All Hollow’s Eve: A Replay Retrospect of Hollow Knight
2025 has seen a long awaited sequel hit the market after a seven year wait in Hollow Knight: Silksong, so of course I’m not playing it. Instead, for reasons unknowable even to me, I have decided to replay the original Hollow Knight and write about it for you, my dear would-be readers. Let’s take a look into [checks notes] 2017’s indie darling Hollow Knight from the perspective of someone who has yet to beat it even once but is playing through it a second time.
Buggy Basics
Hollow Knight is a 2017 classic Metroidvania with souls-like elements developed and published by indie dev Team Cherry. If you didn’t understand some or most of those words, don’t worry. We’re about to break them down.
Metroidvania is an ill-named genre of video game that contains several similar elements across titles. The name is derived from Nintendo’s Metroid series and Capcom’s Castlevania series, as these two pioneered the format.
Honestly, it’s like calling plays where the protagonist dies at the end “Romelets”
Large, sprawling 2-D maps with side scrolling elements are the hallmark of this genre, topped with that good ole feeling of progression as upgrades include new abilities to traverse the map alongside the standard power progression of “I can defeat enemies faster now.” The mark of a good Metroidvania seems to be no less than a few handful of moments where the player simply has no idea where they’re supposed to go next and rather than tell the player, one is encouraged to explore what one can with the abilities at hand.
Hollow Knight adds in the distinction of also being a “souls-like,” another genre whose name is solely derived from individual titles with specific gameplay elements. In this case, it’s the From Software -Souls games, a la Demon Souls, Dark Souls (I, II, and III), Blood Borne, and Elden Ring, to name the primary entries. There are of course tons of other examples not made by From Software, but they pioneered the genre.
Souls-likes are known to possess a higher degree of difficulty, some form of currency that is earned from defeating enemies, endlessly respawning enemies triggered by some sort of resting mechanic (often called “bonefires”), and the loss of aforementioned currency upon player death that can be retrieved on the next life (dropping one’s “souls”).
Hollow Knight, at first glance, borrows all of these elements in its own way. You earn Geos from defeating enemies or hitting geo-filled rocks that can be used to buy upgrades for your character or maps of the area to help you traverse. These geos are lost upon player death and can be retrieved by defeating your “regret,” a shadow version of the protagonist. Enemies do respawn, but it’s not as much triggered by resting on one of the many benches in the game as it is that Metroidvanias often feature respawning enemies. And at first glance, or so I thought, the game does possess a degree of bonecrushing, soul-smashing difficulty.
The odd thing is that on my second time through this game without ever having beaten it before, I am having such an easy go of this difficult game. Has the game gotten easier? Am I just a better gamer than I was before? Who knows!
Story and Setting
Another element of the “souls-like” genre is a deliberately vague and withholding form of storytelling that relies on item descriptions and the scant interactions with Non Playable Characters (NPCs) scattered throughout a sparsely populated world in decline. Having not done much research at all, here is the story in brief.
A vast kingdom by the name of Hollownest is in decline after some sort of blight has befallen its populace. This blight drives the bug population of this once powerful kingdom mad resulting in blindly attacking anyone not affected by the blight or mindlessly carrying out the duties they had before the blight befell the kingdom.
We, the player, play as a traveling bug who is visiting this kingdom for reasons unbeknown to the player (as of yet, at least) and stumble upon a different traveling bug by the name of Hornet who puts the protagonist on the path to opening the door of the Temple of the Black Egg and confronting the blight head on, as it is no doubt some sort of Eldritch entity.
I’m calling him “Flick” and pretending he has some pretty wild ideas about how to harvest berries.
That’s sort of what I can piece together in the brief hours I have played it (current run is at around 7 hours having just collected the Crystal Heart ability that allows you to cross vast chasms, etc.).
Where Hollow Knight really shines for me is in its settings. There’s something to be said about a dark, lonely environment to be explored set to a beautiful piano score. Most of my 7 hours of play has just been jumping and backtracking through the same areas as I frantically try to find a direction where I can actually make progress, but I find myself not becoming upset due to the privilege of spending more time in this beautifully hand-rendered (check on that**) world.
**Editor’s Note: Okay, yes, Hollow Knight is fully hand drawn and animated.
From the onset of the game, it seems as though we’ll be exploring caves and forests for the most part, but then you find yourself crossing what seems like a bug-made bridge. This leads us to a large bug-made gate that requires a special seal to gain entrance. On the other side, we see our first glimpse of the fallen kingdom - spires of metal buildings drenched in perpetuity by an ever falling rain. The City of Tears, it is called, is the moment for me when Hollow Knight transcended a bonecrushingly difficult game that one would play for bragging rights and little else into a true beautiful work of interactive art. Just moving through an empty, waterlogged city where the beauty of the kingdom that was and has been lost is a physical pain that can be felt by the viewer. People lived here. People built this. And now they’re all mindlessly controlled by the blight and will remain forever under its control unless we as the protagonist do something about it.
A gorgeous, hand-drawn depiction of a statue of I’m gonna say Flick’s dad? I don’t know.
Hollow Knight is a story of redemption - not for oneself, but for a kingdom and its people who have fallen victim to the choices of those who reign over them. I assume, I really have no idea what’s going on, but that’s the vibe I’m picking up.
Gameplay
Alright, the game’s pretty and the story is vaguely moving, but is the game fun? That’s all that matters, after all. We’re gamers, buddy, not scholars. We aren’t here to learn stuff about stuff, just let me smash bad guys to dust already!
The gameplay of Hollow Knight can be broken up into two distinct categories: exploration and boss fights. Exploring the world relies on collecting upgrades that allow you to wall jump to higher climbs, dash across gaps, and collect resources that expand your life or souls-meter for spells. Along the way, you’ll run into helpful NPCs who sell charms with powerful abilities to augment your powers further or strengthen your ever important Nail, your sword and main avenue for dealing with enemies.
Occasionally throughout your exploration, you will walk into a room just to have the exits blocked by barriers and a big bug thing drops from the ceiling revealing a name. Such are the boss fights in Hollow Knight.
Boss fights in Hollow Knight are a game of patience. There are no health bars to mark progress. One can count the hits if one likes, but there is very little indication if the next hit will be the final hit and this encourages a slower-paced fight. Rushing in with thoughts of delivering the final blow can often spell your end instead.
I think this is the biggest difference in my play style when it comes to Hollow Knight on my second-round through. Frankly, I’ve played more games in this genre than on my first time through, namely Elden Ring. Sinking 273.8 hours into 100%ing Elden Ring has taught me a thing or two about waiting for an opening, choosing to heal over dealing damage, and staying alive as long as possible since being alive is very much required for dealing damage. All of these skills are necessary for success in Hollow Knight and I think the slow-paced exploration feeds into this notion of taking one’s time and being patient during the boss fights.
This is not to say that your enemies will be doing the same. No, if anything, the bosses of Hollow Knight are hyper aggressive and leave very little room for catching your breath mid-fight.
A turning point happened when I was playing last night while exploring the area of the City of Tears known as the Soul Sanctum. All the while exploring this area, I had a feeling of dread creeping through me because I remembered having a difficult time with the area’s boss, the Soul Master, during my first play through of the game. More specifically, I had such a hard time against this area’s boss during that first play through that I quit playing the game for a length of time due to how difficult it was and how little progress I was seemingly making during the fight.
Last night, I sighed when I saw myself getting closer to the rain, as much of the Soul Sanctum happens within the confines of bookcases and wizardly accoutrement with the boss fight happening in the rain just outside of the study. But, fearless as I am knowing that there is a bench nearby where I’ll respawn, I headed into that rainy arena and to my surprise beat the Soul Master on the first try without breaking too much of a sweat.
The Soul Master. This guy likes to give grasshoppers food. He has literally no problem with it.
A boss that had literally impeded my progress in a previous time in my life was nothing to me now. In a way that’s hard to encapsulate, I have progressed as a person in some intangible way (at least when it comes to video games, I’m not claiming I’ve reached enlightenment or anything). It’s a weird feeling.
Retrospective in Progress
A part of me really likes calling the pieces that I write about video games “retrospectives.” Fun fact, everything written in the overarching category of nonfiction is a retrospective very much like all pictures are pictures of the past. I can’t very well write something about the present. I type too slow for that.
Point is, I am not done with Hollow Knight yet. For one, I haven’t beaten it and on the other hand, it feels like one of those games that will stick with me even once I’ve earned the bad ending because I didn’t speak to Sly enough times to unlock a better ending. Or however the end game mechanics work.
Hollow Knight is something special, a work of immersive and interactive art made by a passionate team with clearly high standards whose work should be celebrated. I can’t wait to play the sequel. Just after I figure out where to go next now that I have the Crystal Heart.
