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 About the Game Hollow Knight is a 2017 Metroidvania game published by Team Cherry. Garnering high praise on its release it is considered to be one of the most prolific and well regarded games of the modern era, with critics citing the incredible atmosphere the game develops as well as the tight controls and interesting exploration as reasons for its success. I however, have managed to miss this gem, alongside, until as recently as a year and a half ago, all Metroidvania games. But really, what can one such as myself, which such scant experience say to describe Hollow Knight? Instead I’ll pass on to the one and only Yorkshire Tea for a more elaborate introduction: From the Desk of Yorkshire Tea Hollow Knight is somewhat of a milestone for us. Not only is it the culmination of the whirlwind tour of Metroidvanias I've dragged Nat on for over a year, but it's also the first game we've tackled together which really embodies the design philosophy of the current, "modern" gaming era. We've looked at the two obvious progenitors of the genre - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid as well as Metroid Fusion, which, by placing a greater emphasis on active story elements, was a clear (and high-profile) indication that developers felt SotN's narrative innovations were worth emulating. Almost every subsequent Castlevania and Metroid title followed in these titles' footsteps, to say nothing of the countless games from other studios that pay homage. Some of them openly brand themselves as Metroidvanias, but even in those which don't the influences are clear. The way I see it, a Metroidvania is a pure distillation, on a 2D plane, of the following basic gameplay elements: 1) How you move the thing 2) Where you move the thing 3) Why do you move the thing With the added, crucial design tenet: The player must be conscious of a sense of progress and accomplishment An ideal Metroidvania, therefore, provides you with a character who is inherently fun to just move around and control, an engaging and interesting world to move them around in, and a compelling reason to do so. And by acquiring new gameplay elements (or movement options, if you want to really break it down), new parts of the world to explore and new story elements to consider, the player feels that they have made real, tangible progress. By making progress in the game, the world grows and develops for the player. Not that any of this is unique to Metroidvanias, of course - just that the genre represents these elements in their purest form. Matter, motion and purpose. Hollow Knight excels in each of these: moving and attacking feels natural and satisfying, the world is memorable enough that eventually you don't even need the map to know where you are, and the storyline is full of moments and character interactions you won't soon forget. Hollow Knight is not just modern in the sense that it builds upon the lessons taught by and learnt from nearly two decades' worth of Metroidvanias, and in doing so exceeds the sum of its parts, but also modern in very, very clearly taking inspiration from From Software's Souls games. Even as somebody who has only played Bloodborne, I can recognise how Demon's Souls and its successors have influenced the way players and developers look at video games. Uncompromising difficulty and oppressive environments are what most easily spring to mind, but there's other stuff there: an understated approach to worldbuilding that requires players to act as archaeologists, an understanding and appreciation of characterisation as conveyed in a few brief lines or a handful of unique animations. It's the small things that so often shine the brightest in the unforgiving worlds of Souls-likes. Without going into too much spoilery territory, Hollow Knight is good at this - really good at this. For most people, what makes a Souls game is its insistence on the player mastering movement and attacking, and memorising both the environment and enemies' behaviour. We all know the drill: death is to be expected, and a necessary part of the learning curve. The penalty for death is losing your souls/blood/geo, and you can get it back if you're good enough. Save points are few and far between, and you respawn at them if you die. Progress is automatically saved if you die or quit, so no trying to cheat the system. Don't go expecting lots of cutscene-enforced invulnerability, because nearly everything happens in real time. The Souls influence on Hollow Knight in the gameplay department is very transparent, but to no detriment. Hollow Knight proves it can work in 2D and makes it its own thing. The environment and aesthetics of Hallownest are also very, very clearly inspired by Bloodborne - but again, Hollow Knight manages to own them instead of coming across like a glib imitation, thanks to its own unique and cohesive art style. Ironically, the unrelenting difficulty of Souls games isn't really an innovation as it is a rediscovery, or at least reframing, of the difficulty found in early games, back when few titles in any genre made any friendly concessions to the player. The Souls games, and the many games they've inspired, are proof that there's a lot to be gained by going back and examining the design philosophies of the past. Very appropriate, perhaps, for Hollow Knight, a game all about delving ever deeper into ancient ruins and what lies beyond even that. In short, Hollow Knight blends Metroidvanias and Souls-likes into one extremely enjoyable cocktail: here is a game which knows precisely what it wants to achieve and why, and looks back at everything which has come before it to know how to achieve it. Is it a truly original game, with no clear precedent? No. But such careful refinement of existing elements is rare enough these days as to be the nearest thing to originality. As I'm sure the King of Hallownest would appreciate, nothing truly great is achieved without building upon the foundations laid by one's predecessors... About the LP This, as with many of our LPs will be a Guided Blind LP, where I will play with no foreknowledge of the game and Yorkshire Tea will guide me through the world, ensuring that I don’t go too far astray. (Without good reason) Art and banners, will, as ever, be handled by the amazing Bifauxnen. Episodes                                                                            Bonus Streams/Videos!     Links Our Patreon! - In case you want to support our LPs and see episodes early! Fanart  By - A Fan Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 5, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2021 23:23
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Mar 20, 2021 00:34
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Commander Keene posted:I'm more blind than Nat is, considering he's stated he played some of the game before. All I knew about Hollow Knight before I opened the first video in this LP is that it's a Metroidvania starring bugs, it's supposedly hard as balls, and there's a mod that adds a gun to the game. On this briefly, after the first video I'm completely blind to the game. I really didn't play much the first time before deciding that it wasn't for me.
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Mar 22, 2021 13:57
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Mar 23, 2021 00:10
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Mar 24, 2021 23:59
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FWIW I noticed the lantern when I watched through episode 3 myself after this recording. But yes, if you could keep hints in spoilers that would be good. Tea's pretty good at this point about pointing me where I need to go if I get hopelessly lost. And the Hades comment uses "recent" by the standards of the time dilating insanity that has been this past year. We recorded this last session on Sunday. (And usually we'll be a week or two in advance at most so that we can respond to stuff in the thread)
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Mar 25, 2021 02:46
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Twelve by Pies posted:I can't deal with a game that doesn't give you a map that shows where you are on it by default, or requires you to give up precious badge slots to see where you are on it. So this only further confirms I would hate playing this game, and I'm glad to experience it via someone else playing it so I don't have to. We get into this a little bit further down the line but you're definitely not alone here.
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Mar 25, 2021 12:51
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Because so much about this game is really neat, and I enjoy watching it.
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Mar 27, 2021 00:08
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Mar 29, 2021 23:04
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pointlessone posted:This right here is why I absolutely love Hades, and hope it sets an entire new trend in gaming. God Mode's progressive +2% damage reduction per death made it possible for me to not only beat the game, but actually feel like wasn't hitting a brick wall. No judgement, no mocking, just toggle it on and you still get to enjoy the game. I wanted to save this discussion until after Episode 6 aired so sorry for the long time on getting to this! I said at the end of episode 6 that I'm sure this isn't a game I could play outside of the LP format. For full (potentially too much) disclosure, I come out of every session sweating buckets because I'm so anxious in the game about going the wrong way etc. It's not a game that isn't fun to me by any means but I literally couldn't deal with that level of stress for a long time and I definitely wouldn't be able to make it work without talking to Tea the entire time. To bring this on topic, the atmosphere of this game is a choice by the developers and one that honestly would drive a person like me away from the game. It strikes me that in the same way that atmosphere or art can evoke certain emotions in a player then so can difficulty. If it is a legitimate choice to say that making the game friendlier or less isolated would compromise the emotion the developers want to evoke from a player, it is probably also legitimate to say that a game should be x level of difficult because of the emotion that struggling against that difficulty can evoke. I'm not sure that's the right decision to make, but I feel like it's one that isn't necessarily wrong to make either. (Even though as I get older I would really like there to be busy adult modes in more of the games I play)
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Mar 30, 2021 22:54
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Mar 31, 2021 23:03
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Apr 2, 2021 23:14
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Apr 5, 2021 22:58
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Apr 7, 2021 23:06
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Hollow Knight has fully embraced the power of the Satsui no Hado. Now i just need to see if inputting a Raging Demon does anything.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:07
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Apr 9, 2021 23:47
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Apr 12, 2021 22:30
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UteHu-aqi_I
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 22:38
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Apr 14, 2021 22:51
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In my defense I forgot it existed until I started recording again.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:03
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Apr 16, 2021 23:37
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Oddly enough I never had that feeling with BotW. Probably because there was always a place I was meant to be going even if I had the option not to.
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Apr 19, 2021 00:55
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Apr 19, 2021 23:39
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Apr 21, 2021 22:53
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Apr 23, 2021 23:01
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:"Remnant Psyches"? Tea has Nat analyze the plot of Hollow Knight, little does Nat know its just a warm-up for Killer 7. Unironically Killer 7 is one of Tea's favourite games ever and he's been trying to make me play it for years.
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Apr 24, 2021 12:08
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Apr 26, 2021 23:04
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Hey just chiming in to say, please be careful when discussing areas I've not been to yet! I don't want to chill your cool discussion about different routes but I have to read the thread and it means I now know that the second nail upgrade is somewhere in the deepnest!
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Apr 27, 2021 15:10
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Apr 28, 2021 23:08
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Apr 30, 2021 23:03
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May 3, 2021 23:02
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May 5, 2021 23:01
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May 7, 2021 23:02
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Explopyro posted:I continue to be amazed at how quickly you're able to sight-read these (especially in contrast to, say, Megaman 11, how long did Torchman take?). It's a testament both to your skill and the developers' communication abilities, I think, and shows what the game is doing is perfectly fair. (Even if I fully suspect I'd be complaining how unfair some of these attacks are if I were getting destroyed by them.) In fairness to MM11, looking back at it, Torchman is just a much more difficult fight than this. Some of it is in the visual coding but largely it's because you're so much more durable in Hollow Knight than Mega Man is in 11. I think a lot of how well I do is because of how aggressively I go for regeneration whenever I can as well as how much regeneration is possible because of how high my soul gain is. Even if I end up with a net 0 regen, I've still had that much more time to internalise the boss and its mechanics. Watching back, on a lot of fights I'll teeter near 1/2 HP for a long time until I download the mechanics and end the fight firing hadokens because I've got the capacity.
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May 8, 2021 11:50
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Reveilled posted:I'd argue that the latter point about teetering near 1 HP to learn the mechanics--which is unquestionably true about how you play--is essentially the opposite of aggressively going for healing. Having watched a bunch of people play this for the first time, new players will almost always panic and try to heal in the shorter windows where there's just too little time to safely heal. You're much more willing to just focus on dodging and learning until you can identify when it's safe to heal, and then generally remain disciplined about healing only in those windows (not always, but who could expect perfection on your first try!). In that sense you're actually less aggressive about going for healing than most new players, which I think is a large part of your success. That's really interesting to me. I obviously haven't watched anyone else play this game so I have no context but I've really felt like I've been going for healing hard during fights.
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May 8, 2021 14:23
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May 10, 2021 23:15
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Alxprit posted:The game is hard and you are that good, just accept the compliment and move on, sir. What playing videogames online has taught me is that no matter how talented you are at a game there are a tonne of people who are more talented who have spent billions of hours playing. SirSamVimes posted:From that first attempt, I honestly feel like you would have been able to get Soul Tyrant in a few more tries with your current level of upgrades. You had gotten the hang of dodging and healing pretty handily. It felt very doable. One of the issues from an LP pacing perspective that I'm going to have is when I come up against bosses that need 3+ attempts. I avoided refighting Soul Tyrant pretty much entirely because of this consideration.
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May 11, 2021 12:35
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May 12, 2021 23:21
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C-Euro posted:That secret passage from King's Station out to Kingdom's Edge was one of the very few things in this game that I was spoiled on. I'm glad I wasn't the only one going crazy by how close Nat got to discovering it on his own the first time! In retrospect I should record my offscreen work and just cut stuff like that into a quick highlight before the next set of episodes air. Because I was pretty surprised.
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May 13, 2021 23:55
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 16:24 |
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May 14, 2021 22:26
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