Hollow Knight | The Completionist

it feels like every major release in the last year was defined by its size Red Dead Redemption to God of War in Assassin's Creed Odyssey all show how far console games have come in terms of how massive their virtual worlds can be however sometimes these large games feel bloated like the size is just there to be a talking point almost once in a while a game comes along that shows how influential a strong sense of vision can be strong art direction and incredible passion can go a long way let's find out if those elements are enough to set apart yet another indie Metroidvania when I complete hollow night hey everyone and welcome back to another brand new episode of the completionist now back in 2018 during the summer we get a live stream called any land an event to raise money for charity in honor of my mom and we raised over $50,000 it was a really cool time and best part about it was that during that stream we had a goal and this super goal was you guys home voted on what game I completed well I'm happy to say that today is the day where I complete that game today we're completing holo night let's begin yes [Music] hallow night has earned its place in the indie game canon as a game that is tough smart and absolutely enormous like a lot of 2d indie adventure titles hollow might seems if it came out of nowhere and anyone who's worked in or near games knows but there's a ton that goes into getting a game released hollow nigh in its developers team cherry are living proof that hard work persistence and a commitment to our direction can pay off in dividends the game was put on Kickstarter and advertised as a throwback to classic 2d NES adventure games like Zelda 2 or force an Adu what sets it apart from other games of its type is the incredibly strong art direction as well as it's constantly ballooning scale I kind of thought a game starring a bunch of bugs in a ruined insect world would be small and simple that was way way off because this game is giant the game was primarily developed by Ari Gibson and Willem Pelin though there are others listed in the credits even with such a small team behind the scenes the developers have churned out update after update since the game's release in February of 2017 the best part is that these content packs have come out as free DLC team cherry is like the Bob Ross of any game developers just overwhelming amounts of goodwill coming out from them all the time last year we saw the release of hollow light on switch and other consoles as well of course they couldn't release on every system rest in peace PS Vita version someday we'll all play you in heaven well the 19 of us who still have a Vita the scope of this game is huge and I am Florida what these guys were able to put out there hollow knight is a pitch perfect example of a 2d platformer full of exciting combat and a really rewarding exploration and it feels handcrafted at every turn just another example of how quantity doesn't always mean quality anyone who's ever been to an all-you-can-eat pancakes buffet can tell you that there are approximately 1 bajillion things to complete in hollow Knight and I can see why is the top of the list for fans of the show more specifically for in DeLand during India and we had an insane if goal to raise money for charity and the incentive was that the overall total could be going towards what game I complete and the game that had the highest total by far was holo night so here you go now to fully complete holo night I'll need to do several different playthroughs there are in game completion criteria as well as steam achievement so I'll be tackling this game on PC first I'll be playing to the main game normally in this basic run I'm going to complete as much as I can in game and try to check off a ton of these steam achievements within this playthrough I'll be doing things like filling out the hunter's journal bestiary to get the true hunter achievement learning how to optimise the boss fights and just generally getting acquainted with this enormous world hopefully doing all this prep work will prepare me for my next exponentially more difficult playthrough Steele soul mode this model walks after completing the game for the very first time in this mode every move I make is much more dramatic because if I die once my save file is deleted and I'll have to start back over from the very beginning just to make things interesting there's also steam achievements from making it through Steel soul mode with 100% in-game completion I can guarantee that I'll be on the edge of my seat for most of this run there are a couple of choice related achievement that I'll try here as well stuff like in the purity or neglect achievement for saving or killing certain characters that you can't do within just one run so whatever choices I make for the basic playthrough I'll make the alternate choices for this steel soul run to cover all my bases thirdly I'll be smashing my way through some speed run challenges you wouldn't be a Metroid style game without a couple of achievements related to getting through the game at record speed there are three steam achievements attached to completing the game under certain times the most difficult seemingly being to beat the game with 100% in-game completion in just under 20 hours you know I'm getting exhausted thinking about all this but you know what I'm gonna give myself a little self-love by saying I am good at speedruns bring it on hollow knight let's go but that's not all remember all those DLC updates that team cherries so kindly release for free well now that charity seems like agony because all the DLC the game come lesion percentage creeps up from 100 to 112 percent there are some really tough challenges that have been added like the grim truth and the scary sounding god master content back with these add-ons I fully expect my playtime to massively increase there is apparently even one more DLC being worked on so I better complete this game ASAP before they put even more on my plate please stop getting bigger you're fine just the way you are a mysterious stranger descends into a ruined Kingdom in search of treasure glory or both while exploring a beautiful yet hostile world this voiceless character starts to understand that something went horribly wrong in the past this might sound like the description for a dozen other games but Hollow Knight takes his adventure game tropes and remixes them with dazzling confidence and amazing attention to detail to create something stunning and original in hollow Knight the player is dropped into the world with the bare minimum of exposition rather than lengthy cutscenes or drawn-out introductions you're invited to simply start exploring the fantasy insect world around you there are allusions to something tragic and doomy happening to the population and there are references to a once mighty Kingdom below the surface of the land the goal seems to be explore everything and uncover mysteries but the incentive is truly up to the individual I'll admit this type of storytelling isn't for everyone I had to draw my own conclusions for the plot and there's actually very little going on narrative Li other than what the hell just happened here however I was totally drawn into uncovering the mysteries of hollow nest for myself creepy bugs recited cryptic poetry to me and I loved figuring out what it all meant it's really easy to compare aspects of this game to games like Dark Souls or blood-borne but I promise I won't be doing that the entire time I will say though the storytelling in this game is a callback to that style of narrative when is often called environmental storytelling and no that's not a reference to Fern Gully but it is now I personally love finding little plot nuggets hidden in item descriptions or in the backgrounds of an area Laura is more delicious when it isn't spoon fed and I found myself more invested in what was happening because I had to work for it it's more difficult but hey sometimes you got to put on the old miners cap and go digging for a story something that team cherry absolutely nailed in this game is the tone the insect Kingdom is lush while also having a broken-down quality to it and there's a lurking darkness that makes everything feel a little bit off the world of home night is like if a bug's life had its version of Grimm's fairy tales cheerful for a time then disturbing in a little upsetting yes even more upsetting than ants the NPC's scattered throughout the landscape have enough personality that I was always genuinely excited to run into one of them again most only offer a few lines of dialogue at a time but I loved running into and rescuing the arrogant though to the mighty or the befuddled cartographer Korn affirm the world takes itself very seriously but the characters throughout often don't which is a nice contrast NPC dialogue and even enemy designs themselves are often genuinely funny which was an unexpected delight how can you not love the rump I was blown away just by how much variety there was in holo night literally everyone and their mom who's played this game has said this before but this game is huge for a world inhabited mostly by creatures smaller than my thumb the world feels complex and enormous there's a real ecosystem at play and areas connect to other zones in interesting ways the locales feel really distinct and each are instantly recognizable by their backgrounds and color schemes what's amazing is that you're made to feel a certain way based on where you are to the cool blues of the Queen station are relaxing and green path is totally chilled to explore the darkness of deep nest is oppressive and made me feel really edgy and the filter that overlays the screen when you explore the ancient basin is genuine creepy everything feels cohesive like when I reorganize my amiibo collection by game series I can't say enough about hollow Knights incredible music a special shout-out to composer Christopher Larkin for the incredible score it feels subtle but it underscores everything and add so much to how the game feels each area has its own theme music that adds flavor to the area and when an area doesn't have music you just know something's about to go down the sound design is another piece of challah night's delicious game pie characters have their own little insect language that I'm sure someone on the internet has already deciphered and learned how to speak there's so much more than that your attacks blink off of armor and mindless worms slobber and hiss when you cut them into pieces it's gross and disgusting and amazing this is a roundabout way of saying that the entire aesthetic of the deep nest area will haunt me for weeks and I am forever frazzled but I had to go through it in my first playthrough I stumbled into it entirely by accident and it was claustrophobic dark and full of goddamn spiders that chitter and squeak and crawl across the foreground it made me feel like they were all over me all the time it makes my head shudder uncontrollably so team Gerry thank you for that a game this massive needs a map and the way hollow Knights unlocks is pretty clever whenever you make your way into a new area you'll probably find a couple of loose pages scattered around a literal paper trail if you will follow the pages and you'll likely hear some pleasant humming and before long you'll run into an absent-minded corner first sketching away after you meet him you can buy a map off of him directly or as extremely patient wife is Elda in the main hub town the maps get more filled in the more exploring you do but are only updated at save points now this is a choice that makes sense even in this fantastic world the player character still has to jot down and fill in what they've explored while taking a little break I played this game on PC and I didn't experience any major issues when holiday was first released in 2017 I heard about some game breaking stuff but I never into any of that cuz there have been several performance improving patches since then that's right no real flaws no glitches mistakes in programming nothing I'm trying to think of any way I can avoid saying bugs but I think you're just about ran out holo Knight has an extremely consistent visual style that has reinforced every step of the way by sound design music and every other aesthetic choice it's gorgeous and grotesque and the mysteries only get more involved and interesting the further into the game you go the beautiful music and environmental storytelling make exploring that much more of a treat even if deep nest gave me nightmares oh my god it has spider is that a spider no no I don't want it no out it's just it's just Ted hey hang in there buddy [Music] Hamo night takes shonrock inventions established by classics like Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night and refines them just like the player characters nail weapon the action is streamlined and smooth and just as confidently developed as the non gameplay parts hollow Knight could have just been another 2d indie platformer but with its massive scale gripping combat and excellent exploration mechanics it firmly establishes itself as one of the best games of its kind completing this game however almost made me want to take a can of raid and just go to town on the whole operation we've all heard of Metroidvania as a concept but Holloway takes the genre and makes it its own thing the main elements of the game are divided between combat and exploration and so much of the fun of this game is found in testing boundaries I often found myself thinking I wonder if I can do that in regards to trying to reach to certain areas and I was always blown away when I could you start the game off with just two moves a jump and a slash with those two basic actions you're let loose to explore the depths of hollow nest the first few hours are pretty basic but once you unlock your first traversal ability the game opens up like you wouldn't believe pretty soon you'll be air dashing wall climbing and high jumping with all the intuitiveness and ease of mega man or samus moving feels awesome in hollow Knight the walking speed is just right and even the basic jump has a nice floatiness to it and even lets you control your trajectory in the air after some practice leaving be able to Pogo around on things like spikes or at the backs of invincible enemies it's super empowering to get from place to place like how I imagined professional parkour people must feel all the time of course the movement doesn't matter if there's nothing to move towards the environments begged to be explored the more you play the more you start to notice little details like locked doors and crumbly floors that you want to return to later on things like that will stick in your mind long after you turn the game off hollow Knight constantly moves you forward with little incremental nudges and it always feels rewarding to find a way to a high ledge or break through a secret to find a secret hollow Knights combat is challenging but rewarding it is brutal and unforgiving but also experimental and quick while being able to react quickly is an essential skill to develop enemies often stick to specific patterns type boys who take their time to observe their foes will be rewarded your arms the little sword called a nail that means we have to get up and everyone's business for the majority of the combat many enemies and bosses have a long-range attacks so it's up to you to determine how to get up close and personal with your enemies most bosses are quick and a lethal but there were times where I had to take out a difficult boss one tiny slash at a time until I was the only one left standing imagine trying to fight an arranged bear with a paper clip those are what the odds feel like much of this game if it sounds tough let me reassure you it is very much so but if there's one thing of the solo series revitalized in me it's an appreciation for tough challenges hollow knight rarely feels unfair and even really beefy bosses like the sole tyrant aren't so bad once you get into that Zen flow State I love the unique twists that Holland brings to the table there's an amazing man in mechanic called the soul meter this meter gradually fills up each time you hit an enemy once it's full you can use the accumulated soul to cast damaging spouse or you can use it to heal yourself by standing still and holding down a button the tension this creates is super intense because it turns you into a sitting duck this risk versus reward mechanic is awesome and only heightened by the fact that if you die you lose all the currency you have on your person until you go back and defeat your shade a little ghost of your character now this was annoying at first especially when I had tons of cash money stocked up and had entered a brand new area but after a while it doesn't feel like a terrible punishment if anything it makes finding your way back to where you died even more epic and tense because if you die before you defeat your shade all that money is gone for good the charm system in holo night is the perfect bridge between the combat and exploration sides throughout the game you'll find little charms that can be equipped on your character that bestow certain effects however you can only have on a few at a time do you choose the - master charm which lets you sprint around more quickly or do you stack yourself up with defense buffs certain charms are definitely more effective depending on the situation and I found myself mixing and matching to find the best combinations now that I've got the basics out of the way let's talk about how goddamn hard it is to complete this game there's so much I had to stone-cold master in this game getting every achievement was insanely hard and one of my absolute proudest accomplishments getting through the main game took me a long time dozens of hours even there are some really smart design choices that made that much more bearable though for example there are seem achievements for different endings as the main game unlocked by defeating the final boss while having different items equipped but they're easy to rack up since there's a save point right before the final boss it's a nice touch that makes me feel like team cherry it's throwing me a little bit of a bone here ditto with more of the difficult dream variants of bosses for some bosses after you beat them once you can challenge them again for a tougher fight if you lose against this more difficult form you can restart the fight instantly and instead of having to trek back from the last bend you saved a little time savers like these things lets me save my rage for more important things like who the hell taught that girl in Fern Gully how to dance like that the achievements related to steal soul mode were tough but not impossible once I knew exactly what was expected and where everything was I was able to cruise through and collect exactly what I needed without ever having my file erased I had to learn every aspect of the boss patterns and be super careful not to dive into anything unprepared but I want to empower everyone by saying this achievement is totally doable with patience and a little bit of luck just like most things in life to be honest during my steal soul run I was able to also take care of those couple achievements I missed in the first playthrough where I had to unceremoniously execute some innocence I had to plan a little bit ahead but it really wasn't the hassle to check those off the list even if it feels a little cruel I'm relieved said steel soul mode didn't give me too much of a hard time but be prepared this mode should not be attempted until you feel as confident as Dwayne the rock Johnson must feel in everyday life experience with the speedrunning achievements once you know exactly where to go and what to prioritize it is extremely reasonable to knock out the entirety of hollow light in a limited amount of time keep a cool head at save as often as you can and get in the zone I had to restart a couple of times but eventually I figured out what I needed to do but time to spare it might sound like this game gave me very little trouble but the DLC is where things took a little bit of a turn especially with the release of the god master update over this last summer getting to 112 percent completion is hard as hell while the Grim troop and hidden dreams content packs add some tough but fun challenges the god master DLC is probably the toughest challenge that could ever be conceived of for this kind of game God Master is by far the hardest challenge in all of Hollow night let's start with the hull of God's doesn't seem so bad at first the hall is lined with statues of bosses you've encountered throughout the game kind of like Shadow of the Colossus if you will interacting with them allows you to challenge them again beat that and you can face a more difficult version of that foe beat that version and you can face that same difficult version once more with the caveat that you will die if you get hit once and you have to do all three of these fights for every boss and even some sub bosses I always able to take down some of these challenges on my first try however some of these bosses took me literally hours to take down whether it is because the fight took a long time and I kept slipping up at the end like with the soul tyrant or because they created a battlefield of that is near impossible to navigate like the mark off now you may notice when you enter the Hall of gods that you are missing some of the BAA statues found within that is due to the second large challenge of the god master dlc the Pantheon's these Pantheon's act as almost Mega Man esque boss rushes within each pantheon you need to refight ten predetermined bosses nine of these bosses are ones that you've encountered throughout your journey but the tenth is a brand new foe not found in the base game these new enemies provide a great challenge and are an exciting way to end these Pantheon's I loved it that is until you apply bindings each Pantheon has four bindings that are meant to create a tougher Challenge for the player they limit the player in various ways such as removing all charms setting your health to four masks allowing only one charge of soul and reducing the damage of your weapon to 80% one binding can make these Pantheon's difficult but in order to get the full god master experience you'll need to complete all these Pantheon's with all of the bindings turned on at the same time just sit with that in your chest for a minute process it let it sink in and start to make you freak out a little bit after struggling through countless attempts you'll finally reap your reward the bindings glow gold next to the door all of that work for some glowing textures now for what I can tell this gold shine is the only thing you get for this work amazi not even really sure because there are so few people out there to compare this achievement to to see it does anything else you get and on top of that Justin you think you finished the DLC the fifth secret Pantheon opens up this Pantheon is actually the most difficult thing in the game instead of fighting ten bosses you are now fighting over 40 bosses in a row and guess what they're the tougher variants that we found in the Hall of gods and some of the bosses are variants that you won't find anywhere else in the game including absolute radiance this dude takes up an already difficult fight and cranks it up to 11 and of course needs to do all of this with the four bindings equipped each attempt on this Pantheon would take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour in order to accomplish this task hours were spent in the Hall of gods grinding out optimal strategies against the more difficult bosses and when you finally take down the Pantheon you get a new ending that seems to allude to the upcoming hornet dlc this challenge may repeat this this challenge should never ever be attempted most people will struggle will just be beating the Pantheon's normally but taking it on with the binding turned is the very definition of insanity turns out there is one extra thing that becomes available if you're able to fill out all the notches of the pantheon access to a secret area with an item called the whether to mask which adds another entry to the bestiary again a cool more addition but for how much damn work I put into getting there I can confidently say I don't feel like it was worth it ultimately what's great about Halle Knight is how good it feels to play in every respect the controls are tight the exploration is fun and interesting and the world is just as huge and fantastic as anything I could have ever have hoped for you constantly feel like you're progressing even if it's only a little bit at a time getting all the achievements was a challenge though and that DLC especially the god master update puts a lot of what makes this game great into a whole other context like if you had an amazing five course dinner but the dessert was just a huge pine cone and you were not allowed to leave the table until you finished every single bite sit with that pine cone think about it you know what go get a pine cone and just look at it and imagine it in your stomach digesting that's the deal C is enjoy [Music] getting through all of hallow night is a long hard journey to get every achievement you must play this game many times in several different ways the rewards were playing this way are minimal but it does feel like the game's creators made a point to acknowledge how difficult it is to accomplish everything on this list most rewards are lured based referring to the in-game bestiary the hunter's journal which can only be filled out by finding every single enemy on the map and defeating many of them dozens of times this takes a ton of time but finally doing so rewards the players with the hunter's mark which doesn't actually do anything but unlock a few extra lore entries still it's nice to at least get a nod for filling out the whole thing there are many other check mark type achievements in holo light and most reward the player as they go along with currency charms and more more related dialogue it really feels like the more you do in this game the more you learn about the world which is a pretty cool reward overall I do wish the rewards for achieving the most challenging feats in this game were more substantial but I don't only fault the developers for that it wouldn't be in the spirit of the game to offer unlimited stamina or invincibility as a reward so really its completion for completions sake you know what I'll take it even if I'm forever scarred by God Master when I completed hollow Knight there were three full campaign playthroughs including 100% speed run it under 20 hours and a hundred percent where I didn't die once 158 entries to the hunter's journal filled out forty five charms collected 47 bosses defeated dozens and dozens of times because of the god master DLC 150 hours of total playtime and one very stoked completionist who's excitedly planning out in deal and part two I can't wait to see what gets voted at the top of the pile next year I had a ton of fun with hollow Knight a challenge is real but it's wonderful to get lost in the realm of hollowness and uncover mysteries everything about this game is so considered and so much care has been taken with every aspect it's a beautiful and heartfelt game and its reputation is well-deserved holiday is a instant classic that everyone should experience at some point to another however if you are a completionist those DLC add-on packs are no joke they're fun but the challenge level is so damn high you might get frustrated and want to walk away from it all at the very least it is an incredible game so with that and my guys I give this game my completionist rating of finish it that's all coming over today guys so please as always let me know what you think of my today's episode somewhere on the internet if you like the show you want some more exclusive completionist content in order to patreon.com slash the completionist we got a podcast going on there we have a board game show tons of fun new things [Music]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 1,872,777

Rating: 4.9382019 out of 5

Keywords: hollow knight, the hollow knight, hollow knight review, hollow knight gameplay, hollow knight game, hollow knight switch, hollow knight grimm, metroidvania, hollow knight lore, hollow knight nintendo switch, let's play hollow knight, the completionist, completionist, jirard khalil, game review, game reviews, team cherry, switch, hollow knight pc, hallow knight, hollow night, celeste, dead cells, platformer, indie game, steel soul, hollow knight dlc

Id: e4QGKT28kj0

Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SgtBlumpkin]

Great video. That seems like a hell of a lot of work.