Hollow Knight was my favorite game that released in 2017. Returning to it now with all the shinny updates and polish has remind me it stood out in a similar way to the new God of War. Hollow Knight does not have the best combat, boss battles or exploration that I've played in the game. But it does everything so well that it stands out by hitting such a high level across its major features. And the game's presentation is a contender for the best of its type. I still listen to the soundtrack now and then. And I can't believe how good the game looks from a team this small. Yet, despite it being two years since the game was first released, and 19 months since my first critique, I find myself in the same predicament I was in, in the opening to that video. Back then, it was how to differentiate judging something as product versus judging it as art in the case of Hollow Knight's update, I wonder what's the best way to judge something that's outright FREE oppose to the original game that is merely ridiculously under-priced. The four listed update for Hollow Knight are conveniently supplied by the game's main menu are as follows: Hidden Dreams, The Grimm Troupe, Lifeblood, and Godmaster. One of these has far more content than the others. Even after some tease features were cut from the eventual release. But even the smaller expansions bring new areas, charms and enemies. By my count, there are 12 boss battles added to the game in these content packs, as long as you're okay with counting some of the remixed&updated ones. When something is free, obviously whether it is worth you money isn't applicable So, all we've left with is time, but how much is the monetary cost worth for a standard score, that's just your translated estimation of a satisfying experience. If the prodcut is FREE, does it gain the first 5 points on an out of 10 scale as a base, and that's where you start. Or does it change how people view the product. My concern is when something is free or close to it, that you'll forget that fact and judge it like it did cost money, somehow. It gets unfairly delegated to the same area as every other game you played. Or you switch over to judging it as art without realizing you've done so. The two reasons why I'm bringing this up is that these expansion packs did have some disappointing parts to them. Some from inclusions of what I considered to be poor content when compared to the best of what Hollow Knight previously offered. But also from a large part of the game being ignored in these updates that we'll discuss shortly. The other reason is that I've seen some people discussing that they were so disappointed by these updates, that it ruined the game for them. This is something that I spent some time trying to understand. The knee-jerk reaction I have is that it's free. If it's so bad, then, just don't play it. It's bonus content, not part of the main game, and can easily be ignored since its starkly separate from the experience. But as I thought about it, and tried to make some comparisons, I think I understand it more. What finally made it clicked for me was imagining a TV series that ended with a proper fulfilling conclusion, and then another season comes out years later that spoils that ending. I still think that Hollow Knight's DLC can more easily be ignored than this. But I find myself at least understanding this rejection now. If anyone is curious to why some people are upset, it's because the new endings and tidbits of Hollow Knight's ongoing lore were locked behind the completion of its most brutally difficult content. Many players were unable to reach it, and had to resort to viewing it online instead of experiencing it in game themselves. Again, sorry for doing this so much, but we'll get to that a little later Let's be positive, and also have a spoiler warning, just in case the video's title wasn't enough. I'll be showing most of the base game of Hollow Knight and all of its DLC. So if you haven't played it yet, you should probably do that before you watch this video. Returning to the game was surreal, because many of the updates address things I criticized in the first video. I want to be clear that I do not think these changes are in response to that video. It, instead, confirms what I've long said about most of the criticism that is contained in videos like mine being things that the developers are already aware of. These aren't things that they've never realized, but are instead of problems caused by running out of funding, or hitting a deadline. Still, it was affirming to see that at least some of the points that I brought up were valid, and the game was better off having fixed them. Namely, a boss has been added to the Hive area. Traitor King and Nosk have updated movesets. There is a new rematch fight against the Mantis Lords where you fight all three of them together. A new platforming gauntlet that demands you use all of Hollow Knight's upgrades. And a boss select mode with the option to revert your upgrades or the option to make the fight harder so you can enjoy it with your full moveset that you couldn't have unlocked yet for most fights in the base game. What hasn't been changed were the Dreamer encounters. This makes me think there's a deliberate purpose for these moments to be passive. A purpose that is lost on me, and that's okay. The one thing I do still wish that have been added was a boss to the end of the Deepnests, similar to the Watch Knights that guard the Dreamer in the City of Tears. However, considering how deeply linked Hornet is to that area, and with the recently announced sequel Silksong, there may be another reason why that last stretch of Hallownest is being kept boss-free. Bosses are the focus of this video, because they were the focus of the DLC. Especially when we're speaking about the best part of these updates. The one exception is the Path of Pain, which is a new secret location in the White Palace. The way I see it, Hollow Knight has 4 main facets of gameplay: Exporation, Platforming Combat against regular enemies and then BOSS combat. Path of the Pain is how the DLC add something new to the platforming facet. It is much more difficult than anything else in the game. Including the rest of the White Palace. Frequent check points are included to alleviated this difficulty, and for I remembered, these are the only ones in the game that allow you to hit for infinite soul, meaning that you could always heal to full when you messing up. In my first Hollow Knight video, I said that the game was too easy, I'm not going to repeat that here for the DLC because it wouldn't be true. But Path of the Pain for me was not the excruciating experience for me that I've seen others shared. I don't think this is an issue with the Path of the Pain's design, but rather, its pushed against the limit of Hollow Knight's moveset. There's only so much you can do with pogo-bounces resetting your dash and air jump. This may be seen as cheating to some of you, but I think you only need to look at the trailer for Silksong to see how much more potential there is and what it looks to be Hornet's broader moveset. That's not to say that Path of Pain wasn't enjoyable. It reaches some great moment while pushing Hollow Knight's platforming to its extreme. It achieves something close to Celeste's level of strings of actions feeling like notes of music being arrange to an executed order, and more of them keep getting added together for longer levels. Celeste can also be why Path of Pain felt a little bit disappointing, since it was over so quickly, and didn't have as much to work with as Celeste did. But that brings us back to the potential of Silksong. What Path of the Pain does excel at is evoking the feeling of desperation. Even you are comfortable making most of the jumps, they still feels like you're climbing somewhere you're not supposed to be. lightly breaking the rules, which starts when you break a wall that acts differently than most other breakable boundary in the game. The layout of danger zone and buzz saws feels claustrophobic. And then, right before the end, you can feel like you swam too far of the sea, and are stranded bouncing along these spikes and saws with no safe place to land. And when you do finally break through, when you should feel a rush of relief you have to fight two enemies after landing instead of reaching a check point like the other points of White Palace and Path of the Pain. These enemies are not difficult, but the shock and panic can make the fight a memorable experience, since it comes out of nowhere, and you're afraid of being pushed back to the checkpoint if you failed. This is one of three times that the DLC flirt to another facet of Hollow Knight's gameplay: Combat against regular enemies. The other two are similarly minor moments. You may not even want to count them as you journey through the rest of the DLC. A fight against a jumping ninja bug through a newly breakable wall at the Colosseum of Fools, and collecting flames by killing specter-typed enemies for the Grimm Troupe. For the sake of being throughout, I also want to mention the new giant pipe enemy on your way to the Godhome's entrance, and a special ordeal event hidden in the boss select area. I think it's fair to say that this is more like a facet of Hollow Knight's gameplay that wasn't being explored. Unfortunately, there's another that were similarly neglected. But let's instead link these specter enemies to the DLC's boss content. Grimm, and his harder version, Nightmare King Grimm, are not the first bosses added to the game via DLC. Those go to Zote's incredibly presented dream fight, and a rematch against the more difficult version of the dung beetle defender. Grimm is, however, the first wholly new boss fight, and was also one of the most exciting part of DLC. So we'll be starting with him. The clever trick the Grimm Troupe pulls is you fight Grimm before you fight Grimm. His specters have similar move and the exact same sort of flow to their battles. They appear, unload whatever attack they had selected to use, and then you get a chance to get in some counter attack before they vanish and reappear to go through this cycle again. This is how every enemy you fight for the quest works. It's also how Grimm works, much to fight's detriment. Grimm could be seen as setting the stage for the proper fight against the Nightmare King. That's also the only other fight in the game that gets a full title card introduction, as long as you doesn't count the rematch against the Radiance as a different fight. And at first, this fight was worth of that same grandiose introduction. For most players, I'd wager that feeling will never go away. But after seeing this fight so many times in the boss-rush land of Godhome, Nightmare King now is one of the least favorite fights in the game because it's so boring. This reaction is not from a lack of challenge. In fact, I think I made a mistake in my first Hollow Knight video, and that I could have made it more clear that I wanted difficulty options and not for the entire game to be retuned for my preferences. I think I didn't communicate well enough that I wanted the nail upgrade to be somthing that you can undo for a higher challenge, something that the DLC has sort of done in Godhome. Nightmare King is definitely a challenging fight. He has 6 highly damaging moves that he cycles through with brief telegraphs. And when you were first learning the fight, you can easily be knocked off rhythm and start taking multiple two-mask hits in succession. But when you get passed that, the fight becomes a monotonous game of tennis Nightmare King takes his turn, you take yours. There is little room for expressing yourself by being aggressive during and between attacks. The best you can do is [slip] in some sneaky hits as you are avoiding some of his moves. I view this as an intentional decision on the part of team cherry. I guess it's to make the fight a long endurance dance, one that you are partnered for with Nightmare King as he leads you through each step to the music, and are responding in the only way that is allowed, going along with the theme of the fight being on a stage in front of the audience. The best evidence I can point to in order to support this is that Grimm will remain when he summons his Cloak Spikes from below the stage. You can either get next to him during this or shade dash through the spike after they've emerged to get in some damage as a reward for truly understanding how this attack works. Nightmare King does not remain for this move and you simply stick around and wait. Couple this with how quick Nightmare King is to teleport away if you get close to him for some attacks and how quickly he vanishes after finishing each move. And I think the intent for this being a drawn-out fight is plain to see. And I do understand that this is criticism that isn't applicable for when you fight this boss in its natural location, it's only when you are trying to finish a boss rush that these problems began to show. So maybe it should be something aimed at the Godhome rather than Nightmare King himself, but I find myself fixated on bosses designed like this since almost half of the boss fights in Hollow Knight use the structure. Although none of them is as much as Nightmare King and not all of them suffer for it. Other fights like the Mantis Lords also share this type of battle flow, but never feel monotonous like this fight doesā I think they avoid the problem by cycling through attacks much faster and leaving more opportunities for counter-attacks. A solution for fights like Nightmare King which can't be that fast at first because then it will be unfair when you are still learning each move would be a way to indicate that you would like him to dance faster since you are comfortable with the fight. Perhaps by not returning his bow at the beginning and instead hitting him to make him angry. What this boss does expertly provide, is another fight that demands your full attention and focus to learn several attack patterns on the same level as The Radiance. This is something I felt the base game was missing. It's also arguably the best presented boss fight in the entire game, with his music blasting to life when the fight unexpectedly starts, and rising with a chaotic chorus whenever he switches to his bullet hell move. Curiously this quality is absent in the Godhome version and I wonder why that is. As I said the quest to unlock the fights with Grimm involves fighting some enemies that match his fighting style. What I didn't say was that finding these enemies involves traveling around Hallownest to quest markers before you can kill them to collect their flames. The minor criticism I have here is that this part of the DLC is boring filler. At best it can be seen as a way to entice players into taking another āworld tourā of Hollow Knight since this was DLC added after release, and can serve as a great excuse to remind yourself of the journey you took through this world. I think it's a valid way looking at it and it's not offensively boring but this is far from my favorite new content that's being added. Replaying the game from the beginning with this DLC included allows you to kill two bugs with one magnifying glass if you know how to get to the Howling Cliffs and trigger the Grimm Troupe's arrival early. It still involves some back and forth, but the previous DLC also added a teleport you can place to help smooth out backtracking. I've played Hollow Knight all the way through six times now and it's surprising to me how I'm still not sick of it. Of course nothing matches my first play-through, and the game does start to wear a bit thin after you're familiar with it since it's best to prioritize getting all the upgrades as quickly as possible before fully exploring it, but I still had a good time. The major criticism I have about this Grimm Troupe quest is that it could have been tied to a new areaā and this is where all of the DLC has to be viewed against another facet of Hollow Knight's gameplayā Exploration. Before I get into this, I also want to remind you of what I said at the beginning of the video the DLC was free. It's impossible to appraise as a product. As an expanded work of art, however There were two parts of the DLC that broke my heart. One is linked to what I said in my first video on the game: that I wanted so desperately to go out of bounds and see what was beyond the edges of the map. Almost as if my wish was granted, you can break through that wall in the Colosseum of Fools, right above this area with the tents. It opens to a drop and somewhere new... and it's just a simple fighting arena with a new enemy so there's a Simple Key to open a new lock that was added to the game. If we follow the trail of that lock, you reach a new area off the sewers and far below the City of Tears. A place that has a new backdrop that teases this huge expansive undergroundā you can see the Fungal Wastes in the distance. This introduction is practically screaming that it will be another large open area like The Abyss or the Kingdom's Edge... and it's instead where you find a mysterious creature that you dreamnail to teleport to Godhome, where you go through a series of boss rushes. I was not expecting the DLC to expand Hollow Knight's world. I think that would be too much even for Team Cherry's absurd levels of generosity when it comes to pricing its content. But the way these areas are introduced still raise my hopes then promptly slashed them, and it's undeniable that a core facet of the game wasn't used in this DLC. The announcement of Silksong dulls this criticism significantly, and I think it speaks more to how much I enjoyed this game, but yeahāI was heartbroken by these two moments regardless. Godhome, in my experience, is something unique. It is a boss rush mode that is contextualized within the game's world. To put it simply: it's canon. To explain in more detail: this is an actual place that the Knight is visiting and your actions here have repercussions, which as you might recall from earlier, is one of the reasons why some people were put off by it. There's a building series of challenges that keep upping the ante until you get to the final one and the ending that it protects. I know that games like Furi are nothing but a series of bosses but I am unaware of another game that has a separate area for a rematch with all bosses that isn't just a fun pretend arena. In Hollow Knight, you have tuned slain bossesāor godsāto this area with the Godtuner and are fighting a different version of them for reasons that weren't clear to me. Fortunately they don't have to be something I understand for me to appreciate the effort that went into the context of this area. You have two options in Godhome you fight bosses in a series of continuous fights in the Pantheons, or you fight individual bosses with difficulty options. Curiously there are also options when fighting through the Pantheons, and these are more significant changes. In the Hall of Bosses you can choose normal mode, a hard mode where the boss deals double damage, and then Radiant mode where one hit will kill you. Whereas in the Pantheons you can reduce your health to 4 masks, reduce your soul to one use, set your nail to its base damage rate, prevent the usage of any charms, or any combination of the four including all four at the same time. I think it's easier to understand the system if you view the Pantheons as the real challenge and the Hall of Bosses being your way to practice specific fights as much as you want. There are new boss fights in these pantheons but each of them already existed within the game in some form or anotherā which I wonder about. Is that an intentional choice to be within the theme of Godhome, that you have to have encountered the āGodā in some form in order to tune it, or was it just a cover way to use content that may not be finished in time of the base game? Either way the new fights generally cap off their respective Pantheons and are as follows: Nailmasters Oro and Mato, in the Pantheon of the Master. Paintmaster Sheo, in the Pantheon of the Artist. Yoda, in the Pantheon of the Sage, Nailsage Sly Pure Vessel, in the Pantheon of the Knight. And three other fights that we'll get to in just a moment. Pantheons have ten bosses each. There is one intermission area in each Pantheon where you can heal to full and refill all of your soul, but it does not act as a checkpoint. If you die on any boss, even after this intermission area, you have to start the Pantheon over from the beginning. To smooth out the difficulty of hitting a new boss after fighting nine other bosses, the fights are unlocked as statues in the Hall so you can practice after seeing them. Which is something I needed to do in order to beat Pure Vessel at the end of the Knight Pantheon. I'm of two minds of this feature. First off, I have to acknowledge that if you dislike the boss fights in Hollow Knight that this DLC will do little to change your mind but then I'd also question if the base game is something intended for you since it has such a focus on these big battles. I loved that I was able to fight all of these bosses as much as I wanted, with a variety of different difficulty options and there being an actual in-game reward for doing so. However, there's an issue with some of the fights being awkward when transplanted into this new area and of course the elephant in the room that is the fifth Pantheon that we haven't spoken about yet. The Pantheon of Hallownest has you fight every boss in the game, in a row, with multiple resting spots but no checkpoints. It also throws three new fights at you throughout this ordeal: the first is the Sisters of Battle which is a new version of the Mantis Lords which has all three of them attack you together. The second is the new worst boss in the game: Flying Nosk. And the third is a harder version of the Radiance. now appropriately named Absolute Radiance, which is an incredible fight with a few glaring flaws. The biggest problem I have with the fifth pantheon is that it becomes boring. For more than one reason. The first is that you just went through all of this content in the previous pantheons in order to unlock this big one an attempt was made to spice up some bosses with new arenas but this solution fell flat for me when compounded with the other issues. Fights have downtime between them as the screen fades to white, you teleport to the next area, and have to sit through the boss's introduction that plays no matter how many times you've seen it. This may seem petty but this is meant to be a capstone challenge that you try multiple times. It is astounding to me that these introductions weren't removed for the Hall of Bosses versions of these fights, with the option to automatically restart if you die instead of having to open the statue's menu again, never mind seeing them over and over in the Pantheon rushes. But the thing that contributed the most to this pantheon being boring was that it takes too long to get to the proper fights. Anyone who has gotten this far, especially beating Pure Vessel at the end of Pantheon of the Knight has demonstrated enough mastery of Hollow Knight's combat they are above most of the fights in this Pantheon. This would probably still be true if half of the fights were removed ānot to mention that both versions of many fights are included. You will fight Soul Master and Soul Tyrant in this Pantheon. False Knight and Failed Champion. Both Hornet fights. The way I see this Pantheon, having all of these fights only succeeds in the following two ways: to have a building of tension through the staggering idea of every boss in the game to an epic conclusion, and to up the difficulty by potentially exhausting the player. However, I think this Pantheon would have been more successful overall if it was just the harder versions of every fight, the new bosses added in the DLC, and then the final trio that is Nightmare Grimm, Pure Vessel, and Absolute Radiance. My guess is that the concept of this being a showdown against every boss in the game was what Team Cherry wanted so much that it was worth these potential issues for them. The rematch against all three Mantis Lords is a work of art as far as I'm concerned. It's not perfectāthere are the rare moments where a mantis can spawn on top of you or their attack patterns get so out of sync that there's some awkward downtime ābut when they hit a sequence that flows naturally together for what feels like a full minute it's incredible. Each attack prompts a quick flash of decision making while you also counterattack. I have never fought a boss in a game before that made me feel like I was perfectly weaving through an actual onslaught from multiple enemies instead of responding to the same patterns over and over. Of course the reality is that this fight is exactly that, but it hides it by being so well-paced. The only significant issue I have with it is that I wish the three lords shared a health pool so that there wasnāt this release in tension before the fight is over. Occasionally the remaining 2 Mantis Lords wouldnāt attack properly after that either. Like they were still acting as if all three were still alive and using their moves together. We can use the Sisters of Battle as an example of the tennis match boss structure done in a good way. They have a turn where they use a move and then you react to that. It works because the attacks come so quickly and have a wide variety of possible responses. Pure Vessel and Absolute Radiance are my other favourite fights in the game for the same reason. In a space of a few seconds you may have to dash, jump, side step, counter-attack, and possibly pogo-bounce depending on how comfortable you are with the fight. In the same amount of time, a lesser fight will only ask you to do one type of response and have little room for creative play. In the worst cases of all, it may ask for the same response again and again. Which brings us to Flying Nosk and the rest of the boss fights that I feel brings the Pantheons down. Flying Nosk feels like a super version of the Vengeflies. It will stay out of your reach and youāll potentially be punished for trying to slip in extra attacks, or have to deal with the awkwardness of pogo-bouncing above the screen. The fight instead is waiting for Flying Nosk to take just-in swoops at you. You jump, attack once or twice in return, and then wait. Sometimes it will drop or spray some goo at you and you step into a safe position before continuing to wait. I understand that not every fight in the game should be as intense as The Sisters of Battle or Pure Vessel, but itās still incredible to me that the same team made both of these fights when it would have been better if Flying Nosk didnāt exist. Period. Itās like negative content. The shame is that the introduction to it in the Pantheon is excellent, since itās Hornet, not the knight and you may expect it to be another fight against her and before itās something a new Nosk. Even so I wish this had been a much better fight or wasnāt a part of the Pantheon. Some other fights that are guilty of this sort of structure are Uumuu, Elder Hu, and both versions of the Soul Master. Not every fight built like this is necessarily bad for the reasons we went into for how Sisters of Battle succeeds, but I think a good sign for something being off is if the boss vanishes for significant stretches or has attack patterns that punish any attempt at being aggressive instead of waiting for counter-attacks. Thereās also a spectrum here between this extreme and the other. Fights like False Knight, Traitor Lord and Lost Kin allow you to be relentlessly aggressive while responding to attacks as they come at you, while how you handle fights in the middle like the Nail Masters, Sly, Pure Vessel and the Radiance will largely depend on how comfortable you are with all of your options and their attack patterns. I know that the same could be said of any boss. Player skill will always determine how effectively you can play against them, but this is also the key to understanding why some of Hollow Knightsā bosses are disappointing. No matter how good you are at the game and how good you are at the boss fight, Nightmare King will still vanish between attacks, and the Collector will still jump into the ceiling to rummage through his jars. I think thatās all I can say about Hollow Knightsā bosses without going through them one by one which honestly I think I would enjoy, but Iām putting effort into making this current series of videos more focused. However there is one fight that I think deserves it right now, Absolute Radiance at the end of the final Pantheon. This is not my favourite boss in Hollow Knight. I think Pure Vessel is just a tiny bit better than it because you have more freedom to play around his attacks, but Absolute Radiance is the perfect boss to summarize what Team Cherry did so well in this game and DLC and also show where they fell a bit short. Absolute Radiance is a faster, much more difficult version of the Radiance from the base game. Fundamentally itās the same fight, but the attacks are strung together so quickly that it can feel unfair at first. In fact, I fought Absolute Radiance so many times because I was convinced that the fight had some unavoidable attacks and I wanted to criticize it in this video. While that turns out to be true, they are from glitches rather than a problem with its design, with one possible exception I just needed to get good. The thing every player needs to realise about Absolute Radiance is her attacks can sometimes overlap. This is where the feeling of āthereās no possible way I could have avoided thatā comes from, since these attacks can layer over each other in ways that make them hard to see and understand, never mind intentionally avoid. The solution that has to click with you is that you must play proactively when it comes to dodging. When the horizontal spikes or pillars of light sweep across the battle platform you have to dodge through them and be safely ready for the next attack as soon as possible. Specifically in the case of the pillars of light you have to have dealt with them before they reach the halfway point across the platform. If you donāt do this and you are risking taking an unavoidable hit when you dodge through it at a bad time and into the path of the next attack. Once I got this, Absolute Radiance became consistent with only one rare exception. I felt like the appearance of the floor spikes and a pillar of light at the same time could lead to situations where my only response was a risky one and I had to hope the following attack missed me. This sort of thing can be acceptable to bosses that you can die to and retry, but itās terrible for a fight that is at the end of a long endurance boss rush Pantheon that makes you to do the whole thing again if you die. Fortunately, like I said, it was a rare problem. Tragically, this is far from the worst problem that Absolute Radiance has. I think a great way of testing the balance and quality of a combat system is to play it with damage cranked as high as possible. This is rarely the best way to play a game but itās a fantastic method to see if fights have fair telegraphs, acceptable hit-boxes, and so on. Because when you die in one hit, and itās not fair, you see it, you remember it, and you go and check it, whereas if you donāt die in one hit, it doesnāt really matter. Iāve beaten every fight on Radiant mode in the Hall of Bosses and Iāve completed all of the Pantheons with a mix of the bindings active, and I am happy to report back that almost every boss in Hollow Knight is fair and has little for me to complain about. However, one of the exceptions that does have major issues is Absolute Radiance. In part because a shared ability it has with some other bosses: summoning homing balls of light that can remain active for damage even after they vanished, and sometimes they even continue to move while invisible. Other bosses can spawn these with the telegraph being skipped over too when I never saw Absolute Radiance do this. Unfortunately, this still is not the worst thing that Absolute Radiance can do. I saw this bug happen four times while fighting this boss. It is an instant wipe even if you are not on Radiant mode. What I think is happening is that if you pogo-bounce off the bossā head and then jump too high above the screen, the transition to the next stage of the fight begins even though the boss isnāt ready to go there yet. So the void from below goes up, you and the boss remain down, and you just take damage over and over again, and the fight is over. This can happen in the Pantheon version of this fight. In fact, it happened to me during one of my binding runs and it cost me all of that time. I would be more on board with defending the decision to make this the last Pantheon a kill-every-boss-in-the-game concept if the fights were pristine enough to support it, but I think Iāve made my case here. It should have just been the toughest 10 or 15 or maybe some checkpoints could have been used since thereās a second secret lore titbit locked behind beating all of the Pantheons with bindings on thatās separate from the Absolute Radiance ending. I hope you donāt mind but I also want to harp on about the bossesā introductions playing each time you fight in the Pantheons and the Hall of Bosses. Challenging myself to beat Absolute Radiance on Radiant was doubly gruelling because she shows up with her delayed teleport and shouting out her full screen name announcement like sheās Soulja Boy. Every goddamn time. It's little things like this that always make me wonder how thoroughly features are tested. It makes sense that extreme difficulty modes may be included just for a small percentage of players but quality of life improvements go a long way. To reiterate, not enough testing on these modes isnāt a huge problem, but I still wish it had been done. I think that Hollow Knight received enough testing to find and fix most problems but it could have used just a little bit more to ring out the last bit of refinement. Here are some final examples. Pure Vessel can sometimes teleport on top of you for an unavoidable hit, if you happen to be in the wrong place. The game does seem to have a check to make sure enemies do not teleport near you but it sometimes fails. I believe the same check also fails in the Markothās fight where its daggers can sometimes appear in your path or below you while you are still in midair. So, you fall into them or dash right on top of them with no way to avoid it. but you also have to keep moving here so you are screwed either way. These daggers can also spawn off screen So, you have no way of knowing where they are coming from. And by that I mean, on the other side of arenaās wall which you can never see. Markothās shield can also change their rotation direction with no warning as you go in for an attack or dodging these daggers. This was the toughest fight for me on Radiant mode because these problems even more than Absolute Radiance. Conversely on the ascended mode this is one of my favorite fight. So, I think I goes to show you that the really extreme balance mode arenāt always the best way to play. The new fight against Nosk is an improvement but can still punish you for trying to be aggressive by stopping abruptly in place with no warning. If the game has contact damage, and that means that the act of enemies simply changing their movement also counts as an attack. So, you need a telegraph. When I fight Nosk I have to always remember that he can stop in the middle of the room with no warning and I have to stop myself from fighting because it coins flipping instead of reading a telegraph. Traitor Lord has the similar issue with the ability to step forward with no warning of whatsoever before he does one of his attacks. He does this so rarely that I that it is a glitch rather than an intentional part in the fight regardless it is frustrating when it does happen. For one of what I am not sure about, Zote the Mighty, despite being my favorite fights for its presentation and frantic feeling have some moves that feel impossible to dodge under some circumstances. This may be similar to what I spoke about earlier with reacting to Absolute Radianceās attack as quickly as possible. But I fought this boss many times and I havenāt seen that solution yet. His mid-air corrected alter jumps and an attack made his blimp bombs appear in some arrangements has made me feel that there was nothing I could have done before I got hit. The Collector spawning Primal Aspides is incredibly harsh. This isnāt really the same with the other things I pointing out here. I just feel like fainting. This boss is the reason why I refuse to grind out the two pantheons that I missing full binding clears all. It is too frustrating to lose that much progress to. The Fragile Strength Charm breaks the balance of many fights in God home. Dying in the Boss Rush area does not count as a death and so, the charm never breaks. Nor do you need to farm all the geo required to make a breakable to safely use either. I did not realize how powerful it was until I had already cleared all the pantheons and most of the fights on Radiant mode. When I tried out this charm, I felt like the bosses are dying so much faster that they were milting underneath the nail. If this is an intended easy mode for fights then I think that is great. But it feels like using a soft cheat mode to me. Or that I was taking off a secrete binding that I never knew I had all along. I believe the upstart damage by 50% which is, that is a lot damage, that is a lot damage! And related to that, my final gripe is that I think the charm binding removing all of your charm slots instead of just unlocked ones of new notches was a mistake. Having lower damage and health and souls does not change how the game feels and play, while losing tweaks on your movement, dash and nail arcs are things that require something close to reprogramming your muscle memory. This is not a challenge that makes the game harder for me in a fun way, especially when losing the ability to do the downward dash with Shade Cloak in response to some attacks. It removes options and make the gameplay feel worse in order to make it harder. Something different like a three-charm limit would be better in my opinion. On the other side I am stunned by how much work went into Godās home presentation. some fights have new arenas and altered backgrounds linked to their original settings. The super-secret area for beating all the pantheons with bindings which by the way unlocks blue shield mask bugs in each of the intermission room during the pantheons has its own unique atmosphere and feel I do not understand how Team Cherry justifies this method of work on places that are barely used and rarely seen by most players. It is wonderful and how insane it is, in its own way. Hollow knight feels more complete with all these new contents and the only part of it that I never look forward to when going through the game again is collecting the flames for Grim. But hey when the drums kick in during the music for that fight. It can feel worth it. and I think this game has solidified its place as my favorite of 2017. The new ending has its own animation that hints it ties to Hornetās campaign. The trailer has me excited and I actively try not to give my hope for games anymore. It is always better to be presently surprised than have your hype be dashed to pieces. And here I am cautiously thrilled to explore Some new hollow knight content which looks to be a perfectly translated boss moveset into one a player can control. My one hope is that some points in the game, You break a wall or fall through a floor or chase enemies down along corridor and suddenly find yourself back in Hollownest, another return with Hornet this time and maybe a bit of teasing what the Knight is up to. I hope you will join me for that video too. Thank you for watching.
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Honestly, even if I disagree with some of it, I have to give props to a guy who went and beat every single boss in the game on Radiant difficulty.
There's nobody who can complain to him that he just needs to "git gud".
Also, he pointed out a significant bug in the Absolute Radiance fight.
https://youtu.be/Ece-wZ6VjFw?t=1674
Ahh, your usual "I love the game but I have to point out its flaws" JA video.
I really like the small part in the end that he said he hopes to see an Easter egg in Silksong where you break a wall and suddenly found yourself somewhere in Hallownest again. Merely thinking about that makes me feel all nostalgic. What a great game Hollow Knight it is.
Edit: lmao that blooper in the end killed me.
I really wish JA edited his thoughts more. There's some great points in his videos, but then he repeats the thought with a bunch of worse examples in a seemingly random order until I'm slightly confused what the point even was.
I agree with basically all of his points. I made it to 112% but didn't do all the bindings, because it just became too much work. And that's after already having sunk 80+ hours in.
The pantheons become a test of stamina and most of it just wasn't as enjoyable to me as other parts of the game. And god yes, the intro animations and the couple title cards get so annoying. It's a minor frustration that gets compounded over and over and over again, because you replay them so many times. It's totally unnecessary and not connected to the difficulty of the fights. It's like having a mosquito bite on your knuckle. By the end of the day, every minor annoyance really builds up.
I also agree that I wish there were more exploration in the DLC instead of just bosses, but that I'm totally willing to look past because it was just free DLC.
Also, he's right about the new Mantis Lords fight. The fight is amazing, but the pacing would be improved with a shared health pool. You get in an awesome rhythm, but then 2/3 of the way through the fight gets really easy as they drop out 1 by 1.
Fuck flying Nosk as well. Fuck primal aspids as well.
My other complaint are all the particle effects. They're part of the difficulty but 1) Switch performance isn't good enough, and 2) I really dislike how they obscure the edges of the screen when you take damage. It sets up a snowball of damage because you can't properly see what the boss is doing next.
All in all, I agree with him that this is critiquing a masterpiece. It's like a 9.5/10 for me. These are issues that are really going to affect the 1% of gamers who make it to the very, very end and are willing to grind on bosses for hours.
I'm not familiar with JA, but a lot of you seem to take issue with his videos. I appreciate this one, because it's nice to see my nagging issues with the game articulated so well, and with so much nuance. It's REALLY difficult to discuss Hollow Knight online because when you point out issues, you usually get spammed with "git gud". Here's a video with proof that he's an excellent player who beat all 5 pantheons, and he still has the same complaints to make. Anyone telling him to "git gud" is just being an ass.
I cannot find the theme that he uses for the intro for the life of me. Does anyone know what track that is?
I adore Joseph Anderson love his videos and watch them regardless of if i agree with him. Buuut. I think it is pretty clear that he is way better at gaming than 99% of us seeing his footage of Godmaster is just incredible compared to me. I think it comes close to him being so good at this game that his review of it is not really applicable to me. Love hollow knight aswell btw
I really like the video. Kinda sad to me so many comments dislike it and/or just keep comparing it to Matthew. I enjoy both.
I like when content is locked behind brutally difficult challenges.
If I am not good enough to beat those challenges, its fair I don't get to see the content.