- Hollow Knight October 13 2017
- Hollow Knight Goty 2017
- Hollow Knight 2019
- Hollow Knight Best Game Of 2017
This year has been great for video game lovers. There have been many large releases that saw massive success and critical acclaim. Only 5 months in and we already have: Resident Evil 7, Yakuza 0, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, NieR: Automata, Prey, and Persona 5. Alongside all these huge titles it may seem strange, but the biggest surprise of this year was the indie game Hollow Knight. This is the first game by the Australian independent studio Team Cherry, but it feels like these guys have been making games for years. Hollow Knight is a metroidvania style game that takes place in the ruined bug kingdom of Hallownest.
The setting and atmosphere of Hollow Knight is the dark and dingy underground kingdom of Hallownest. The game is very cryptic and it is pretty much left up to the player to interpret the plot through subtle clues scattered through the environment. There are plenty of different environments for the player to discover and explore, each with a completely unique setting. These gloomy areas are accompanied by a matching moody soundtrack. While the game definitely has a drab vibe to it, there are plenty of charming moments. For example, there are these cute little Grubs scattered throughout the world that have been trapped in jars. As you find them and set them free you can visit them back in their home and the Grubfather will give you a present for each one that you have rescued. Accompany moments like that with the beautifully hand-drawn art style of Hollow Knight and you have a game that is simultaneously dreary and endearing.
Hollow Knight (2017) The metroidvania genre has been blessed for the last few years with a flood of good and great games, but as impressive as many of them have been, Hollow Knight still blows all of them away. Welcome to the world of Hollow Knight, a title released in 2017 by Team Cherry that breathes a new lease of life into the explorative 2D platformer genre.This title takes a genre known for its happy go lucky and colourful nature, then turns it on its head. Hi Everyone, All players can now access Hollow Knight version 1.2.2.2 via Public Beta. To access the beta, in your Steam library right-click on Hollow Knight and select 'Properties'. Then from the BETAS tab select 'public-beta'. Patch notes: - Fixed missing Dung Defender audio - Removed erroneous green/blue pixel - Fixed issue where a boss could be damaged before start of battle - Minor. Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization Deluxe Edition (2017) PC The Mors (2017) PC Hollow (2017) PC DEMO; Rocket Knight (2010) Fable 3 (2011) Tekken 7 - Deluxe Edition v 2.21 + DLCs (2017) PC RePack xatab. PC Gamer's Best Platformer of 2017 is Hollow Knight. Below, several writers who championed the game during our GOTY nominations process share their thoughts on why it's so great.
Do not let the cutesy bits of Hollow Knight fool you, this game can be brutally difficult at times. It starts off slow, as most metroidvanias do, but quickly ramps up as you acquire new abilities. There are many difficult boss fights and platforming sections that took me numerous tries to master. Despite this, I never felt like the game was unfair, it achieved a perfect balance of difficulty. It was challenging enough to be entertaining and engaging, but it was never frustrating. While another recent metroidvania in Ori and the Blind Forrest focused mostly on platforming, Hollow Knight is much more combat focused with platforming sections scattered throughout. There are dozens of unique boss fights to perfect and complete. When you are fighting bosses, you are exploring the masterfully crafted world of Hollow Knight.
![Hollow Knight (2017) Hollow Knight (2017)](https://aggrochat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/hollow_knight-2017-06-04-15-26-39-952-1024x576.png)
As a metroidvania, Hollow Knight has a big, interconnected, sprawling world. As you acquire new abilities and items you can access new places that were previously unavailable to you. This world was particularly well thought out. It is incredibly easy to get from area to area, as they are connected in such a way that makes them simple to navigate. There is so much to be found in the world of Hollow Knight. Grubs, health upgrades, magic upgrades, new abilities, upgrades to abilities, and new items are all around the player. There is so much to discover and be found that I was constantly enthralled with the exploration aspect of this game. One pretty unique thing about Hollow Knight is that it really never tells you where to go. It is up to the player to explore and stumble upon the correct path. Many of the paths that you will take will lead to boss fights, new abilities, and secrets, but a lot of these things are completely optional to complete the game. I really loved the fact that the game does not tell you where to go. There is less pressure to move forward, and it opens up a much bigger window for exploration. This game lets you play and discover at your own pace. Instead of saying “Well let me go here and move forward in the game”, I was saying “Let me explore and I will see what I stumble unto”. The latter is much more compelling, especially in an exploration based genre like metroidvanias.
Hollow Knight October 13 2017
One of the most common complaints that I have heard about Hollow Knight was its map system. When you discover a new area, you have to first find the cartographer to sell you the base map. From there you have to explore on your own to record the full map. Some people do not like this because they claim it makes navigating new areas a chore and a hassle. I do not agree with the sentiment in the slightest. I quite enjoyed that feeling of mapping out areas for myself. When you can see the whole map from the start, a lot of the excitement of finding different paths is lost. The only criticisms for Hollow Knight that I have is that I would have liked to see the base town of Dirtmouth to be built up throughout the course of the game. Maybe some new vendors to sell the player some items that would help locate secrets at the end of the game. In games like this, I can reach about 90% full completion pretty easily, but finding those last few secrets and items can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. So, towards the end of the game I would have liked to see some way to find those secrets that I missed. Other than that, the only real issue with Hollow Knight is that is really nothing “new”. It does not introduce any spectacularly new mechanics or revolutionize the genre. That being said, it does a fantastic job of taking all the greatest aspects from other games and combining them into the best metroidvania that I have ever played. While I value innovation pretty highly, I also greatly value the ability for a developer to perfect a genre and Hollow Knight does exactly that.
I rarely talk about prices of video games, but I think something has to be said in the case of Hollow Knight. This game is only $15 for a ton of entertainment, just to complete the game it will take about 20 hours. Sniper app 1 4 0 – snippets manager tasks. To get the true ending or 100% the game it takes more in the realm of 30-40 hours. Compare this to other fantastic indie games like Owlboy, Ori and the Blind Forrest, and Shovel Knight. Those games are about $20-$25 and will last the player maybe 10-15 hours. Not only is Hollow Knight a phenomenal game, but it gives you a pretty big bang for your buck.
All in all, Hollow Knight is one of the best games that came out this year, and that says a lot. I cannot sing enough praises for this game. If you like metroidvanias, 2D platformers, or 2D action games, definitely check this one out. It is expertly crafted and is quite possibly the best metroidvania ever made. For these reasons, I give Hollow Knight a 10/10. It may not introduce anything entirely new, but it does a damn good job of perfecting the formula.
The metroidvania genre has been blessed for the last few years with a flood of good and great games, but as impressive as many of them have been, Hollow Knight still blows all of them away. It’s a game of remarkable polish, offering a huge amount of content at a quality level few of the competitors can match.
Gameplay-wise, it seems pretty standard at the beginning. You explore a massive 2d world, search for upgrades to get past obstacles and when you can’t, look for stuff to do elsewhere until you have what you need to get past. Beside basic upgrades like wall jump, dash, and double jump, you also collect 40 charms that expand your skillset further, but their use is highly limited by the number of slots you can fill (you can also collect more slots to increase the number of charms used).
This allows for a huge number of builds in terms of skills, something you usually find more in a cRPG than in a pure action-adventure variant like Hollow Knight. If certain bosses are too strong, you have to respec your build to adapt, but as many of the bosses are quite different, you’re forced to try out different specs to see how you fare against them. And while not all of the charms are equally useful, few are of them are really useless.
Another point of differentiation from other metroidvania is how the game handles mapping. When you get to a new area, you don’t have any map. In each area, you have to find a cartographer who sells you a map, which is incomplete, and which from then on gets updated with information about where you have been, once you save at a save point. It’s not quite an automap, but it definitely makes getting around easier.
Hollow Knight Goty 2017
This approach, while sometimes annoying, forces you to pay attention to your surroundings in every new area and forces you to memorize most level layouts to the point that you often don’t need to rely on the map too much. It’s a map system that doesn’t trivialize exploration while at the same time cuts down on pointless busywork (as the map later helps you to plan routes to get around the kingdom).
The game has two shortcut systems (actually three with the teleport function added in a content pack, but I never really used it), and even with them you still have to walk around a lot. And again, both systems have been deliberately designed in a way to cut down on pointless travel time, while not trivializing getting around overall.
Hollow Knight doesn’t do anything revolutionary in terms of mechanics or core gameplay, but it pushes boundaries in many small ways and together with the overall high polish this leads to a very satisfying experience while playing.
There is one area where the game is quite unique, and that is the overall art design, which is tightly interwoven with the overall story and all the other content aspects like the enemy design and even your own character. You play a bug exploring an old insect kingdom, where something in the past has led to the downfall of said kingdom. Each area of the kingdom repeats the overall theme while exploring a different aspect of it: a spider domain, a garden of mantises, underground caverns full of living mushrooms, deep caverns of deadly centipedes and so on.
Hollow Knight 2019
Whether it’s a fantasy- or a space-themed metroidvania, in most games you often find pretty cliche environments, but while Hollow Knight follows roughly fantasy conventions, the insect theme makes every area feel really fresh and unique. This, in turn, adds just to how much fun exploration is in the game. Getting to a new area is always exciting, and there’s just so much to discover, so many secret areas, that it never gets boring.
And unlike most metroidvania games that deploy a sort of fake non-linearity (it feels non-linear, but usually you can’t break the official order of progression), Hollow Knight is one of the few games that is actually non-linear. Sometimes you need upgrades to get past a certain point, but at many points in the game, you really have options of where to go next, and each playthrough can feel decidedly different based on the order in which you approach the various areas.
So, is the game perfect? No. Its main plot remains frustratingly vague, so much so that when I reached the final boss the first time, I had no clue why I fought him or over what. You can interfere a lot about the background story just from the area design and the various utterings of NPCs, but you never have a clear idea of what’s going on.
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Hollow Knight Best Game Of 2017
Also, to fight the real final boss, you have to get through an area that suddenly introduces Meat Boy-like masocore platformer torture, with a very boring design that just adds challenge, but no style (saws, spikes and lots of death). And all of the 4 DLCs add a lot of boss fights, often bordering on the insane hard, with few new levels and none really all that interesting.
But otherwise, its one of the best, if not the best metroidvania I’ve played in a long time, and given the level of competition, shows just how remarkable the game is.