Hello!

I've played Hollow Knight for a little bit. Only have one save, working on getting all the endings, and let me say; This game is absolutely amazing.

If you don't own it, it's a serious must have. The combat is nothing too deep, you have a dash a double jump and what's basically your i-frame. There's spells on top of it, but you don't really need to get into them if you don't want to. I didn't, and I'm doing just fine with my play-through. Although, if you're planning on 100%ing the game (achievements wise) I'd recommend getting to know the spells. They're pretty useful, and can be mechanically deep. It's worth understanding them, even if you don't use them.

The bosses are amazing and should be one of the main selling points of the game besides the exploration and world building. Which are equally as good. The bosses make up for the less mechanically deep combat, by having great boss battles instead. The later portions of the boss battles are truly astounding, and insanely fun. Especially in the DLCs. If you've played the game, you know what I mean. I'm not going to drop any names, because I believe going into this game blind is the best thing you could possibly do, but if you know; you know.

Exploration and world-building are the next topics I should talk about and let me tell you, it's amazing. It's stunning, even for a metroidvania like Hollow Knight. Trust me, when silksong releases, this'll probably be blown out of the water with the spectacles it shows off so casually. Not only the spectacles, but the progression of exploration is masterfully built. If you're going in blind, you have literally no clue where to go. So, when exploring, you kinda just wander around. You might find a few secret things here or there if you take your time not searching up guides, and then get your attention caught by something unusual. That's how it goes most of the time, at least. And although it seems simple on paper, (because it is) it's refreshing being so free in a game. It's almost like BOTW. Now, less about exploration and more about world-building, you can get yourself fully immersed into this game. I'm talking fully. The knight (your player character) might as well just be a self-projection of yourself, who just can't speak or do anything beside the basic movements like walking and jumping. You'll find all kinds of wacky/fun bugs in this game, all of which you'll more than likely see more than once a play-through. It's really solid, and that's all I can really say without spoiling anything. You can compare it to dark souls if you want to, but I wouldn't personally. I believe dark souls world-building is a little more convoluted than hollow knight's, but there's still a comparison to be made.

Despite what my hours show, I've played around 100 hours on this game. 55 on Xbox game-pass, and 44 on steam. I'm counting my steam play-through as my only play-through however, as it's the one I've actually done stuff on besides yk just get the regular ending. (Spoilers: There are multiple endings. No way for you to know without guidance tho lol) From my experience with both DLC's, (I'm at the end of the godhome dlc rn) I can proudly say this is one of my top 5 games alongside games like Terraria. I would happily forget everything I knew about this game and re-play it from the beginning if I could. The learning curve is a bit steep, but once you get into it; it's a 10/10 game that all metroidvania fans and 2d platformer fans alike should play at least once in their life to see if they like it.

This game is really, REALLY good for people who enjoy SCP content; and if you do enjoy that type of content; aka mysterious anomalous stuff- I'd give it a go.

Otherwise, It's a mid "game". It's more of a graphic novel than a game, but it's well worth the price of a graphic novel. I mean, seriously! When I was playing, I was more immersed than most of the other games I've played. I've played plenty of RPGs too, so that says quite a bit in my book. The story is amazing to go through, and I think that it was a proper experience I think all SCP fans should indulge themselves in at least once. However, despite this wide amount of praise I've given it so far; it has it's downsides.

I wouldn't call this a "horror" game. It's not particularly scary. There were only 4 or 5 memorable parts where I can say I was properly scared, and that was through the first half of the game. Second half was more just stories and interesting lore that I enjoyed. (Mostly because I've enjoyed SCP content half my life though.) Near the end it got very silly, and wasn't really a horror game anymore. More just a graphic novel with a few extra steps to it.

And there's one part that's just unbearable to sit through; and it's unfortunately about SCP-1762. Here be dragons, now known as here were dragons. I wish this part wasn't as grueling as it was. The story is amazing, and mystical, and wonderful; however I feel as if it was just put there because it was a popular SCP that got a lot of traction. Sort of like peanut or old man larry, but they didn't want to put peanut or old man larry. No clue if they did or not though, because there's a myriad of different routes (I think) you can take throughout the game. Assuming the 4 empty slots in my SCP gallery aren't there for future updates, at least.

Other than those two things, I can't really criticize it further. Besides a few nit-picks like not being able to see yourself in first-person, the "game" is great. I'm going to be referring to it as a graphic novel from here-on-out, because really; that's what it is. It's a great D-Class simulation, and I hope to see more games like this release in the future with even more SCPs and easily accessible stories. This was a great experience, and besides my complaints above; I'd recommend this to anyone who's remotely into the SCP foundation.


7/10 in my book. Would rank it higher if it had more to it, but don't expect 40 hours of game-play is all I'm going to say. Graphics are great, nothing bugged, everything was perfect; but in my opinion- the tags could be changed around a bit and some nit-picks could be fixed. Such as audio not matching subtitles, not being able to see yourself in first person, etc. I went into this game expecting a game and got a graphic novel. I'm not complaining though. A quality SCP game is a quality SCP game. What more can an SCP fan ask for?