Hollow Knight

Yeah I love Hollow Knight, definitely one of my fave games of all time. Can be quite tough though, but stick with it. It's also surprisingly long (but in this instance that's actually a good thing)

Play it then, you willy

Only one way to find out? It is a great game, although some dislike the difficulty of it.

I would say Hollow Knight is harder than Dark Souls.

It’s 2D nature does however make it easier to see incoming attacks and therefore to me it feels fairer. Attacks also take off smaller chunks of your health, so getting taken out by an attack you didn’t see is less likely.

The reason I think Hollow Knight is harder however is that you need to dodge far more and there is rarely a gap in the fight long enough to heal. I therefore simply didn’t heal in Hollow Knight’s boss fights whereas I am healing all the time in Souls boss fights. (Apart from a couple of Demon’s ones I did flawlessly).

Yeah, I remember there being very few opportunities for healing in boss fights, and doing so usually means missing an opportunity to attack, and so it's a gamble that you can go another attack pattern without being hit to make it worthwhile. (Outside of stuns)

Upgrading the nail is fairly important in Hollow Knight. I inadvertently made the game harder for myself by not having my nail as levelled as it could be when fighting some / most of the bosses.

There was an optional big grub like thing that birthed smaller babies that I felt was impossible when I first tried it as I couldn’t kill the babies as quick as they spawned. Went back much later and killed it with ease.

I thought this was every bit as tough as Dark Souls and Demons' Souls, but way more enjoyable to control. You still get punished in combat for making the wrong calls, but it completely lacks the stiffness and clunkiness of the Dark Souls series. Its as if Dark Souls was being played at double speed and had some kind of momentum and weight to movement that Dark Souls completely lacks (even though that feels like what its trying to go for).

Also, some of the end game bosses in Hollow Knight are on a whole different level to anything I encountered in those two games.

This game is continuing to blow me away. Its an actual work of art. My only criticism at the moment is it's a bit hard to navigate between areas.

There're a few options for fast travel but are quite spaced out.

It's only made by 2 or 3 people or something. Nuts

Ok, this is beautiful and obtuse at the same time. I think I like it.

This is a bit good and I need to git gud. Amazing what they've done with basically three... well, not even three colours, but three tones

Just keep looking at the map. If anything looks uncompleted, revisit when you've gained new skills.

I think they added pins to the 'barthana' lady bug, you can buy them and pin them to points of interest to remind yourself later.

As someone who has attempted various Souls games but quit after a few hours, I'm surprised when I hear people say HK is the harder game.

The map is so big in HK that you can just explore for ages and ages before you really need to fight a lot of the bosses. Some of them become really easy once you've levelled up sufficiently, whereas early on they feel like absolute nails.

I also don't get the frustrations with the map. It's refreshing how it just tells you to go off and explore – lends a real sense of discovery.

Silksong is by farrrrr my most anticipated game. I absolutely can't wait to play it.

Also, obligatory: play Rain World if you like HK. It's even better imo, although more unforgiving.