Sorry I haven't been able to reply to everyone I have been in work full time and I was not expecting this response. Sure, it’s a migraine-inducing Metroid rip-off, but at least the one man who made it had the decency to let you see your position on the map from the off.Not sure where the best place for me to post this update is so I'll pop it here. I wanted to get the disappointment out of my system quickly so I moved onto Axiom Verge. Hollow Knight’s core mechanics get so much right that whenever it does make mistakes, it’s all the more difficult to take. It’s ironic, because it’s the term that sums the game up perfectly). But the items kept criss-crossing into a cluster, err… jam (I wanted to use another term here but I know I can’t. The final straw was a boss fight (I repeatedly died and got sent back to a distant checkpoint, of course) in which two enemies stand either side throwing lava projectiles and small cannon fodder creatures that allow you to replenish your health. That’s long enough and there’s no point in saying it gets better later, because it’s too late. 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.
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