Platformers can be great (e. g. Celeste), but I don’t think it’s how you describe Hollow Knight genre. It’s a metroidvania in the first place. But anyway, it’s not a genre that brings the greatness, but amazing attention to detail; extremely satisfying gameplay; peak artstyle, music, writing and sense of humour; and amazing plot-twists. As you progress through the game, it reveals you the aspects you didn’t even think about, and it just blows your mind. By the end of your playthrough you feel like you’re playing absolutely different game than you started. I don’t want to go much into details because of spoilers. That’s what would be best to experience yourself if you decide to give the game a shot.
I can’t spoil shit, haven’t even beat the first major boss yet.
The fun of this game for me is a lot like back before GPS and ride share apps, how you might be lost at night and walking home, broke after a satisfying night out. You don’t know where you are exactly, but you feel a creeping recognition as you make your way through unfamiliar areas. Then you get a moment of pure elation as your mental map puzzles it all out. Your world feels bigger, you feel safe again, and you’re ready to return home with a true sense of satisfaction.
Then there’s the way this game trains you to fight like the main character. You can’t make too many mistakes because HP is limited and healing is often a high stakes moment, so you quickly learn a way to use the moveset - and when it clicks, it looks good.
You learn how to fight like Hornet, and the way she fights speaks to her story. Being the royal progeny of a spider and something eldritch, her style of combat is graceful yet intense, smooth as silk and totally merciless.
The surface elements (the storybook aesthetic, the gobbledygook bug-talk from amusingly forlorn characters) keep it all from becoming too grounded. If Team Cherry ever tried to make their work seem grounded in realism, I never noticed it. They use real things (like the “needle” you use as a weapon) as only small reminders that this is a story about bugs. These bugs are fully capable of metallurgy and heavy engineering, so anything that refers to the human world only exists to keep the sense of scale in focus.
To add to what you’re saying, the game changes on you so much. From the start it’s no Hollow Knight, but as you gain new abilities and ways to arrange those abilities, the game changes almost as fast as you can get good at it. I can’t wait to get into the second act.
Great explanation, but I guess the question was about the first part and your answer is about Silksong (even though many things take place in the first game too)
They’re very different games in some respects, but Silksong for me so far is very much a direct continuation and elaboration of the creative aims of the original. Same ideas, taken further. It’s early for me, but it feels a little like it was taken in more of a Sekiro direction with the combat precision and more deliberate choice of weapons loadouts.
Platformers can be great (e. g. Celeste), but I don’t think it’s how you describe Hollow Knight genre. It’s a metroidvania in the first place. But anyway, it’s not a genre that brings the greatness, but amazing attention to detail; extremely satisfying gameplay; peak artstyle, music, writing and sense of humour; and amazing plot-twists. As you progress through the game, it reveals you the aspects you didn’t even think about, and it just blows your mind. By the end of your playthrough you feel like you’re playing absolutely different game than you started. I don’t want to go much into details because of spoilers. That’s what would be best to experience yourself if you decide to give the game a shot.
Thanks for explaining it. You and the other comment bpiqued my interest. Grateful.
I can’t spoil shit, haven’t even beat the first major boss yet.
The fun of this game for me is a lot like back before GPS and ride share apps, how you might be lost at night and walking home, broke after a satisfying night out. You don’t know where you are exactly, but you feel a creeping recognition as you make your way through unfamiliar areas. Then you get a moment of pure elation as your mental map puzzles it all out. Your world feels bigger, you feel safe again, and you’re ready to return home with a true sense of satisfaction.
Then there’s the way this game trains you to fight like the main character. You can’t make too many mistakes because HP is limited and healing is often a high stakes moment, so you quickly learn a way to use the moveset - and when it clicks, it looks good.
You learn how to fight like Hornet, and the way she fights speaks to her story. Being the royal progeny of a spider and something eldritch, her style of combat is graceful yet intense, smooth as silk and totally merciless.
The surface elements (the storybook aesthetic, the gobbledygook bug-talk from amusingly forlorn characters) keep it all from becoming too grounded. If Team Cherry ever tried to make their work seem grounded in realism, I never noticed it. They use real things (like the “needle” you use as a weapon) as only small reminders that this is a story about bugs. These bugs are fully capable of metallurgy and heavy engineering, so anything that refers to the human world only exists to keep the sense of scale in focus.
To add to what you’re saying, the game changes on you so much. From the start it’s no Hollow Knight, but as you gain new abilities and ways to arrange those abilities, the game changes almost as fast as you can get good at it. I can’t wait to get into the second act.
Great explanation, but I guess the question was about the first part and your answer is about Silksong (even though many things take place in the first game too)
They’re very different games in some respects, but Silksong for me so far is very much a direct continuation and elaboration of the creative aims of the original. Same ideas, taken further. It’s early for me, but it feels a little like it was taken in more of a Sekiro direction with the combat precision and more deliberate choice of weapons loadouts.