
The World And Lore of The Game
Hollow Knight is a game littered with secrets and stories for the player to discover. The more the player explores the Kingdom of Hallownest the more they figure about the world around them, and what a wonderful and emotionally beautiful world it is. It kinda reminds of Dark Souls and the Kingdom or Lordran, where each character and location has its own backstory and adds to the adventure in some way. I like this kind of presentation where the player can take the time and effort to figure out what is going on and invest themselves with the world. Most games struggle on telling a story because they constantly have to stop to explain what is going on or why they should care, but games like Hollow Knight and the Soulsbonre series prosper by letting the player simply explore the world at their own pace and take things as they may.
The citizens that inhabit Hallownest aren’t the most poetic characters I have seen in a game, but you get to witness their journeys as you progress through the apocalyptic setting. They have simple personalities and it’s easy to understand their motives once you get ¼ through their questlines, meaning when you talk or encounter them throughout the game it feels like they're comforting you and you are supporting them along the way as well. There is Hornet who is your foe throughout the game, but turns out to be a determined fighter who guides you towards the right direction to figure out what Hallownest really used to be like. Quirrel who is actually out on his own journey to discover the secrets that lie within Hollowness and confront a dark past. Zote who is basically your sarcastic rival who is determined to form his own legacy. Myla the Miner, Tiso, the Nailsages, the Blacksmith, etc. Some of the bosses even provide history for the world and are interesting themselves like the Mantis Lords, False Knight, the Broken Vessel, Soul Master, and the Dung Defender. Not only do these characters have unique personalities, but most of them have backstories that help fill in the gaps of what could have occurred in the past and questions that you may have been carrying with you.
For example Quirrel is actually the servant of one of the three dreamers, Lady Monomon, who was the king’s loyal researcher and conducted experiments within a laboratory in Fog Canyon. She went into a deep sleep and ever since then Quirrel has been waiting for someone to show up so that they can put an end to her eternal slumber and help her move onto the great beyond. The Dung Defender was one of the many royal knights who served the king of Hallownest. Ever since the fall of the kingdom he’s been hiding in his dung filled den wishin to go back to the life he once had before. Before the world he knew was in utter shambles. The Mantis Lords have tried to maintain peace within the Mantis Village by isolating themselves from the outside world. There is a fourth throne if you look in the background of where the fight takes place, and you can even look into who that fourth throne may have belonged to. It’ll even lead you to a hard to access and easy to miss optional area filled with lore and goodies. Some of these tales are actually quite sad which helps remind the player they are trapped within a lonely world. A world where something has to let go in the end.
Each area has its own gimmicks, traits, and enemies that help differentiate themselves between each other. Greenpath is an area blooming with evergreen and teaming with enemies that hide amongst the plants and evergreen. The City of Tears is the capital of the kingdom of Hallownest and is filled with loyal subjects and servants that were corrupted by the plague. We'll dive deeper into the City of Tears later. Deepnest, which is basically Hollow Knight’s version of the Tomb of The Giants from Dark Souls. Fog Canyon, Kingdom’s Edge, The Hive, The Outskirts, and much more. Due to extra detail, the areas of Hollow Knight stand out, making the player feel like they're actually in the world of Hollow Knight. So outstanding characters and world design, yada yada yada, but what about the overall lore? Well that’s an even deeper topic to dive into…...
The Story and Ideology
Much like Dark Souls or many interconnected games where they have actual choice over where they want to go first, Hollow Knight makes the player set up their own journey. Decide what paths they take, what they encounter, and what challenges they shall overcome. But you may be wondering what they are supposed to specifically be doing? I'm here to explain to you who the main character is and what happened to the fallen kingdom of Hallownest. The people of Hallownest were once ruled by a goddess known as The Radiance, a shining light that helped guide her people towards her direction. The people were mindless husks when the Radiance was around, they threw their responsibilities towards her hoping that she could decide what their fates were. Basically they submitted their free will to belief.
Soon an emperor known as The Pale King arrives and states to the people of Hallownest that they can decide for themselves. They can live freely and create their own society, and he can rule over them as their leader. The Radiance is angered by the Pale King and her people leaving her one by one, so she decides to unleash a plague which rapidly begins to take over the kingdom. Thousands begin to get corrupted by the plague, revert to the zombies they were before but now even worse. The citizens who were not corrupted by the plague are massacred by those infected by it. Using the powers of a black eternal space known as the Void, the Pale King decides to create a vessel, a lifeform that would contain the Radiance’s plague. It took several attempts, but finally the Pale King created the perfect vessel which he named the Hollow Knight.
The Hollow Knight is a fierce warrior who will fight anyone just to contain the plague locked within his own mind and body. No matter the cost. Henceforth the title of the game. The Hollow Knight seals the plague while the Pale King gathers three dreamers to help lock a magical door containing the Hollow Knight, so that no one can reach the Hollow Knight and the Hollow Knight itself won’t escape with the plague. But the Hollow Knight isn’t enough as the plague finds a way to infect more people. This leads to you, a lonesome knight who journeys towards the kingdom to break the curse.
You soon figure out that you're one of the many failed vessels by the Pale King and it’s your responsibility to get rid of the plague once and for all. There are two endings for the game: one where you contain the plague and slow down the spread of it, and another is where you get rid of it once and for all. The ending where you contain the plague on your own is a good ending, but it isn’t climatic. The plague is still running about and all you did was sell yourself within a chamber. If you choose the second ending, which is probably what you're going to do due to the first ending, you come face to face with The Radiance yourself. You beat her in one epic climactic battle and you get rid of the plague as stated. But while doing so you sacrifice yourself to gain enough power to destroy it. Hornet finds your broken shell lying on the ground and other failed vessels watching from the Void go back into slumber knowing that you're gone and that you have fulfilled your destiny. It’s a nice story from what I think, a little bit nicer than Dark Souls in my opinion. The sacrifices a little hero pushed himself through to preserve the life of others who are still alive.
There was something I learned at the end. I’m not trying to be political or biased, but I’m just trying to point out something that I thought I learned from the game. This lesson has to deal with religion and how far ideology can go. Religion can be a great thing for some, but when a religion is taken to the extreme people tend to become unstable. People will begin to question the actions they make and if they follow their religious beliefs too seriously their beliefs will influence them to do terrible things. Acting upon one’s self is a good thing, but acting upon a religion is what I consider not free choice. People have the ability to make their own decisions, a religion shouldn’t dictate to people what they should mainly do. The next subject is monarchy. The Pale King seemed like a great ruler at first, but he did some pretty bad things too. He let his own people die without even thinking how they feel, he took great risks, and he ended up making things much worse. It was a system of monarchy that ultimately due to now equal share of power with the people. In the end it either succumbed to religion or a mad king. They both may seem good, but there’s always an evil force driving them. Any system of law or order is ultimately flawed if it centers around one main power or figure. Anyways, enough about the story, let’s talk about the gameplay!
Learning From The Gameplay
Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, metroidvanias being 2D side scrollers that have an emphasis on exploration, finding secrets, and collecting upgrades to become more powerful overtime. But unlike most metroidvanias, Hollow Knight has some of the most well thought out combat, tightest controls, and open ended level design I have seen in a video game. At the start of the game you can only move from side to side, jump, and strike surfaces with your sword… I mean nail, which is this game’s version of a sword.
Over time you unlock new abilities and equipment that help you gain access to new areas. A dash that lets you propel yourself forward and dodge quickly, wings that allow you to double jump and reach higher areas, a lantern to navigate dark areas, a ground slam to break crumbling floors, charged attacks that deal more damage, and much more. Not only do these powers help with navigation, but they are also implemented to combat in a way where it works. There is a special meter known as the Soul meter and it is used for spells and healing. Soul can be refilled when striking enemies, so you are encouraged to fight aggressively if you want to get the advantage on enemies or stay alive longer. However, spending your Soul is a tough choice. Do you want to use it on powerful spells or refill your health? Especially during tough fights where you have to find windows of opportunity to do either or. Do whatever is best to stay alive. The game wants the player to make these quick decisions on their own without telling them or relying on one situation for every single problem. Especially since they constantly have to change up how they approach a problem.
Exploration is a big part in Hollow Knight because new areas will either possess key powers you need to progress or trait upgrades that will help progressing with the game much easier. When I say you’ll be discovering a lot of new areas I mean the game heavily rewards you for finding secrets. Beating new bosses, unlocking secret new paths, going deeper into the kingdom, the game opens up the more you explore. The rewards are good too, geo is the main currency used to buy items from vendors and is this game’s version of Souls or Blood Echoes from the Soulsborne games, mask shards will upgrade your health bar, and most importantly of all are the charms.
Charms are equippable perks in this game, they affect you by giving you specific buffs or special abilities that drastically change your playstyle. Equipping the right set of charms can even turn the tides during battle, and make some difficult fights much easier. You may want Dashmaster to evade attacks much easier. Shaman Stone if you want to increase the power of spells. Quick Focus if you want to heal faster during battles. Quick Slash to dish out more damage within a shorter period of time. Fragile Strength which increases the amount of damage you deal, but breaks if you die making you visit a specific vendor to fix it for future purposes. Fury of The Fallen, Flukenest, Nailmaster’s Glory, Hiveblood, and more. Quick Slash is a charm I highly recommend since a majority of players will be relying on melee combat and it makes late game bosses much easier especially for newcomers. Think of trying to create a build in Bloodborne or Dark Souls. You specialize in a specific loadout and stats and that eventually becomes your go to way of fighting.
Anyways, we're getting off course. One thing I like about Hollow Knight is something that Dark Souls also does: force the player to learn from their mistakes. Most games offer you multiple difficulty settings, but Hollow Knight is one of the few that doesn't have those settings. I think having no difficulty settings is good, because it tells the player there is only one proper way to play the game and if they don’t adapt to the game’s rules they will be punished heavily. The currency system of this game even punishes players for not being careful or refusing to learn from mistakes. If they die they have the ability to retrieve their geo back, but if they die again then it’s gone for good. Same goes for Blood Echoes in Bloodborne. When you overcome a challenge you feel rewarded. It’s exhilarating, it’s exactly the type of mood you want to keep pushing forward. Countless times I have struggled to fight certain bosses and understand their attack pattern, but after several attempts I begin to pick up quickly and eventually I overcome the challenge. Overcoming bosses is the only way to progress in the game and feeling like you accomplished something after beating a boss makes it feel more satisfying. Speaking of bosses….
Boss Battles
Much like the characters in Hollow Knight, bosses are cleverly designed to be different from one another and have their own traits to define who they are. Each foe is more devastating than the last one and carries multiple attacks that stack up on each other. Your first major boss of the game is False Knight, who carries a giant hammer to slam down on you. At first it looks like he moves and attacks slowly with heavy blows, but the deeper you get into the fight the more chaotic his attacks become. Everytime he strikes the ground a spark wave is shot out and travels along the ground, rocks start falling from the ceiling, and he jumps frequently around the screen. Eventually you understand his attack pattern, and finish off after his final phase. And after that you unlock your first upgrade which opens up the next area of the game. It’s challenging bosses that make the game so memorable. If half of a game's bosses relied on gimmicks or didn’t require you to change up how you fight midway through the fight then they wouldn’t have an effect. They will all just start feeling like the same fight.
It’s ferocious foes that slam down the player that make the game so engaging. There is the Dung Defender who chucks dung balls around the arena, rolls into a ball to bounce around, dives into the ground and tries to attack you from beneath, and tries to crush you using his size and weight. The Collector hops towards you with powerful swipe attacks while minor enemies are summoned from the sealing to distract you from the main fight. The Broken Vessel who fights very similarly to you and spews infection clouds around the screen. The Watcher Knights fight in a pack, spin around the arena at breakneck speed, and hound you on all sides. The Crystal Guardian fills the screen with laser beams and tries to attack while you dot around the screen. Hornet zooms around the arena in a short amount of time and tries to throw her needle at you.
One of my favorite fights is The Mantis Lords, because it’s a group fight done right. One of the Mantis Lords attacks you for the first phase and it helps you get used to their moveset. The other two fight together for the second phase and it’s where you have to learn how to deal with two opponents at once. Each boss becomes more challenging than the last and that’s great! Making the game harder as the player progresses is the only way they’ll get stronger. You develop new strategies, learn from your past mistakes, change your playstyle, learn to come back to certain areas when you are stronger, and prepare for your next encounter.
Comparing Hollow Knight To Other Games
Quite a few times in this review I’ve mentioned Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or things related to Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The reason for that is because Dark Souls influenced quite a few of the mechanics and ideas seen in Hollow Knight. The influences are very clear. I really hate it when people or game journalists compare things to From Software’s games, but I’m being brutally honest here. Some of the things I see in Hollow Knight is stuff you may have seen in Dark Souls. The griddy atmosphere and dying world. The souls like mechanics, which are geo in this game, where you can lose all of it if you are not careful. The many bosses that protect each area and change how they fight. Getting kicked back to checkpoints far away from where you originally were when you die. The build variety, hard to master combat, and much more. Look I love Dark Souls, it’s another masterpiece that will stand the test of time along with Bloodborne which I personally love even more, but if you're gonna compare something to Dark Souls it better be for a good reason. Maybe point out the similarities between the games, not just that the game is hard or it’s littered with bosses. If it’s anything Mega64 one time said it’s that there were several games before Dark Souls, some of them more influential than it. So you can’t just say, “Cuphead is Dark Souls, so hard, lol”. What are you, a child? Some of the games I would say that are influenced by Dark Souls are titles like Nioh, Ashen, Salt and Sanctuary, The Surge, Death’s Gambit, etc. Overall you have to have resources to back up a claim.
Now back on track, why did I bring up Dark Souls? Well personally even though Hollow Knight is influenced by Dark Souls, I feel like the game leans more towards the metroidvania category than soulslike. The genre it was mostly based on. Hell, this is the best metroidvania I have ever played. I think most games can learn from Hollow Knight and how it executes every step it takes. The game immediately drops you into the gameplay just like Doom or Bloodborne and it allows you to immerse yourself without anything like heavy dialogue sequences or heavily cinematic cutscenes every few minutes. When the game gives you a new item they tell you what it does and what button to use. Tutorial areas for each ability aren’t that long and you quickly pick up on how to use them to continue your journey. If you constantly take control away from the player then they won’t feel that immersed at all. You’re just taking them on a forgettable linear adventure. Does the player really feel like they're on an adventure or are they some kid on a roller coaster at Disneyland? Games like Hollow Knight and Bloodborne allow the player to have fun with the tools they are given. It’s not some Activision bullsh*t where there is a scripted moment every few seconds.
Plus I think Hollow Knight sets a good image out there for other indie games and developers. So many indie titles I have seen are either heavily narrative or only popular because of internet fame. Hollow Knight shows indie developers that games can be fun without relying on cheap gimmicks or expect reactions to carry them out. Stuff like Doki Doki Literature Club and Bendy and The Ink Machine get’s boring overtime but are apparently praised by millions. Meanwhile awesome indie games like Katana Zero, Outer Wilds, or Owlboy are actually good and have good design choices but fade away in less than a year due to how poorly they sell or are advertised. It boggles my mind to see this type of stuff, but unlike the internet famous indie games at least these smaller indie games have communities that aren’t as toxic and their fans don’t center their entire lives around it. Nothing ruins a decent game more than cringeworthy fans who spurt the same phrase over and over again. Which is why…..
The Community
The Hollow Knight community is one of the most loyal fanbases I have seen for an indie game. They know how to have fun with it and share ideas between each other without things getting overly toxic or spoiling huge portions of the game to those who haven’t played it. For those struggling to figure stuff out how to play the game there are players who guide them towards the right direction without telling them specifically what important story or lore moments happen. Sound familiar? Cough cough, Undertale, cough cough. There is lovely fanart for Hollow Knight, fans who research the lore, fans who make handmade products, and even musicians inspired by the game. One of the more talented Hollow Knight musicians is Lazy Moonkin who made a song called The Last Farewell which is based on Radiance and her people. The lore artists are much like the Dark Souls lore researchers, diving into each detail of the game so they can piece together the puzzle. You don’t need people like MatPat who make obscure theories about the game when there is actual evidence by the community. Why make a theory when there are several fans who have the answers for those questions, especially since your video was about how the Pale King is the Hollow Knight? That’s just dumb! Pure dumb! You don’t go and make a video about a game just because it’s getting popular!
Finally there are the fanartist and by fanartist I mean they belong in a museum. I have seen some of the most gorgeous and most hilarious pieces of work by the community. Some of them actually influenced me to start drawing and oh boy that’s been an interesting experience, because I suck at drawing. One of the main artists I follow, @pockles4nockles helped create a zine containing several pieces of work from several artists. So go check that out, it’s pretty cool. I would pre-order a copy, but too bad I’m poor to afford expensive shipping. Sure there has been some sh*t posting an overabundance of memes in recent months, but overall it’s a stable community. It’s not boring, but it’s not toxic like the Detroit: Become Human or Cuphead community. Jesus. They are literally cancer. Anyways let’s wrap this essay up and talk about the climax.
Conclusion
And there you have it, my in depth review about why I think Hollow Knight is an absolute masterpiece. I would like to thank Team Cherry for creating this amazing game for the whole world to play and wish them the best of luck for their next big title, Hollow Knight: Silksong. Hollow Knight really is one of my most favorite games of all time, living up to other games I love like Bloodborne, Shovel Knight, and maybe a few others. It is that high up there and I just hope it can withstand the test of time.
Hollow Knight is also the game that got me looking more into gaming and trying out games from other genres. It also taught me to give my all whenever it comes to a tough situation. To keep trying no matter what and even when I fail to achieve something I can always get back up and try again. Hollow Knight Is A Masterpiece with an amazingly deep world, incredibly memorable characters, rewarding combat, beautiful visuals and environments, and is the perfect example of how to do a video game. Please play it if you haven’t and if you have, I hope you understand why I love this game so much.
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