RolStoppable said:
No, the game is underwhelming. That's all. Most of the Castlevania games on GBA and DS had higher than medium difficulty, but the positions of save and warp points mitigated that. You don't get the same in Hollow Knight; heck, some areas in the game don't have a warp point at all. Traversal becomes cumbersome eventually, because you have to cover so much distance. Starting with five health points and finishing with nine is really lame as far as character progression goes. The same goes for the implementation of the badges you can equip. You can't equip much and what you can equip doesn't change much. Hollow Knight is one of those games that have had a cult develop around them, so everyone has got to love it. Any criticism is met with shaming, but at the end of the day the question has to be whether Hollow Knight can stand its own against the staples of the genre or if it's just another indie game that gets way too much credit, because Konami ended the development of the Castlevania series and the last one (Order of Ecclesia) is already a decade old. Additionally, there's a broad selection of such games. There's SteamWorld Dig 2, two Guacamelee titles, two Shantae titles, Axiom Verge and more. Why put up with Hollow Knight's design flaws when other comparable games are much less frustrating? This is basically the modern day equivalent of the 1980s question between Mega Man games (2 onwards) and Ninja Gaiden games. Some people consider design flaws a challenge, but the majority of gamers should be free to play better games because they are more fun. |
I was joking, but honestly, I've played most of the games you've listed and Hollow Knight is easily my favorite.
I think you're mistaking things you personally don't like for design flaws, and just dismissing the progression system purely on the basis of a large starting health bar or because you don't know how to correctly manage badges. In my opinion there are plenty of upgrades in the form of new traversal abilites, new badges, mask shards, soul shards, badge notches, strengthening your weapon, etc, etc. Fast travel is woven into the setting and I'm not a big fan of being able to warp anywhere because that removes a lot of difficulty. Same with having save points right next to the boss fight. None of the bosses (save the endgame ones which do have nearby save points) are so hard that you're dying constantly against them and if do die, you deserve the punishment of having to reach them again.
I'm not challenging the fact that the game is a 2/5 for you, because everyone has individual taste, but it's utterly incorrect for you to dismiss my enjoyment and claim that the game does not deserve my affection, because it's 'objectively bad' according to your personal metrics.
