hollow knight review
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Hi, I'm <span class="p-name">Jefklak</span>/<a rel="me" href="https://brainbaking.com/about/">Wouter</a> and you're looking at "Jefklak's Codex", a dedicated and highly opinionated website about nostalgic games. The word <strong>nostalgic</strong> should be emphasized here. I grew up with a Game Boy between my hands and PC RPG games burnt into my retina. That healthy cocktail left a lasting impression - and netted me the Codex (and glasses).
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</p>
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If you found this website amusing and/or helpful, you can <a href="https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld"><strong>buy me a coffee</strong></a> - if you don't mind I'll use it to drink tea instead. I also like to hear your feedback via (encrypted) e-mail: <span class="link meel">say hello</span>. Thanks!
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If you found this website amusing and/or helpful, you can <a href="https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld"><strong>buy me a coffee</strong></a> - if you don't mind I'll use it to drink tea instead. I also like to hear your feedback via (encrypted) e-mail: <span class="link meel">say hello</span>.
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We retro fans have to stick together you know!
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<center>
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<a rel='me' href='https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld'>
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@ -67,9 +69,4 @@ How many of the games in this list are familiar to you? How many of those did yo
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Most gamers who tried to play the demo (the bad part of the full game, mostly) despise them because of the 'sucky graphics' and too complicated design. For example, in Arcanum you'll be instantly overwhelmed by the character creation choices. That is, again, one of the reasons why you are here, I hope. By all means, check out my tips & tricks, and hopefully they'll be helpful. If it was not, check out the Links section for a comprehensive list of similar websites and specific game help.
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### Contact Info
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Feel free to contact me if you notice any spell faults, guide errors or other wrong or misplaced information. You can also mail additional information which is not stated in any of the articles (yet), I'll add it as soon as possible. If you played several times trough a cRPG or Gameboy game and created some articles and/or a guide but do not own webspace yourself, let me know and I will upload all your gathered information to the Codex, among with your name on the site as a reward of course. If you own a dedicated RPG website yourself and would like to cross-link to this website, Im totally up for that too.
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We retro fans have to stick together you know!
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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ image = "/img/Guides/cv-harmony.jpg"
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date = "2007-01-12"
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title = "Handheld Castlevanias"
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aliases = ['/articles/handheld-castlevanias']
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tags = ['Castlevania', 'Portrait of Ruin', 'Harmony of Dissonance', 'Circle of the Moon', 'Aria of Sorrow', 'Dawn of Sorrow', 'feature']
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tags = ['Castlevania', 'gba', 'Portrait of Ruin', 'Harmony of Dissonance', 'Circle of the Moon', 'Aria of Sorrow', 'Dawn of Sorrow', 'feature']
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+++
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<p class='vspace'><a class='wikilink' href='/articles/castlevania-portrait-of-ruin-review/'>Portrait of Ruin</a> is the second Nintendo DS Castlevania game. Maybe, if Komani thinks it'll be worthwile, a third one will follow, since there have been three Castlevania games released for the predecessor the Gameboy Advance. All excellent Handheld Metroidvania games, but which one excels at what? A short overview would be handy indeed. Well here you go!
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@ -6,11 +6,9 @@ title: "Castlevania Aria of Sorrow: a retrospective"
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aliases:
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- '/articles/aria-of-sorrow-retrospective/'
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tags:
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- 'Castlevania aria of sorrow'
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- 'Castlevania'
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- 'Castlevania gba'
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- 'Aria of sorrow'
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- 'Castlevania aos'
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- 'gba'
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- 'metroidvania'
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- 'retrospective'
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game_platform: 'gba'
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howlongtobeat_id: 1576
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@ -6,11 +6,9 @@ aliases:
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date: "2018-09-09"
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title: "Castlevania Circle of the Moon: a retrospective"
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tags:
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- 'Castlevania Circle of the Moon'
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- 'Castlevania'
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- 'Castlevania gba'
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- 'Circle of the Moon'
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- 'Castlevania cotm'
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- 'gba'
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- 'metroidvania'
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- 'retrospective'
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game_platform: 'gba'
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howlongtobeat_id: 1578
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ date: "2020-09-03"
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title: "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Switch Review"
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tags:
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- 'bloodstained'
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- 'castlevania'
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- 'metroidvania'
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- 'switch'
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- 'review'
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description: "One year later, Ritual of the Night is still unplayable on the Nintendo Switch. Numerous patches later, the game still stutters and crashes, with its most popular screen being the loading one. We're off to a great start here... "
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@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
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image = "/img/games/por.jpg"
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date = "2007-01-12"
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title = "Castlevania Portrait of Ruin Review"
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tags = ['Castlevania', 'Portrait of Ruin', 'review']
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tags = ['Castlevania', 'Portrait of Ruin', 'metroidvania', 'review']
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game_name = 'Castlevania Portrait of Ruin'
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game_genre = 'Metroidvania'
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game_release_year = '2006'
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---
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image: "/img/games/HollowKnight/cover.jpg"
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date: 2021-06-01
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title: "Hollow Knight: Metroidvania marries Demon Souls"
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tags:
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- 'hollow knight'
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- 'switch'
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- 'metroidvania'
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- 'review'
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game_platform: 'switch'
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game_name: "Hollow Knight"
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game_genre: 'Metroidvania'
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game_release_year: '2017'
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game_developer: 'Team Cherry'
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---
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I hope they divorce very soon.
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That's my review, condensed into a single sentence. As much as I loved my deep dive into the world of [Hallownest](https://hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/Hallownest), as the end came near, I stopped playing. And I'm not alone. Here are a few fun Reddit threads:
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- [Is Hollow Knight too difficult?](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/jjdbc2/is_hollow_knight_too_difficult_for_a_beginner/)
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- [I love Hollow Knight, but it's too hard for me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/8i42ak/i_love_hollow_knight_but_its_too_hard_for_me/)
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- [Why is Hollow Knight so hard???](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/g42sks/why_is_hollow_knight_so_hard/)
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Trolls love to answer these questions with the two words _"GIT GUD"_. They're completely missing the point. By now you should have noticed that the game is incredibly difficult---yes, much more so than [The Messenger](/articles/reviews/the-messenger), albeit in a different way. The game is all about pattern recognition, very precise timing, and patience---much like the Demon Souls series. I am only good at the first one. As [Blake Andrea](https://epiloguegaming.com/why-i-quit-playing-hollow-knight/) prophetically ends his tirade:
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> Everything I keep reading and writing about whether games should have difficulty options anchors itself back to the question of Hollow Knight’s benches: if you’re going to make your game difficult, at least don’t make it discouraging for the player. Game design should continually nudge, “Keep playing.” All it would have taken is some encouraging benches and I would still be in Hallownest.
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Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
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## So... Why waste your time with it?
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Because, apart from the atrocious difficulty, the game is one of the best [metroidvania](/tags/metroidvania)s I've ever played.
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Why? In essence, it has everything a great metroidvania game has: a superior sense of progression, atmosphere, items and upgrades, and a living, breathing (and very unique!) world. The first few hours, you're left wondering what the heck is going on. Every new section of the "castle" (the underground fallen kingdom of Hallownest) leaves you wondering where to go to. Initially, there is no map, until you come across a humming cartographer that is friendly enough to sell you a new part.
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But the map itself is useless: sights have to be added by buying pins. Money, or Geo, is initially hard to come by, although this gets easier as you progress in the game. Even your own location depends on the equipment of a charm---which, to be honest, is quite ridiculous in a game about exploration: it forces the player to give up a charm notch, making equipping battle-related charms to soften the difficulty more cumbersome. I did find the not-immediate availability of a map to be refreshing as wandering, exploring, and adventuring is part of the core gameplay of Hollow Knight. Sadly enough, every single moving--or immobile--part in the game can kill you. Hallownest is a _very_ dangerous place. Too eager explorers will die again and again. And as Blake mentioned, like Castlevania's save rooms, you are revived on benches.
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That is, if you manage to find one.
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Hollow Knight even includes (too) tricky platforming sections, in the same vein as Celeste and [The Messenger](/articles/reviews/the-messenger). To my personal view, this does not belong in a metroidvania game. After more than ten tries, I gave up trying to visit a certain optional _nailmaster_ NPC just because of that. The problem is, again, a lack of benches: dying means having to traverse too many rooms in order to get to the part where you died in the first place. Many a time I died trying to reach it---again and again.
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Insert ragequit gif here...
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Have I talked about the punishing boss battles yet? Yes, everything is punishing in this game. But some boss battles... Well, they are borderline insane. After reading [the 10 hardest Hollow Knight bosses](https://www.thegamer.com/hollow-knight-hardest-boss-battles/), I was convinced that I would never ever finish the game with the true ending. To make matters worse, after a few patches, Team Cherry "rebalanced" the gameplay by making a few must-needed charms less usable and by making a few bosses even more insane by having them do two damage instead of one and up the attack frequency. Good job, guys. I had to dig through YouTube to find cheesy strategies to overcome most bosses. That's a bug, not a feature.
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For those who like to enjoy the game's immersiveness without having to go into a heart rate overdrive, you're out of luck. Yoshi's Crafted World includes a _"Mellow"_ difficulty option my wife likes to use to just wander around and enjoy the game. Yoshi's given wings; if you manage to fall off a cliff, no big deal. I'm not advocating for something like that to be enabled by default---it can be hidden away in a few submenu options---but at least give casual players a chance to explore your game. I don't even consider myself a casual player and had to really push myself to take on a boss for the nth time in order to progress. The Traitor Lord in Queen's Gardens (the one that got buffed up with the patch) was the reason I quit: simply reaching him from the nearest bench is a pain, and the two damage is ridiculous.
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## The atmosphere
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Now that we know the biggest flaw of Hollow Knight, let's talk about the biggest selling point: the atmosphere. Hollow Knight is simply put, beautiful to behold. Every section (Forgotten Crossroads, Queen's Gardens, Deepnest, Kingdom's Edge, ...) is a feast for the eye and completely different. In-between both sections, you can slowly see the world changing: mushrooms and spores gathering at the edges where you can access the Fungal Wastes, desolate darkness creeping in where Deepnest tunnels begins.
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Not only that, the NPCs are lovely too: they are funny and implicitly provide multiple subquests that are very naturally intertwined into the core gameplay, unlike the stark contrast made by Bloodstained' item fetch quests in the town, for instance. Furthermore, as you rescue people or come across new bugs to talk to, the town evolves. The world also changes as you make progress and I love that. It is truly a unique game, and a very long one, clocking in at about 30 hours, compared to the usual 12 for an average metroidvania game. Multiple hidden branches take you to loot, or more often than not, _lore_. I've read people on Reddit to be disappointed by this, but I personally loved that. Discovering a secret chamber to find a petrified version of an enemy with a line of background info---what's not to like? The effort Team Cherry put in to make Hallownest a living, but sometimes dark and creepy place, is astonishing. Not every nook and cranny has to be filled with items or double jump upgrades.
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That being said, sometimes the game does drag on a little bit. The map design is good, but not as great as classics such as [Aria of Sorrow](/articles/retrospectives/castlevania-aria-of-sorrow/): the game requires you to backtrack too often, possibly further increasing the death count. Later in the game, to be able to access the true ending, you have to redo a couple of boss battles and fetch "Essence" with your Dream Nail. To me, it felt like an arbitrary way to prolong the game and could easily be cut for the better.
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## The best of all time?
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That is up for debate, although a lot of fanboys at [ResetERA](https://www.resetera.com/threads/what-are-the-absolute-top-tier-metroidvania-games.124260/) would love to see Hollow Knight as the best metroidvania of all time. To me, that's quite a stretch: it is pretending that Super Metroid, Castlevania Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, and Symphony of the Night do not exist. It is certainly one of the best _indie_ metroidvania's out there, and I would love to see its successor, Hollow Knight Silk Song, to include an adjustable difficulty setting (and benches next to boss battles, please). Is it better than [Bloodstained](/articles/reviews/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/)? Absolutely. Is it better than the classics? No.
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It's just too bad that because of this marriage with Demon Souls-style gameplay, I'd rather do another castle run than a Hallownest run.
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---
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image: "/img/games/MaxPayne/screen001_k.jpg"
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date: 2002-03-16
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title: "Max Payne Review"
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tags:
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- 'max payne'
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- 'review'
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game_platform: 'PC'
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aliases:
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- /articles/max-payne-review/
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game_genre: '3D Shooter'
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game_release_year: '2001'
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game_developer: 'Remedy'
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---
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_(This review is originally written in Dutch by Newkid86, in 2002)_
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As the body of the mafia boss collapses behind his desk, the door behind me is thrown open and the guards storm in. The blood is pumping through my head, I turn around in a blur and slowly see the first bullets coming my way… hold it! Why do all MP reviews start like this? Everyone gradually knows that there is bullet time in it, isn't it? No need to keep yacking about the damn thing ;-). Nywayz, having said this: on with the review…
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#### Story
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In MP, you play an agent seeking revenge after some junkies killed his family. He goes undercover with the mafia and slowly but surely tries to find out who the culprits are. Obviously it has to go wrong somewhere (otherwise we have no game ;-)) and the mafia finds out that he is a cop. In revenge, they kill and blame his only police contact. In short: both the police and the mafia are going after him. So in the beginning you will end up in an 'I against the rest' situation, but as the story unfolds you will discover that everything is more complicated than you would initially think.
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#### Budget time
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The big selling point for MP is, of course, bullet time. You can slow down the time at any time, but to make it not too easy, you have a meter at the bottom of your screen that indicates how much bullet time you have left. You can replenish that by killing opponents. When I first heard about this I had my doubts. Wouldn't it be another extra that you almost never use in the end? How wrong I was. The whole game IS just bullet time! One frantic gunfight follows another and all of this wouldn't look out of place in The Matrix. Often you watch with your mouth open as everything around you is shot to rubble as you duck away from a barrage of bullets. The whole system is just brilliant and the whole game is built around it. A small drawback is that the levels are often no more than a few rooms connected by corridors. Now this is not really noticeable and there is more than enough variation in the levels to keep them interesting. The enemies that populate the levels are generally quite smart, but you should not expect highlights from the AI. It is also a pity that they cannot hide themselves like you can.
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All this is shown by the Max-FX engine which proves to be very powerful. The graphics are open-mouthed and the sound only enhances this "WOW" feeling. When you see what this engine is capable of, you immediately know why MP has been working on for so long.
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#### What about MODs?
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The makers have also done everything to support the MOD scene as much as possible, eg by adding some very powerful editors to the CD. This has not missed its target and as a result there are some promising MODs in development. Fortunately, because the game itself is far too short. On a weekend most of them have already raced through the three chapters and slow motion cannot do much about that. For the rest, I cannot think of any significant disadvantages. Perhaps it becomes a bit monotonous at times, but just at such moments a plot twist of format is unleashed on you so this is never disturbing.
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#### Conclusion
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Max Payne has become a beautiful game where everything is really right. Gameplay, graphics, sound… everything adds to the dark atmosphere that makes this game so much fun. The fact that it is a bit too short is handily compensated by the MODs that are coming and with that the biggest drawback is immediately eliminated. A must-have for every action fan!
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- Gameplay: 9
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- Graphics: 9
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- Sound: 9
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- Addiction level: 9
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- Total: 91/100
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Minimum requirements: PII 400 or equal, 128 MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, 3D Accelerator, 16MB VRAM, 800 MB disk space, mouse, soundcard, DirectX 8.0.
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_(Originally written by Newkid86)_
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