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It was, imo, the founder of the Vania part of Metroidvanias, so they didn’t have the benefit of standing upon many shoulders. Hollow Knight is a great spiritual successor to that endeavor, and I agree that they took much of what made SotN great and improved upon it.
It’s interesting watching people get so excited by HK, I have to wonder if that’s what it was like when SotN and successive games came out.
If you liked Hollow Knight, you should give Symphony of the Night a try sometime. The gameplay loop is similar, and like Hollow Night, there’s no hurry.
I think they’re both good, with the older one being the one that, imo, defined the Vania side of things. But being on the older side myself, I understand having limited time to take on new games!
The art style is great, and the ability to choose your loadout adds a unique twist to how Metroidvanias usually work. I had a good time playing it, and it reminded me a lot of when I played Symphony of the Night many years ago.
Many Metroidvanias are boring because they lack character that would motivate you to do Metroidvania levels of backtracking.
This is a good point, and likely why I’ve not gotten that into many of the more recent ones (with some exceptions). I suppose in that sense, it’s revolutionary next to many of its contemporaries.
Hollow Knight is clearly one of the best to ever do it in my opinion. It also totally transformed the landscape of metroidvanias, with subsequent games imitating it left and right.
Can you expand on this? I feel like there’s some interesting perspective in there.
And I will probably play Silksong eventually, too but I’m just trying to understand why people think it stands above the rest.
I don’t really understand the appeal of Hollow Knight. Like don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but having played lots of other Metroidvanias, including the classic Symphony of the Night, it didn’t rock my world or reshape the paradigm that existed. It is a good Metroidvania alongside others.
Is the appeal a kind of generational thing—people who hadn’t played a lot of those predecessors but experienced this one first?
Edit: I appreciate the responses and everyone’s unique perspective!
Yeah, no. Valve has all but ensured their continuing relevance with the Steam Deck alone. Coupled with their consumer-focused policies (like forcing companies to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat), they’re not going anywhere.
This is just a Mac fanboi who’s salty that Mac support is poor, even though it’s Apple that has made their walled garden hard to work with.
I do worry a little about future antitrust actions, because while I generally like Valve as they are, Gabe won’t be around forever. They have a giant influence in the market, and they don’t even have to try (they were one of the first, so it makes sense they’d have the most market share); it could be that the company I generally like starts actively being anticompetitive or starts donating to Nazis or something.
But that is a problem for a future time, and there’s no denying that Valve has propelled Linux gaming into mainstream relevance. No matter what happens, I’ll always be grateful for that.
Sad, but not unexpected. I happened to pick it back up after a few years right about when the first round of layoffs happened. Somebody decided to fundamentally change the game all at once, removing or replacing people’s weapons and gear, and while I think it’s overall good, it pissed off a lot of people who had spent hundreds of hours farming behemoths.
I’ve been playing my last hurrahs, knowing this was coming. Sad that Forte (who bought Phoenix Labs) just let it die like this, but they were never in it to make a good game—just a quick buck.
Hopefully a game like this comes again, someday. They were the first game I can recall that had good crossplay at a time when what was novel.
And the Game Grumps did a playthrough of it.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRQGRBgN_Eno9Y96-sp6L6e5pKfVTxGXq
I wish GOG would get on the Linux train a bit more.
Iirc, they’re the least profitable of the three big stores, so I understand that it might be difficult to devote the resources needed, but given that they have Linux versions of some games, it would be nice if they’d make a flatpak of Galaxy (or maybe they should just give their Galaxy dev budget to Heroic).
Like I said, it ticks the boxes for some people, and if you’re patient enough (pun intended), you can absolutely play for free and still have plenty to do.
I think I put $60 into the game over time, setting that limit intentionally, and I had a good enough time just making use of the free pulls and battle pass. You’ll definitely hit a wall of the end of the content, but they’ve added several things since I last played, so there will likely be plenty to do.
Sidenote: there’s no difference between the two MCs other than gender, so play as the one you think looks the best.
Give Genshin a try, but be warned in advance that they have an “energy” system that determines how much actual gameplay you’ll get to enjoy. It refreshes every 12 hours (without paid boosters), but iirc, they give you some freebie energy boosts in the beginning to get you hooked.
As pretty as the game is, the hours of grind needed to make progress on leveling your characters and gear, and the relative lack of content when your energy gauge is refreshing, made me leave (someone will point out quests, but once those are done, they’re done, and you’ll still need to grind on top of that).
But there’s people who still love it. Maybe you will, too.
https://scarbir.com/ is my go-to for TWS reviews.
You can get decent TWS buds without paying tons of money. I currently have the Soundcore Space A40, and the battery still lasts for 6-7h after almost two years of constant use (8-10h brand new).
If you’re paying over $100, you’re probably overpaying.
Animal Well is on my wishlist, so I’ll look forward to that someday!