Is it just me or does this game suck? It feels so tedious and monotonous. The reward system is so lacking

I'm like 6 hours in and I've got a handful of shopkeepers and a sigmeyeresque beetle I see occasionally. Selling me garbage charms im barely going to use instead of my current loadout or maps and lanterns arent very fun rewards, I'm sorry dude. They're just inconveniences.

user, you're less than a third through the game. You're not ready to make broad statements like that.

Calling charms garbage is a dead giveaway that you don't like Hollow Knight's upgrade system. Not that there's nothing to do.

combat doesn't really open up until you can get to salubra and have more notches
alot of charms have a stack/mix effect with another one opening up more options too

>you're not ready to make broad statements like that

Call me entitled, but the game should make me care by 6 hours.

It's a 25+ hours long metroidvania that opens up more and more that you play.

I'm not retarded, but literally every other metroidvania I've ever played has more aesthetic variety, has better upgrade and map pathing, and doesnt "get good" 15+ hours in.

Most of what you said is taste, but
>not enough aesthetic variety
you just went full retard.

>doesnt "get good" 15+ hours in
Hollow Knight is fine from the start and gets great 2 hours in. It becomes a modern classic by the 10 hour mark.

It's definitely not bad, but it's severely overrated.

>you just went full retard.
Okay, so I've been to the green area the jellyfish area the area below the city of tears that's all white and thick black, saw the sewers and citt, caught a glimpse of the heavenly dream realm and saw the snowy ash in the west.

If theres a secret anor londo I havent seen yet tell me, otherwise, yeah the games backgrounds just have very little variety. A lot of skill and talent is here, but the game gets old as hell to look at. Its exhausting on my eyes, especially when I go back and forth between everything.

I agree, I tried to like this game but something was missing and I honestly couldn’t even tell you what. I got about half way through and just stopped playing it

>the game doesn’t get good till 2/3rds of the way through
when will this meme die? 1/3rd good and 2/3rds shit is shit

I just don't think the game is for you. I don't agree with a single thing you say about it but you're far in enough to drop it.

>not muh dark souls in every single sentence
Are you actively trying to sound as annoying as possible?

it's quite possibly the best game of the last couple of years

>reward system is so lacking
Hopeless.
That's still letting social media decide your opinion.

It's well made, with great artistic lead. But the Unity input lag makes everything feel sloggy.
Still a good game.

that's not what i said at all though
the base combat is fine and just gets better plus you get to salubra pretty quickly anyway

Sorry i was just using terminology to describe locations, anor londo (and ariamis) is just a perfect example of if you havent gotten to that point youd be forgiven to think souls was drab and boring.

I'm not actually comparing it to souls. I'm only referencing it. My only comparisons were to the general amount of metroidvanias I've played, which is a lot. All igavanias including bloodstained, all metroids, and a handful of indies.

If HK had that anor londo moment and I just didnt know, I would keep playing. Thus the point of the reference.

last thing I remember was fighting the dung beetle guy, how far is that from salubra?

That's way after Salubra

Maybe it's just a matter of taste OP, I started this game last week and was really impressed with it finished it in 4 days. Definitely a masterpiece for me, this is coming from someone who's having a gaming burnout and dropped games left and right. It's probably not your kinda game.

That's said I'm now feeling empty ever since I finished it, to other anons is salt and sanctuary as good as this ? I've heard their similar

Not every game has a fortnite battlepass that rewards you for simply playing

When does the cost become too great?

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you can get to salubra after beating hornet in greenpath
there's alot of paths you can actually go and do things out of order so its possible to skip or forget

- too long
- artstyle is good but severely lacks variety. Most of the world is also themed around bugs/insect stuff, which doesn't help.
- world is too stretched out
- often lets you go along a straight path for 5min until it hits you with a deadend where you need an ability/item for to proceed, forcing you to backtrack for 5min so you can go where the devs wanted you to go
- most deaths and damage comes from contact damage with enemies, making all their attacks feel harmless. Basically you are fighting them while everyone else could just be playing tag with you (and winning)

I still agree with most of the positive things people bring up, though. The negatives just outweigh them for me

It's not bad, but is pretty overrated

>- most deaths and damage comes from contact damage with enemies, making all their attacks feel harmless. Basically you are fighting them while everyone else could just be playing tag with you (and winning)

Love Hollow Knight, top there with my favorite games, but this so fucking much.

SILKSONG FUCKING WHEN

>FUCKING
God, I love Hornet so much.

It has one of the worst reward systems within the Metroidvania genre. You can write it off by saying “it’s a souls game, not a metroidvania!” But if you are gonna call the game a metroidvania then you done fucked up, because it falls flat on its face in terms of interesting environments, rewarding exploration, and meaningful progression.
Not that it’s a bad game. It has a good grimderp atmosphere and more befitting a souls game, and some of the best controls I’ve ever seen.

play cod, that's probably more on your level.

I started playing it again recently (just did Path of Pain) after originally dropping it very early in the game (after the first Hornet fight) and I have to say that these critiques are really on the money

I especially felt the dead ends bit. Before playing this I really didn't get why so many people complained about backtracking in Metroidvanias because I don't feel like that's really an egregious problem for most of the genre.
But here it's pretty damn bad. The level design seems to only be made with a fully unlocked move set in mind, and things like fast travel points (thank God for the Dream Gate upgrade) and benches are often no where near where you would like them to be, forcing you to retread extra ground constantly.

In particular there's one route in Greenpath that you can't enter the first time you see it, so you come back once you have dash because that will let you in.
Only to find out that it's still a dead end until you get another upgrade, so you come back once you have Mantis Claw and IT'S STILL A DEAD END. In fact you couldn't have opened no matter your upgrades because it connects to a one way breakable wall from Queen's Garden.

I'm real tired of getting the "you found a secret" jingle only for it to contain a statue that I can hit for the same amount of soul I would have gotten from killing any enemy

> everyone who played it considers it a modern classic
It's castlevania with bugs, it only shows that you haven't played many metroidvanias if you think that HK brought anything to the table.
It is to the metroidvanias what darksiders was for zelda-likes. Looks good, but brings absolutely nothing to the table and is heralded as the best of its genre by people who haven't played many games in said genre.

HK and its fandom have the knack to piss me off incredibly.

>modern classic
eat shit and die buglet. I hate you and your likes, play the castlevanias game, HK invented absolutely nothing, everything HK has was already in the post SOTN castlevanias

I don't think there's a Castlevania game that makes you spend money to unlock a save or fast travel point, so I guess HK has that.

>I especially felt the dead ends bit. Before playing this I really didn't get why so many people complained about backtracking in Metroidvanias because I don't feel like that's really an egregious problem for most of the genre.
When done right, it can actually be the best part of a metroidvania. With good level design, you come back to a previously visited area with new power-ups, abilities, items etc. and the contrast between the first time and now makes it feel fresh. Suddenly you breeze through a tough part thanks to new movement skills or because you are way stronger than the enemies in that area. The difficult part for the designer is to anticipate when you will return. HK also fails in that regard because an enemy like the little mosquito types from the beginning still feel like a threat even after progressing a fair amount. Again because of the contact damage thing.

>The level design seems to only be made with a fully unlocked move set in mind
Good point. Wouldn't be surprised if that's how they actually designed it.

>HK invented absolutely nothing
Inventing something new is not a requirement for a piece of media to be good.

>best indie game to date
kek

>the little mosquito types from the beginning still feel like a threat even after progressing a fair amount.
This is going to sound like I'm trying to be obnoxiously antagonistic, but I really don't know how to put this other than "git gud." One of the things HK does best is gradually increasing the difficulty in a way that forces you to be better at attacks and movement, even if you have damage and health upgrades. Once you've progressed a fair amount in the game the starting enemies should stop being a threat altogether. Not because you're invulnerable to them, but because at that point you should have acquired enough skill from the incremental challenges that these early enemies are child's play.

Good geam
I like

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If it hasn't anything new, it's a waste of my time, and HK was a huge waste of time. 30+ hour for exactly the same games I've already played, is a terrrible thing.

I love liking games that Yas Forums hates

Seems there's a bit of a clash between the storytelling and gameplay focused factions here and the critique becomes harsher the less storytelling leeway you're willing to accept. From a gameflow POV, some of the backtrack sections and temporary dead ends do feel lengthy and I'd have been happier for those to be shortened for a tighter game flow. OTOH looking back on it, the travel sections made me feel some of the desolation and added to the atmosphere of vastness of that empire that fell into ruin while traveling it. Descending into the Abyss did feel like descending into some long forgotten section that no one would normally visit. As such, it served the environmental storytelling and establishment of the atmosphere, even if it hampered the game flow to an extent. As such, I thought the mixture of both made for a memorable experience and I'm ok with the choices, be it the actual intent of the devs or not. That's coming from someone who finished most of the game before the mark&return mechanic was introduced.

Ok. Good games don't have to be liked by you to be good, either. Because again, inventing something new isn't a requirement for a good game. I'm sorry that you force yourself to hate a good game just because it didn't meet an arbitrary requirement of "new."

Can someone mention a game with A better reward system? It's the only game I fealt had almost every discovery being useful. It's always an upgrade to health, attack, soul capacity or a talisman that can varry your build. Not just more useless rockets like in Metroid, weapons and armor weaker than the last in Castlevania or tons of useless consummables in Soulsborne.

The game opens up once you unlock movement abilities like the dash, wall jump and double jump

That's just nonsense. HK is the only Metroidvania I've ever played that actually delivers on a nonlinear, interconnected world. When you have a choice between two directions to go in, it's an actual choice that can lead to completely different areas and a completely different order to the game experience, not just "okay, well done, here's five missiles. Now go the fuck back to the main path." There were dozens of times when I picked a direction, realized that oops, this way is going somewhere new, I must have missed an optional branch with a power up, only to go back and realize that nope, BOTH directions lead to somewhere new.

People who say this are just looking at surface level gimmicks instead of being able to parse the actual fundamental structure of the game.

>there's no power grinding loop like in Castlevania so that I can't get addicted to seeing numbers going up and can't roflstomp bosses, it's so BAAAAD and TEEEEDIOUUS
lmao

HK is a way better designed game than ANY Castlevania.

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Rabi-Ribi is the only other metroidvania I know of which has the same nonlinearity.

Most other ones, especially Castlevania are just beat boss A, get upgrade X so that you can go to place Y and beat boss B etc etc.

In Hollow Knight you don't even need the fucking double jump, most places are designed to be passable without it.

>When you have a choice between two directions to go in, it's an actual choice that can lead to completely different areas and a completely different order to the game
This. Reminder that you can go through the City of Tears entirely backwards.

>The reward system is so lacking

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Has anyone here beaten pantheon of hallownest legitimately

Delivering a polished product is as valuable as delivering new ideas to a genre. HK is a hodgepodge of a lot of ideas from different games, but it put them together well, which isn't a given most of the times. The handdrawn-looking artstyle and animation is distinct and memorable and will age pretty well. You can sink in time both by going pure gameplay and by pondering the story behind it and taking in the world, if you're so inclined. Considering that and the amount of content the developers delivered for a surprisingly small price, the game is an amazing overall package.

>There were dozens of times when I picked a direction, realized that oops, this way is going somewhere new, I must have missed an optional branch with a power up, only to go back and realize that nope, BOTH directions lead to somewhere new.
When the fuck was that? After 10 hours? 20? I've been playing for 8 and the game still punishes my exploring with deadends.

It's just very very boring

>When the fuck was that?
Not him, but literally anytime after the two hour mark.

Not him, but you can buy the lantern and go to Crystal Peak immediately, even before City of Tears. Or go to Nest. Or w/e, pretty much everywhere is open, to an extent, once you have Mantis Claw.

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No. It's pretty much just a bit better than a polished turd though. Once the initial cool-factor of the nail bouncing wore off and nothing else was introduced it turned into a mediocre hack & slash for the rest of the game.

>because it falls flat on its face in terms of interesting environments, rewarding exploration, and meaningful progression
Explain your point

Imagine going Forgotten Crossroads > Greenpath > Crystal Peak > Forgotten Wastes > Darknest > Ancient Basin > Kingdom's Edge > Royal Waterways > Resting Grounds > Infected Crossroads > Fog Canyon > Queen's Garden > Greenpath > Howling Cliffs

I think you could do it. Literally finish the whole map before even entering the city.

>I've been playing for 8 and the game still punishes my exploring with deadends.
First off, you literally hate Metroidvanias.
Second, git gud at finding a way through. There are literally up to twelve entrances into some biomes.

I've been at it for two weeks and still not close to finishing it.
Are you just skipping all the content?

This
I don't get why people are complaining hollow knight doesn't shower then in useless shit, less rewards but more meaningful and enticing rewards seems an even trade off.

My god that's it. All the hollow knight hate. Its scrubs trapped in green pass bitching cause they can't beat the tutorial level.