Hollow Knight - 6 Years Later.

Hollow Knight is a fascinating game the game features a map that is so large that it puts most other metroidvanias to shame it features a combat system that is so tight that it has a higher skill ceiling than most modern AAA games it features an art style that is so beautiful that much more recent games look pale in comparison the game's world has lowered equally deep as the souls games it has tight platforming that can compete with franchises that have done nothing but platforming for decades its world is filled to the brim with secrets to discover the game features story moments so strong they can compete with some of Gaming's finest moments and some systems like the game's healing system are so brilliantly designed that I can only wish that more games finally start to copy it in short Hollow Knight is an incredibly competent game on pretty much all bronze in my opinion it is a masterpiece and we will discuss all of those things in detail however those things aren't what I find Most Fascinating about Hall night the most fascinating aspect of the game is something entirely different something that is seldom discussed the most fascinating aspect of hollow Knight is that it exists in the first place because to put it mildly Hollow Knights existence should not be possible here's the thing Hollow Knight was developed by only three people in roughly three years three people managed to produce a game that looks this beautifully features a combat system with a skill ceiling this High crafted the world this big road lore that deep and crafted gameplay is fluid those people did a job that puts most teams of 60 people that work for half a decade on a game to shame how did the three pull this off what Wizardry is going on behind the surface of this beautiful little game that allowed such a small team to craft such an ambitious title why is hollow Knight in this video we are hopefully going to answer this question we'll go through the game chronologically and discuss several interesting aspects of it along the way will chat about the lore and the story we'll take a closer look at the combat system and the bosses we'll talk about where the game transpiration from and why slopes are bad for you but most importantly will hopefully understand how team Cherry was able to create a game the scope of hollow Knight and why there is an even bigger lesson for the entire industry hidden within this fascinating little game as for spoilers due to the nature of this video this thing is going to spoil the entire game like literally everything including the final boss fight don't worry that is not the final boss fight in the background yet that's just a video of a ladybug opening its wings on the National Geographic alright we got tons of things to discuss so let's get this thing going my name is Steve you're watching Thief perspective a place that hopes to give perspective on interesting aspects of great games this is hollow Knight foreign [Music] the game begins with a creepy shot of the mysterious being being chained away at some forgotten Place suddenly it is being awakens and cries out the next shot just alone Wanderer arriving close to City this Wanderer takes a plunge towards the city and with this the story introduction already comes to a close we take control over The Wanderer and the game starts it's actually going to be hours and hours of gameplay before the next major story moment Hollow Knight has a wonderful story to tell but it certainly doesn't waste anyone's time telling it through cutscenes most of hollow Knight's stories told by the world itself in a certain way Hollow Knight's world is its story but we're getting ahead of ourselves after a short tutorial area then introduces the core mechanics of the game we arrive in dirt mouth the game's Hub and the city that we saw in the opening before third mouth is a small fading Town inhabited by only a couple of bucks the paths east and west of the city are sealed and we can't open them our only way forward is through the well in the center of the little town below this well something mysterious is hidden because third mouth is spelled upon the ruins of a much larger Kingdom a Fallen Kingdom below dirt mouth lighter ruins of the Fallen Kingdom of hollownest the majority of hollow Knight plays out in those ruins so we hop down the well for the very first time and 1986 original Zelda is a game that famously starts in a very interesting and unique way the original Legend of Zelda game is all about freedom and exploration Miyamoto famously stated that his goal with the original seller was it to capture the feeling he had exploring the woods and caves around his hometown and the original Zelda already shows this commitment to capturing a feeling of exploration and freedom from the very first second it begins the game starts with link in the middle of a screen that leads into three different directions and has a cave to explore the very first screen in the original Legend of Zelda game confronts us already with a choice we have to decide whether we want to go north east west or into the cave first the original settler commits to this idea of exploration so much that it allows us to explore into whatever direction we want to go from the very first screen okay so why are we waffling about the opening of the original Zelda in a video about Hollow Knight well because Hollow Knight does the exact same the moment our brave little Knight jumps down this well the tutorial ends and the real game begins at its core Hollow Knight is a game about exploring and slowly Conquering the kingdom of hollowness and the very first thing we have to do once we enter it is to make a choice we have to decide whether to go to the right or to the left the same way Zelda forced players to decide where to explore first in the 80s Hollow Knight forces us to make a choice as well Hollow Knight doesn't send a player on a linear path it is a game that wants players to forge their own path through its many challenges the game commits to this idea already the very second we jump into holonest for the first time so which direction is the correct one well funnily enough it's neither both paths are pretty much mandatory the path to the left introduces critical gameplay systems like the map the grab father and later leads to Green Path while the path to the right is the one that leads to the false Knight and her first ability vengeful spirit that we need to progress but we obviously don't know that our first time through and so Hollow Knight's core gameplay Begins the first half of hollow Knight is all about slowly conquering a dangerous and confusing Kingdom step by step we hop down the well explore a couple of rooms and probably die we make our way back to the shade and explore a couple of more rooms before we get brutally slain again and again then we explore some more we slowly conquer the area and eventually we'll run into the map maker who sells us a map of the area so let's quickly chat about Hollow Knight's map system in Hollow Knight we do not have a map of areas once we reach them for the first time instead the map has to be bought the vendor that sells the map however is hidden somewhere in the area this means that we have to explore the area blind at first Scouting For the map vendor but once we've found the vendor the map still doesn't show us all the areas it only shows us rooms that we have explored in the past and it only updates whenever we visit a checkpoint so whenever we enter new area we are completely blind the first time even if we bought a map of the area before the map only becomes useful once we rest that's a really unusual system that at least in my humble onion fits the game perfectly Hollow Knight is all about slowly Conquering the kingdom step by step and being blind the first time we enter a new area and slowly filling out the a map of the places whenever we rest perfectly accompanies this gameplay it's great after buying the map exploring the Forgotten Crossroads becomes a lot easier soon we run into the false night the first boss fight in the game that guards offer stability vengeful spirit and would you believe it we already have access to greenpath the second area of the game sadly we can't accompany our little night there just yet sorry little buddy but you are on your own for a moment because before we catch up with you we first quickly have to chat about something else something entirely different thank you in 1989 stock tales for the Nintendo Entertainment System players take control over Scrooge McDuck on a journey around the world and even through space on a quest to further increase the riches so for anyone not familiar with 1989's DuckTales it might surprise you to hear that it's a pretty important and influential game for starters it was developed by the core team behind the original Mega Man and ended up being capcom's best-selling game on the NES the game is often praised for its tight movement for example Scrooge McDuck attacks by Paul win off of his walking stick after hitting enemies on the head with it which also doubles as a fun movement option pretty much any best NES games of all times list features DuckTales on a prominent spot the original Paper Mario doesn't feature a skill tree instead of picking new skills and gameplay modifiers in menus we instead customize our favorite paper plumber batting batches to him some of those batches might improve our guard some might improve the damage of fire attacks some might cause a cosmetic change and some might even make the game harder here's the twist those patches that fulfill the same function that skills in a skill tree usually fulfill aren't earned by leveling up instead those patches are hidden throughout the world and we have to discover them one by one while playing instead of a traditional skill tree Paper Mario hit all its different skills around the world as exploration rewards that's a really clever system to make sure the devs can hide a meaningful reward behind everything in the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Link's Health increases by finding hard pieces that are hidden throughout the world whenever link grabs 4 hard pieces his maximum Hearts increased by one that's a really clever system that works similar to paper Mario's batches it's a system that ties player progression to exploration a great way to ensure that players tackle the optional challenges is to type when a player dies in the original Dark Souls the player drops all their currency and they are sent back to the last bonfire they visited the only way to regain this currency is to reach the point where they died again without dying in between that's a really clever thing in Super Metroid the player progresses by gaining new abilities that are hidden all over them players will often encounter obstacles they can't pass yet before they find the necessary in the original Castlevania players control Simon Belmont on his quest to destroy counts Dracula in his castle the Game takes place in several atmospheric stages that all feature all right so how's the little Knight been doing down there while we were taking a glitched journey through random points of video game history they defeated the grandmother rescued a bug called Sly Rich Green Path fought against dangerous Mossy enemies challenged overgrown Knights and even fought against Hornet for the first time what a competent little night they are so why did we discuss all those different games again well here's the thing Hollow Knight is a very simple game and I don't mean that as a criticism I actually mean it as a compliment there are very few redundant systems in Hollow Knight it's all very tightly designed but not only does hollow Knight only use very few systems it also mostly borrows its systems from games that came before it the mask shards that we can find all over the world which are used to increase the knights maximum health are Zelda's heart piece system the benches are Dark Souls bonfires the charms that are hidden all over hollowness are very similar to paper Mario's patches Hollow Knight's down slash and Pogo mechanic is very similar to Scrooge mcduck's Pogo attack and DuckTales the game's core gameplay is obviously very similar to Metroid and Castlevania and so on Hollow Knight not only draws a lot of inspiration from games that came before it it actually directly borrows systems that worked in those games in the past and at least in a humble opinion it's really clever that Hollow Knight does this you know the charms and the hard pieces worked fantastically as exploration rewards in Paper Mario and Zelda why not use those systems for hollow Knight if the game is also focused on exploration the downstrike made competent platforming a lot of fun in DuckTales why not use it in Hollow Knight as well if the game is all about platforming and combat in a 2d space bonfires in assaults games are a perfect checkpoint system for a game that has a slowly conquer its world it's a natural fit for a game like Hollow Knight and so on instead of trying to reinvent the wheel they just took whatever works in the past and suited the game which you know is smart but they did this both ways they not only understood which systems of other games would be a great fit for hollow Knight they also understood when they had to come up with a solution ourselves take the healing system healing is a critical part of every game healing is the way players recover from mistakes the way healing is designed can totally change how we interact with the game if the only way to heal for a player is to return to a checkpoint for example then we're incentivized to track back to a checkpoint every time we are low on health if the game features a slow healing power that slowly refills then we are incentivized to wait and do nothing after making a mistake if the game doesn't feature healing at all then every mistake feels incredibly punishing and if the game features say a healing system that is tied to a cooking system that is tied to a gathering system that makes it possible to pause the game at any time to heal as long as we collect them cooked up enough apples before well then we're playing tears of the Kingdom simple decisions like how to heal can lead to huge changes on how we interact with the game healing matters and Hollow Knight completely Nails its healing and health system in Hollow Knight healing is done by focusing soul for a couple of seconds soul is a resource generated by striking enemies each time we focus Soul we regain a single mask each mask represents a single mistake but Soul can not only be used to heal but also acts as manner of some sort that allows us to cast offensive spells that's it it's an incredibly simple system and in my humble opinion it might be one of the best healing systems ever created it does so many things at once yet it is so incredibly simple it's amazing first it has healing to participating in combat when we're low on Health in a game we usually want to avoid combat for you know obvious reasons Hollow Knight's healing system flips this on its head and makes us actively want to fight enemies when we were low on health because this is how we heal at the same time the healing system adds a completely new layer of complexity to combat especially boss fights a huge part of mastering a boss fight is to actually figure out when it is possible to heal there are tons of healing windows in the game that might not be obvious at first but that once learned can completely turned the tide against the difficult boss finally the healing system even rewards combat Mastery if we truly mastered an encounter say the difficult boss from before and we don't need our soul to heal anymore instead Soul suddenly turns into an offensive resource that allows us to cast spells and to defeat the bosses even quicker our defensive resource is also our offensive resource we always have to make an interesting choice on how to spend our precious soul I unironically believe Hollow Knight's healing system might be the best healing system in any game I've ever played it's the backbone of its combat system and achieves so many things so flawlessly it's truly amazing hooray so let's continue our journey through the ruins of hollowness while exploring Green Path we ran into Hornet Hornet is a really interesting character and she's the second boss fight on the critical path through the game after defeating her we unlock the second big new upgrade the dash ability this upgrade gives us access to a new area the final wastes and the fungal wastes early area where Hollow Knight almost lost me my first time through I almost quit the game here foreign [Music] scale completely escalates after getting the Mantis Clause the next upgrade will pick up once we get the Mantis claw the scope of hollow Knight just explodes we are no longer just conquering a Zone screen by screen we're suddenly Conquering the entire Kingdom almost all of it sewn by Zone tons of paths open up at once and all the paths are equally necessary it's amazing no matter which direction we explore it will be meaningful content and even more content behind that and even more secrets and whatnot behind that for us to find Hollow Knight starts out as a good game but it transforms into a phenomenal one once we get the Mantis claw here's the thing I believe Hollow Knight wastes unnecessarily much time in the run-up to the Mantis Clause the game stays longer in the just good phase and doesn't move into the phenomenal phase fast enough I believe there are two completely unrelated things that necessarily harm the game's pacing namely Chio the game's currency and those mushrooms of Doom so let's talk about those mushrooms first to understand why those mushrooms are so dangerous we have to have a quick chat about something that happened to me during my first playthrough because those Violet mushrooms almost ended my first playthrough of hollow Knight for good to reach the Mantis claw we have to make it through the final wastes first to make it through the final waste so we have to bounce off one of those Violet mushrooms so what's the problem with those unsuspicious mushrooms one might ask well here's the thing those mushrooms are pretty much trampolines that bounces High into the air if we Pogo off of them the only problem well I had no idea that the downwards Polo slash exists at this point during my first playthrough the game never taught me about it and I never tried bouncing off of anything my first couple of hours so my first time through the game I saw those mushrooms toyed around with them for a second or two figured I probably needed an upgrade to use them and continued into another Direction this direction seemed to be the path forward since there were new enemy encounters and scripted sequences and whatnot along this path until I ran into another bunch of mushrooms which again I thought were for later so it jumped off of the mushroom and dashed out of the room and now I was stuck in the early part of hollow Knight with no idea on how to proceed I kept exploring and exploring trying to figure out where to go I had the exact opposite experience of what Hollow Knight is actually going for instead of finding meaningful content behind every door instead of exploring a kingdom that grows and grows in size and instead of finding a correct path wherever I looked I ran into blocked paths everywhere I returned to the Forgotten Crossroads but there was no clear path forward that I missed I returned to Green Path but again I ran from that end to dead end missing that it is possible to bounce off of those mushrooms completely changed my experience with the game and you know it's such a weird problem because it is so easy to fix there are two obvious solutions to the problem I don't have an NPC character pulled off of them right in front of her eyes you know just have squirrel Pogo off of one of those when we enter the area and then have him call us up to him or if that requires too many resources just do the thing that Zelda likes to do and trap us with the new gameplay element and only allow us to escape once we understood what to do with it if this latch were placed just a tiny bit higher and it would have been impossible to dash out of the pit without figuring out the downward strike first which would ensure that we figure this out here the beginning of hollow Knight is a bit slow the mushroom mishap that happened to me during my first time through the game Amplified this problem that one is partly on me but that's not the only problem that can potentially slow down the beginning of the game unnecessarily there's another unrelated problem that slows down every player in order to understand the other problem that slows down Hollow Knight's opening hours we have to have a chat about currencies thank you in Supra land players place a red toy figurine plumber on a righteous quest to figure out why the evil blue toy figurines have been tampering with the red City's water supply the game is a crazy genre mix that has a soft puzzles explore an open world platform through tough challenges and Metroid it's completely insane it's great but that's actually not why we're talking about it we're talking about it because at the beginning of Superland something interesting happens after a short tutorial in the sewers went through the village for the very first time and immediately run into this shop one of the very first things we encounter in super land is this shop and this Shop sells unusual things it sells character upgrades namely a bigger coin purse to store coins in a weapon damage upgrade even more weapon damage and a multiplicator tour movement speed buying this upgrade makes our character run at Double the speed permanently the very first objective in Superland is to actually buy our normal movement speeds the first thing we do is search for coins so that can afford running so here's the multi-million coin question why would a developer hide a necessary gameplay feature behind the currency grind at the very beginning of the game well here's the thing with video game currencies the value of the currency in a game has to be established when we boot up a game the first time we have no idea if coins in this game are valuable like they are in Superland or you know if they're kind of fun to collect but completely optional like say in 3D World if devs want us to care about their currencies if they want to hand the currency out as a valuable reward after say defeating an enemy if they want to guide us by showing us currencies at places in the distance if they want to be able to hand out currency as a meaningful reward for exploration well then they have to find a way to make this currency actually valuable to us and the obvious way to make a currency feel valuable is to having this currency buy things we really want which brings us back to Superland the reason why super land sells us our actual movement speed at the beginning of the game is because the game wants to make it absolutely and abundantly clear that the currency in this game is incredibly valuable so valuable as a matter of fact that it buys core gameplay systems hiding core systems behind the currency is a Surefire way to establish this currency is incredibly valuable which neatly brings us back to hollow nests because Hollow Knight pulls the exact same trick earlier we chatted about how we first have to buy the map for each area individually to orientate ourselves and how the map only gets filled out whenever we rest at the bench well as it turns out I lied to you see Hollow Knight's map doesn't do any of those things the first time we buy it it only starts to fill in the rooms visited after we bought another item the map and quill in a shop back at third mouth but that's still not all because the map also only shows us our position if we have to way more charm equipped where do we get this charm one might ask at the same shop papanada indeed additionally we have to buy pin markers if we want the map to automatically Mark the spots of benches fast service stations and many other things all things that we obviously want I believe team Cherry cleverly decided to sell several essential gameplay features that are arguably necessary to beat the game on the first blind playthrough because this immediately establishes Geo as an incredibly valuable resource the same way we want to run at normal speed in super land we also want to have a working map in Hollow Knight and plus we immediately want Chio it's a fun little trick that establishes the currency as immediately valuable and it works great job with the Geo team Cherry hooray is what I would say if it were the truth but sadly things aren't as simple as they might appear at first glance I actually believe they overdid it here I believe on their quests to make Chio feel as valuable as possible they actually caused more harm than good because while the trick of hiding necessary gameplay elements behind the geopay wall might work exceptionally great to make you feel valuable it comes with a drawback it hurts the game's pacing during its first couple of hours buying the map and quill a compass and a bunch of pins is the very first objective that most people will tackle on the first playthrough to do this we first have to get down to the map maker and buy the map there this opens up the shop above so we now have to backtrack back up collecting as much to you as possible on the way to buy the quill at the top however at this point it is highly unlikely that we have enough jio to pay for the Wayward Compass charm and most of the important map markers so we have to go back down farming Geo until we have enough to buy all of this but whenever we die we drop all of our Geo and the only way to recover it is to make it back to our ghost and to kill it Hollow Knight is no easy game especially during its opening hours while we're still getting used to the game's controls and combat if we happen to lose all of our Geo before getting all the map tools then this may mean that we suddenly have to Grant hero for say half an hour just to unlock necessary gameplay features at the very beginning of the game which know is a potential pacing problem Hollow Knight is a game that becomes really exceptional once the developers let go of the leash and allow us to explore the gigantic map of hollowness all on our own the moment we pick up the Mantis Claw is when Hollow Knight becomes so incredible at least in my opinion the faster we get to this moment the better I honestly believe that the game's early pacing could be significantly improved by removing all Shield requirements to unlock the map if the map and quill were just the basic item that we had by default and if the map maker were to you know just give us the Wayward Compass charm after talking to him for the first time this alone would probably significantly speed up the first hours of hollow Knight even if this means that Geo might feel a bit less valuable during the early game there are so many great other GEOS things in the game I doubt it would matter that much finally and that one is personal those mushrooms need some sort of explanation on how to use them hooray so let's return to the little Knight and their journey through Hollow Nest this play through our proud knight manages to bounce off of those mushrooms with heads towards the Mantis Village the Mantis are a proud race of fearsome Warriors and reaching the center of the village is an easy task the Mantis Warriors probably give a lot of new players ahead of their first time through heck they still give me a headache and I'm on my fourth playthrough hidden in the center of their Village we finally find the Mantis claw which allows us to wall jump hidden all over hollowness we earlier saw signs pointing towards the city with the wall jump we are now able to finally reach it once we enter the city a couple of really interesting things first the door closes right behind us the second we enter we're trapped in the city second wonderful music starts to play and third the environment shifts noticeably for the first time so far we explored a Cave System another cave that is overgrown with Tangy and a calm Garden but suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of a gigantic Gothic City in which it rains all day the city of Tears so the city of Tears is huge and opens up in several stages but there is one specific place in the city that I want to chat about because in a posh quarter of the city there is the pleasure house and in the elevator in the pleasure house there is a hidden wall that leads to a secret room there we find two corpses if we dream nail them then we learn that whatever they were eating tasted wrong and that they were hungry and besides this room there is a kitchen filled to the brim with rotting Buck meat this kitchen holds a dark secret but in order to understand this dark secret we first have to understand stand Hollow Knight's world [Music] long before the events of hollow Knight even before the kingdom of hollownest was built several different species of bugs lived in the Kingdom to come the mosque in who were already encountering green puff the Mantis who live in a village which has to raided the spiders with which will have lots of fun soon and the moth tribe the moths worship the high being called the radiance who shines in a bright light and has powers over the dream room but then something happened a creature called a worm unexpectedly arrived in hollownest worms are gigantic mysterious ancient beings their Origins are unknown to us this worm died leaving behind its shell but while dying a new being emerged a being called The Pale King most of the bugs in hollownest began to worship this new being who expanded the bug's minds and made them intelligent and soon the kingdom of hollownist was founded ruled by The Pale King so those were the golden days of the Kingdom the city of dirtmouth was a busy trading spot on top of the Kingdom stackway stations were built to make traveling through the kingdom easier they built a city of tears and the sewers below the city to keep it from flooding the Tramway was built by the king some of the moskins territory got annexed the Mantis found an agreement with the King and remained independent but in turn had to fight off the spiders of deep nest and the bugs of hollowness erected statues worshiping their King but it was not only the backs of hollowness that worshiped The Pale King the mushroom clown of the fungal wastes followed the king willingly and the moths while the moths started to worship The Pale King as well they turned their back to their former God the radiance the radiance became almost forgotten almost but a small part of the moth tribe continued to worship your own secret when the radiance tried to regain influence over the bugs that used to worship her by visiting them in their dreams those bugs tried to resist the radiance and this is the exact moment that disaster struck the kingdom by trying to receive is the radiance a buck got infected with a terrible disease a disease that slowly deteriorates the Mind slowly enslaving the poor infected bug until it becomes a Mindless vessel that the radiance is able to control at her will most bugs of hollowness became infected despite many efforts infection kept spreading the backs of the Soul sanction tried to stop the infection by harvesting the power of other bugs Souls only to get infected eventually nonetheless some bugs took in the infection willingly making things even worse the king conducted experiments in a desperate attempt to contain the infection but the infection kept spreading eventually the city of Tears was forced to lock down all gates in and out of the city in a final desperate attempt of preventing the infection from reaching the city this left the city in a miserable State and this is the reason the kitchen the pleasure house is filled with rotting Buck meat at least in my understanding of the lore those bugs were part of hollowness former High Society but when the city eventually fell when the gates got closed and more and more citizens fell to the infection they had trouble getting normal food which forced them into cannibalism in order to prolong their lives just a little longer and I know what at least one of you wonderful ladies and gentlemen is wondering that's all cool and stuff and fluff Steve but why is this kitchen so special well thank you so much for bringing it up observant lovely viewer because that's the thing it actually is not it's just a random secret room whose existence makes a lot of sense from a lore perspective it's not this room specifically that is so special it is the fact that pretty much every room in the entire kingdom is like this everything in Hollow Knight's world makes sense lower wise it is permanently raining in the city of tears but this isn't by coincidence it is because above the city there is the Blue Lake that slowly leaks into the city causing the rain this rain runs down into a sewer system below the city later it gets released into the funnel wastes the Tramway stations below the sewers are logically connected the Mantis Lords actually live between the spiders if we visit the borders between the two kingdoms we can actually find the bodies of the spiders the Mantis Lords have slain in the past there are thousands of corpses in the soul sanctum those are there because the soul Warriors harvested The Souls of innocent bucks when trying to find a cure for the infection murdering thousands in the process The City Gate that closed once we entered does so because the city is closed and no one is allowed to enter or leave and I know what one of you is wondering why were we allowed to enter it well that is because we previously looted the city Crest off of the Fallen Knight's corpse the first boss dropped the key to the city the city Crest this boss used to be one of the five Great Knights of hollownest legendary Warriors that fought on the king's orders the king's Crest gave this legendary Warrior access to the city after it was sealed and I know what at least one of you is currently thinking okay the world makes sense so far but at least some points aren't logical why would a random player Knight be able to defeat one of The Marvelous and legendary five nights so easily at the very beginning of the game sieve at which point I'd have to reply that you're actually going out of your way to try to find a contradiction in the world setting and that it's not reasonable to expect the game to have an answer to such questions and that the game has an answer to this question nonetheless the knight in the armor actually wasn't the legendary Knight it was a weak maggot who stole the knights armor at some point before the game even started because the game's world is consistent to even this level the only reason they even put the king's Crest into the game is so that it makes sense that we were able to enter the city When we arrive lower wise the item only fulfills the lore function we have to defeat false Knight anyway since he guards the first ability just think about this for a second they went out of their way to add an item that every player picks up just so that it makes sense lore wise that this door 5 hours later opens and closes for us I really want to emphasize this because it is one of the most impressive things about Hollow Knight almost everything in the game makes sense when we encounter random grave that says here lies the traitor's child then there is a reason for this grave to be here it is the daughter of the fourth mantis Lord who betrayed his brothers and tooking the infection willingly to grow stronger which is also why there are only three mantis Lords and one pillar is destroyed who encounter a boss that looks similar to us but is overcome by the infection and it makes sense that this boss exists here it is another vessel that escaped and became infected when the infection slowly spread towards the abyss if we find a key on a random dad back overcome the void in a corner of the world map far away from where the lock to the key is then there is a story as to why this bug is here spend too much time with the collector a void creature that slowly infected it with void and forced to flee when it was already too late he ran into a sudden bugmate construct at the very peak of hollownest then there is a reason for his construct to be here it's um actually I have no idea why this building is there someone in the comments will know but that's kind of the point because it isn't important that we understand the lore behind every place we visit the important thing is that there is a low reason for everything we encounter which makes it worthwhile to think about it only if everything in the world actually makes sense it becomes possible to wonder why those things are there it's not important that we understand everything the important thing is that we understand that the world makes sense something we pick up unconsciously while playing this is simply something that shines through and as soon as we realize that every single room becomes so much more exciting to explore the reason why it is so interesting to discover the kitchen in the pleasure house and to find out that those bugs turn to cannibalism is because we can trust the game to have an answer to the question why this happened I believe one of the many reasons why exploring the world of hollowness feels so mysterious and magical it's because team Cherry went out of their way to craft the world in a cohesive way where everything makes sense lower wise hooray all right so how's our little night been doing while we were chatting about cannibals they murdered the soul Tyrant learned a new ability desolate dive which gave them access to the crystal Peak they explored the crystal Peak as huge industrial Cavern that reaches up to the highest point of hollowness and a place where the kingdom used to farm crystals only to unlock yet another ability there the crystal heart that allows us to dash around at super speed they made it through the Sears below the city thought of terrible maggots that refused to die they found the ancient Basin buried deep below the kingdom that is overrun with even more dangerous creatures than we thought so far they used the Crystal Heart ability to reach a place overflowing with the infection and in the middle of disinfected SAS pool they fought against another infected Knight who appears to be a lost corrupt sibling of ours the Lost kin only to unlock the Monarch Wings down there the next upgrade and now they are capable of double jumping wow looks like our little Knight has been actually surprisingly busy so what's next for us well next we have to chat about the combat design and all the many different boss fights in the game and about ha [Music] deep Nest is the most terrifying area in the entire game and there are two major ways to reach it the first one is to defeat the Mantis Lords at the edge of the kingdom of the spiders which grants us the respect of the Mantis and in consequence access to deepness the other way is by first breaking the secret wall in the fungal wastes and to explore the area behind it once we make our way back again this happens yep the game literally breaks the floor below our feet without any warning and has us drop down a long dark shaft into an area we've never been before and we don't have a map off and then the game was pretty much every evil trick in the trick box or sadistic level design on us to make this drop down one of the most terrifying and most memorable gaming experiences have ever made it's truly sadistic it's great so let's first set the mood here first this is the sound that's permanently plays in the background [Music] disgusting isn't it second the game suddenly starts to spawn enemies directly below our feet without any warning additionally we encounter these gigantic centipedes munching through the narrow tunnels and devouring everything that stands in her path for the first time the paths are small claustrophobic maze-like and our sight is massively limited there are spider webs everywhere spiders crawl up below our feet everything is confusing and it is incredibly easy to get lost that on its own is already like a top 10 best off of the most prevalent human phobias there's claustrophobia the fear of the dark Arachnophobia phobia to get lost they're all in the house so the game drops us suddenly and without any warning into best of compilation of human phobias completely messing up whatever plans we had previously and then it doesn't allow us to escape the climbing back up the only way back up is behind the hidden breakable wall I doubt many people will find this before getting even more trapped because there is one final sadistic trick the team Cherry pulls on us in Syria the area is incredibly confusing it feels as if there are cons of other potential paths that we miss in order to take the one we take this is however not the case as a matter of fact the path is just cleverly designed to feel confusing in reality it is pretty devilishly designed to lead us to a certain spots this hole in the ground we suddenly drop down another shaft no idea where we will Land once again at the bottom of this trap is the most devilishly trap I've ever encountered in a video game the most sadistic trap I've ever encountered in any video game isn't a mimic it isn't a rolling Boulder it isn't a dark trap and it isn't TNT the most devilishly trapped I ever trapped into in any video game is actually a Healing Spa and a jackpot who dropped into a Healing Spa with a bench beside it so if you're anything like me you probably thought thank God sat onto the checkpoint immediately and suddenly got hit in the face by realization the weight of a pregnant whale we're not trapped here with no way up if we die we respawn at this bench we can't go back the way we came in we're somewhere in a human phobia medley miles away from any area we're familiar with with no idea how to get back up and without a map this realization was unironically one of the most terrifying realizations I ever had in a game Hollow Knight trains us to always look out for those benches we usually make our way from bench to bench each bench being a safe place that we worked hard to reach but here it flips the concept on its head here the bench is a trap and now we have to find a way to get rid of it again all of this is by Design evil team Cherry totally planned all of this if we enter deep nest after a mantis fight we are also carefully funneled to this drop and fast we're trapped in deepness and making it back out is one of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life suddenly the area becomes much more difficult spiders appear spikes are everywhere normal bugs reanimate after we kill them and come back as terrifying zombie bugs even the grubs are trying to get us here it's terrifying it's great the whole way team Cherry set this up is brilliant but we aren't done here yet because deep in deep Nest there are a couple of platforms that suspiciously lead to nothing but a small latch so if we already have the Monarch Wings by this point which is about a 50 50 chance I'd say then we can hop up there and break the wall and behind the wall within a normal grub but there is another second suspicious wall hidden close to the crop and since we just destroyed one of those we are primed to look for another one if we find this one as well well then we're in for a treat that is it read for everyone who loves Larger than Life spiders the rest is in for a pretty bad time behind this second secret wall we run into another night that looks like us we run into a mirror image of ourselves that runs away from us okay I think we have to reiterate what happened previously to really get a feeling for how special this moment feels in game we first found a random secret wall in the final wastes behind this wall we suddenly dropped into deep Nest without any warning then we made our way through deep Nest on a path that is designed to feel like we took one of many many possible Powers before we dropped down another shaft rest and realize that we're trapped then we head into one of two directions to explore this area find a well hidden breakable wall that leads us to a grub and expect a reward but we're stubborn and look for another secret wall actually find one and then and only then we find our mirror image that runs away from us this is literally what happened to me during my first playthrough of the game I accidentally found nosk's Lair without a guide after dropping into deep Nest the game felt so magical to me at this moment like bigger than reality there are so many layers of Secrets over Secrets over Secrets woven to each other to reach this point covering our Mirror Image here felt so incredibly personal as if had stumbled into one of the game's greatest secrets by complete accident it was honestly incredible very few games I've ever played were able to create a moment this strong before and after I believe it's for an actually surprisingly simple reason that this moment felt so special and so personal it felt like this because it truly was it actually is unlikely that many players make this discovery the same way I did a bit of it is level design trickery but most of it is the game actually being okay if people don't find some of its Secrets the game accepts that players will miss out on secrets and that's what makes discovering those secrets so special because they're real Secrets not everyone is going to experience them Hollow Knight is full of secrets that are true Secrets the game is totally cool with players missing out and I'm convinced that this is the best way to design secrets in a game because it is the only way to make sure that Secrets feel truly secret and personal when we actually discover them another person might have completely missed nosq's Lair but maybe she found the entrance to The Beehive or found the love key and figured out where to use it on to run into the collector early or they found one of the early ways to the resting grounds or to Crystal Peaks completely shifting around when they gained which abilities or they thought about going back to the tutorial area and found the Walsh on secret that gives access to the howling Clips early another thing that I naturally discovered during my first playthrough Hollow Knight is incredibly good in creating those personal moments of Discovery and the reason the game is so good at this is because it also allows us to miss its Secrets hooray so what happened to her little Knight who finally found another living sibling well which has our Mirror Image deep into a layer or tons of similar looking Knights are tied up and then well then the Knight suddenly transforms into a huge and terrifying spider boss as a last little middle finger that deep Nest has in store for us it's great what did you expect it's still deepness afterwards we find an upgrade material for his sword one of the the most useful resources in the game a bit later we find a tram ticket hidden in the failed tram station which not only makes it finally possible for us to actually leave deep Nest again but also opens up a lot of new areas on the map deep Nest is basically a terrifying roller coaster the team Cherry crafted to send us for a horrific ride it's the best moment like this in the game it might be the best Moment Like This in any game I've ever played but it actually isn't the only time they pull the trick like this the entire game is designed with this level of care they pull tricks like this over and over to confuse us put pressure on us make us feel lost or cause us to panic while at the same time carefully making sure we do exactly what they want us to the level design is just top notch add to this all the secrets that are truly secret and the rich background lore that makes everything we encounter feel mysterious and meaningful and suddenly we have one of the best crafted worlds I've ever seen Hollow Knight's world is truly a Marvel at least in my humble orb spider hooray with our newly found campus we can finally reach the resting rounds the Kingdom's old Cemetery there we learn about the three dreamers for the first time so for reasons that we aren't entirely aware of at this point there are three bugs currently sleeping their dreams are what SEALs the black egg at the center of the Forgotten Crossroads after a disencounter the game marks the location of the three dreamers on our map this is the first time that the game actually gives us a clear objective Hollow Knight commits so much to the idea of open player exploration that even the main objective of the game has to be discovered after this encounter our little Knight awakens the next swim off this moth hands us the dream nail a magical sword that allows us to enter the mind of whom we hit with it cool so what were we actually about to do before we dropped into deep Nest we wanted to discuss the bosses well then let's do this now [Music] Hollow Knight features an insane amount of bosses the hollow Knight Wiki counts 47 different boss encounters and while some of those bosses are more bosses than others the game overall features a great variety of boss fights but not only are the bosses plentiful in Hollow Knight most of them are fantastic as well so let's quickly take a look at all of the main bosses of the base game and let's discuss different aspects of the game along the way the first boss in the game is grub matter which while she doesn't do much does she I generally like the fight because it gives players that struggle with the false Knight another easy reports to defeat but other than that there isn't much to say about her false Knight on the other hand is a fight that I really like it's a great first challenge for new players I remember that this guy stumped me pretty badly my first time through but it is also a fight that becomes incredibly easy Once We master all of the game systems which is exactly what a tutorial boss should do Hornet is another incredibly well designed early game boss fight she's a great early Shadow Link encounter Shadow Link meaning that it is a boss fight against something that mirrors our character you know her moves that is similar to ours she looks similar she mirrors our own character well executed shadowlink fights are surprisingly rare in games but here it works perfectly she also has lots of unexpected healing Windows which I believe are there to teach newer players about looking out for moments to heal during boss fights the next boss is the soul master so that's a bit complicated see I love the fight I think it is executed in such a beautiful way the fight feels so incredibly overwhelming at first yet it is possible to completely destroy the boss once we learned its pattern the setting is so great a showdown on top of this cathedral-like building the fake out is great the game truly convinced me that I beat him the first time I triggered his second phase yet the boss is far from done with us at this point his second phase is once again so brutally beautifully crafted causes to Panic it's great I really love the fight but I also believe that this fight is one of the worst parts of the game and that isn't for the fight itself it's because of the Boss run boss runs usually refer to the run back to a boss after we die it's literally the path we have to walk to reach the boss if the run-up to a boss is pretty long then this means that it takes a while to reach the boss again every time we die so the general consensus online seems to be that long runs back to bosses are terrible and it might surprise you to hear that I disagree with this to a certain degree some let's do something fun let's put corpse runs on a totally fair trial in which I'll act as the defender the prosecutor and the judge all at once and let's find out if long boss runs are truly guilty of always being terrible here's the exercise corpse runs are terrible gameplay they waste our time and they make learning a new boss unnecessarily tedious you know if we have to run back to the boss for say 90 seconds and we happen to say wipe 20 times to certain boss for whatever reason well then we actually spent half an hour just running back to the boss each time time that we could also spend fighting the boss it's tedious and unenjoyable and I agree with all of this corpse runs are a waste of time you're completely correct imaginary person the problem is there is also another side to this argument that barely ever gets mentioned the defense here's the thing the fact that running back to a boss is annoying raises the stakes while fighting the boss if we get to jump straight into the boss fight after every death again then it means that attempting the boss itself doesn't feel valuable it makes a boss fight feel like an arcade challenge that we slowly have to grind out immediately respawning in front of the boss reduces the boss to a pure gameplay challenge it makes the boss less intimidating it removes Stakes don't get me wrong there's absolutely nothing wrong with the boss fight that is just a tough gameplay challenge that we slowly have to overcome but sometimes the game might try to achieve something different with a boss maybe the game wants to establish a boss as a challenge so intimidating that players feel they can't overcome it yet the Mantis Lord's fight would be a good example for something like this maybe the game wants to escalate the tension of the fight up to the maximum and the long run back is an additional layer to add Stakes maybe the game wants players to be the boss on a meta level you know maybe the boss isn't meant to be grinded until we can defeat them but there is a belt or a trick or a weakness that they want us to exploit and increasing run back to the boss is a way to discourage players from just grinding the boss and so on so what is a verdict to Long corpse runs well that boss runs are guilty of being complicated a long run up to a boss is a tool that most of the time is incredibly annoying but that when used carefully and sparingly can encourage certain things and can raise the stakes of a fight it's not corpse run good or corpse run bad it is the specific corpse from good or is this specific corpse run bad for the Mantis Lords for example I'd say it's corpse run good which brings us back to the soul Master because the soul Master fight his corpse run bad very bad actually catastrophically bad the run back to the soul Master fight is one of the worst I've ever seen in any game and this is not because the run is terribly long or anything it is because of catastrophic enemy placement so since I already hear you typing yes I know about the shortcut in the elevator that's a fun little trick but it doesn't solve the core problem the core problem are those teleporting soul-back enemies those simply have a tendency to teleport right at the top of where we're actually edit to make matters worse whenever we try to kill them they have a tendency to teleport away it's not that I hate those guys I actually think they're cool I love them in the Colosseum of fools but they're like the absolute worst enemy to put on a corpse run if we just want to run past the enemies to reach the boss they make this almost impossible because they constantly teleport into our path and sometimes even on top of us but if we want to defeat them they constantly teleport away and force us to chase them endlessly which is an insane waste of time just so that we can reach the boss making our way past them is really frustrating because they're so unpredictable and hard to hit but we have to make it past several of those every single time we want to fight the soul master and that's the problem if we end up wiping a lot here which I guess many people end up doing the first time through the game then a corpse run becomes incredibly frustrating corpse runs are a tool that has to be used really carefully since the tent becomes so frustrating if done wrong putting annoying randomized teleporting enemies onto a corpse run is just you know a really bad idea next dang Defender is a wonderful boss that I never really fought against the problem with him is that the fight is placed so far off of the normal route through the game while beating him is only necessary very late in the playthrough because of this I always reach him very late when I play the game but at this point my nail is usually so upgraded that I just burned from the boss without having to deal with most of his attacks I really like his dream variant though the crystal Guardian isn't my favorite boss mechanically there are normal enemies in the game that have more mechanical depth what I do like about him however is that when we encounter him for the first time we actually expect to activate a checkpoint the game even statistically places signs all over the place that point towards a checkpoint yet reaching the bench actually starts the boss fight instead of healing us it's another one of those moments where they make us Panic it's great brutling Morlock is barely a boss and more like a better version of a normal enemy it's really funny how the boss tag sets expectations if they wouldn't show the boss intro before encountering her no one would even think about this enemy fluke marm it's a really boring fight mechanically but it is really difficult to be mad at the game because of this because stumbling into the fight by accident is so cool and it fits the area it's inner thematically in such a great way next up are the Mantis Lords monster hunter is a series known for its brilliant combat system in Monster Hunter we pick one out of many different weapons which we then use to hunt down gigantic monsters some of the weapons are fast and agile While others are slow but pull the punch when they finally connect monster hunter is a series known for its complex combat and for having an insanely High skill ceiling so what does Monster Hunter have to do with Hollow Knight well nothing less than nothing as a matter of fact because Hollow Knight's combat system is pretty much the exact opposite to Monster Hunters with just one exception where Monster Hunter features tons of different weapons to choose from our Knight is only equipped with a single weapon the nail while Monster Hunter has slow and heavy weapons and all our slashes have to actually connect with the Enemy Hollow Knight doesn't even have weapon swings it just pretends it does our Knight doesn't swing their sword when we attack It's Just an Illusion what actually happens is that the game immediately spawns a damage area in front of us the moment we press our attack button it looks as if the Knight were to swinger sword but that's just an illusion it's no swing it's instantaneous finally a lot of the complexity of monster hunter's combat system comes from all the different combo moves and the different consumable items that the game features Hollow Knight on the other hand has neither there are no consumable items in the game and there are no complicated combo moves also one game is in 3D space and one in 2D but you probably figured that out already so what is the one thing both combat systems have in common you might ask while they both generate incredibly tense boss fights with an insanely High skill ceiling they just do it in completely different ways Monster Hunter does it with an incredibly sophisticated and complex combat system and Hollow Knight does it with an incredibly simple one a simple combat system that at least in my humble opinion is equally great as Monster Hunters while a lot of Monster Hunters death comes from all the different weapons Hollow Knight's death mainly is a result of its enemy design which finally brings us to the Mantis Lords at first we only fight against one of the Mantis but as soon as it is defeated the other two joined the fight simultaneously after attacking the Mantis immediately teleported away only to reappear a moment later with a new attack over and over again the whole fight is like this there is never a break it's an extremely hectic fight that just keeps on going and going and it is a fight that a lot of people struggle with the first time through the game including myself here's where this gets interesting I believe the main reason why the Mantis Lords are so challenging at first isn't because their attacks are especially difficult to dodge or especially dangerous or anything it's because of something different it's because there is no obvious window to attack them during the entire fight there isn't a single moment where the Manti take a short break from their onslaught of attacks and are open to punishment the only way to deal damage to the boss is by learning their attack patterns and then to punish the attacks of the boss we can only be on the offensive while being defensive at their best Hollow Knights bosses are like dance with the boss where we hit them while they attack us at the same time and I believe the main reason why Hollow Knight is able to create so many incredible boss fights that flow so well and have us attack the boss while dodging is because the knight's sword slash is instantaneous when a mantis Lord Dives down at us from above and we can dodge to the right turn around and attack in an instant because the weapon doesn't simulate its swing Arc the attack happens the moment we press attack since attacking happens in an instant it is possible to attack while dodging which gives the fights in Hollow Knight this dance-like quality it's great the Mantis Lords are the first boss fight in the game that doesn't have an obvious attack window if we want to defeat them we have to punish them while we Dodge their attacks once this clicks and we start to nail the timings they become this incredibly satisfying dance which is why they are one of my favorite boss fights in any game ever hooray next The Collector is an incredible fight lore wise and a surprise of running into it for the first time is great I love how the fight plays around with the theme of The Collector catching bugs and how he's animated would be weird and settling I doubt that team Cherry's priorities with this one were to make him as mechanically interesting as possible and that they instead focused on making him thematically as interesting as possible which I think the really nailed the Watcher Knights are not a great boss fight the moment when we realized that the game expects us to actually fight against two of those guys at once several times in a row has to be one of the best holy fuzzy moments in any game I've ever seen there are not a boss that is really difficult at first but has an amazing flow to it once we learn their attack patterns I love it nosk is a boss that is really interesting thematically and allows the build up and setting the execution however is a bit next the Lost tin fight is one of my favorite fights in the game similar to how the Mantis Lords Force us to dance with them and to react to their attacks in order to hit them the Lost skin also can only be attacked by truly understanding his attack pattern I love the fight but I also have a huge problem with it actually not with this fight but with the rematch against the dream variation during my latest playthrough I challenged myself to do the dream boss early I tried the boss with only a upgraded Nails 6 masks and barely any Notch upgrades and holy fuzzy that turned out to be a challenge I'd add more deaths to the Lost King rematch than to any other boss fight during this playthrough including the Grim rematch but the thing that gave him so much trouble wasn't the boss itself the thing that killed me over and over again was something much more stupid the stupid orange ghosts that periodically spawn in the arena those girls just have a tendency to spawn right in front of us leaving us in a situation where it becomes impossible to avoid getting hit those ghosts add an artificial layer of difficulty onto an otherwise already challenging fight and while I hate them Holland had sometimes does this and those mechanics all end up being my least favorite boss fight mechanics in the game those mechanics don't make the boss truly more difficult to just artificially inflate the difficulty by being unfair the dream fight would be difficult enough without this additional layer of random ghosts tagged on top of it I still managed to be the dream version of the Lost King fight during my playthrough but I think the fight would have been much more enjoyable without the random ghosts winning the party next umu I have a weird soft spot for this cute jellyfish on paper the fight sounds horrible umu has just two attacks it is the only boss in the game that we can't damage while it bosses on the offensive and we always have to wait for an NPC to open up a short punishment window however you know the fight might be terrible but since it is the only one in the game that is like this I still kind of like it I generally enjoy it if games every once in a while break up the pace and throw in something that is completely different and you know if viewed through this lens then I can kind of appreciate the fight the Hornet rematch is an almost perfectly executed shadowlink fight I really love the fight Hornet's attacks come fast they are well telegraphed there are tons of cool Windows to punish her and the whole thing is really difficult while still being completely Fair the only thing that bugs me are the randomly appearing spikes in the arena that are similar to the ghosts and sometimes you know just spawn in a way that makes them undulgeable but that's a nitpick in an otherwise great fight hornet in general is amazing so in amazing that you know I mean I know it's never going to happen but sometimes I think about how cool it would be if she got her own game the traitor Lord is a fight that I really like his moveset is surprisingly simple he either dashes into the air which we can punish by standing still or he dashes towards us which we can either Dash through or jump over to punish and that's basically it he has two more attacks to spice things up but the biggest part of the fight is just correctly reacting to whichever attack he throws at us which I find weirdly enjoyable I did almost all boss fights with the double damage active and got home the trade the Lord however is one of the few I actually went back afterwards to do hitless who's next [Music] foreign is a tough little kitty it is one of the toughest and also one of the very most rewarding to learn boss fights in any game I've ever played he attacks so fast and so relentlessly it's insane yet all of his attacks are still punishable and every hit is always avoidable it's incredible Grimm really shows how solid Hollow Knight's core mechanics are you know team Cherry is able to pump up the difficulty to this level to have a boss who attacks so fast so relentlessly and so punishing and the fight is still completely Fair one of the best ways to find out how good the core mechanics of a combat system are is to see if the mechanics still hold up if we turn up the difficulty to 11. nightmare King Rim is hollow Knight's combat not turned to 11 but to exactly 137 and it still doesn't even show the slightest crack Hollow Knight's combat system is simple on the surface but its core mechanics are so well crafted that they still work flawlessly when fighting against the positive difficulty of nightmar King grim and even the souls games can handle this level of difficulty without revealing some small problems it's incredible hooray and that was the last boss that I wanted to discuss in detail so back to our journey through hollownest after learning about the three mysterious dreamers and acquiring the dream nail it is now our job to find the free dreamers and to break the seals locking the entrance to the black egg Temple at the Forgotten Crossroads speaking about the Forgotten Crossroads at about this point in a story something interesting happens to it the entire area becomes overtaking by the spreading infection which makes exploring it much more difficult and the enemy is much more dangerous I love that this happens it is such an unexpected surprise makes the entire world feel so alive and it raises the stakes in such a cool way it's great there's just one thing that I do not understand about it once infected certain paths are blocked off for no real reason this makes traveling for one of the most Central parts of the game a lot more cumbersome for it you know no apparent reason not a big fan the rich monomon the first streamer that we're going to awaken we have to do a lengthy series of events we first have to defeat the tongue Defender then we have to flip a switch to remove acid from an otherwise unreachable area where we finally find a new item is must here that allows us to swim in acid or we can't just do this regardless behind umu will break the first seal by dream nailing the teacher a second dreamer is sleeping in the highest tower of the city of Tears it is only reachable the first grabbing the Monarch wings from the bottom of the map and afterwards defeating the Watcher lights higher top the highest tower we find lurian and break the second seal the third dreamer is hidden deep within deep nest in the spider inhabited distant Village in one of the Huts in this Village we find a bench sitting on it and traps us and we awaken trapped and wept in a completely different place the den of the Beast because of course we do it's still deep Nest hidden within the then we find Hera the final dreamer with this all three seals are broken and the path towards the final boss of the game is open so we have to set the stage a bit before we enter the black egg Temple at this point in the game we are very unlikely to have a complete understanding of the lore you know we pick up a bunch of things like that there is an infection that is spreading from the egg and that there are dreamers that are somehow connected to The Pale King that the city of tears felted infection and so on we have a vague idea about what is going on but if we didn't look up something online it is incredibly unlikely that we've connected all the dots so far we probably enter the black egg temple with no idea where the weights was inside inside there is a huge long black Corridor of nothingness most of the temple is just pitch black and then we see room infection and spreading out of it we enter this room and in it we find another Knight Bound by chains a knight that looks uncomfortably similar to our own little player Knight we break the chains and trapping this poor being it falls down it screams and then the game fades in the name of the creature the hollow Knight when I first played the game this took me completely by surprise I always unconsciously assumed that the Game's name Hollow Knight refers to our own little Knight the player character not to the final boss the fact that not we are the hollow Knight but the final boss completely flipped tons of assumptions that I had about the game story in my head it was great with fight the hollow Knight in a challenging sword duel it's a back and forth we strike he strikes it's a good fight with a good flow to it until suddenly something unexpected happens the hollow Knight stops for a second he takes his sword and then he starts to brutally Hammer his sword into his own stomach over and over again the final boss in Hollow Knight the hollow Knight himself tries to help us defeat him he tries to kill himself Hollow Knight is a game in which the final boss wants us to murder him which leaves us with a question what the fuzz is happening why is the final boss painfully stabbing himself into the stomach over and over again that's the final boss in Hollow Knight actually want to die what is going on here [Music] okay [Music] when the kingdom of hollowness fell there were two different powers that fought against each other on the one side the radiance with her bright light on the other side the pale Knight in my understanding of the Lord those two Powers represent the Sun and the Moon the sun in this case the radiance causes a bright warm light that causes bugs to go insane if they try to resist it for too long on the other side there's the moon in this case The Pale King with its soft calm light that causes bugs to gain Consciousness if they're exposed to it for too long so far we discussed the story of hollow Knight as a conflict between those two Powers but those two aren't the only ones there is a third power that influences the events in hollownest to find out more about this mysterious power we have to travel deep below the kingdom below the sewers and even below the ancient peasant we have to travel into the abyss the deepest part of hollownest down there are several mysterious things the entire area is littered with thousands and thousands of skeletons of creatures that look uncomfortably similar to our player character at the deepest point of the Abyss we run into aggressive Shades the same Shades that we leave behind on death if we continue to explore sooner or later we'll find the lighthouse built by The Pale King that keeps dark and terrifying creatures at Bay if activated and even deeper down we find the shade cloak ability in the arms of a long forgotten ancient creature long before The Pale King arrived in hollownest there used to be another ancient civilization down here a civilization that worshiped the third big Power in our story the void if the radians represent sunlight and The Pale King represents Moonlight then the void represents the absence of light it's complete nothingness its darkness and shadows at some point after arriving in the Kingdom The Pale King discovered the void below the kingdom and built the lighthouse to keep it in check when the radiance infection became a bigger and bigger threat to the kingdom however The Pale King turned towards the void in the hopes to finally put an end to the infection our little player character the Knight stands in the center of this plan but before we were finally able to truly understand what happened we first have to find the two sides of the king's soul to gain entrance to the deepest deaths of the Abyss the first part of the king's Soul can be found at the end of the Queen's Garden after defeating traitor Lord the white lady gives it to us the white lady is the pale King's Queen the second part can be found on the corpse of The Pale King himself in order to find The Pale King we first have to collect 1800 Essence which we mainly collect by defeating the difficult dream versions of certain bosses this rewards us with the awakened dream nail with this dream nail we can now enter the White Palace by dream nailing this guard at the palace grants the White Palace contains the end game platforming challenges of the game after managing to hop and bounce away through this deadly Palace we find The Pale King dead on his throne the second part of the king's soul on his body with the king's soul completed we're finally able to reach the very bottom of hollow Knight's map and to finally uncover the last mystery of the story at the bottom of the Abyss deep below all the skeletons and entrance opens up this entrance leads to a path through piles of bone at the very end of this path we found a broken egg that shows our own reflection this place is the only place in the game where we see our own reflection seeing our own reflection allows us to do something interesting it allows us to do something unexpected it allows us to dream nail ourselves it allows us to enter our own memories and to experience memories we probably have long forgotten we awake in a darker version of the Abyss we hear The Pale King speak no cost to grade this music starts to play and thus we make our way back out of the Abyss bodies strike down on the floor from above bodies look similar to our own little night there are other beings like us trying to climb out of the Abyss at the same time we are we hear The Pale King no mind to think no will to break born of God and void and then we finally reached the top and at the top there is The Pale King The Pale King and another Knight who looks almost identical to us the two leave us behind we fall back down into the thousands of corpses below and our King's Soul transforms into a void soul so what did we just witness well as the infection became more and more dangerous to the kingdom The Pale King came up with a plan on how to get rid of the radiance once and for all he planned to produce a vessel made out of pure void that is able to contain the radiant's influence inside of it for eternity this vessel is the hollow Knight The Pale King produced thousands and thousands of vessels searching for one pure enough to be able to contain the radiance within for eternity and they found one but it wasn't our player character it was a sibling of ours The Vessel we saw in the sequence before the other vessels were thrown back into the abyss and the place was sealed the vessel that was chosen however ended up being the hollow Knight the creature we fight against in the black egg Temple is actually our brother the radiance got locked into the hollow Knight's mind the night chained up in the temple and the temple was sealed by the blue dreamers here's the thing however the pale King's plan failed the hollow Knight wasn't able to keep the radiance locked inside of him forever it is actually heavily implied that he caught fatherly feelings towards The Pale King which tainted his pure void and kept the radiance away to escape after a while the infection managed to spread from the black Temple again at this point The Pale King decided to flee together with his Palace into the dream room where he died and where we eventually found his corpse the reason why the hollow Knight is stabbing himself during the boss fight is because he understands that he isn't able to contain the radiance within him and wants to help us the fight then escalates in this amazing back and forth where the radiance takes control over the hollow Knight for a few seconds and attacks us before the night regains control and tries to kill himself again it really amazing Hollow Knight's story is so unique in Hollow Knight the world is at the center of the narrative Hollow Knight is all about discovering more and more of the mysterious Kingdom of hollow Nest discovering all the places learning their history figuring out how the kingdom fell to ruins understanding our own role at the center of it all that's Hollow Knight's story and at least in my humble opinion the game has an incredible tale to tell and details it in a really unique and interesting way it's incredible if we kill the knight in a black egg Temple then we absorbed Radiance into ourselves and step into the hollow Knight's place we succeed the hollow Knight we become chained up in the temple for eternity the radiance trapped within us this however is not the true ending of the game there is another ending sequence that allows us to actually face the radiance but before we talk about the true ending of hollow Knight there's something else that we've got to discuss first at the beginning of the video we chatted about this video being interested in finding an answer to the question how it is possible that Hollow Knight even exists well we now have established all the necessary fluff to have an actual conversation about this [Music] at the very edge of the Kingdom we find the Colosseum of fools the strongest Warriors of the Kingdom fight there in competitions of life and death Only the strongest survive eventually we reach this place on our journey through Hollow Knight and are able to fight to become the champion fools ourselves the Colosseum of fools is hollow Knight's late game combat Challenge and to put it mildly it's the it's the biggest and most insane public burning of developer resources that I've ever seen in any game ever it's utter Insanity usually when a game includes an optional late game combat Arena challenge like the Colosseum it is a remix of enemies and bosses that we fought previously you know it's a quick thing to throw into a game for the developers since all the enemies and bosses are already designed and coded anyway this is not what the Colosseum of fools is but my counting the Colosseum of fools introduces a whopping 10 new enemies that are just used in its challenges and nowhere else in the game 10 new enemy types just for an optional one-off late game challenge some of them are similar to enemies who encountered elsewhere but a lot of them are complete new enemies with move sets more sophisticated than most enemies in a base game the Colosseum introduces two and a half new boss fights it features terrain that constantly changes it features moments where it is building tension and crazy surprising set pieces it turns to flow or below us into shiny yet deadly spikes it has centipedes trying to stomp us it responds at us and entraps us in a tiny cage with no floor to stand on it's incredible the final challenge is really difficult but beating it is incredibly rewarding it's so good so here's the thing Hollow Knight was made by a team of three people they had less deaths working on Hollow Knight than the average Beaver family as members those three people crafted a gigantic world of hollow Knight they filled it with amazing lore they placed tons and tons and tons of wonderful handcrafted rooms and NPCs into this world that tell it story they crafted one of the tightest combat systems I've ever played they crafted dozens and dozens of incredible bosses some of them so good that beating them feels like a dance with death a few of them so great that they are among the best bosses in gaming they use incredibly clever level design throughout the game level designer is perfectly handcrafted confuses and cause panic in us like in deep Nest they filled this world with thousand and dozens of meaningful Secrets several of them revealing entirely miserable boss fights or even areas they made sure that each area is visually distinct they filled each area with unique and memorable enemies they crafted the game that is roughly 40 hours long they did all of this in roughly three years but after doing all of this they still had resources left to craft the Colosseum of fools an area that features tons of enemies which they never use elsewhere and features new boss fights they still had resources left to burn for an end game combat challenge Hollow Knight is an exceptional game for many many reasons but the one thing that always blows my mind is the three people were able to craft all of this in only three years and a couple of months how were they able to do this however three people able to achieve things that the biggest and most experienced game studios in the world barely ever managed to achieve with budgets hundreds of times higher than Hollow Knights so during my recent through I replayed Hollow Knight with this question in mind and I believe I found an answer or actually several answers that all boil down to the same thing and this ladies and gentlemen is the moment where an old acquaintance of ours steps out of the shadows and reveals itself for an unexpected comeback slopes we have to talk about slopes slopes make everything in game design a tiny bit more complicated and annoying I actually mean that that's no joke if a game features slopes then every single Collision calculation of the player becomes this tiny bit more complex but it is not only our player character who suddenly has to test if there is a slope ahead whenever he walks a step each and every enemy has to as well suddenly debugging needs to take much more edge cases into consideration because maybe a certain attack causes us to go out of bounds on a certain sloped surface the same is true for every enemy attack slopes introduce the problem of how to draw enemies on top of them if we for example just place this bug on a sloped surface then it looks silly we need a custom animation for when it stands on the slope but it's not just standing animation it also needs a new attacking animation actually it needs two one for attacking upwards and one for attacking downwards but it's not just the enemies walking particles now probably need their own version for the player running at the slope particles hitting a slope might need to resolve in a different way than when they hit a flat surface and so on slopes are a very simple thing on the surface but once they are in a game they introduce a never-ending series of tiny new problems all of those problems are solvable but each one requires a tiny bit of development resources every single time and this stuff adds up which brings us back to hollow Knight so how did Hollow Knight handle problematic slopes well let's solved the slope problem by not doing slopes Hollow Knight doesn't feature a single walkable sloped surface they mask this in a really clever way often there will be slopes on areas that the player can't reach or in the foreground but the area where the game actually takes place on is 100 free of the bane of slopes they just cut a corner here by literally not cutting corners but it's not just the walkable surfaces that are as simple as possible if we take a closer look at the game then we can see that they cut Corners everywhere Hollow Knight's art style is incredibly simple it is beautiful and even if you give me a thousand years to try I couldn't draw a single bug with as much character as the Box in Hollow Knight but it is nonetheless a simple art style that is quick to draw it's also an art style that is quick to animate things like walking animations most of the time only contain of a couple of frames the difference between those frames are often only black lines moving which represent the arms and legs attacks often only have one anticipation frame one frame where the attack is actually active and one recovery frame enemies often only contain out of a couple of dozen Graphics many parts of the enemy drawing being reused in many different frames a talented animator with lots of experience in its art style is probably able to draw all those Graphics in an afternoon but it's not just the graphics that are quick to produce they also reuse them a lot take those leaves in his mask growth the whole place is overgrown with beautiful vegetation yet if we take a closer look then we can see that the entire floor around here is actually built by using the exact same Four Leaf Graphics over and over over again the same is true when there are tons of mushrooms in the background or signs or whatever really they simply cleverly reuse background Graphics to cut down on the overall workload all over the kingdom pretty much all wooden beams in the game are the exact same graphics with different ropes on top of it and so on or take Hollow Knight's lightning system the game has beautiful lightning all over the place there's just one problem as far as I can tell Hollow Knight doesn't even have a lightning engine to begin with they just pretend they do hollow Knight's lightning is just a single gradient graphic with a vignette effect on its border that they put below the foreground and the Knight yup if they want to simulate a flash of light they just flash the gradient behind the Knight wide for a moment like when using the double jump the one to limit our vision like in deepness the vignette effect just becomes stronger so strong that it actually limits our vision they give the gradient different colors in different areas to visually differentiate them but they never actually calculate how actual light would behave you know if you were to stand this spot with a lamp then the lamp wouldn't light the area below us in reality the reason it doesn't hold on Knight is because it's only a graphic but a calculation of how real light behaves they make incredibly clever use of simple particle effects these Leaf particles are used basically everywhere in Green Path cutting the chains of the hollow Knight looks incredible in the moment we do it but as a matter of fact it's just a really simple particle emitter traveling over the chain a simple camera shake this little two frame animation and another couple of chain particles to drop down the emitter is even set up a bit sloppy one travels slightly off of the actual chain literally unplayable again don't get me wrong the outcome looks incredible it's just incredibly simple how they achieve the effect or take the enemies most enemies that shoot a projectile shoot the same projectile the enemies that fight with sword and shield all behave very similarly so similar that I believe they probably share a lot of the same code base the enemies attacks aren't simulated swings but immediately much zones just like our own attacks the movement system and the jumping physics are simple and don't try to do anything fancy and finally Hollow Knight doesn't even try to come up with tons of complex systems for their game they were humble enough to take simple but great systems that worked in the past and to Simply Implement those like the charm system that is paper Mario's batches or the mask Shard system that are Zelda's heart pieces everything in the game is incredibly simple nothing tries to be fancy or complicated and I believe it's the sum of all of those simple things that is what makes it possible that Hollow Knight exists I believe that team Cherry was always looking to solve complex problems with the most Simple Solutions they were able to come up with while developing Hollow Knight Simple Solutions that won't cost them any headache later down the road Simple Solutions like just cutting sloped surfaces entirely or like just taking a lightning engine instead of writing one when team Cherry set out to create Hollow Knight is set out to create a world that is a joy to explore is set out to craft hundreds of enemies dozens of bosses deep lower Secrets around every corner and Visually distinct sounds while also featuring difficult and tight combatant platforming with a team of three people that's insanely ambitious and they actually stuck The Landing I believe the reason why they were able to do this is because they focused only on the things in the game that are truly important and took shortcuts with everything else the thing that I personally found the most impressive about Hollow Knight is its razor sharp focus on what's truly important it's not important to have sophisticated lightning engines for most games or complex level geometry most games aren't better if the enemy animations consist of hundreds of individual frames or if the game has a unique drawing for each single backdrop so many modern games focus on so many things that cost so much time and energy yet ultimately add nothing to the experience at the end of the day the only thing that is important for a game is if it manages to achieve what it's set out to do hollow Knight set out to be a game about exploring a huge mysterious and exciting world and at the end of the day it is much more important for the game Hollow Knight the team Cherry had the resources to put something insane like the Colosseum of fools into the last corner of the world than it would have been to have slopes hooray with this there is only one final thing left for us to do fight the hollow Knight again in the temple of the black egg if we have the void Soul equipped Hornet appears to help us MIT fight she stunts tonight and gives us a chance to enter his mind by dream nailing him inside his mind we literally challenge the Sun for a duel the sun flies towards us and is revealed to be the radiance the fight against the radiance is as epic as it deserves to be she attacks an incredibly fast patterns with attacks that are difficult to predict and hard to memorize which makes them a perfect test of our Mastery over the game systems as the radiance grows weaker and weaker void starts to appear and tries to tear the radiance into the thefts the radiance tries to flee upwards while shooting laser beams at us but she isn't able to escape at the top we finally finish her off avoid breaks free from inside us and we brutally slept for several times before finally tearing her down into the endless nothingness of the Void the shades at the bottom of the Abyss slowly fade away and we had one final shot of hornet finding the knight's broken helmet or the Temple of the black egg used to be Hollow Knight is an exceptional game on almost every front the only thing that I can criticize about it is that it's pacing in its first couple of hours is a bit slow and even this is a comparably small problem Hollow Knight is a masterpiece on almost every front it features a combat system with an insanely High skill ceiling that is incredibly satisfying to master it features some of the best boss fights in the history of gaming it features some of the deepest lore I've ever dug myself into it features a world that is not only a choice to explore but also filled to the brim with Secrets it's among the best games ever created but the most important lesson that Hollow Knight teaches is in my opinion how much there is to gain if the game stays focused on what it is trying to achieve and by cutting back everything that eats up valuable resources but doesn't help to achieve this goal so here we have it over an hour of hollow Knight and I didn't write a single bug pun we snailed it before we wrap this up just one more thing a couple of words on the state of this Channel and my own plans going forward videos like this take an insane amount of work and that is a problem not for me I enjoy producing them and probably also not for you given that you're still sticking around but for YouTube see the way YouTube is set up heavily incentivizes to upload as many videos as possible best several videos a week at the end of the day YouTube ad money is earned when people click on videos and if a channel manages to produce several videos a week then it is of more value for YouTube and they usually push this kind of content much more which you know is just how YouTube Works here's where I run into my little problem producing videos like this is an insane amount of work literally hundreds of hours so if it takes me say 250 hours to produce this video then I start to run into problems of mathematical nature if I try to produce several of them per week if I only ever upload a video every couple of weeks however well then it becomes insanely difficult to make any significant amount of money with YouTube's ads and that is before talking about all the other fun YouTube perks like your super Mario Maker tutorials becoming flagged as terroristic content or all of your earnings suddenly randomly going to Ubisoft content like this simply can't exist on YouTube ad money alone because of this I decided to set up a patreon for the one person watching that never heard of patreon before it is a direct way to support content creators financially So speaking to all of you wonderful viewers that are lucky enough to have disposable income and no major Financial queries if the fact that content like what we're doing around here and on the other channel exists is worth more to you than I don't know pulling a Coke out of a vending machine once a month or a Starbucks coffee then you can make a real difference in making sure that these videos keep coming by supporting this channel also there are some fun goodies like access to some cut content getting your name into the credits and the option to ask me questions about pretty much anything in regular patreon q and A's you can learn more about all the goodies by clicking the link in the video's description hooray the next video will be over at the gaming channel we'll take a look at things the Mario Maker 2 Community disc covered over the last two years shout out to psychro and every single person in this lovely Discord server for giving me a crash course and afterwards we'll start with the seller series around here as a matter of fact we'll discuss on Karina last because I want to take a look at how it influenced the Zelda games that came after it so we'll do mature's mask next and afterwards a lovely little game called out of Wilds discussing those two games close to each other makes a lot of sense for reasons immediately obvious for anyone who played both and with this it's time for us to wrap this up thank you so much for watching this little video I hope you got at least some entertainment and value out of it if you liked it liking it back would be a gentleman's move if you're interested in more long-form content discussing games subscribing might be a good idea and if you truly loved it and want to ensure that content like this can survive on the platform then there is the option to support the channel on patreon as well alright thanks for watching until next time lots of hugs thank you

Channel: Ceave Perspective

Views: 211,158

Keywords: hollow knight, hollow, knight, silk song, silksong, team cherry, ceave, ceave perspective, ceave gaming, ceave hollow knight, hollow knight ceave, retrospective, hollow knight retrospective, hollow knight review, hollow knight critique, video game retrospective, ceave retrospective, hollow knight ceave perspective, review hollow knight, retrospective hollow knight, critique hollow knight, team, cherry, hollow knight analysis, game retrospective, analysis, analysis hollow knight

Id: _eDUHT3LBrM

Length: 91min 9sec (5469 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023