I put about five to six hours into it before giving up. I’m glad Hollow Knight’s fans, and they are many of them, enjoyed it and I really wanted to as well. Great Metroidvania games are wonderfully tantalising and confusing as they make you wonder how on earth the developers came up with such cunning game design. As the confusing map and game world gets bigger, enthusiasm fades as you wander around aimlessly, dreading backtracking rather than relishing it. There’s not enough new abilities early enough and the items you do find fail to escalate the game or create the burning desire to play on. In Hollow Knight, you start off vulnerable and for too long, stay that way. This allows the player to build confidence and momentum, which are crucial as they’re being faced with hostile and increasingly more dangerous, non-linear environments. The idea was handled well in Shovel Knight but it I feel it doesn’t work with Metroidvania games, because those games are about starting out in a vulnerable state and gradually growing into the adventure through the sense of progression and being empowered when you find new abilities. I’m not asking for Nathan Drake levels of generosity where you restart almost exactly where you died but being forced to replay the same sections over and over again to retrieve your lost treasure is a concept foolishly borrowed from Dark Souls and makes it immensely frustrating. When you do get the compass, it takes up an inventory space, adding insult to injury. The fact it was there in the first place made me wonder what other idiotic and moronic decisions were made elsewhere. It is simply unforgivable in this genre, and although it’s less of a problem when you can eventually buy a compass, it’s the sort of thing that can drive time-poor players away from the game instead of trying to hook them. It’s like starting a Mario game without the ability to jump.
The decision not to allow the player to see where they are on a map which is continuing to branch off in multiple directions is one of the worst game design choices I’ve ever experienced in my 30 years of gaming.
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