An absolute masterpiece, even though I actually dislike some parts of it quite a bit. I played Hollow Knight in roughly three phases – with only the last two phases happening in the couple of months before writing this review.
The first phase was all the way back in early 2019. That was actually much closer to the original release than I had thought back then. There was so much praise everywhere that I somehow assumed the game was a decade old cult classic. I had only returned back to PC gaming after more than a decade of being console-only a few years earlier, so I wasn't super into the whole indie scene yet. It was also one of the first and few games I played a lot while streaming, for the occasional entertainment of some of my friends tuning in to see me suffer. Anyway, the hype had gotten to me, I played the game, I mostly enjoyed the – to me, surprisingly hard – game, and I finished the game. All within just about three weeks, and a total of roughly 25 hours playtime. That first phase ended when I beat the game, getting only to what I'd now consider the bad ending. I didn't use any walkthroughs or guides, and I had not much interest in completing collectibles and optional content. Managing that final (hindsight: lol, lmao even) boss felt great, and I was happy to move on from the game.
Over seven years later, now deep into my "try 100%ing every game" phase, I finally dared returning to it. I had since learned how much more of the game there was still to explore. I had found the Colosseum, for example, and knew there were some challenges there that I didn't feel like doing back then. But I only learned about the Path of Pain from the internet later. The more I read about how super hard the game was supposed to be, the less I wanted to risk returning to it and burning myself out on it. In the back of my mind I always thought I'd return to it once Silk Song was finally out.
A big question for me was: Should I just do a complete new playthrough to ease myself back into it? I ended up not doing so, it felt familiar enough fairly quickly and so I just started cleaning up things. I went into it with the expectation that I wouldn't be up to the task of actually 100%ing it and just hoped I'd at least get enough of the remaining achievements to not have it drag down my completion average.
It didn't take long before I rediscovered what makes the game so great – the atmosphere that's created through the art style and soundtrack is just absolutely phenomenal. And interestingly, I think from a gameplay perspective the cleanup phase worked even better for me than the original playthrough. By far the part I dislike the most about the game is the map system, navigation and exploration in general and the lack of decent fast travel. I don't mind an initial exploration into a new area, but once I find the map for that region it should be much more straight forward to find your way. Being confused by the labyrinthian layout is not challenging, it's just annoying. But because during this cleanup phase I just resorted to guides fairly quickly, this annoyance wasn't nearly as bothersome as back when I played in 2019. After a while I actually even installed a few mods that made traversal less of a grind. I never directly teleported onto collectibles or anything crazy like that – because in fact I did very much enjoy challening platforming sections around those, just not the 10 minute walk to those.
Similarly, cleaning up remaining boss battles was also quite enjoyable (especially since part of my earlier cleanup meant I now had the Dreamgate ability to reduce backtracking between attempts to basically nothing). Grinding a very specific thing until I get good enough is fun! Even the Colosseum wasn't too much of a challenge. I started playing some Pantheons, now [i]that[/i] is a challenge. But I persevered even through those. I didn't expect to ever even reach Absolute Radiance, and was quite content already once I finally succeeded in the Pantheon of the Knight.
Towards the end of that second phase, I realized that I've been enjoying it enough – and more importantly, had gotten pretty darn good again – that I'd probably go for at least the two regular speed run achievements. And indeed I managed it first try. So I figured… what the heck, let's try Steel Soul, but with 100% completion in under 20 hours to get three more achievements in one go. For this I needed two attempts, because Fog Canyon can go fog itself. Frustrating, but still deeply satisfying to complete. And suddenly I found myself with only one achievement remaining. All the cleanup done, all the speedruns done, all Pantheons mastered but that ultimate final challenge. This was the second phase. An additional 50 hours of combined playtime, [b]a lot[/b] of which went just into trying the Pantheons over and over again.
So I knew I had to at least give the Pantheon of Hallownest a try. And after a couple of attempts I knew that I could do it if I just trained enough. So I did. Phase 1, a mostly casual playthrough with some sidequests, was 25 hours. Phase 2, finishing up everything else in the game, was 50 hours. And Phase 3, mastering only that final Pantheon, was another 25 hours. Over the course of more than a month, trying to get in at least one attempt every day to stay in the flow. Earlier bosses that made me question my sanity back in 2019 when just trying to somehow beat them once now melting away in the face of my Neo-like upgraded fighting abilities. And yet, always still getting beat at some point of this mad boss rush. Hundreds of attempts before even reaching the very final boss and finally unlocking the ability to train that particular fight in isolation. Spending hours doing that. And then finally, finally, finally getting that one run where it all clicks into place. Embrace the Void.
As I said, an absolute masterpiece. Regardless of my personal distaste for backtracking during regular gameplay. The three different phases of me uncovering the full depths of what this game has to offer reminded me of Celeste, where mastering the regular game, then the B-sides, and then the C-sides also almost felt like three different games. I'm not sure yet when I'll actually feel ready for Silk Song, but Hollow Knight already taught me that there's no rush – greatness will wait until you're ready for it.
