It took me a while to think of what I wanted to say, and how to properly articulate it. But I think I know what I want to say now. I'd like to start this review by something something completely insane: I hate this game. I actually, truly, from the bottom of my heart, really hate this game. And that's crazy to me, because for all intents and purposes, I should have loved it. I love Metroidvania games, I love platformers, I love Dark Souls games (or used to, but that's another can of worms I'm not going to open). Everything about this game screamed "This is the game for you, it's perfect for you!" Hell, I even had friends tell me this game was right up my alley.

Hollow Knight is a hauntingly beautiful game, from its visuals, to its soundtrack, to its world building and character design. Everything in this game makes you want to get lost in it and explore, see what's around the next corner, and this is further enhanced by the incredible map making system included in the game. At first your map starts out completely empty, then looks like a kindergardner drew it, and you can't see yourself on the map. Navigation by the map, for the most part for early sections of the game, was navigation by memory on what you've seen, and by what things look familiar on your map. It was incredibly immersive, and dare I say addicting. You could get more tools back at the game's central hub town to improve your map making skills, and make navigation a hell of a lot easier, and watching your map grow in size always felt cathartic.

Which is why it's all the more heartbreaking that I didn't get any enjoyment out of this game. Maybe I'm just a filthy casual. Maybe I just couldn't appreciate the game for what it was. Maybe I was blinded by something else and couldn't truly look past what I perceived as faults. Maybe I started playing the game with the wrong impression of what exactly Hollow Knight was trying to be. To me, the game played "too perfectly". And what I mean by that, is that almost every platformer I have ever played has had some slight "clunk" to it. Movement would take just a fraction of a second to actually happen, jumping would be just VEEEEEEEEERY slightly imperfect. Jumping would only really have, 4-5 heights to it at most depending on how hard you pressed the jump button and for how long. Yet in Hollow Knight, it felt like jumping had infinite heights. It was so extremely precise, that it actually threw me off at how perfect the moving and jumping in this game was. I would constantly run into enemies, constantly make extremely novice mistakes I shouldn't be making, and constantly made the game harder for myself because of my lack of understanding of the underlying mechanics as a whole.

Hollow Knight does an excellent job at teaching the player how to play the game. While the game isn't ball crushingly hard, it still has some large degrees of difficulty to it. I feel like this is just a minor reason as to why my interest in playing this game was so minimal. I didn't want to return to the game and continue playing. I beat the first boss, and in my arrogance, wanted to explore as much as I could because in my mind, this was a Metroidvania game. However, this also plays like a Dark Souls game in terms of enemy variety and complexity, and you also have next to no health in the early game. So little health that most enemies will kill you in 3-5 hits depending on what they are. Luckily you have a way to heal yourself quite often, so that more than likely is 10 hits based on a technicality, but the fact remains that you are incredibly frail and will die quite easily if you find yourself just turning your brain off and trying to play it like a Metroid game. And this is the trap I fell into. I certainly believe without a doubt I had the wrong idea and impression of what Hollow Knight exactly was. The level design and the way progression works is almost identical to a Metroidvania, so it was easy for me to be fooled. But the enemy design and how they interact in combat, despite being a 2D platforming plane, is almost identical to how enemies interact in Dark Souls. What this essentially means is that exploration in Hollow Knight cannot be tackled like you would in a traditional Metroidvania. The two styles of play are counterintuitive towards each other and don't mix. If you try to run around and do whatever you please in Hollow Knight like in a Metroidvania, you will die. And you will die a lot. You have to take your time, examine your surroundings, and approach it like a Souls game.

And I think this is why I ended up not liking this beautiful, wonderful game. I approached it with the wrong mind-set, with the wrong way of thinking. And I ended up getting punished for it. I wanted to give this game a chance, to convince myself that I would love it. But the game never clicked with me, and in the end, I suffered as a result over my purchase and regretted getting the game, and was deeply saddened that I wanted to refund the game because I saw how much love, care, and time went into crafting this gem.

I suppose if anyone read this far, just know this: Hollow Knight is not a bad game. In fact, it's an amazing game. That's why I wholeheartedly recommend Hollow Knight. But it's an amazing game that just wasn't for me.

Maybe you learned something by reading this, and this will help you decide to finalize your purchase, or prevent it from happening in the first place. I didn't really want to make such a long drawn out review like this, but I had so much on my mind and so much I wanted to say, that I felt like I needed to say it and put it somewhere.