Hollow Knight Video Game Review (About In Description)
1Hollow Knight’s rich world and incredible depth of content will make you want to explore its caves for dozens of hours.
It’s not hard to get lost in the deep, subterranean world of Hollow Knight – and I mean that in more ways than one. The expansive catacombs of Hallownest have countless paths to explore and secrets to find. But more than that, it’s rich with lore, history, and purpose that drew me into a 2D Metroidvania kingdom I wanted to uncover every inch of.
The deeper I went into Hollow Knight, the more I was surprised at just how much content and freedom it has to offer. I could wander in basically any direction and find bosses to fight, upgrades to collect, and secrets to uncover. But what’s truly captivating about the exploring this long-dead kingdom is its atmosphere. Art, music, color tone, sound, and a million other little details combine to give each area of the map a distinct sense of place, and those areas jigsaw together in a way that feels intentional and alive.
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There are far more of these distinct biomes than I ever expected to discover, and the edges of each one blend together with the next in ways that help them make sense in the world. For example, walls on the border of the Fungal Wastes, even impassable ones in other areas, will be dotted with its telltale mushrooms. The lush environment of an area called Greenpath feels bustling and humid, a stark difference to the cold, dark caves of the Forgotten Crossroads. The bubble-filled region of Fog Canyon isn’t technically underwater, but the muffled filter over all of its audio goes hand-in-hand with jellyfish enemies and a brighter blue tone.
Hallownest’s capital city, the City of Tears, is a metropolis in a huge cave where it’s always raining. But it wasn’t until 10 hours after I first discovered this place that I stumbled across the Blue Lake, a massive body of serene water positioned just above the underground city. Hollow Knight doesn’t shove this connection in your face, it just lets you explore its world and piece together the story for yourself as you sit down and enjoy a moment of quiet.
Hollow Knight's larger story is told in a subtle way, but its lore is so deep that I feel like I could write a book on it.
In fact, Hollow Knight tells you very little about what’s going on, and instead sends you into a world full of monumental events that all happened long before you arrived: wars and heroes, love and culture, disease and destruction. The aftermath of Hallownest’s troubled past is left for you to discover and comes through loud and clear, but only if you take the time to listen. It’s told in a very subtle way, but teaches you so much about Hallownest in the process that I feel like I could practically write a book on it.
It’s a tragic tale, one full of fallen heroes and terrible decisions, but it still manages to make time for beautiful, calm, and hopeful moments throughout. And it’s easy to enjoy those moments, because Hollow Knight’s hand-drawn art is simply beautiful. It’s a world that manages to feel cohesive despite its citizens being adorable bug-people in a dying cave.
The story (and your place in it) is picked up as you go. Some of it through dialogue with the adorable and quirky characters who still reside in this decrepit kingdom, some through important story events, and some just by observing your surroundings and the clues strewn about it. After my second playthrough, I have a fairly clear picture of Hallownest’s history, but it’s a picture I assembled myself.
As much as I genuinely loved being pushed out of the boat and told to start kicking, Hollow Knights’ first few hours can be a predictably sink-or-swim experience as a result. It’s an unashamedly challenging game that does a great job of silently teaching you how to play, but it still felt a little bit daunting to start — especially when death means having to fight your way back to your corpse to reclaim your money, called Geo.
You have to find a map seller named Cornifer in each area before you can start keeping track of where you’ve been, and even then you have to equip a specific charm to see where you are on it in real time. That, coupled with fact that getting good at the combat takes practice, means I spent my first couple hours just trying to figure Hollow Knight out.
But once I picked up the rhythm of its combat and the pattern of exploring its initially restrictive cave systems, Hollow Knight clicked in a way that made me never want to put it down. After Greenpath, the second major area, you reach a point where there’s no clear “correct” direction anymore. Like any Metroidvania, your path options are gated behind things like ledges too high to reach or gaps too far to jump until you find the necessary upgrades, but there are enough options that don’t result in dead ends to keep to you exploring for quite a while.