Recent reviews by Aurora

I can't believe the game kept the quality insanely high from the beginning to the end. Every single character (even the sidest characters you can't even interact with) are fully voiced and have unique animations/scenarios that you come across on your journey. It was successful at making me feel like I really lived as my character. I hope to see more games from these developers. 10/10

people like Mr. Berg make the world worth living

Story was too good, never tought i'd be invested in so many different characters.

Also, Ignis best boi.

Pros:

- amazing atmosphere
- decent enough story

Cons:

- combat is too simple for an action game
- story doesnt really have any "options", just one pre-decided playthrough and thats it

It's obvious that especially the graphics are made with love. Visually great while carrying most of the main gameplay mechanics from the legendary aoe2, BUT:

Devs, please don't make us write the problems in the recommendations when they have been already reported in your forums months ago and was ignored. They are really tiny issues and it's not worth ignoring at the cost of annoying people with inconveniences. I don't remember every single one obviously but some of the ones i do are: (Please remember that the issues the game has are REALLY REALLY minor)

1- Mongol technology from archery range has a visual bug where "Siha Bow Limbs" icon stays with an error message. For people who don't visit forums and see it's an actual bug can be very frustrated especially since it's a mastery rank.

2- Both stone and wood walls have a bug (not just visual) when you build in long lines sometimes 1 to 4 tiles of walls disappear during construction and yes, units can pass through that opening and the game doesn't allow you to build over the empty spaces again.

3- Chinese civilization has a bug that if you try to build the landmark of the next age too fast after building one while you have dynasty landmarks available for build, the game only gives you 2 random options among all available landmarks/dynasty landmarks instead of normal set age options. For example from Castle Age to Imperial Age it offers one of two: Imperial Palace and Great Wall Gatehouse

4- I am actually unsure if this is a bug or intention, as someone who completed all the achievements in aoe2 and now about to complete aoe4 ones i'd say it's suspicous. Most civilizations have certain kill count achievements with certain units. Every one of them except HRE has the kill count of 1000 (1k) for those while HRE is 10000 (10k). I don't want to believe it's a mistype issue but thought it was worth mentioning. (I was expecting generally more grindy achievements in aoe4 but it's more relaxed compared to aoe2 so this is not a complaint really. Just funny if it was a mistype)

Even though I recommend it, I have to say a couple of things about it.

1- You backtrack and you backtrack a lot. One of the most loved things about Hollownest is that it has a very large complicated map with lots of small places that can be missed easily. Not having movement skills other than the dash forces you to either take a mental note which gets overwhelming easily due to the amount of areas that you need to remember or put an actual pin on the area on your map (limited by 5 per pin type) and go back to it later on. The problem is that some of those are absolutely necessary for story progression and you'll never know which unless you follow a guide or backtrack to all those spots and check them one by one. That's a negative side especially in the beginning of the game for me but I guess it's personal preference. I just like to be tidy and thorough and the way hollownest is designed makes it really hard and even uncomfortable at the beginning.

2- Hollow knight is hard to get into. Again, probably a personal preference but over the course of about a year I started playing Hollow Knight at least 3 times. Played for about 15 minutes and uninstalled to try again later. Last time I started after seeing all the comments about how "Hollow Knight is the best game ever and whoever makes a negative comment on it is stupid" and actually forced myself to play first 5-6 hours which is where it got better (No, Hornet wasn't it) . So if you are planning to get it thinking it's gonna be a fun experience from the start because of all the "omagawd its a masterpiece" reviews, it's not going to be. It can be confusing and frustrating at the beginning. But it gets better.

3- The lore. It's one of the only two things that can be considered "soulslike" (other one being shade-death thingy mechanic.) It is given in a way that you can miss pretty much everything and complete the game Thanos style ("I don't even know who you are!") or dive into the absolutely amazing and massive lore of the Hollownest. It's so good that I feel like i'll be thinking about it for a long time.

4- Combat. I generally don't enjoy platformers but Hollow Knight's combat makes even that fun for me. It's so well designed and polished that this is the part the game actually becomes a masterpiece. Every boss (Except No-Eyes, damn.) is such an adventure. Which is why Godhome is a great place to spend so much time in.

TL;DR: force yourself for the first couple of hours, get a couple of movement abilities as early as possible then you can enjoy and explore the game for a long time. Considering the free DLCs too, it's definitely underpriced.

It's not only an artistic masterpiece, it's also a perfect example of a good storytelling with no words.