I actually liked that the abyss was simple and easy. It was an odd contrast: This area that seems so dark and deadly is a strange comfort. There's a reason. It's your home.
I agree, yet the Abyss always struck me as the sort of place you're not supposed to spend too much time in. The door that opens with the King's Brand specifically says "We shall enter that place no longer."
if streatch goal was reached, you were gonna ump to the lake and in the dpeths of it, was hiding real horrors, the hardest part of the game and more than 4 bosses. It was called ''a massive expansion''
I heard they were going to put a whole area in the black lake full of bosses and such, but the idea was scrapped in favor of completing the game and moving on with the sequel. I hope they go back to that idea...but I certainly prefer Silk Song over anymore DLC. It would seem greedy to suggest otherwise.
@@elijahbradley704 that the joke. Most, if not all, of Joe's criticisms were pretty much directly addressed by the developers in the DLCs, and so the joke is that the devs maybe saw Joe's video and based all the super hard fights and new modes off of his criticisms
This game is absolutely a $30 game minimum. It has more content than many full $60 games, and the main reason it's priced so low is that there's this stigma surrounding kiddy-looking 2D games.
He also never specified what kind of nail, which left me highly confused and lost throughout the video. /s Fingernails, Toenails, and fastener types of nails, are all different beasts, and say a lot about the person using it. Shove a fastener type of nail into an enemy, and it's almost biblical. Swing a Giant's toenail into an enemy, and you're a crude scavenger, who probably smells.
I think Dreamers were not bosses, because Game Developers wanted to make a point that Dreamers are not enemies or villains. They are heroes, in fact, they sacrificed their lives in attempt to protect the world and they were happy to finally be released from eternal service, because player had proved to be worthy vessel to replace a weak one.
@@BiscuitAWitch Well before killing Monomon and Luren you do have a boss battle against their guardians, and i'm sure that enough was a good evident for them to trust that you were a worthy vessel
While they’re role in this scheme by the Pale King is laid bare, their opinion on the state of Hallownest is divided. I’m not entirely sure which one (or it might be a conglomeration of their thoughts) is being vocal about the plan to seal the radiance *clearly* not working, but at least one of them remains adamant about remaining as a seal, another wanting the knight to fulfill their duty and replace the previous hollow knight, and another possibly remaining neutral, or at least, not willing to discuss this issue. Point I’m trying to make: if at least one or two wish to remain a seal, it would have been nice to fight them and win over their favor
@@thirdeye9698 Monomon is the one who is implied to be vocal in the plan not working, you can find similarities in her stream-of-consciousness tablets in her archives and the speech by that Watcher. Lurien seems the most adamant about the seals remaining intact, while Herrah seems more neutral, as she only did this to get a daughter from the Pale King (Hornet).
Re: difficulty. I don't think you fully get this: you're really, really good at video games. The vast majority of game-likers aren't as good as you. You're very talented. I know you know this, but I don't know if you know HOW true it is. When you're doing Steel Soul runs in 3 hours, Trial of the Fool with 5 masks, you find the Radiance easy, you can do all bosses on radiant with just a few tries, you are 3+ standard deviations above the mean for video game players. You are an outlier. It is a little surprising to me that you don't seem to recognize just how *much* better than average and even above average gamers you are. I get the same vibe from your Dark Souls videos, where you talk about challenging bosses you had to try a few times to beat, when adults I know who have been playing games since they were kids, who are "good" at games relative to "normal" casual players, grind out 10, 20, 30 attempts at some of those same bosses. Hollow Knight starts slow to teach people how to play. For folks who have already played not just Metroidvanias but thousands of hours of games, who have internalized game logic and mechanics, yeah, you could start out with more skills... But that can be super intimidating to folks. Beyond casual and new players, even most of us #TrueGamers don't have your skillset. The difficulty ramp you say you'd like to see in this game would make it inaccessible to, I'd wager, a third or so of its current fan/playerbase. A lot of HK folks say it was one of their first games or first "hard" games. IMO, you should keel this in mind when writing your scripts. Difficulty options? Sure. At least NG+, like Dark Souls. But redesigning the pacing of video games to be so difficult as to push out a third of current players (but in the process creating a sincere, difficult challenge for you!) is arguably not a good move. I know that you're not actually advocating for this, but, I could see some folks I know who struggled with HK and literally don't yet have the physical capability to do the Radiance *feel* like that's what you're asking for.
Hollow Knight it my mom's first game ever :) if the intro section were any more complicated there's no way she'd be able to keep up. Part of what's great about Hollow Knight is how approachable it is in gameplay mechanics/controls, music, and visual design
I mean, I've seen many people at a stand I worked at in a game convention failing for A LOT of times the tutorial jump section in the first five minutes. I didn't even think it was possible lol. But yeah, I like listening to these videos out of curiosity, but i don't like at all most of the things he says about difficulty and design decisions.But these are his opinions, so.. good for him that he's good with games. now I'm going for the 20th attempt for ornstein and smough
completely and utterly correct in every way, he thinks he's casual or whatever but goes on to apologize for being eleatest, it's not that the game is easy, it's that he has MASTERED it and craves more, more game, more challenge, more difficulty.
Literally!! I bought the game because of this video, I have 170 hours into it now and I still haven’t beat the radiance or third colosseum, so his “its too easy” falls on deaf ears for me. Im not terrible at the game I have an 100% steel soul run and all the speedrun achievements, just this game is actually extremely difficult even for 170 hours of playing it.
Disagree you should start with the dash. I loved the very beginning where your abilities are so limited. It gives you a sense of vulnerability, whilst also teaching you how to master the base mechanics.
Yes. Joseph Anderson usually make mistakes like that. Because he compares the mechanics to one game with another and dont try to understand the choices of each developers. What works well on one game it doesnt work on another. Megaman X is not a metroidvania, the new abilities helps but they are not essencial and as you say, they are not lessons and overall the Megaman games are shorter.
I totally agree with your comment from a year ago! The dash is lock until after hornet fight for lore related reason, you get it from another vessel who probably died from failing hornet's trial, I really like how TC has done with the slow upgrade at the beginning that built up so much expectation and atmosphere. Also the first few boss fights would felt so much different with the dash, adding it as default would ruin that experience in my opinion.
Interesting seeing this opinion coming in so much, it's one of the more debated things I've seen on HK. I personally think the game feels so empty without it that I agree with Joe but I concede to Team Cherry's decision to make it an upgrade since it's not a deal breaker to go without it initially. The potential 1-4ish hours of gameplay (on the first run) where you go without it just feel so slow and mechanically boring that it put me off a few different times trying to play through until I finally sat down and decided I was gonna give it a fair shot, and getting the dash and wall jump are where I finally "clicked" with the game's mechanics. Imo, it just deters people who want something as fast-paced and responsive as the game ends up being to have to play without essential abilities for so long, especially since the boss experience is contingent on what abilities and upgrades you have when you challenge them.
Do you consider things like "lore" or "atmosphere" part of these critiques? The Dreamers being passive made perfect sense within the world's logic, even if in the meta-structure of game design it's a bait. The relative emptiness of places like Basin and Abyss felt eerie at first, and then simply lonely. It seems like these things weigh a lot more on my judgements of games than for you, but maybe I'm just misinterpreting.
I have noticed that his critiques are exclusively focused on the mechanical experience. For example, when he suggests improvements, he always talks from a mechanical/mastery point of view, and he mostly disregards narrative and atmosphere (like his criticism of the Abyss here: emptiness is a key theme of that place, and he treats it as an oversight).
it's incredible how many of the critiques in this video were improved with subsequent DLC that came out "traitor lord is too easy" > new moveset "no boss at the end of hive" > hive knight "i want more mantis lords" > mantis sisters fight "no spider boss in deepnest" > nosk "no end-game geo sink" > divine/unbreakable charms
@@thegreatpufferfish9638 No, Hollow Knight was intended to be easy because you have to beat him to fight Radiance. Otherwise it would have taken much too long if it were to be a difficult, long fight. Although difficulty is sort of irrelevant as you do get a full heal before the Radiance but I digress. The point is he is just as difficult as he needed to be.
@@unioneye1087 would it? hollowknight is inspired by dark souls heavily(so much that it copies in a lot of places) but cant deliver the lore as well as dark souls nor have as interesting lore, it makes sense to like one and not the other.
@@penguinwolf3330 I find hollow knights lore and way of telling it to be fascinating and I’m glad it isn’t spoonfed to you like a lot of other games would. One of the biggest parts and important mechanics of the game is exploring, which is how you unlock not only new abilities and areas, but also how you unlock the lore, through lore tablets, character dialogue, and background art. As you traverse through the game, you slowly, not only open up new areas, but learn what happened. Questions you had at the beginning, get answered later on and bring even more questions, that may or may not be answered by the end of the game and the lore being somewhat mysterious and not fully known for the not only the main character, but for you the player, is part of the charm and atmosphere of the game. Which fits, the main character doesn’t fully know what they’re look for as they uncover this desolate and crumbling underground and claim past memories. If we immediately knew most of the lore and plot of Hollow Knight in the first few hours of playing, the rest of the playtime exploring and uncovering new lore tablets, characters, and new rooms that give clues and context to the story wouldn’t matter or be as interesting as much, each new discovery of this exploration game would be dulled down by the player already knowing what happened and could possibly lead the player to rush through the remainder of the game. Idk, I just feel like slowly uncovering the lore fits this specific game perfectly, given how you’re also encouraged to explore and uncover new things, as well as the main character
@@ghostlyexe not saying its bad in hollowknight, I like the style it is presented too. Thing is, dark souls presents its lore the same way and is more in depth, and many of the events and concepts in HK's lore are from dark souls.
When you said that the trial of the fool became a THIRTY MINUTE fight with no nail upgrades, it sort of bothers me. Of course I know that you mean the time elapsed during the battle, but for me, when I had fully upgraded everything, the fight itself took 10 minutes, and actually being able to beat it once took me two weeks. You're really good at the game, which isn't a bad thing, just remember that almost all players struggle a lot more than you, and actually like the difficulty of the game
Yes! especially for players (like me) who have never really played games like hollow knight. I have yet to beat the false knight and just break the wall once I can because it was incredibly difficult. The game is incredible and though many of his points are incredibly valid, for many new players making some of the fights and stuff harder just would make the game impossible and frustrating.
I feel like half of this critique is just him flexing. I mean, some of his criticisms had merit but he kept coming back to harping on how easy fights were for him. It got pretty obnoxious. I mean, I'm glad their is the Godhome boss rush stuff in the expacs now, but it seemed like if you cared so much about difficulty, you could easily replay the game without getting masks or shards. Your first playthrough didn't need the super tough mode.
@@davidrich27 yea he really likes flexing. If you have a history of playing a lot of games and have become so used to learning new games then it's pretty obvious you're going to adapt to new game mechanics much quicker than someone who doesn't have that history. At least now he has godhome but he probably says those are too easy too lol
@@zorab.4065 I didn't really 'grow up playing video games' - like, I played some games as a kid, but apart from THPS2 I was not very good and I liked it much more to watch my brother play, who was much better than me. I only got back into gaming as an adult a few years ago, and even then I mostly play artsy indie games, puzzle games, platforming games without a combat system. In fact I tend to dislike any combat or violence mechanics in games and will never play a game in which my only way of interacting with the world is through the barrel of a gun. So Hollow Knight was really fucking hard for me. I gave up after I couldn't beat the False Knight. I came back a year later and only beat Hornet after literally dozens of tries. Same with the Mantis Lords. The boss after that I said fuck it and started playing with cheats and that's the only reason I was able to finish the game. I wanted to experience the entire game, and I'm really glad I did, but I really wish there'd been difficulty levels and an easy mode where maybe you have more masks or enemies deal less damage, because it sucks when you're forced to use cheats because otherwise you literally won't be able to experience the game.
@@kiiturii after playing Godhome, I'm not entirely sure I want Silksong. If that level of difficulty is the direction the developers want to take their creations in, I don't want to get invested. I'll be waiting for the reviews before I spend any money on a Team Cherry game.
I'd like to point out that perhaps Ancient Basin being rather empty was intended. It's the only place in the game where there is no ambience, it's dead silent. It's unique feature is that it doesn't have one. It's meant to feel hollow and abandoned, forgotten at the foundation of the world, and that lack of a unique, defining feature is a genius way to create that feeling.
I actually liked the fact that you don't fight the dreamers. I went through all of Deepest expecting Herrah to be this super hard boss and then I reached her, invaded her dream and killed her while she was helpless. It was jarring to me because my impression of the dreamers was that they were the "bad guys", so I felt like my morales were challenged and that maybe I wasn't the "good guy". It added a layer of gray onto what seemed like a pretty black and white game to start with.
Yeah it feels like the game makes it unclear what your morality is on several occasions like that. I really liked it. The first Hornet fight and the Dreamers appearing to you at the Resting Grounds also felt that way.
Or how you kill the false knight, and in order to put the maggots on your monster list, you have to kill the helpless and innocent ones that cry over their sibling. I felt actually sick doing that, that I stopped for a day.
I feel the game does a great job at making you feel remorse. I don’t know about others, but i had a hard time killing even normal enemies, especially that miner in the beginning of crystal peak, because they’re just normal people, they don’t want to fight you, they HAVE to.
I know this is late but i love how you are the darkness (hollow) and you are fighting the light (the radiance and orange light). it’s totally against the grain and makes the story more challenging.
I actually never saw the grub quest ending as depressing just for the sake of being depressing as I actually noticed the achievement name and the grubs still being alive on my first playthrough. My trust in the grubs being the sole sweet part of the game didn't waver and I realized its most likely just a part of their natural life cycle, not the father cannibalizing them just for the sake of being macabre.
Maybe you already know it by now but the grubfather did it to protect his children from the infection so they can become butterflies and hatch. So he sacrificed himself for his kids
And now, the traitor lord (as well as nosk) is a fully fleged boss, the hive have been revamped into a better area and actually have a boss at the end, and each DLC seems foccussed on giving more end game fight and challenge, like the NK and the path of pain. Seems like team cherry is trying to adress the few flaws of HK.
Right, I was so confused. I only just beat Hollow Knight and have decided I can now watch critiques of it. When he mentioned Traitor Lord not even being a boss, I was gawping thinking 'did we play the same game? Traitor Lord killed me more than any other boss, and that was despite having Cloth "helping".' Thanks for clarifying that an update changed the boss. I'm interested in seeing what the boss used to be like
He only dealt one mask of damage per attack. The attack with that orange wind and the one where he "punches" the ground didn't exist. Just as Joe said, he was simply a oversized traitor mantis.
@@maximillionpegasus5160 Haha same here. Traitor Lord was the only boss to cause me to rage (well so far...haven't done all the postgame stuff yet). I actually like the sound of the older version better. The 2-damage attacks just felt like inflated difficulty, especially given how hard it is to heal vs him.
I'm usually not a fan of grinding out really challenging boss fights in games, but it was fun to do the Godseeker DLC. I think many of the upsides to the boss battles are ones that I only saw once doing that DLC, as it makes the game challenging even with end game equipment.
It has been 0 days, 0 hours and 0 minutes since I learned there's a breakable wall in the elevator ride on Soul Sanctum. I have finished this game 11 times between three platforms
I'm sure you've heard this a lot of times Jo, but in a lot of your critiques, I've noticed you complain about things involving difficulty in a way that's always surprising to me : you're always too good at the games and there's one point or another where it's too easy for you. I can sometimes agree with those points when I hear them, but some other times it's too much of a point to make. Almost sounds like you're bragging or something, even though you have no reason to do so. I'm referring mostly to what you said about Radiance. To me this fight was insanely hard, considering you need to kill Hollow Knight before it for every attempt, and even though it's the true final boss, I didn't even imagine what was waiting for me in the Godmaster DLC. Most people don't have your level at games. The fact that you did a 100% steel soul speedrun in under 3 hours without even being proud of yourself is enough proof. What I mean is that whenever you make a statement about challenge in games, please keep in mind that some people like me are being constantly crushed for hours by these challenges to a point where they won't ever believe you're being objective. And some people, like my girlfriend who wanted to walk through this game by herself, with my guidance, could never pass the mantis level because jumps were too tricky and enemies were too quick. I have never done this, but I actually told her to stop because this would just be suffering for her who's too inexperienced with platformers and quick reaction games. Admittedly she was inexperienced, but what I'm saying here is that you're actually too good at games compared to most people who are already considered very good at games. Hollow Knight is probably perfectly fine with how it is in terms of difficulty because it satisfies a lot of people who pass the first test of interest and dedication and get into its design and gameplay. I hope this didn't sound too preposterous, I really like your videos, I love listening to what you say and agree with you on a lot of things, it's just this type of criticism that always sounds like you're up there on top of your skill tower.
"please keep in mind that some people like me are being constantly crushed for hours by these challenges to a point where they won't ever believe you're being objective" He's not trying to be objective, he's talking about his own experiences with the game. If he thinks a change might have improved his experience, he's going to say so. Should he not mention something he would have liked to be different just because other people like it the way it is?
@@Bane_questionmark You're right, he's not trying to be objective (he said it himself in his last video), but I'm not blaming him for telling his opinion. In this one, he explains that to him, the Radiance fight was too easy. It's his opinion (actually it's not really an opinion it's his experience, and he made his whole opinion based on it), so it doesn't matter if, for you, the difficulty is fine or excessive. But then why mention something like that in a critique? It's not objective, and everyone will have a different experience on it, some people will beat Radiance first try and some will never beat it and have the game ruined for them because of it. This particular type of judgement on a game is different, because you literally just say "I wish it was more on this side of the spectrum (harder) and less on that side (easier)". I'm 100% sure that Jo knows he is really good at this game, more than probably a good 95% of all players. In that case it's obviously not a very insightful commentary to make, since making the fight harder would just make even more people unhappy.
Maybe Hollow Knight combat just didn't click for you. That's my experience at least. I often find so-called hard games easy, but in Hollow Knight I struggle a lot. In particular when it comes to managing multiple, projectile shooting enemies while in midair like you do in the Colisseum. That kind of thing is difficult to account for in a review, because you can't easily quantify it. How difficult something feels is a measure of how much you have to change to overcome it, so if you're already up to the task, you may never notice the challenge.
It's honestly a bit infuriating how good this guy is. He's like "yeah, after the last nail upgrade, the radiance is easy" And here I am unable to beat the radiance fully upgraded
I feel like the critic should have been "you need to have an option to change the difficulty" and not "this game should be harder". Im more of a casual player and do not spend a lot of time playing games. But I still enjoy them! I appreciate it when games have options to change the difficulty for more casual players. I don't think it's right to make a game only playable for more experienced gamers. It pushes newcomers away 😐
@@derkatzenmensch220 There's a problem with implementing difficulty options, and that's that new players who have heard the game is 'very hard' may take the easy option. This goes away from the Dev's visions for what the game is meant to be, what it's meant to feel like. I like how Celeste handles this, calling their 'easy mode': which is basically a bunch of options like infinite hp, infinite stamina, things that fundamentally change the game; putting those in a setting called trainer/accessibility mode immediately tells players "this is not an easy mode. This is not how the Dev's intend you to play the game. This is for people who for reasons, cannot play the game". Honestly tho its the Dev's call. Have fun Also there are far harder games than hollow knight, hk is more about memorising patterns rather than millisecond reactions. :)
@@joeg2jerry20 hollow knight wasn't hard for me personally, it was challenging but doable, im just saying that if it was harder people might drop the game which is worse than people getting a different experience from what the devs intended. If a game has options for difficulty I always try every option to see what's challenging but not impossible for me. it's such a shame when people drop a good game because they can't play it :/ The hardest difficulty for expierenced players could be just as challenging as an easy difficulty for someone who hasn't picked up any game yet. I like having options to make my experience the best it could be. People play how they want anyways. Like skipping the story / lore, mods etc. I feel like players should play in a way that's the most fun for them and not completely follow the devs intention if they don't want to. I know it's the choice of the dev if they want a really difficult game, I just feel like a lot of people might miss out on good games that way
@@derkatzenmensch220 I agree with you on that a lot of people do put these types of games off due to their initial difficulty. But hey, Silksong's (hopefully) coming, let's see what TC does this time
@@derkatzenmensch220 but that's literally what he said: 50:00 "Sometimes you can break this principle by becoming so durable, or achieve such high damage output, that you can ignore what the boss is doing. This is fine, and even a welcome feature in some games, because it can become an alternative method of progressing for some players who struggle with pattern recognition (...). The issue arises when it ceases to be a choice. When you upgrade yourself without realizing what you've just done -- that you have broken the fights for yourself, in your favor, and have no way of reverting back to a lower amount of health or damage, so that the encounter once again adheres to the principle" It's clearly a call for the developers to add a way to revert back the acquired character upgrades. At the player's will, of course.
i'm actually really happy we didnt get everything in the beginning and were kept rewarded for spending our time in the game till the very end. BOTW, which is a good game, gave us almost everything from the very beginning which made it get repetitive a lot sooner.
I agree to a certain extent. Yes, in HK, it was insanely fun to discover new abilities that let you reach new areas as well as obtain new movement options, but that’s the point of the game. It’s a metroidvania. Whereas in BotW, yes you may start out with every rune right from the start, sure, but it’s the way you use them that evolves along your journey. It rewards experimenting with the basic tools given to you to create some truly incredible combos and clever setups to defeat foes. I understand that for those who don’t want to experiment, then yeah, BotW’s moveset can get old after a while. But that’s not the player base the game was trying to cater to, I guess?
@l L Or literally true Zelda games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, i always saw BOTW as a walking simulator with a form of game hacking, like the runes being obtainable right at the start of the game 🤷🏼♂️.
@@DesTr069 Zelda games have similarities with metroidvanias, the dungeons were pretty unique thanks to that, until BOTW came out and ruined everything (still can deliver fun on it's own).
My favorite part of Hollow Knight was when I got the wall jump and thought “what happens if I try to climb up to where I started at?” I was expecting to find a ledge just big enough for the set piece jump at the beginning and nothing else. Imagine my surprise when I got up there, a title card appeared, and suddenly I had found a new area exactly where I would’ve never expected to find one. It was an awesome moment, and really made me feel like I was exploring the world in a unique way.
This was a game I bought for $10. Thought I beat it at 20 hours, then at 60, by the time I was done I had 110 hours in the game. I felt I robbed someone so I did something I never do, I bought the physical collectors edition. One of the only indie games I love with all my heart.
@@seemoore9175 No, there is. There is a lot more lore than story and the lore contextualizes the story but your interactions with Hornet and the Dreamers and your quest to destroy/become the Hollow Knight (or kill the Radiance) is a story
“On your first play through you’re looking at about 20 hours” Me: *laughs in 150 hours* edit: I love how wholesome all the replies are lol. Thanks for not fighting in my mentions
Side note, the Grubfather eats the Grubs to act as a cocoon for them so they can become Grubberflies. You get the Grubberfly's Elegy charm from this and the achievement Metamorphosis, clear hints the Grubfather isn't evil.
I was a bit confused when you said the reveal at the end of the grub storyline was "grim and dark" He didnt just eat them like a sadist, if you stand next to him you can hear the grubs inside are fine. This is actually part of the life cycle of a few real world insects, where the parent acts as a breeding cocoon. hes allowing his children to turn into grubberflies. (still a bit dark since they kill their father but hey thats kinda how reproduction is)
Well that’s not at all what most people got out of that, if true I like that a lot better, but it’s definitely set up to give the impression that he eat them all. Maybe that’s the point.
@@c.j.3404 i feel it should be somewhat obvious when the achievement you get for rescuing all the grubs is called "Metamorphosis" and the inclusion of the charm you get as a reward, "Grubberfly's Elegy" which looks like a grub with wings.
@@QBeeIII i would recommend watching rt games play though when he gets to that point, i think he represents the average player pretty well, and both he and everyone in the chat (most of hoom had played the game before) actively did not get that at all, and consdering its hidden away as a achievement (that could actively gust be dark sarcasm) and a not very esey to hear noise, then ya i would say that second twist is hidden and most players didn't get it.
50:44 I definitely had a different experience there. I can't imagine fighting the late-game bosses without the fully upgraded nail, masks, charms, and soul tanks. For context, I enjoy hard games, but I'm not exactly "good" at them.
Yeah, I think the criticism he makes of the difficulty should be taken with an ocean's worth of salt. He doesn't seem to realize how far above average he is at this game....
Honestly there are several bosses I had to put on hold and upgrade my character to be able to fight later on. I just got my pure nail and I still cant get past the first phase of the radiance. Im fully willing to admit im not great at this game but after persevering and getting better stuff, I was able to get through every challenge I encountered at some point. Yet to him it seems like the game was never a challenge to begin with. Its fine being good at the game but the critique about the difficulty only applies to the minority of god like gamers like him. Honestly only option in cases like this is to have Different difficulty modes tho im not sure this fits hollow knight's current game design.
@@juniperrodley9843 You can be doing the same things he's doing on just your second playthrough. The bosses get wayyyyyyy easier after beating them just once. His suggestion was to make the final nail upgrade toggleable, not to remove it. This makes it an option for new players still but also lets people later in the game disable it if they want to, it's a win-win.
Is there much of a chance of a '1 year later' style of video for Hollow Knight, like you did for Fallout 4? There's been quite a bit of DLC since the game's release, which actually dealt quite a bit with some of your criticism (more challenging combat, platforming, etc.)
I believe he said on stream a few times that he hasn"t played any of the game's DLC yet, and also that he's working quite hard on his witcher video (and i think he hasn't started playing witcher 3 yet!), so I wouldn't expect a video on hollow knight for quite a while.
@@sanjoog47 no it's not at all. It's literally a whole different game with a whole different story line. They've said that they wanted to make it accessible so you don't need to have played the original hollow knight to keep up with the story in silksong which means it's very far from what expansions are
i saw this video and decided to play the game. 25 hours in i came back and rewatched the video in utter disbelief at the difficulty suggestions. probably the hardest game ive ever played in 20 years
He played the game when it was on an earlier version. By the time this video was made updates and DLC to the game was already added. The updates made the game more difficult by buffing some bosses and nerfing charms.
Aside from maybe the dream challenges, probably disagreed with you in nearly every aspect of this critique. You play a game 3-4 tmes and then complain that the level design is too familiar, that the dash and wall jump should be part of the base move set and that combat is too easy. I think there is a potential link there... I appreciate your commitment to thoroughness and your willingness to lay yourself bare in so many words. I connect with you as a writer and a critic on a more personal level since you don't use a lot of jargon but I think your experience and skill level are so far beyond mine that your criticism over difficulty is just moot. I don't think some of these things are a fault of game design. I think Cherry has an ebb and flow to the game that makes the pacing great. Or at least, they designed the game to be open enough to allow an ebb and flow to take place. My most recent stretch of the game was beating the dreamers and no, I don't think fighting the (Abyss) Watcher Knights and then fighting its dreamer is a good idea. That fight for me was HELL. It was the first time I gave up and went to go specifically to hunt more masks and charms because I couldn't win that fight no matter how hard I tried. Even after upgrading my nail and health and using a charm set up to boost my health and healing speed, it still took me a long time to win but if I then had to fight the watcher himself after that? No man. Just no. I get it, difficulty is a... well... difficult topic. You're an experienced gamer in these arenas and I am DEFINITELY not. I love Metroidvanias and I love Hollow Knight. I SUCK at it though and only rise to meet its challenge after much trial and error and I mean... it is a TRIAL of my errors. I will say that I don't consider any of the enemies to be unfair though. The teleporting mages have a wisp of smoke showing where they are going so it's not quite so random. Ultimately though, I like this critique because I like you but MAN I haven't disagreed with you this much in awhile.
He literally compare with the dash problem in Megaman, where he wants the dash as soon as possible whenever he plays the game AGAIN. Obviously it feels weird when you create a new savefile in HK and can't dash because you got used to it, but it make so much sense for your first experience. Then when you are playing for the 2nd time you can grab the upgrades faster because you know where to go. I don't see the point of this critique. Giving the player the upgrades right from the start would reduce the rewards for exploring such large areas. Then his critique would simply be "huh the game is not rewarding me" About difficulty: there's a ton of people who claim the game is hard. Who would have thought games feels more easy for people who live by playing them (of people who just play a lot every day)? HK is way harder than most games in the market, but I think is super well balanced. Obviously some will learn faster than others, but apart from the Godhome challenges, the mais story bosses and enemies can be defeated if you try and leard, thus giving you a sense of acomplishment. Nightmare King Grimm basically killed me in the first few seconds of the fight. I couldn't hear the music because of the double damage sounds! When I finally beat him I realized I only took 3 hits from him the entire fight.
@@brenosulzbacher Exactly. The first three areas are basically there to teach you how to use the default jump, the wall climb, and the moth wing before it freaking combines all of that in the City of Tears.
I actually entered Howling Cliffs in a third way - I decided to superdash from the top of the Crystal Peak to see what will happen. It really demonstrated how game is great at rewarding exploration - it feels really rewarding to find a secret reward in a non-obvious place.
It was like that for me when I played Samus Returns. First playthrough some bosses killed me a dozen times each but on a second run, I didn't die more than twice on a boss.
Whenever you refer to difficulty in your videos, you always speak as if your experience with it is the only experience. Hollow knight IS a hard game. But you're very good at it. 90% of the playerbase will have a harder time with the game than you and you don't ever acknowledge this, in all of your videos
90% of the playerbase legally qualifies as mentally disabled and should spend their time mastering concepts such as tying their shoes, safely boiling water to make meals, and applying for disability compensation instead of playing games that are intended for players with the dexterity and brain power that have developed beyond a 6-year-old's capabilities. Joseph's skillset he brings should place him firmly in the average/above-average area. He mentions recognizing difficulty in obstacles, but understands how to adjust to overcome them, this is exactly how the average person will experience things. Someone well above average in the 90th percentile will struggle to recognize the difficulty in the first place because their reflexes and perception are so sharp. Someone who struggles to adjust their play to overcome the challenges is well below average and they are better served watching a movie or some of the movie-games that are popular now.
How much of a fucking elitist can you be? Not more than this guy above, probably. Do you listen to yourself? If you find this hard you're literally mentally handicapped? What?
The legal qualifications are objectively clear. You have not offered a single argument against my claims, only ad-homs and mentioned that you are incredulous. I am not claiming to be highly skilled myself, or disparaging anyone who is lacking. Nor do I think anyone who is highly skilled is a "better" person somehow. Not a single shred of elitism. Derisively telling people to "git gud" doesn't benefit them or encourage them toward areas they will find the most satisfaction in. If people struggle to adapt to challenge then games like this are not for them, I only recommended they avoid frustration and encourage pursuits that will bring them happiness instead.
You were wrong about the Grubfather, he doesn’t eat the grubs, if he did then you wouldn’t hear the grubs inside, and he is using his body as a or cocoon so all of his grubs can grow up safe in a warm environment you literally get an achievement when you get all the grubs with that reveal called metamorphosis. Edit: thanks for the likes guys! This is my most liked comment! Have a good day :)
Talking about slopes. Believe it or not programming a platformer with slopes make the whole thing a lot LOT more complicated. It seems Team Cherry cut their losses in both the art and code departments and did what they could. Personally I don't mind. As someone who knows the ins and outs of basic platformer coding I understand completely why they made that decision and sympathize with them. After all they are only like 3 people + a composer.
I know I'm late, but I'm answering to this anyway. They had 3 people designing the game, +1 composer and a person helping with the marketing. In reddit, where they answered a lot of questions from fans some time ago, a person asked "How can you, being only 2 people, make a game SO GOOD? I'm truly amazed, seriously." And they replied "Hey thanks! We should say though, Hollow Knight was also developed with our friend David Kazi, who did a lot of the technical under-pinnings for us. All things that go right over our heads. We also had Chrisopher Larkin doing the amazing sound and score, and Matthew 'Leth' Griffin coordinating all sorts of marketing, testing and businessy stuff from his home in California." www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6rvds8/we_are_team_cherry_the_developers_of_hollow/ Also, english is not my first language and I'm still learning it, so I apologize for possible mistakes I might have made.
There are slopes in the game already, actually. I'm bad at the game and modded the game for invincibility, because I'm a pussy. The slopes appear only on the spikes in the broken elevator shaft. And they do function like slopes, you can run up and down them, it's great. You do kinda slide down them at all times, like they're made of ice, but that would be an easy fix, unless the inner working of the code is real fuckin' pastalike.
@@aidengray3998 > "that would be an easy fix" Hollow Knight uses Unity's rigidbody2D (essentially box2d) for its movement (Source: twitter.com/teamcherrygames/status/946171459440803840?lang=en). Implementing platformer style movement on slopes without the sliding down slopes behavior is really hard in a realistic physics engine like this--I know because I've tried to do it myself in Unity. If Team Cherry were to add slopes to the game, they would probably need to write an entirely new movement system that doesn't use the physics engine.
play it! i’ve watched a ton of youtube playthroughs and got the game about last week i still enjoyed it even though i knew just about every twist and the lore
its mind boggling to see games like this have this amount of content , replayability , depth of mechanics , priced at 15 $ and other shitty , cash grab games like star wars battlefront go at 60 $
Let's see. Butterfly is the last form. Who would became butterfly -- young grubs or old grub? Don't forget, that grubs need a lot of food before metamorphosis. Who gets more: the old grub by eating dozens of grubs, or dozens grubs by eating just one old? Also, the collector was saving grubs before you kill him, you can get it by dreamnailing.
The charm you get literally says: "Contains the gratitude of grubs who will move to the next stage of their lives." Also the collector is clearly messed up in the head considering it lives in the "Tower of Love" and is a creepy shadowy monster.
This video has taught me one thing: You are a masochist and REALLY good at video games. This game is my absolute favorite of all time, and yet I still think this was a very well-put-together video. It's also crazy to notice how much Team Cherry had addressed your criticisms in the free DLC. It really furthers my excitement for Silksong.
I don't think the grubfather ate his children so to speak. You get an achievement called metamorphosis which indicates that he will serve as a type of cocoon for the other grubs. Considering that the grubs still sound happy inside the grubfather when you hit him afterwards I think this si probably the case.
Katomic Yeah I agree. I would've sided with Joe on this one but the name "metamorphosis" along with the happy grub sounds make me think It's not actually sinister. The grub dad is probably one large cocoon or something for the grub kids. I even like to think that he had to wait for all of the kids to be rescued before he could start the next step so none of the kids got left behind haha
And as a result, the grubdaddy explodes in a disgusting feast of green goo and gore, perhaps much like the jumpscare grubs on a way creepier scale as his kids pop out as adult grubs or whatever their evolution is supposed to be. New moths?
I enjoyed Ori and the Blind Forest, but when it was over, I was done. Hollow Knight, on the other hand, will live rent-free in my brain forever. The game is so so good.
Yeah. I found ori mostly fun to play yet kind of cruel in some moments. Compared to most of the game, the escape sequenced in each major section had a huge difficulty spike with no way to exit them to get a break without just quitting the game. And honestly the story did not land for me at all. I otherwise kinda enjoyed it but there was so much that made it grating that i dont think i will ever replay it. I have even been hesitant to play will of the wisps just cause it wasnt an experience i enjoyed
@@radaf4429 what a weird way to ask that question. You might as well ask why anyone loves any piece of art. Why do some spend their whole lives thinking about the works of Shakespeare? It's "just" a bunch of plays. Idk, dude. I like what I like. I could write many paragraphs about the ways that HK is good, in my opinion, but it doesn't feel like that'd be very useful for you.
42:13 the reason the dreamers aren't bosses is that they know that the hollow knight is unable to contain the infection and therefor needs to be replaced. They understand that the only way to break the seal to the black egg and replace the hollow knight would be to stop dreaming, to die. They are not monsters that was put to sleep as some sort of sacrifice by the pale king, but powerfull and responsible beings that chose to enter eternal slumber to save hallownest. Also no eyes is a girl.
That's true! And it wouldn't make sense for the Dreamers, who weren't warriors, to fight. However, if they knew the vessel had to be replaced, then they should have tested the Knight to make sure they were worthy. (Although Lurien did have the Watcher Knights and Monomon , Uumuu. Hornet could have been protecting her mother as a boss.)
Reminds me of one of my favorite little quotes ''Symphony of the Night isn't here to impress you, you are here to impress Symphony of the Night''. Which has become strangely relevant. I now go out of my way to put time aside and grab some refreshments and such for a Mr. Anderson video.
The pantheons are a good challenge for people who wanted harder bosses, lifeblood added more bosses to places that should’ve had a boss, and Grimtroupe added a bunch of endgame content to spend geo on and Nightmare Grim, who the whole hallow knight community simps for I guess. (Uh oh guess I’m banned on twitch now)
He did'nt eat the grubs. It is just another state in the biology of grubs, like kangaroos in pouches, as shown by the text of "Grubberfly's Elegy": "Contains the gratitude of grubs who will *move* *to* *the* *next* *stage* *of* *their* *lives.* Imbues weapons with a holy strength."
This. I hope Joe read this because his criticism was just completely invalid. He should do more research before providing an answer such an answer as gospel.
Feel like there's multiple reads of this situation (much like a lot of parts of the game). An elegy is a lament for the dead. Perhaps they are meant to be eaten to fuel the grandad to achieve his metamorphosis. Perhaps they weren't meant to be eaten at all and he's a monster.
It’s clearly an Elegy referring to the death of the Grubfather. Why would the achievement you get be called Metamorphosis? Grubs don’t eat their own to achieve this status but they do need a cocoon. It’s common sense.
Nearly every detail of Hollow Knight made my jaw drop. After finishing it I immediately started trying to get 100% completion. It's a masterpiece and might be my favorite game of all time. Glad you enjoyed it!
My experience was very magical and terrifying, there's an area in the fungal wastes that leads you to a bunch of enemies that are listening to a prophet, they were all friendly, so I stayed there for about 10 minutes looking at them enjoying it, farming them, and when i was satisfied, I walked out with a smile and fell into a pitfall that led me for the first time into deepnest I was in a new, completly different area from what I have experience, clearly hostile towards me, carrying hilariously large loot from farming, knowing I was going to die, and was going to have to come back into this hell hole to get it back
imma have to strongly disagree with you when you said that environmental story telling was an "issue". I think it makes it much more immersive as you wont get a concrete answer to the things around you as you are a traveller from out of town (kinda).
I like enviromental story telling but imo it isnt delivered well in hollowknight. the fromsoftware games (dark souls and such) as well as a bunch of other games do it a lot better.
I think that there are some aspects of the enviromental story telling that could be improved, but for the most part it's pretty good. Hallownest is meant to feel big and old, and it does really well at conveying that feeling
@@bowserjjumetroid3645 Been a month but for me, the environmental storytelling in hollow knight is kinda just confusing and it doesn't really provide a baseline. It's hard to explain so I'll set up some examples. SPOILERS. In Dark Souls, the way they tell their lore is by giving casual players a nice shallow story. The Chosen Undead must go and ring two bells to awaken Frampt, who will tell you to defeat the four lords and link to fire to undo the undead curse. This helps display a easy to follow story that presents a good and evil path, and gives the average person a sense of purpose in the game. Of course in reality, the truth is much more tragic. You are inhabiting a world which is breathing its last life, and you are essentially cleaning up all the gods that have gone insane or depressed, corrupted etc. All the while you are being manipulated by Frampt. If the player ever realizes this at any point in the game (for me it was when I killed gwynevere). Then there is a sense of real looming tension and sadness that the one hope spoken to you was a lie. In hollow knight there wasnt really anything like this. It was a story that either you knew or you didnt know. Playinig through the entire game there wasnt anything to grab you on the story and make deeper layers as it went. I still really like the hollow knight environmental storytelling though, the hollow knight boss isreally cool as it tells a story through the boss fight. But yea thats kinda the problem i had with it personally
I don't really understand where Joe is coming from when it comes to difficulty. I thought the game was really really hard, especially the bosses at the end. I consistently screwed up the timing on sword swings, found it extremely difficult to adjust to a dash without I-frames, took several playthroughs to get used to pogo-ing off enemies, and never beat the final coliseum challenge. I've beaten every souls game way too many times, and while I can't judge if Hollow Knight is harder, I personally found it harder. Maybe it's the side scrolling combat which is a fairly new concept to me since I grew up on Zelda (never beat the first Zelda 2 dungeon) and never played a side scrolling platformer until picking up Shovel Knight in my mid 20s. Maybe it's the fact that I first played it on mac which would constantly fail to read my inputs and had horrible lag (I found the pc version more manageable but still very hard). LIke... Joe mentions this dream boss in the Queen's Garden that just curls in a ball and jumps at you, so you have to hit it back like you're playing volleyball, and Joe says this boss is disappointing and easy, whereas that little shit killed me like 20 times before I finally took it out. I didn't beat the Radiance until I got a new computer that ran the game better, and it still killed me at least 5 times. Difficulty is subjective, but my god I can't figure out how Joe is avoiding so many hits in that coliseum footage. I can't do that. Avoiding projectiles, pogoing, all that biz is really hard for me for some reason. Idk.
Probably just due to what we grew up on. I came out the womb playing 2D games. 3D games like Dark Souls are ridiculously foreign to me and I can't wrap my head around them, albeit I'm getting much better lately. But 2D games and platforming I can do in my sleep.
I only finished Hollow Knight last month, and have been holding off watching this video until then. Had to pause when he was talking about the traitor Lord to check the comments. I thought I was pretty good at Hollow Knight, I beat the Radiance on my second attempt, but for whatever reason the Traitor Lord gave me way too much trouble, AND I'd done Cloth's questline. "isn't even a boss" my fucking ass, that shit killed me way more times than any other boss.
I’m really glad you put out that PSA in the beginning. I really want to encourage people to support this team and think they went well beyond any realistic expectation for indie developers. Just in scope, I can’t imagine how much work they put in, and it shows.
Nosk is still super cheeseable. Just press yourself next to the center platform and swipe upward. If Nosk moves to your side, go to the other side of the platform. Rinse and repeat.
@@nicholasali3566 That's all I did to win. I just changed sides whenever Nosk was on the same side of the platform as me, and if I ever got hit, the opposite side of the platform gave enough shelter to heal safely. All of my damage was done while Nosk was standing above me on the platform and I swiped upward to hit him.
Traitor lord I got bored with and killed him with sharpshadow like a bitch. But if you dont cheese him, he is decently hard, considering you have no opportunity to heal safely, and he deals two masks. Nosk pretty much forces you to chese hime by sitting next to the platform and poking his belly, because thats the only spot that lets you heal. If they added a half step it would fix this, but then you couldnt heal there either.
The grub father is actually not bad, at he achievement you get once it happens is called “Metamorphosis”, it’s likely that he served as the vessel for the grubs’s ascension
I thought most people discover the Howling Cliffs through Greenpath, actually. There's a short cave route at the very top of Greenpath that leads there. You don't even need the lamp to get through it.
I know this is a minor nitpick on the whole of the video, but selling the items one by one (up to a certain amount) is necessary because the shopkeeper gives various lore with each new item sold
Also, I've never used the geo-attracter, the dash charm, and even the one that shows your position. I enjoyed using my surroundings to figure out where I am and saving the precious charm slot for other things like the nail extender. So I wouldn't say those charms are "required"
Fair enough :P But I wouldn't fault the game for having the badge as a requirement when the game encourages exploration without it and has the option for those who aren't as directionally inclined
@Joseph Anderson: Regarding your worries about the price for Team Cherry. They just announced that Hollow Knight sold more than 500.000 copies. Even at a price of 15$ that should be by far enough money for such a small team to keep going into future projects. If we and they are lucky and Hollow Knight gets the attention it deserves with it's Switch release (which I guess will be at ~20$), they could even cross the line of 1 million sold copies across all platforms. No need to worry here for them. They also said publicly that they put the price so low on purpose, so as many people as possible could play their game. Which is a great philosophy from a social standpoint.
You’ve convinced me to buy this game and it’s been well worth the money. It’s my first platformer and I’m absolutely horrible at the game but it’s still a blast! It’s very neat that such a demanding game in terms of skill can still be fun for a new casual player like myself.
Plus it was on a shot of Bardoon, the best character in the game, who's also "not a real dragon". He tells you so. Also a few incidental things like how the Radiance works, where the Pale King got his powers, you know, trivia.
@@olaf8778 You have my heartfelt congratulations. I'm encouraging my little brother to continue with the challenge. He is now working on Pantheon of the Knight. Can't wait to see him succeed.
I dont think the pantheons are beyond anyone. They just requiere so much time to git gud that its not really worth it. At least I dont have the time for it. So not happening.
@Banuner agreed, beating one of the two is an achievement in itself but if you beat pure vessel, NKG, and path of pain youre already good at the game. Absrad and PoH is a whole different level
I actually love the abyss, maybe I'm the only one but it's refreshingly simple and inspires an air of mystic because of the mystery behind it; it wasn't meant to be found at what's down there is ancient and untouched for decades, hidden from the world. I love the way that it teases a mystery and unearths so much story if you pay attention. maybe It is just me though?
Don't know if anybody brought it up in the comments yet, but your point about The Abyss feeling empty was kind of interesting. The developers originally planned for it to be a massive area with a few bosses, but unfortunately it was a Kickstarter goal that was never reached. It's still possible we may see what content was planned for it in the future.
Damn I actually feel bad for the devs that there were goals that weren't hit. Having almost finished everything in the game makes me wish I actually contributed to the kickstarter.
Well, there’s always DLC. That being said, there were also things they cut that were part of the base game, such as the Bone Forest, which seems to have been mostly repurposed into the Abyss in terms of aesthetic, but there was also lava. Other than that, they’ve since added and fixed a lot of complaints people had with bosses, such as adding in the Hive boss to the Bee area, and improving the Traitor Lord to be much more substantial. But, I hope so badly that they add in the giant-ass spider boss they teased in one of the trailers to Deepnest, what made the roar when you got captured??
Tbf some goals have been met but not implemented. While other things haven't but still found their way into the game in some way. Hornet being playable certainly makes more sense if she gets her own storyline in a dlc yet her goal as playable character was actually met. Afaik Zote was supposed to be the 3rd playable character
Now I wonder if he's happy with all the new updates that have come out. I mean with the way he was talking about limiting the player, he must really like the Godmaster expantion.
Great critique, a few things that stood out to me: -If you do a bit of snooping online the Grubfather is actually a good guy.(Something to do with how the bugs mature) -I found the writing really good in this game, dunno if it caught your eye. Characters rarely delivered the tired cliches that many NPC's usually spurt out - regarding the difficulty, from the footage show, it just looks like you are really, really good at the game. Some of that air juggling was insane. I find the ability to "break" the game with different equip combos and pure skill is highly rewarding. I feel that they needed to kind of have a cap on difficulty as not to drive too many players away, if you skim the steam reviews you can already see people complaining that the difficulty is way too high. - It doesn't sound like you are an achievement guy, but I found them amazing, the speedrun and Steel soul added replayability and great new ways to experience the game, they even have exclusives per playthrough to encourage repeat runs. - My favorite boss fights were Soul Master and Radiance. Soul Master because he is an introduction into the OH SHIT breakneck pace of some of the bosses where you are constantly moving and looking for tells and because of how damn fun teleporting is, feels like a fight straight out of DBZ. The fake out was also unexpected and really made it stand out in my memories of the game. - Radiance because of the AMAZING introduction with the music kicking in perfectly and it really feels like a culmination of all your experience and mechanics for one final challenge. It's not perfect but this is honestly one of my favorite games of all time and with the second DLC it will probably stay in that spot for decades.
i found this game difficult but the soul master was just dumb easy. first tried him. the soul soldier actually gave me more trouble(i died 4 times) the soul master gave too many oppurtunities to heal. still a good boss tho
Not to mention offer even less of a chance for some new players to take their time and not only explore but examine the world, its lore and absorb the intricately designed atmosphere.
@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts Bosses being added to areas (Hive Knight, for example), others being tweaked and improved, a couple of new areas to explore, and pretty much the whole game tweaked and refined.
Mantis Lord also got a big "fuck you" upgrade so that he's not a glorified gigantic mantis traitor lackey with a huge health bar. Also: A B S O L U T E R A D I A N C E
Coming back to this video I was so confused, especially when he mentioned Hive not having a boss. I literally paused the video and googled it because I KNEW it had a boss. Sure enough, it did. It was added with the free DLC. Honestly this is better than it being in the base game imo, because it shows the reason behind the lack of content: "Team" Cherry is literally 2 people. The fact that so much shit was added with **FREE** DLC on a game that lets be real, is permanently 75%, is ridiculous. I bought it on PC, bought it on switch, and might buy it on ps4 and never play it JUST to give them more money. Im so excited for Silk Song and if its 30 bucks Im getting it twice yet again just for the sake of it.
This game looks incredible. The complaints about lack of difficulty won't really apply to me as I'm sure I'll find it challenging enough anyway. Great video!
Holy shit, you watch Joseph Anderson too? I'm a huge fan of your videos and your channel has helped me keep a bit more sane while I wait for the next JA video.
I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's more comfortably becoming my favorite for the year. And don't sell yourself short! You might take to the combat faster than you think.
Good review, but you have to understand: you are crazy good at this game! Don't know if because your previous experience with games or because your four playthroughs. But for other people who are not so experienced with platforms, this is an insanely hard game. One of the hardest games to come out in while. The elitists will soon chime in, calling me out, but you could easily see this in the first weeks after release, when I played, on the forums: every single day a new thread related to difficulty appeared. I too believed I could never progress in this game: never liked or played platformers before, platformers with analog jump are like 5 times harder than fixed height ones for me and hundreds of hours of Dark souls and co. without a shield made me expect i-frames on a deep instinctual level and Hollow Knight has no i-frames in the jump system or the initial dash. It took me 25 hours of practice to no longer be helpless at the game (even the first boss took my like 7 tries), but 100% of your suggestions related to difficulty would guarantee that I could never finish the game without an investment of time an effort which quite frankly would not be fun. I still believe I will never be able to do level 3 coliseum without the cheesiest of the builds allowed by the charm system, max upgrades and probably a couple of hours worth of tries.
Was going to say the same thing. I felt pretty good just beating the true ending of this game at all, let alone doing it without upgrades or spells or anything like that. Plus his aerial combat is 10 times more fluid than I ever got, and he was attacking during boss patterns where I was just busy trying not to get hit. I think the amount of players who have things "ruined" for themselves by making the game too easy is much smaller than the number of people who need to get those upgrades so they don't spend 5 hours dieing to the same boss fights. I did the mantis fight with no weapon upgrades, and it was satisfying admittedly, but it took a bunch of attempts, and each time you have to run back from a checkpoint. If I'd kept that mindset up I would have lost patience with the game long before the end, or it would have hugely stretched out an already pretty long game. Dark Souls players seem to love that mechanic, but there was a reason I played like 2 hours of that game and stopped. I'd like to do a "hard mode" run, but I can't see myself doing it with just the benches. I'd have to abuse that teleport dream gate thing I think.
I definitely get how annoyingly easy it'd be for him at the end of the game, but with only a single difficulty setting the game is right on the border of being too hard for the vast majority of players. I'm at 99% completion, but I don't see myself ever beating that third colloseum fight.
DiabloQFDB I don’t find the game too terribly difficult most of the time, but even when it’s not being difficult, due to the inconvenience of dying and threat of losing your Geo (at least before you buy everything when Geo actually matters), it’s already incentive enough for me to play cautiously.
See thats were we vary greatly, I prefer analog jump, and I've been doing platformers (puzzle-platformers, rogue-lits, 2D/2.5/3D) and all for nearly 3 decades...and I'm a fan of the super punishing "difficult-just-for-the-sake-of-being-difficult) type platformers....I 110% GOlden God Super Meat Boy and 108% master expo on Cave Story+ and (you want to talk CHALLENGING) lol.....difficult? 1001 Spikes make Hollow Knight look casual by comparison I am not being elitest or arrogant (and for the average gamer yea I could see that) no hate or criticizing here BUt analog is my way of playing...i dont like fixed JMP. Never have....Dark Souls, Salt and Sanctuary, Enter the Gungeon...1001 Spikes, Cave Story+, 660+ Hours of Binding of Isaac (and rogue-lites/rogue-likes (like-likes) dating back to Dwarf Fortress and Diablo (Diablo 2...lol all the 1000s n 1000s of hours...clans, US east hardcore ladder, lvl 97s, 98s, 99s...not so much difficult, just time consuming w/ an almost cult-like-devotion) Isaac is the same way, the SHEER amount of depth to that game...good ol' Edmund McMillen...I mean....I've already put as said over 600 hours on the Switch version....always learning new synergies and which works and which doesnt with over 1,600 room combinations, and a beastiary of 180+ creatures, and 400+ items, and learning which works with which, and its also luck....so the replay value is immensely high...still seeing things months later that I never saw the first few hundred runs LOL. Greed Mode ? shhhit Greedier Mode ? Ultra Hard....these are t he kinds of things most would throw the system out the window, or get mad, smack their legs while playing in bed due to anger, and frustration thumbsticks + ultra punshing platformers + massive open worlds + huge beastiary + tedious backtracking and almost-unfair-like-design = what pushes me forward I admit I'm a OCD-type-focused-masochist. I complete these games without walkthroughs, guides, hacks, or help 100% all nooks n crannies, every aspect of Hollow Knight including all DLC I will complete (and I wont MOVE on to the next game till I complete this one). Just how I am. But I can see how its def not for everyone.
53:43 "Having so much damage meant I didn't have to do any of this..." (In reference to the timing and strategy of healing). Speak for yourself! I commend you for completing the game in the variety of ways that you did, and in fact I'm pretty jealous given that I thought of myself as being pretty good at the game before seeing this and a couple speedruns. That said, keep in mind that you are in the minority here - I understand that your commentary on difficulty can only really come from your own experience, but I think it's important to recognize that the game wasn't quite so easy for other people (including myself). I was grinning and nodding my head the entire time you were talking about the strategy of healing because I was remembering when I did the same thing on my playthroughs. What you described was most definitely still present in late game when the nail was upgraded (in fact, almost exclusively at this time) for me and, I presume, many other people.
I feel like the reason you don’t start with dash is because not having it allows you to learn how to dodge enemies without having an easy way out in the beginning. If you started with dash and relied on it to dodge enemies then later on when the game requires more precise dodges it will become very hard and frustrating.
@@pouihurmen yes, it is. I was saying that precise dodges around and with dash are trained well by starting you without dash. using dash isn't the hard part, it's finding the right positions to sit still for even a moment in fights
@@xiloscient3335 ah my bad I misunderstood the first comment. still don't know if I agree though, I don't think the bosses up until Hornet protector are that good at teaching proper positioning in the first place as they're all rather slow with simple movesets
The dreamers being boss battles isn't something I can agree with. For one thing, when you see Monomon there's dialogue indicating that they were waiting to be killed. And for another, using the dream nail on them with that music going on in the background really got to me emotionally. I was satisfied with an emotional payoff rather than getting an epic boss fight payoff. The piñata part of it could have been done better though.
Just a single hit would have been too easy and clean for the conveyed message. They could have, however, done something to prevent spamming the attack to force you to acknowledge your actions, wanted or not.
Actually, the worm that eats the little worms is not something bad. I don't remember the name of the type of worm, but there is one that eats his children in order to let them eat it from the inside so that they can grow into adulthood.
Not a fan of metroidvania at all but I absolutely love the art style and ambiance of this game. That and it's a blast to watch when the person playing it is good at it.
That's part of how crazy the price is, right? It even looks great! Such a cool style and so many different locations, characters, and backgrounds. So much work went into it.
Joseph Anderson Yup. I bought it during Summer sale for ~$10. Played a few hours and it's just not my cup of tea. Don't regret my purchase though, happy to support the devs. I can recognize the objective quality of the game, just doesn't fit my taste.
@Marc Shanahan No, that's Klei. They made Mark of the Ninja, Invisible Inc, etc. Team Cherry makes Hollow Knight- They're much smaller. Only 3-4 people. Klei is a bigger studio, around 30-40 people IIRC.
The reason the dreamers aren’t boss fights is because they don’t have the power to fight back, the seer says it themself they are sleeping and they used the last of their strength to lock you in the dream world before you get the dream nail and even then if you really think about it they still do have bosses. For monomon it’s uumuu, for lurien it’s the watcher knights, and for herrah it’s deepnest itself. Also I feel as though the reason the hollow knight is an easy boss is because although it’s being controlled by the radiance it still has trouble doing so because the hollow knight is still slightly hollow. Also on a final note it feels as though your bragging about your skill most of the time and honestly most of the things you say that are bad seem like extremely tiny things to me
@@juniperrodley9843 Which is why she doesn't try to stop you. She knows that you gotta do what you gotta do. She doesn't want it to happen, obviously, but at the same time she kinda does. Also she was probably the one to save you from the weird kidnapper dudes, as they are all found sliced uo later.
yeah, that scene wasn't meant to be a fight. It's meant to elicit emotion. Everything we know about the dreamers shows how they cared for hallownest in some way, and in order to save it we have to kill them.
I love cutscenes in games a lot of the time because of the better looking visuals (ex. Smash Ultimate) And when I found that cutscene in City of Tears at first I wanted more but as I played I realized the game itself was just as good. The art looks like a cartoon optimized to be played as a game It’s beautiful
This is the first video of yours that I'm enjoying early as a patron. However, this is a game that I've been kicking around the idea of playing, and after that glowing intro I think I unfortunately have to stop the video and go play it myself!
Happened to me with the Prey review... Watched it half-way before I realized that I just gotta play that game... Still didn't get to play it yet, I need to finish Pillars of Eternity first, so watching that review all the way to the end is going to have to wait for the meanwhile...
Joseph, every time I myself THINK I might have an idea for a video I''D like to do myself, you go ahead and make something that knocks it out of the park. Great job and very well said.
My first experience with deepnest was similar to yours. I got the wall jump ability, beat the mantis lords, and ventured into deepnest without a lantern. The difference was that, when faced with the oppressive atmosphere of deepnest, I decided to climb up towards the surface (which might not even have existed) and I ended up back in the fungal zone. It was great!
Hollow Knight is by far my favorite game of the year, and as nostalgic as I am about Super Metroid and how often I replay it compared to Hollow Knight because of the sheer depth of its movement systems, I believe that Hollow Knight stands as a beacon for the best Metroidvania title *ever*. The map design by itself is pure genius. I knew it was after my own 100% playthrough and through watching others play, but I swear every time I hear a new take on the game's paths or watch more content, the complexity continues to astound me. As great as the combat feels and as fun as it can be, I think it's carried by the exploration aspects. It's hard to say for sure, but I think if the game were set up more like Megaman or Shovel Knight, or even Ori, the combat would lose some (though not all) of its luster. Hollow Knight truly is a *composition* in ways that most games can't approach, and I'm eagerly looking forward to every drop of DLC Team Cherry pushes out.
I've never played La Mulana, but it's a very interesting game. I originally thought it was a remake of an old NES game, but it turns out it was a doujin project from the very beginning. Maybe it's because Deceased Crab played it on SA and I associate him with crappy old NES games. I actually *really* liked Portrait of Ruin. I think I've replayed that more than any other Metroidvania, although if pressed I would admit that Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night are better. I mean, how can you not like a game that has a skeletal bartender who throws cocktails at you?
That last part was more of a rhetorical flourish than anything. I was just being emphatic. I'm curious, though, which of the two do you think was better, Aria or Dawn?
Excellent video! Hollow Knight is definitely my favourite game of the year, and you did it justice. I just wanted to point out that, from what I can assume watching your videos, you are really skilled in action games. You said The Colloseum is a great area where finally the combat showed its true potential (and I agree, especially beacuse it's an optional area), but for a lot of people it was sincerely too hard. I think that if Team Cherry had inserted that kind of challenge and complexity into the main route it would have been for the worse to a lot of players. A similar thing happened to me in regards to the plataforming. I really like the genre and am pretty good at it, therefore, I would have loved if the game had more challenging and complex plataforming sections; but I know for a fact that others considered the White Palace to be out of place and overly difficult. I'm sure Team Cherry could have made the game a lot harder overall, but decided against it to not overwhelm a lot of its player base. I've been a patreon for a while now and it's my first time commenting. I'm a bit nervous hahaha. Really really great video!!
I agree. I had a level four nail and still haven't beaten Colosseum. I beat White Palace but it was quite challenging. Joseph is very very good, to the point where he may lose touch a little bit with the average scrub. Level four nail does, however, make the regular areas pretty easy.
Thanks Tobias! And fair point. I probably should have went into more detail on it in the video. A hard mode would be a good solution, or a lot more optional ways to push combat more. I didn't find the White Palace to be particularly difficult, but maybe I was carried by my Super Meat Boy experience. Even the saw blades are similar there. *That* did feel a bit out place--all of a sudden here's this grinding machinery. I wish I had brought that up.
I definitely felt like I was using all the systems you said you could ignore during radiance even with the final nail. It was a long fight and took me well over 20 tries and in terms of difficulty very much felt like the DLC bosses in Dark souls 1.
You didn't find the White Palace that difficult? Wow. It's certainly a very twitchy platforming challenge in a game that's not focused around platforming. The Hiveblood charm makes it less tedious (wish I'd thought of that from the beginning!), but it was a slog for me. Definitely my least favorite part of the game. The saw blades were 100% Super Meat Boy, and I was actually very disappointed in Team Cherry at this point for practically abandoning the game's down-to-earth tone. The whole rest of the game makes the Pale King seem like a charismatic and interesting figure, and the one area devoted to him has platforming challenges *instead* of lore or maybe even an interesting boss fight. I feel like they should have used the White Palace primarily for story instead of gameplay, especially when you consider what you have to do just to get there in the first place. The last part of this game in particular shows roughness around the edges. As you mentioned, defeating the Dreamers is shockingly anticlimactic and leaves the player with the feeling that there should be more. The Abyss is underdeveloped, the White Palace is a massive departure from the style of the core game, and both of the final boss fights are a letdown compared to earlier parts of the game, particularly the Hollow Knight, who may be the easiest final boss in any Metroidvania I have ever played. Worse than Dracula at the end of SOTN, even. My last play session of Hollow Knight was a distinctly mediocre experience compared to the fun I had up to that point.
I’m honestly quite surprised that I’m not the only idiot who sat on the bench at Deepnest without a map, without having nail upgrades and without a lantern. For me, I wandered around for multiple hours until I finally found my way up the fungal wasted, and just to be jumpscared by the pit that leads to Deepnest AGAIN, and eventually I had to find my way back to the Mantis Village, probably traumatized lol.
This is a very in-depth analysis that I enjoyed, but I feel like it jumps all around the place. It's strangely ironic how I would say its pacing isn't great. What strikes me as odd is that throughout the video you oscillate between giving huge praise and calling it your favorite game, and nitpicking it so much it would seem like you deeply hate everything about it. There is great truth hidden between the nitpicking; in fact, the game's several updates have adressed some of the issues talked about in this video. I think you might have tried to express what you felt were the weak points and downsides in your favorite game, and that just didn't come across the right way somehow. I agree that the game is far from perfect, but the critique didn't sit well with me most of the time. A big thing I was bothered by is how a large portion of the criticism boiled down to "it was too easy", which is honestly just absurd, it's hard to believe you were being serious. This game isn't stupidly hard, but it is universally regarded as a Very Difficult Game. On your followup video you explain that you were simply asking for more difficulty options for hardcore players like you, and that's totally fair. But I don't feel like that serves as a basis for the criticism here. Anyway, those are my thoughts. It's not the first time I've watched the video, glad I found it again!
Watching this video, it feels weirdly like he was trying to figure out his style. But he clearly knew how to make cleaner critiques by the time he posted this.
Nice video! However, regarding your point about some areas feeling underused, particularly the Hive; Hollow Knight was funded through Kickstarter, and some of the 'mini-areas' would have been full areas if a stretch goal had been reached. This doesn't explain every underused area, but it does put some decisions Team Cherry made into context, like the Hive not having a boss. Additionally, you noted that the ghost fights felt like they were bonus content, and you're not far off! Some of the Kickstarter rewards were getting a character of your own design into the game, either as an NPC or an opponent. The Kickstarter bosses were added as the ghosts so they wouldn't mess with the story too much, I think.
yeah that was weird. Don't get me wrong, I suck at most aspects of hollow knight, but the map wasn't an issue for me to learn and I've only used the charm a handful of times
"On the other end you have samus with the air control of a pregnant cow who miraculously discovers she can fly for a few seconds" I'm laughing way too hard at that
I loved this video. A couple of things, though: 20:17 Technically, Hornet does tell you to "seek the grave in ash," but to your credit, it's rather cryptic and doesn't immediately scream "Kingdom's Edge" to anyone who hasn't already discovered the area (which would be almost no one on their first playthrough). Also, I spent a lot of time exploring during my first playthrough, so backtracking was the first thing I did whenever I got a movement upgrade such as desolate dive, which opens up Crystal Peak and the Resting Grounds, and by extension, Kingdom's Edge. And I actually have to respectfully disagree with your point that the player should start with more movement upgrades. Hollow Knight rewards exploration, and having more mobility in early game would help to highlight that, but it doesn't really take long enough to get the mothwing cloak to warrant adding it to the starting equipment.
wouldnt the game be over in a few hours since you would be able to go almost anywhere? i mean the reason of the movement being progressed is because of backtracking and new areas. like for example when i got the dash i remembered that a grub was unreachable so i went after i got the dash to save him. (rip grub daddy, he will die when the grubs grow up)
@@NuggetOG No. Having a single dash ability would not for some reason make the entire game accessible instantly. And even if it did... So what? BOTW did exactly that and is considered the best game ever fucking made by every idiot with a recording program on their computer. I'd say having access to everything from the jump could even heighten the exploration experience.
i would like to mention that the abyss could have been more fleshed out, but they didnt get to the goal on the kickstarter so they couldnt make it an actual area. you literally were going to go into the lake of void, like you said, and there were going to be multiple bosses. just thought i should add that.
I actually liked that the abyss was simple and easy. It was an odd contrast: This area that seems so dark and deadly is a strange comfort. There's a reason. It's your home.
I agree, yet the Abyss always struck me as the sort of place you're not supposed to spend too much time in. The door that opens with the King's Brand specifically says "We shall enter that place no longer."
if streatch goal was reached, you were gonna ump to the lake and in the dpeths of it, was hiding real horrors, the hardest part of the game and more than 4 bosses. It was called ''a massive expansion''
@@ismetcancelik5052 Damn, if only they'd reached that stretch goal. Ah well, maybe we'll get to see the concepts for those bosses in Silksong.
I heard they were going to put a whole area in the black lake full of bosses and such, but the idea was scrapped in favor of completing the game and moving on with the sequel. I hope they go back to that idea...but I certainly prefer Silk Song over anymore DLC. It would seem greedy to suggest otherwise.
I like to say it as a birthplace because I don’t think that home feels like a betrayal feeling
"I hope there is a mantis lords fight with all 3 of them."
Team cherry:
> "The Hollow Knight is too easy"
> Pure Vessel: "Hello there"
Nosk and the traitor mantis are pretty straight forward
(I think is the lifeblood update): well, hello there
@@tsunamie1015 Still very easy
Pale Champion-Hello There ua-cam.com/video/lfl-pf0SzdE/v-deo.html
@@SpiritofNature nosk is still easy, but I think traitor got a pretty good upgrade
Mantis Lords/Sisters of Battle are the most well-designed boss fight in video game history. Prove me wrong.
I'm gonna go ahead and blame you specifically for the Godmaster fights
Yes
And the bindings as well
this video was made before the grimm troupe, of course he didn't talk about godmaster
@@elijahbradley704 that the joke. Most, if not all, of Joe's criticisms were pretty much directly addressed by the developers in the DLCs, and so the joke is that the devs maybe saw Joe's video and based all the super hard fights and new modes off of his criticisms
@@adamosborne685 true
for those of you who dont get how good of a bargain 15 usd is, team cherry (the games devs) have received several requests to _increase_ the price.
Tht is why I bought the game on several platforms!
This game is absolutely a $30 game minimum. It has more content than many full $60 games, and the main reason it's priced so low is that there's this stigma surrounding kiddy-looking 2D games.
@@jerrodshack7610 nah its priced low for availability
@@jerrodshack7610 it has less bugs than fallout 76
@@BarioIDLno it doesnt
"I am gonna call it a sword because that's what it is" proceeded to call it nail through out the video.
Hey I called it a sword at least two times after that! I think I went with "sword nail" too, haha.
Literally unwatchable!
Yeah I'm gonna have to unsubscribe cause of that, absolutely shameful.
"Pro" youtubers
He also never specified what kind of nail, which left me highly confused and lost throughout the video. /s
Fingernails, Toenails, and fastener types of nails, are all different beasts, and say a lot about the person using it. Shove a fastener type of nail into an enemy, and it's almost biblical. Swing a Giant's toenail into an enemy, and you're a crude scavenger, who probably smells.
I think Dreamers were not bosses, because Game Developers wanted to make a point that Dreamers are not enemies or villains. They are heroes, in fact, they sacrificed their lives in attempt to protect the world and they were happy to finally be released from eternal service, because player had proved to be worthy vessel to replace a weak one.
I think fighting them would've been better. It would show them *testing* if you're worthy enough to carry that burden.
@@BiscuitAWitch Well before killing Monomon and Luren you do have a boss battle against their guardians, and i'm sure that enough was a good evident for them to trust that you were a worthy vessel
While they’re role in this scheme by the Pale King is laid bare, their opinion on the state of Hallownest is divided.
I’m not entirely sure which one (or it might be a conglomeration of their thoughts) is being vocal about the plan to seal the radiance *clearly* not working, but at least one of them remains adamant about remaining as a seal, another wanting the knight to fulfill their duty and replace the previous hollow knight, and another possibly remaining neutral, or at least, not willing to discuss this issue.
Point I’m trying to make: if at least one or two wish to remain a seal, it would have been nice to fight them and win over their favor
@@thirdeye9698 Monomon is the one who is implied to be vocal in the plan not working, you can find similarities in her stream-of-consciousness tablets in her archives and the speech by that Watcher. Lurien seems the most adamant about the seals remaining intact, while Herrah seems more neutral, as she only did this to get a daughter from the Pale King (Hornet).
I mean hornet is a boss fight
low difficulty he says, as he does trial of fools with a non-upgraded nail...
And four masks
P
@@aasdkoaskdasddad6515 E
Probably didn't go through path of pain either..
God I can’t even imagine trying to do that
Re: difficulty. I don't think you fully get this: you're really, really good at video games. The vast majority of game-likers aren't as good as you. You're very talented. I know you know this, but I don't know if you know HOW true it is.
When you're doing Steel Soul runs in 3 hours, Trial of the Fool with 5 masks, you find the Radiance easy, you can do all bosses on radiant with just a few tries, you are 3+ standard deviations above the mean for video game players. You are an outlier. It is a little surprising to me that you don't seem to recognize just how *much* better than average and even above average gamers you are. I get the same vibe from your Dark Souls videos, where you talk about challenging bosses you had to try a few times to beat, when adults I know who have been playing games since they were kids, who are "good" at games relative to "normal" casual players, grind out 10, 20, 30 attempts at some of those same bosses.
Hollow Knight starts slow to teach people how to play. For folks who have already played not just Metroidvanias but thousands of hours of games, who have internalized game logic and mechanics, yeah, you could start out with more skills... But that can be super intimidating to folks. Beyond casual and new players, even most of us #TrueGamers don't have your skillset. The difficulty ramp you say you'd like to see in this game would make it inaccessible to, I'd wager, a third or so of its current fan/playerbase. A lot of HK folks say it was one of their first games or first "hard" games.
IMO, you should keel this in mind when writing your scripts. Difficulty options? Sure. At least NG+, like Dark Souls. But redesigning the pacing of video games to be so difficult as to push out a third of current players (but in the process creating a sincere, difficult challenge for you!) is arguably not a good move. I know that you're not actually advocating for this, but, I could see some folks I know who struggled with HK and literally don't yet have the physical capability to do the Radiance *feel* like that's what you're asking for.
Hollow Knight it my mom's first game ever :) if the intro section were any more complicated there's no way she'd be able to keep up. Part of what's great about Hollow Knight is how approachable it is in gameplay mechanics/controls, music, and visual design
I mean, I've seen many people at a stand I worked at in a game convention failing for A LOT of times the tutorial jump section in the first five minutes. I didn't even think it was possible lol. But yeah, I like listening to these videos out of curiosity, but i don't like at all most of the things he says about difficulty and design decisions.But these are his opinions, so.. good for him that he's good with games. now I'm going for the 20th attempt for ornstein and smough
completely and utterly correct in every way, he thinks he's casual or whatever but goes on to apologize for being eleatest, it's not that the game is easy, it's that he has MASTERED it and craves more, more game, more challenge, more difficulty.
@@federicosavorani6320 The jumps are weird to get used to at first, tbf
Literally!! I bought the game because of this video, I have 170 hours into it now and I still haven’t beat the radiance or third colosseum, so his “its too easy” falls on deaf ears for me. Im not terrible at the game I have an 100% steel soul run and all the speedrun achievements, just this game is actually extremely difficult even for 170 hours of playing it.
Disagree you should start with the dash.
I loved the very beginning where your abilities are so limited. It gives you a sense of vulnerability, whilst also teaching you how to master the base mechanics.
exactly what i felt like during my playthrough!
And you feel awesome by the end of the game
Yes. Joseph Anderson usually make mistakes like that. Because he compares the mechanics to one game with another and dont try to understand the choices of each developers. What works well on one game it doesnt work on another. Megaman X is not a metroidvania, the new abilities helps but they are not essencial and as you say, they are not lessons and overall the Megaman games are shorter.
I totally agree with your comment from a year ago! The dash is lock until after hornet fight for lore related reason, you get it from another vessel who probably died from failing hornet's trial, I really like how TC has done with the slow upgrade at the beginning that built up so much expectation and atmosphere. Also the first few boss fights would felt so much different with the dash, adding it as default would ruin that experience in my opinion.
Interesting seeing this opinion coming in so much, it's one of the more debated things I've seen on HK. I personally think the game feels so empty without it that I agree with Joe but I concede to Team Cherry's decision to make it an upgrade since it's not a deal breaker to go without it initially. The potential 1-4ish hours of gameplay (on the first run) where you go without it just feel so slow and mechanically boring that it put me off a few different times trying to play through until I finally sat down and decided I was gonna give it a fair shot, and getting the dash and wall jump are where I finally "clicked" with the game's mechanics. Imo, it just deters people who want something as fast-paced and responsive as the game ends up being to have to play without essential abilities for so long, especially since the boss experience is contingent on what abilities and upgrades you have when you challenge them.
Do you consider things like "lore" or "atmosphere" part of these critiques? The Dreamers being passive made perfect sense within the world's logic, even if in the meta-structure of game design it's a bait. The relative emptiness of places like Basin and Abyss felt eerie at first, and then simply lonely.
It seems like these things weigh a lot more on my judgements of games than for you, but maybe I'm just misinterpreting.
Yeah, I know. It feels like he didnt get anything from the main story...
I have noticed that his critiques are exclusively focused on the mechanical experience. For example, when he suggests improvements, he always talks from a mechanical/mastery point of view, and he mostly disregards narrative and atmosphere (like his criticism of the Abyss here: emptiness is a key theme of that place, and he treats it as an oversight).
He said it was about the art of the game, but ignored story, and got mad when you need to learn some lore(relic sale)
I do agree with you. But who captures you in Deepnest before Herrah??
@@cosapocha the weavers
it's incredible how many of the critiques in this video were improved with subsequent DLC that came out
"traitor lord is too easy" > new moveset
"no boss at the end of hive" > hive knight
"i want more mantis lords" > mantis sisters fight
"no spider boss in deepnest" > nosk
"no end-game geo sink" > divine/unbreakable charms
Wait, was Nosk added in an update? I thought he was there from the beginning.
@@jakeinator21 He was always there but he was ridiculously weak. The lifeblood DLC made him far harder and a way better boss.
This is top comment material
You forgot:
"Hollow Knight too easy" > Pure Vessel
"Bosses not complex enough" > Ascendent fights
@@thegreatpufferfish9638 No, Hollow Knight was intended to be easy because you have to beat him to fight Radiance. Otherwise it would have taken much too long if it were to be a difficult, long fight. Although difficulty is sort of irrelevant as you do get a full heal before the Radiance but I digress. The point is he is just as difficult as he needed to be.
“I don’t think very highly of the lore in hollow knight”
*Mossbag wants to know your location*
Late but *mossbag
Hope he doesn’t take interest in Dark Souls lore in general then, since it’d be REALLY hypocritical to do so.
@@unioneye1087 would it? hollowknight is inspired by dark souls heavily(so much that it copies in a lot of places) but cant deliver the lore as well as dark souls nor have as interesting lore, it makes sense to like one and not the other.
@@penguinwolf3330 I find hollow knights lore and way of telling it to be fascinating and I’m glad it isn’t spoonfed to you like a lot of other games would. One of the biggest parts and important mechanics of the game is exploring, which is how you unlock not only new abilities and areas, but also how you unlock the lore, through lore tablets, character dialogue, and background art. As you traverse through the game, you slowly, not only open up new areas, but learn what happened. Questions you had at the beginning, get answered later on and bring even more questions, that may or may not be answered by the end of the game and the lore being somewhat mysterious and not fully known for the not only the main character, but for you the player, is part of the charm and atmosphere of the game. Which fits, the main character doesn’t fully know what they’re look for as they uncover this desolate and crumbling underground and claim past memories.
If we immediately knew most of the lore and plot of Hollow Knight in the first few hours of playing, the rest of the playtime exploring and uncovering new lore tablets, characters, and new rooms that give clues and context to the story wouldn’t matter or be as interesting as much, each new discovery of this exploration game would be dulled down by the player already knowing what happened and could possibly lead the player to rush through the remainder of the game. Idk, I just feel like slowly uncovering the lore fits this specific game perfectly, given how you’re also encouraged to explore and uncover new things, as well as the main character
@@ghostlyexe not saying its bad in hollowknight, I like the style it is presented too. Thing is, dark souls presents its lore the same way and is more in depth, and many of the events and concepts in HK's lore are from dark souls.
When you said that the trial of the fool became a THIRTY MINUTE fight with no nail upgrades, it sort of bothers me. Of course I know that you mean the time elapsed during the battle, but for me, when I had fully upgraded everything, the fight itself took 10 minutes, and actually being able to beat it once took me two weeks. You're really good at the game, which isn't a bad thing, just remember that almost all players struggle a lot more than you, and actually like the difficulty of the game
Yes! especially for players (like me) who have never really played games like hollow knight. I have yet to beat the false knight and just break the wall once I can because it was incredibly difficult. The game is incredible and though many of his points are incredibly valid, for many new players making some of the fights and stuff harder just would make the game impossible and frustrating.
I feel like half of this critique is just him flexing. I mean, some of his criticisms had merit but he kept coming back to harping on how easy fights were for him. It got pretty obnoxious.
I mean, I'm glad their is the Godhome boss rush stuff in the expacs now, but it seemed like if you cared so much about difficulty, you could easily replay the game without getting masks or shards. Your first playthrough didn't need the super tough mode.
@@davidrich27 yea he really likes flexing. If you have a history of playing a lot of games and have become so used to learning new games then it's pretty obvious you're going to adapt to new game mechanics much quicker than someone who doesn't have that history. At least now he has godhome but he probably says those are too easy too lol
@@zorab.4065 I didn't really 'grow up playing video games' - like, I played some games as a kid, but apart from THPS2 I was not very good and I liked it much more to watch my brother play, who was much better than me. I only got back into gaming as an adult a few years ago, and even then I mostly play artsy indie games, puzzle games, platforming games without a combat system. In fact I tend to dislike any combat or violence mechanics in games and will never play a game in which my only way of interacting with the world is through the barrel of a gun.
So Hollow Knight was really fucking hard for me. I gave up after I couldn't beat the False Knight. I came back a year later and only beat Hornet after literally dozens of tries. Same with the Mantis Lords. The boss after that I said fuck it and started playing with cheats and that's the only reason I was able to finish the game. I wanted to experience the entire game, and I'm really glad I did, but I really wish there'd been difficulty levels and an easy mode where maybe you have more masks or enemies deal less damage, because it sucks when you're forced to use cheats because otherwise you literally won't be able to experience the game.
@@kiiturii after playing Godhome, I'm not entirely sure I want Silksong. If that level of difficulty is the direction the developers want to take their creations in, I don't want to get invested. I'll be waiting for the reviews before I spend any money on a Team Cherry game.
I'd like to point out that perhaps Ancient Basin being rather empty was intended. It's the only place in the game where there is no ambience, it's dead silent. It's unique feature is that it doesn't have one. It's meant to feel hollow and abandoned, forgotten at the foundation of the world, and that lack of a unique, defining feature is a genius way to create that feeling.
Ehhh on their Kickstarter page, the next backer goal was an expansion of the Ancient Basin, but it wasn't met.
It was an expansion of the abyss
I actually liked the fact that you don't fight the dreamers. I went through all of Deepest expecting Herrah to be this super hard boss and then I reached her, invaded her dream and killed her while she was helpless. It was jarring to me because my impression of the dreamers was that they were the "bad guys", so I felt like my morales were challenged and that maybe I wasn't the "good guy". It added a layer of gray onto what seemed like a pretty black and white game to start with.
Yeah it feels like the game makes it unclear what your morality is on several occasions like that. I really liked it. The first Hornet fight and the Dreamers appearing to you at the Resting Grounds also felt that way.
I agree, I was relieved in the Fog Canyon when Quirrel told me that the dreamers wanted it. Overall all that buildup to the ending was really cool.
Or how you kill the false knight, and in order to put the maggots on your monster list, you have to kill the helpless and innocent ones that cry over their sibling. I felt actually sick doing that, that I stopped for a day.
I feel the game does a great job at making you feel remorse. I don’t know about others, but i had a hard time killing even normal enemies, especially that miner in the beginning of crystal peak, because they’re just normal people, they don’t want to fight you, they HAVE to.
I know this is late but i love how you are the darkness (hollow) and you are fighting the light (the radiance and orange light). it’s totally against the grain and makes the story more challenging.
I actually never saw the grub quest ending as depressing just for the sake of being depressing as I actually noticed the achievement name and the grubs still being alive on my first playthrough. My trust in the grubs being the sole sweet part of the game didn't waver and I realized its most likely just a part of their natural life cycle, not the father cannibalizing them just for the sake of being macabre.
Exactly 💪 participation in weird bug culture 🥰
Maybe you already know it by now but the grubfather did it to protect his children from the infection so they can become butterflies and hatch. So he sacrificed himself for his kids
Yeah I always saw the grubs as just a funny side mission, the end reveal just a joke the game pulled. The grubs are still alive
@@snowman3456 grubflies not butterflies
@@b1battledroid9824grubberflies, actually!
And now, the traitor lord (as well as nosk) is a fully fleged boss, the hive have been revamped into a better area and actually have a boss at the end, and each DLC seems foccussed on giving more end game fight and challenge, like the NK and the path of pain. Seems like team cherry is trying to adress the few flaws of HK.
Right, I was so confused. I only just beat Hollow Knight and have decided I can now watch critiques of it. When he mentioned Traitor Lord not even being a boss, I was gawping thinking 'did we play the same game? Traitor Lord killed me more than any other boss, and that was despite having Cloth "helping".'
Thanks for clarifying that an update changed the boss. I'm interested in seeing what the boss used to be like
He only dealt one mask of damage per attack. The attack with that orange wind and the one where he "punches" the ground didn't exist. Just as Joe said, he was simply a oversized traitor mantis.
@@maximillionpegasus5160 Haha same here. Traitor Lord was the only boss to cause me to rage (well so far...haven't done all the postgame stuff yet). I actually like the sound of the older version better. The 2-damage attacks just felt like inflated difficulty, especially given how hard it is to heal vs him.
I'm usually not a fan of grinding out really challenging boss fights in games, but it was fun to do the Godseeker DLC. I think many of the upsides to the boss battles are ones that I only saw once doing that DLC, as it makes the game challenging even with end game equipment.
Maximilion Pegasus that’s why you should always check the videos release date before watching a game wich is out for over a year now
It has been 0 days, 0 hours and 0 minutes since I learned there's a breakable wall in the elevator ride on Soul Sanctum. I have finished this game 11 times between three platforms
Same
I just got to this in the video and my mind actually broke for a moment.
theres a secret area above the vessel fragment section left of the elevator in forgotten crossroads
@Pogsii wait what
It has been 0 days, 0 hours and 0 minutes since I learned that the up soul upgrade is in the abyss
I'm sure you've heard this a lot of times Jo, but in a lot of your critiques, I've noticed you complain about things involving difficulty in a way that's always surprising to me : you're always too good at the games and there's one point or another where it's too easy for you.
I can sometimes agree with those points when I hear them, but some other times it's too much of a point to make. Almost sounds like you're bragging or something, even though you have no reason to do so. I'm referring mostly to what you said about Radiance. To me this fight was insanely hard, considering you need to kill Hollow Knight before it for every attempt, and even though it's the true final boss, I didn't even imagine what was waiting for me in the Godmaster DLC.
Most people don't have your level at games. The fact that you did a 100% steel soul speedrun in under 3 hours without even being proud of yourself is enough proof. What I mean is that whenever you make a statement about challenge in games, please keep in mind that some people like me are being constantly crushed for hours by these challenges to a point where they won't ever believe you're being objective. And some people, like my girlfriend who wanted to walk through this game by herself, with my guidance, could never pass the mantis level because jumps were too tricky and enemies were too quick. I have never done this, but I actually told her to stop because this would just be suffering for her who's too inexperienced with platformers and quick reaction games. Admittedly she was inexperienced, but what I'm saying here is that you're actually too good at games compared to most people who are already considered very good at games. Hollow Knight is probably perfectly fine with how it is in terms of difficulty because it satisfies a lot of people who pass the first test of interest and dedication and get into its design and gameplay.
I hope this didn't sound too preposterous, I really like your videos, I love listening to what you say and agree with you on a lot of things, it's just this type of criticism that always sounds like you're up there on top of your skill tower.
skutchi i agree.he is really really good at the game.
"please keep in mind that some people like me are being constantly crushed for hours by these challenges to a point where they won't ever believe you're being objective"
He's not trying to be objective, he's talking about his own experiences with the game. If he thinks a change might have improved his experience, he's going to say so. Should he not mention something he would have liked to be different just because other people like it the way it is?
@@Bane_questionmark You're right, he's not trying to be objective (he said it himself in his last video), but I'm not blaming him for telling his opinion. In this one, he explains that to him, the Radiance fight was too easy. It's his opinion (actually it's not really an opinion it's his experience, and he made his whole opinion based on it), so it doesn't matter if, for you, the difficulty is fine or excessive.
But then why mention something like that in a critique? It's not objective, and everyone will have a different experience on it, some people will beat Radiance first try and some will never beat it and have the game ruined for them because of it. This particular type of judgement on a game is different, because you literally just say "I wish it was more on this side of the spectrum (harder) and less on that side (easier)". I'm 100% sure that Jo knows he is really good at this game, more than probably a good 95% of all players. In that case it's obviously not a very insightful commentary to make, since making the fight harder would just make even more people unhappy.
He did beat the game 4 different times. Gaining the high level of skill he has would be easy once you played it enough.
Maybe Hollow Knight combat just didn't click for you. That's my experience at least. I often find so-called hard games easy, but in Hollow Knight I struggle a lot. In particular when it comes to managing multiple, projectile shooting enemies while in midair like you do in the Colisseum. That kind of thing is difficult to account for in a review, because you can't easily quantify it. How difficult something feels is a measure of how much you have to change to overcome it, so if you're already up to the task, you may never notice the challenge.
It's honestly a bit infuriating how good this guy is. He's like "yeah, after the last nail upgrade, the radiance is easy" And here I am unable to beat the radiance fully upgraded
I feel like the critic should have been "you need to have an option to change the difficulty" and not "this game should be harder". Im more of a casual player and do not spend a lot of time playing games. But I still enjoy them! I appreciate it when games have options to change the difficulty for more casual players. I don't think it's right to make a game only playable for more experienced gamers. It pushes newcomers away 😐
@@derkatzenmensch220 There's a problem with implementing difficulty options, and that's that new players who have heard the game is 'very hard' may take the easy option. This goes away from the Dev's visions for what the game is meant to be, what it's meant to feel like. I like how Celeste handles this, calling their 'easy mode': which is basically a bunch of options like infinite hp, infinite stamina, things that fundamentally change the game; putting those in a setting called trainer/accessibility mode immediately tells players "this is not an easy mode. This is not how the Dev's intend you to play the game. This is for people who for reasons, cannot play the game". Honestly tho its the Dev's call. Have fun
Also there are far harder games than hollow knight, hk is more about memorising patterns rather than millisecond reactions. :)
@@joeg2jerry20 hollow knight wasn't hard for me personally, it was challenging but doable, im just saying that if it was harder people might drop the game which is worse than people getting a different experience from what the devs intended. If a game has options for difficulty I always try every option to see what's challenging but not impossible for me. it's such a shame when people drop a good game because they can't play it :/
The hardest difficulty for expierenced players could be just as challenging as an easy difficulty for someone who hasn't picked up any game yet. I like having options to make my experience the best it could be. People play how they want anyways. Like skipping the story / lore, mods etc. I feel like players should play in a way that's the most fun for them and not completely follow the devs intention if they don't want to. I know it's the choice of the dev if they want a really difficult game, I just feel like a lot of people might miss out on good games that way
@@derkatzenmensch220 I agree with you on that a lot of people do put these types of games off due to their initial difficulty. But hey, Silksong's (hopefully) coming, let's see what TC does this time
@@derkatzenmensch220 but that's literally what he said: 50:00
"Sometimes you can break this principle by becoming so durable, or achieve such high damage output, that you can ignore what the boss is doing. This is fine, and even a welcome feature in some games, because it can become an alternative method of progressing for some players who struggle with pattern recognition (...). The issue arises when it ceases to be a choice. When you upgrade yourself without realizing what you've just done -- that you have broken the fights for yourself, in your favor, and have no way of reverting back to a lower amount of health or damage, so that the encounter once again adheres to the principle"
It's clearly a call for the developers to add a way to revert back the acquired character upgrades. At the player's will, of course.
i'm actually really happy we didnt get everything in the beginning and were kept rewarded for spending our time in the game till the very end. BOTW, which is a good game, gave us almost everything from the very beginning which made it get repetitive a lot sooner.
I agree to a certain extent. Yes, in HK, it was insanely fun to discover new abilities that let you reach new areas as well as obtain new movement options, but that’s the point of the game. It’s a metroidvania. Whereas in BotW, yes you may start out with every rune right from the start, sure, but it’s the way you use them that evolves along your journey. It rewards experimenting with the basic tools given to you to create some truly incredible combos and clever setups to defeat foes. I understand that for those who don’t want to experiment, then yeah, BotW’s moveset can get old after a while. But that’s not the player base the game was trying to cater to, I guess?
@l L whats AOC?
@l L Or literally true Zelda games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, i always saw BOTW as a walking simulator with a form of game hacking, like the runes being obtainable right at the start of the game 🤷🏼♂️.
@@DesTr069 Zelda games have similarities with metroidvanias, the dungeons were pretty unique thanks to that, until BOTW came out and ruined everything (still can deliver fun on it's own).
@@saricubra2867 true, BotW dungeons were definitely underwhelming, I think everyone can agree on that. Hopefully the sequel addresses that, though
My favorite part of Hollow Knight was when I got the wall jump and thought “what happens if I try to climb up to where I started at?” I was expecting to find a ledge just big enough for the set piece jump at the beginning and nothing else. Imagine my surprise when I got up there, a title card appeared, and suddenly I had found a new area exactly where I would’ve never expected to find one. It was an awesome moment, and really made me feel like I was exploring the world in a unique way.
This was a game I bought for $10. Thought I beat it at 20 hours, then at 60, by the time I was done I had 110 hours in the game. I felt I robbed someone so I did something I never do, I bought the physical collectors edition. One of the only indie games I love with all my heart.
Same
I bought the soundtrack for the same reason lol
i feel like i need to give them more money
same i got my copy half off, after like 2 hours of playing, i feel kinda bad ngl
Same, I bought all the DLCs and soundtrack because I actually felt like I robbed developers lmao
“I didn’t pay attention to the story”
*fury and confusion intensifies*
there was no story, just lore
@@seemoore9175 No, there is. There is a lot more lore than story and the lore contextualizes the story but your interactions with Hornet and the Dreamers and your quest to destroy/become the Hollow Knight (or kill the Radiance) is a story
It is typical for these types of games (souls-esk story telling) to just be missed easily, yet they always end up having the most depth.
Eh Hollow Knight is my favorite game but I never really cared for the story that much
@@a-ha4940 but the lore is brilliant and carries the story by being so good
“On your first play through you’re looking at about 20 hours”
Me: *laughs in 150 hours*
edit: I love how wholesome all the replies are lol. Thanks for not fighting in my mentions
I wanna like it but it’s at 69
@@muffatoons but I will lol
Just finished 1st playthrough.
46 hours.
First play through took me 90+ hours because I couldn’t find green path and spent like 15 hours in the crossroads
To be fair though, before I beat the radiance I took my time doing a bunch of dlc and collecting all the charms so there’s that.
Side note, the Grubfather eats the Grubs to act as a cocoon for them so they can become Grubberflies. You get the Grubberfly's Elegy charm from this and the achievement Metamorphosis, clear hints the Grubfather isn't evil.
Joesph: There’s not a lot of lore.
mossbag and Rusty: allow us to introduce ourselves.
Angry Ccmaci noises
I was a bit confused when you said the reveal at the end of the grub storyline was "grim and dark"
He didnt just eat them like a sadist, if you stand next to him you can hear the grubs inside are fine. This is actually part of the life cycle of a few real world insects, where the parent acts as a breeding cocoon. hes allowing his children to turn into grubberflies.
(still a bit dark since they kill their father but hey thats kinda how reproduction is)
Well that’s not at all what most people got out of that, if true I like that a lot better, but it’s definitely set up to give the impression that he eat them all. Maybe that’s the point.
@@c.j.3404 i feel it should be somewhat obvious when the achievement you get for rescuing all the grubs is called "Metamorphosis" and the inclusion of the charm you get as a reward, "Grubberfly's Elegy" which looks like a grub with wings.
@@QBeeIII i would recommend watching rt games play though when he gets to that point, i think he represents the average player pretty well, and both he and everyone in the chat (most of hoom had played the game before) actively did not get that at all, and consdering its hidden away as a achievement (that could actively gust be dark sarcasm) and a not very esey to hear noise, then ya i would say that second twist is hidden and most players didn't get it.
@@c.j.3404 fair enough 👍
@@c.j.3404 I remember that and agree his playthrough and chat represents most peoples reaction
Is it possible that Radiance (or as you put it "...the Sun you have to fight...") is just a kid with a magnifying glass, burning ants in his backyard?
holy shit
Wow, that is one of the most creative comments I've ever seen! Nice!
Hazzanger shut up! XD
Ant bully X hollow knight crossover confirmed
that'd be a weird-ass looking kid what with his moth feathers(?) and all
50:44 I definitely had a different experience there. I can't imagine fighting the late-game bosses without the fully upgraded nail, masks, charms, and soul tanks. For context, I enjoy hard games, but I'm not exactly "good" at them.
Yeah, I think the criticism he makes of the difficulty should be taken with an ocean's worth of salt. He doesn't seem to realize how far above average he is at this game....
Honestly there are several bosses I had to put on hold and upgrade my character to be able to fight later on. I just got my pure nail and I still cant get past the first phase of the radiance. Im fully willing to admit im not great at this game but after persevering and getting better stuff, I was able to get through every challenge I encountered at some point. Yet to him it seems like the game was never a challenge to begin with. Its fine being good at the game but the critique about the difficulty only applies to the minority of god like gamers like him. Honestly only option in cases like this is to have Different difficulty modes tho im not sure this fits hollow knight's current game design.
@@juniperrodley9843 You can be doing the same things he's doing on just your second playthrough. The bosses get wayyyyyyy easier after beating them just once. His suggestion was to make the final nail upgrade toggleable, not to remove it. This makes it an option for new players still but also lets people later in the game disable it if they want to, it's a win-win.
same man same
Is there much of a chance of a '1 year later' style of video for Hollow Knight, like you did for Fallout 4? There's been quite a bit of DLC since the game's release, which actually dealt quite a bit with some of your criticism (more challenging combat, platforming, etc.)
I believe he said on stream a few times that he hasn"t played any of the game's DLC yet, and also that he's working quite hard on his witcher video (and i think he hasn't started playing witcher 3 yet!), so I wouldn't expect a video on hollow knight for quite a while.
Welp never mind he just said he had a "one year later" style of video on Hollow Knight close to finished. Sorry about giving incorrect information.
If you hadn't seen he posted one today
15:59 “paid expansion” team chearry: we dont do that here
The only paid expansion turned out to be a different game
Silksong is kinda a paid expansion
@@sanjoog47 no it's not at all. It's literally a whole different game with a whole different story line. They've said that they wanted to make it accessible so you don't need to have played the original hollow knight to keep up with the story in silksong which means it's very far from what expansions are
kiiturii yeah I know I meant that, you pay for it and it expands on hollow knight lol
@@sanjoog47 no it doesn't that's the point. It's made to be a stand alone game not an expansion for hollow knight
i saw this video and decided to play the game. 25 hours in i came back and rewatched the video in utter disbelief at the difficulty suggestions. probably the hardest game ive ever played in 20 years
He played the game when it was on an earlier version. By the time this video was made updates and DLC to the game was already added. The updates made the game more difficult by buffing some bosses and nerfing charms.
@@BiscuitAWitch
Oh.. oh no... So that means I am playing it difficult 24/7
@@MillyKKitty We all are
@@BiscuitAWitch
I still havent even beated the mantis lords
@@MillyKKitty It could help to have nail arts. Otherwise, it's all about practice--you can do it!!
Aside from maybe the dream challenges, probably disagreed with you in nearly every aspect of this critique. You play a game 3-4 tmes and then complain that the level design is too familiar, that the dash and wall jump should be part of the base move set and that combat is too easy. I think there is a potential link there...
I appreciate your commitment to thoroughness and your willingness to lay yourself bare in so many words. I connect with you as a writer and a critic on a more personal level since you don't use a lot of jargon but I think your experience and skill level are so far beyond mine that your criticism over difficulty is just moot. I don't think some of these things are a fault of game design. I think Cherry has an ebb and flow to the game that makes the pacing great. Or at least, they designed the game to be open enough to allow an ebb and flow to take place.
My most recent stretch of the game was beating the dreamers and no, I don't think fighting the (Abyss) Watcher Knights and then fighting its dreamer is a good idea. That fight for me was HELL. It was the first time I gave up and went to go specifically to hunt more masks and charms because I couldn't win that fight no matter how hard I tried. Even after upgrading my nail and health and using a charm set up to boost my health and healing speed, it still took me a long time to win but if I then had to fight the watcher himself after that? No man. Just no.
I get it, difficulty is a... well... difficult topic. You're an experienced gamer in these arenas and I am DEFINITELY not. I love Metroidvanias and I love Hollow Knight. I SUCK at it though and only rise to meet its challenge after much trial and error and I mean... it is a TRIAL of my errors. I will say that I don't consider any of the enemies to be unfair though. The teleporting mages have a wisp of smoke showing where they are going so it's not quite so random.
Ultimately though, I like this critique because I like you but MAN I haven't disagreed with you this much in awhile.
He literally compare with the dash problem in Megaman, where he wants the dash as soon as possible whenever he plays the game AGAIN. Obviously it feels weird when you create a new savefile in HK and can't dash because you got used to it, but it make so much sense for your first experience. Then when you are playing for the 2nd time you can grab the upgrades faster because you know where to go. I don't see the point of this critique. Giving the player the upgrades right from the start would reduce the rewards for exploring such large areas. Then his critique would simply be "huh the game is not rewarding me"
About difficulty: there's a ton of people who claim the game is hard. Who would have thought games feels more easy for people who live by playing them (of people who just play a lot every day)? HK is way harder than most games in the market, but I think is super well balanced. Obviously some will learn faster than others, but apart from the Godhome challenges, the mais story bosses and enemies can be defeated if you try and leard, thus giving you a sense of acomplishment. Nightmare King Grimm basically killed me in the first few seconds of the fight. I couldn't hear the music because of the double damage sounds! When I finally beat him I realized I only took 3 hits from him the entire fight.
Damn, I have over 150 hours in this game and I didn’t even realize that the teleporting enemies give off smoke
Padré bruh, same
@@brenosulzbacher Exactly. The first three areas are basically there to teach you how to use the default jump, the wall climb, and the moth wing before it freaking combines all of that in the City of Tears.
I actually entered Howling Cliffs in a third way - I decided to superdash from the top of the Crystal Peak to see what will happen. It really demonstrated how game is great at rewarding exploration - it feels really rewarding to find a secret reward in a non-obvious place.
It's weird, when I super dash from the crown I just get teleported into a hole and fall back to the mines.
I don't know if you still care, but I think he dashed from the part with the elevator back to dirtmouth
gabal I also did that
I actually visited there right after Greenpath. I believe there's a breakable wall that opens a way there.
"on repeated plays i found the health and damage were far too op"
me struggling through with all upgrades:
uh yeh, too ez
It was like that for me when I played Samus Returns. First playthrough some bosses killed me a dozen times each but on a second run, I didn't die more than twice on a boss.
that appears to be true for every video game in existence
Whenever you refer to difficulty in your videos, you always speak as if your experience with it is the only experience.
Hollow knight IS a hard game.
But you're very good at it. 90% of the playerbase will have a harder time with the game than you and you don't ever acknowledge this, in all of your videos
90% of the playerbase legally qualifies as mentally disabled and should spend their time mastering concepts such as tying their shoes, safely boiling water to make meals, and applying for disability compensation instead of playing games that are intended for players with the dexterity and brain power that have developed beyond a 6-year-old's capabilities.
Joseph's skillset he brings should place him firmly in the average/above-average area. He mentions recognizing difficulty in obstacles, but understands how to adjust to overcome them, this is exactly how the average person will experience things. Someone well above average in the 90th percentile will struggle to recognize the difficulty in the first place because their reflexes and perception are so sharp. Someone who struggles to adjust their play to overcome the challenges is well below average and they are better served watching a movie or some of the movie-games that are popular now.
How much of a fucking elitist can you be? Not more than this guy above, probably.
Do you listen to yourself? If you find this hard you're literally mentally handicapped? What?
Milktube r/iamverysmart
The legal qualifications are objectively clear. You have not offered a single argument against my claims, only ad-homs and mentioned that you are incredulous. I am not claiming to be highly skilled myself, or disparaging anyone who is lacking. Nor do I think anyone who is highly skilled is a "better" person somehow. Not a single shred of elitism. Derisively telling people to "git gud" doesn't benefit them or encourage them toward areas they will find the most satisfaction in. If people struggle to adapt to challenge then games like this are not for them, I only recommended they avoid frustration and encourage pursuits that will bring them happiness instead.
Milktube 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
You were wrong about the Grubfather, he doesn’t eat the grubs, if he did then you wouldn’t hear the grubs inside, and he is using his body as a or cocoon so all of his grubs can grow up safe in a warm environment you literally get an achievement when you get all the grubs with that reveal called metamorphosis.
Edit: thanks for the likes guys! This is my most liked comment! Have a good day :)
He vored them lmao.
He is sacrificing himself like the mother gruzma.Once they are ready they will bust out of him and he will die
redoddish exactly
They metamorphose into his feces.
Was looking for this comment, thanks. He got that one wrong.
Talking about slopes.
Believe it or not programming a platformer with slopes make the whole thing a lot LOT more complicated. It seems Team Cherry cut their losses in both the art and code departments and did what they could.
Personally I don't mind. As someone who knows the ins and outs of basic platformer coding I understand completely why they made that decision and sympathize with them.
After all they are only like 3 people + a composer.
Oh that is very interesting! Could you go more in depth about that? Also I thought they had 5 people?
you kidding me
they would have had to spend so much work on a slope it would have distracted form their QUALITY WORK
I know I'm late, but I'm answering to this anyway. They had 3 people designing the game, +1 composer and a person helping with the marketing.
In reddit, where they answered a lot of questions from fans some time ago, a person asked "How can you, being only 2 people, make a game SO GOOD? I'm truly amazed, seriously."
And they replied "Hey thanks! We should say though, Hollow Knight was also developed with our friend David Kazi, who did a lot of the technical under-pinnings for us. All things that go right over our heads.
We also had Chrisopher Larkin doing the amazing sound and score, and Matthew 'Leth' Griffin coordinating all sorts of marketing, testing and businessy stuff from his home in California."
www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6rvds8/we_are_team_cherry_the_developers_of_hollow/
Also, english is not my first language and I'm still learning it, so I apologize for possible mistakes I might have made.
There are slopes in the game already, actually. I'm bad at the game and modded the game for invincibility, because I'm a pussy. The slopes appear only on the spikes in the broken elevator shaft. And they do function like slopes, you can run up and down them, it's great. You do kinda slide down them at all times, like they're made of ice, but that would be an easy fix, unless the inner working of the code is real fuckin' pastalike.
@@aidengray3998 > "that would be an easy fix"
Hollow Knight uses Unity's rigidbody2D (essentially box2d) for its movement (Source: twitter.com/teamcherrygames/status/946171459440803840?lang=en). Implementing platformer style movement on slopes without the sliding down slopes behavior is really hard in a realistic physics engine like this--I know because I've tried to do it myself in Unity. If Team Cherry were to add slopes to the game, they would probably need to write an entirely new movement system that doesn't use the physics engine.
I like how I've fallen in love with a game I haven't even played.
play it!
i’ve watched a ton of youtube playthroughs and got the game about last week
i still enjoyed it even though i knew just about every twist and the lore
I just keep rage quitting lol
The game is incredible! Truly an amazing experience. I’m currently practicing AR so I can beat the final pantheon. Wish me luck!
@@neuro1073 Good luck!
Dan Zaripov thanks! I actually beat it on practice mode for the first time today! Once I get a hang of this, I’ll finally be able to take it on!
its mind boggling to see games like this have this amount of content , replayability , depth of mechanics , priced at 15 $ and other shitty , cash grab games like star wars battlefront go at 60 $
Edson i respectgully disagree
Robert Dimarco which one ?
Of all the games you chose battlefront. How about uncharted or hzd or other generic title?
They will forever do that meanwhile there is people that buy said cash grab
at least these ones are finished
Joe: i wish the game was harder
Cherry: so a boss rush with every boss in the game? I got you
The P in Pantheon stands for "PAIN"
@@juniperrodley9843 I wonder what the other letters stand for.
@@billystokes3917
Pain
Aaaaaaaaaaaa
Noooooooo
Too
Hard
Eeeeee
Oh
Noooooo
@@devin7436 Underated
@@currypenguin overated
Grubfather isn't a monster. That's just how they metamorphose. Grubs are fine.
strifera was going to comment this but you already did.
Red Black I think it is supposed to be ambiguous.
Oh thank god. I almost cry when i saw the grubfather had eaten them
Let's see.
Butterfly is the last form. Who would became butterfly -- young grubs or old grub? Don't forget, that grubs need a lot of food before metamorphosis. Who gets more: the old grub by eating dozens of grubs, or dozens grubs by eating just one old?
Also, the collector was saving grubs before you kill him, you can get it by dreamnailing.
The charm you get literally says: "Contains the gratitude of grubs who will move to the next stage of their lives."
Also the collector is clearly messed up in the head considering it lives in the "Tower of Love" and is a creepy shadowy monster.
This video has taught me one thing: You are a masochist and REALLY good at video games.
This game is my absolute favorite of all time, and yet I still think this was a very well-put-together video.
It's also crazy to notice how much Team Cherry had addressed your criticisms in the free DLC. It really furthers my excitement for Silksong.
I know I’m late but this boi doing Trial of the Fool with ONLY FIVE HEALTH
James Cordes this boi skilled
A madman, but skilled
In fact, NO STAT UPGRADES.
@@trondordoesstuff If you've seen his streams he's exceptionally good at this sort of thing. I saw him demolish celeste like it was nothing.
One could say that he's a fool
I don't think the grubfather ate his children so to speak. You get an achievement called metamorphosis which indicates that he will serve as a type of cocoon for the other grubs. Considering that the grubs still sound happy inside the grubfather when you hit him afterwards I think this si probably the case.
This, I didn't get the feeling that the Grubfather had ill intent, it was just like, nature taking its course, i don't know.
plus the text for the charm you get for collecting all the grubs seems to indicate that as well.
Katomic Yeah I agree. I would've sided with Joe on this one but the name "metamorphosis" along with the happy grub sounds make me think It's not actually sinister. The grub dad is probably one large cocoon or something for the grub kids. I even like to think that he had to wait for all of the kids to be rescued before he could start the next step so none of the kids got left behind haha
And as a result, the grubdaddy explodes in a disgusting feast of green goo and gore, perhaps much like the jumpscare grubs on a way creepier scale as his kids pop out as adult grubs or whatever their evolution is supposed to be. New moths?
They didn't sound very happy. And metamorphosis may refer to himself.
Looking at Joseph's save slot screen gave me clinical depression.
I have 70 hours on one slot...
Don’t worry
He’s just a pro gamer without any flaws and was handmade by god to play games
Pantheons didn’t exist yet so most of the time he would have played isn’t there
I have 60 on 1 slot, and only 92% completion.
I enjoyed Ori and the Blind Forest, but when it was over, I was done. Hollow Knight, on the other hand, will live rent-free in my brain forever. The game is so so good.
Same! I love both ori games but they’re not as replayable or memorable as hollow knight and its community.
Yeah. I found ori mostly fun to play yet kind of cruel in some moments. Compared to most of the game, the escape sequenced in each major section had a huge difficulty spike with no way to exit them to get a break without just quitting the game. And honestly the story did not land for me at all. I otherwise kinda enjoyed it but there was so much that made it grating that i dont think i will ever replay it. I have even been hesitant to play will of the wisps just cause it wasnt an experience i enjoyed
Why. It's just a Metroidvania
@@radaf4429 what a weird way to ask that question. You might as well ask why anyone loves any piece of art. Why do some spend their whole lives thinking about the works of Shakespeare? It's "just" a bunch of plays.
Idk, dude. I like what I like. I could write many paragraphs about the ways that HK is good, in my opinion, but it doesn't feel like that'd be very useful for you.
42:13 the reason the dreamers aren't bosses is that they know that the hollow knight is unable to contain the infection and therefor needs to be replaced. They understand that the only way to break the seal to the black egg and replace the hollow knight would be to stop dreaming, to die. They are not monsters that was put to sleep as some sort of sacrifice by the pale king, but powerfull and responsible beings that chose to enter eternal slumber to save hallownest.
Also no eyes is a girl.
That's true! And it wouldn't make sense for the Dreamers, who weren't warriors, to fight. However, if they knew the vessel had to be replaced, then they should have tested the Knight to make sure they were worthy. (Although Lurien did have the Watcher Knights and Monomon , Uumuu. Hornet could have been protecting her mother as a boss.)
@@andymcclurg9916 well, the entirety of deepnest can be considered a single, giant, boss
You don’t watch a Joseph Anderson when you have the time, you make time for the video.
True Story
Reminds me of one of my favorite little quotes ''Symphony of the Night isn't here to impress you, you are here to impress Symphony of the Night''. Which has become strangely relevant. I now go out of my way to put time aside and grab some refreshments and such for a Mr. Anderson video.
sadly
Would highly recommend you check out The Nth Review, which has a little more style but is otherwise definitely worth your time. UA-cam.com/NthReview
I'm fine with not fighting the dreamers, but no Deepnest boss is dissapointing. White Palace didn't need a boss, though.
Deepnest has a boss, it's just in a hiddenish area. Try looking just to the left of the Hot Springs.
There's Nosk.
And while most people will say he was disappointingly easy, I actually found him to be really tough
Try him in the new area from the latest update... boi did that fight change
True, White palace has the Path of Pain as it's on kind of bossfight
Winged Nosk is honestly easier than the normal Nosk
It’s cool to think about how much Team Cherry listens to the community. Almost every problem in this video has been fixed.
You mean listens to one specific person -_-
@@angeliqueclarkson1158 no, several people said similar things that he said
The pantheons are a good challenge for people who wanted harder bosses, lifeblood added more bosses to places that should’ve had a boss, and Grimtroupe added a bunch of endgame content to spend geo on and Nightmare Grim, who the whole hallow knight community simps for I guess. (Uh oh guess I’m banned on twitch now)
I got confused when he said that the Hive is missing a boss
He did'nt eat the grubs. It is just another state in the biology of grubs, like kangaroos in pouches, as shown by the text of "Grubberfly's Elegy":
"Contains the gratitude of grubs who will *move* *to* *the* *next* *stage* *of* *their* *lives.* Imbues weapons with a holy strength."
also the achievement you get is called metamorphism meaning that the grubfather is acting like a cocoon for the grubs.
This. I hope Joe read this because his criticism was just completely invalid. He should do more research before providing an answer such an answer as gospel.
Feel like there's multiple reads of this situation (much like a lot of parts of the game). An elegy is a lament for the dead. Perhaps they are meant to be eaten to fuel the grandad to achieve his metamorphosis. Perhaps they weren't meant to be eaten at all and he's a monster.
It’s clearly an Elegy referring to the death of the Grubfather. Why would the achievement you get be called Metamorphosis? Grubs don’t eat their own to achieve this status but they do need a cocoon. It’s common sense.
Northern Ghoul Also consider its called “grubberfly” implying they’ll turn from caterpillars to butterflies.
Nearly every detail of Hollow Knight made my jaw drop. After finishing it I immediately started trying to get 100% completion. It's a masterpiece and might be my favorite game of all time. Glad you enjoyed it!
My experience was very magical and terrifying, there's an area in the fungal wastes that leads you to a bunch of enemies that are listening to a prophet, they were all friendly, so I stayed there for about 10 minutes looking at them enjoying it, farming them, and when i was satisfied, I walked out with a smile and fell into a pitfall that led me for the first time into deepnest
I was in a new, completly different area from what I have experience, clearly hostile towards me, carrying hilariously large loot from farming, knowing I was going to die, and was going to have to come back into this hell hole to get it back
One word: the esc button
imma have to strongly disagree with you when you said that environmental story telling was an "issue". I think it makes it much more immersive as you wont get a concrete answer to the things around you as you are a traveller from out of town (kinda).
It’s not like a random bug is gonna tell the entire lore to you
I like enviromental story telling but imo it isnt delivered well in hollowknight. the fromsoftware games (dark souls and such) as well as a bunch of other games do it a lot better.
@@penguinwolf3330 In what way? Whether it's true or not, I want qualifiers. Why do you think that's the case?
I think that there are some aspects of the enviromental story telling that could be improved, but for the most part it's pretty good. Hallownest is meant to feel big and old, and it does really well at conveying that feeling
@@bowserjjumetroid3645 Been a month but for me, the environmental storytelling in hollow knight is kinda just confusing and it doesn't really provide a baseline. It's hard to explain so I'll set up some examples. SPOILERS.
In Dark Souls, the way they tell their lore is by giving casual players a nice shallow story. The Chosen Undead must go and ring two bells to awaken Frampt, who will tell you to defeat the four lords and link to fire to undo the undead curse. This helps display a easy to follow story that presents a good and evil path, and gives the average person a sense of purpose in the game. Of course in reality, the truth is much more tragic. You are inhabiting a world which is breathing its last life, and you are essentially cleaning up all the gods that have gone insane or depressed, corrupted etc. All the while you are being manipulated by Frampt. If the player ever realizes this at any point in the game (for me it was when I killed gwynevere). Then there is a sense of real looming tension and sadness that the one hope spoken to you was a lie. In hollow knight there wasnt really anything like this. It was a story that either you knew or you didnt know. Playinig through the entire game there wasnt anything to grab you on the story and make deeper layers as it went. I still really like the hollow knight environmental storytelling though, the hollow knight boss isreally cool as it tells a story through the boss fight. But yea thats kinda the problem i had with it personally
I don't really understand where Joe is coming from when it comes to difficulty. I thought the game was really really hard, especially the bosses at the end. I consistently screwed up the timing on sword swings, found it extremely difficult to adjust to a dash without I-frames, took several playthroughs to get used to pogo-ing off enemies, and never beat the final coliseum challenge. I've beaten every souls game way too many times, and while I can't judge if Hollow Knight is harder, I personally found it harder. Maybe it's the side scrolling combat which is a fairly new concept to me since I grew up on Zelda (never beat the first Zelda 2 dungeon) and never played a side scrolling platformer until picking up Shovel Knight in my mid 20s. Maybe it's the fact that I first played it on mac which would constantly fail to read my inputs and had horrible lag (I found the pc version more manageable but still very hard).
LIke... Joe mentions this dream boss in the Queen's Garden that just curls in a ball and jumps at you, so you have to hit it back like you're playing volleyball, and Joe says this boss is disappointing and easy, whereas that little shit killed me like 20 times before I finally took it out. I didn't beat the Radiance until I got a new computer that ran the game better, and it still killed me at least 5 times. Difficulty is subjective, but my god I can't figure out how Joe is avoiding so many hits in that coliseum footage. I can't do that. Avoiding projectiles, pogoing, all that biz is really hard for me for some reason. Idk.
Probably just due to what we grew up on. I came out the womb playing 2D games. 3D games like Dark Souls are ridiculously foreign to me and I can't wrap my head around them, albeit I'm getting much better lately. But 2D games and platforming I can do in my sleep.
At this point I've decided Joe is an allpowerful hollow knight god who doesn't realize the full extent of his power in relation to others
I only finished Hollow Knight last month, and have been holding off watching this video until then. Had to pause when he was talking about the traitor Lord to check the comments. I thought I was pretty good at Hollow Knight, I beat the Radiance on my second attempt, but for whatever reason the Traitor Lord gave me way too much trouble, AND I'd done Cloth's questline. "isn't even a boss" my fucking ass, that shit killed me way more times than any other boss.
Because his boss fight was changed.
Traitor Lord was buffed after this came out, the buffed version is probably the one you fought.
I’m really glad you put out that PSA in the beginning. I really want to encourage people to support this team and think they went well beyond any realistic expectation for indie developers. Just in scope, I can’t imagine how much work they put in, and it shows.
Max Scribner I bought it solely because of that endorsement at the beginning
tbh this game has way more value then most 60$ games have. It's ridiculous how detailed sprawling and big this game is.
The variety in enemies, especially bosses, sets a new bar!
“This game is too easy, especially Nosk and Traitor Lord”
Me- (laughs in Lifeblood and Godmaster)
Nosk is still super cheeseable. Just press yourself next to the center platform and swipe upward. If Nosk moves to your side, go to the other side of the platform. Rinse and repeat.
diggoran while that strategy works for his tackle attack, it doesn’t always work for his jump, infection, or ceiling attack
@@nicholasali3566 That's all I did to win. I just changed sides whenever Nosk was on the same side of the platform as me, and if I ever got hit, the opposite side of the platform gave enough shelter to heal safely. All of my damage was done while Nosk was standing above me on the platform and I swiped upward to hit him.
diggoran that is still the best strategy, but it’s not as good as it used to be
Traitor lord I got bored with and killed him with sharpshadow like a bitch. But if you dont cheese him, he is decently hard, considering you have no opportunity to heal safely, and he deals two masks.
Nosk pretty much forces you to chese hime by sitting next to the platform and poking his belly, because thats the only spot that lets you heal. If they added a half step it would fix this, but then you couldnt heal there either.
The grub father is actually not bad, at he achievement you get once it happens is called “Metamorphosis”, it’s likely that he served as the vessel for the grubs’s ascension
I thought most people discover the Howling Cliffs through Greenpath, actually. There's a short cave route at the very top of Greenpath that leads there. You don't even need the lamp to get through it.
You can get there, but you can't jump higher or climb, so you have to go back.
I know this is a minor nitpick on the whole of the video, but selling the items one by one (up to a certain amount) is necessary because the shopkeeper gives various lore with each new item sold
Also, I've never used the geo-attracter, the dash charm, and even the one that shows your position. I enjoyed using my surroundings to figure out where I am and saving the precious charm slot for other things like the nail extender. So I wouldn't say those charms are "required"
The compass is pretty much required if you have a bad sense of your surroundings like me.
Fair enough :P But I wouldn't fault the game for having the badge as a requirement when the game encourages exploration without it and has the option for those who aren't as directionally inclined
Forcing lore is awful. Make it optional.
@@TheGoldMedals
Making the overall story of the game optional is a fucking terrible idea.
@Joseph Anderson: Regarding your worries about the price for Team Cherry. They just announced that Hollow Knight sold more than 500.000 copies. Even at a price of 15$ that should be by far enough money for such a small team to keep going into future projects. If we and they are lucky and Hollow Knight gets the attention it deserves with it's Switch release (which I guess will be at ~20$), they could even cross the line of 1 million sold copies across all platforms. No need to worry here for them. They also said publicly that they put the price so low on purpose, so as many people as possible could play their game. Which is a great philosophy from a social standpoint.
You’ve convinced me to buy this game and it’s been well worth the money. It’s my first platformer and I’m absolutely horrible at the game but it’s still a blast! It’s very neat that such a demanding game in terms of skill can still be fun for a new casual player like myself.
"Joe, you're not even a real dragon!" That left me grinning and chuckling for a while
I hope people outside of the Discord still appreciate it, ha.
I didn't get it at first but it was still an amusing quote regardless of context.
Plus it was on a shot of Bardoon, the best character in the game, who's also "not a real dragon". He tells you so.
Also a few incidental things like how the Radiance works, where the Pale King got his powers, you know, trivia.
Joseph, I blame you for Godmaster.
I wonder if it's what you truly wanted. Gotta say, I think it will forever be beyond me.
To this day, I will no longer attempt the pantheons.
@@matosz23 i finally beat pantheon of hallownest. just had to let it out somewhere.
@@olaf8778
You have my heartfelt congratulations.
I'm encouraging my little brother to continue with the challenge. He is now working on Pantheon of the Knight. Can't wait to see him succeed.
I dont think the pantheons are beyond anyone. They just requiere so much time to git gud that its not really worth it. At least I dont have the time for it. So not happening.
@Banuner agreed, beating one of the two is an achievement in itself but if you beat pure vessel, NKG, and path of pain youre already good at the game. Absrad and PoH is a whole different level
*SPOILER ALERT*
Joseph Anderson admits he's not a real dragon.
😨
I actually love the abyss, maybe I'm the only one but it's refreshingly simple and inspires an air of mystic because of the mystery behind it; it wasn't meant to be found at what's down there is ancient and untouched for decades, hidden from the world. I love the way that it teases a mystery and unearths so much story if you pay attention. maybe It is just me though?
Don't know if anybody brought it up in the comments yet, but your point about The Abyss feeling empty was kind of interesting. The developers originally planned for it to be a massive area with a few bosses, but unfortunately it was a Kickstarter goal that was never reached. It's still possible we may see what content was planned for it in the future.
Damn I actually feel bad for the devs that there were goals that weren't hit. Having almost finished everything in the game makes me wish I actually contributed to the kickstarter.
Well, there’s always DLC. That being said, there were also things they cut that were part of the base game, such as the Bone Forest, which seems to have been mostly repurposed into the Abyss in terms of aesthetic, but there was also lava.
Other than that, they’ve since added and fixed a lot of complaints people had with bosses, such as adding in the Hive boss to the Bee area, and improving the Traitor Lord to be much more substantial. But, I hope so badly that they add in the giant-ass spider boss they teased in one of the trailers to Deepnest, what made the roar when you got captured??
doobi that's nosk lmao. He's been in the game since release 😂 behind hidden walls to the left of the spring if you haven't found him
I feel like they should have charged more for the game and made it bigger. I'd have happily paid 30, 40, or even 60 dollars for this game.
Tbf some goals have been met but not implemented. While other things haven't but still found their way into the game in some way. Hornet being playable certainly makes more sense if she gets her own storyline in a dlc yet her goal as playable character was actually met. Afaik Zote was supposed to be the 3rd playable character
Now I wonder if he's happy with all the new updates that have come out. I mean with the way he was talking about limiting the player, he must really like the Godmaster expantion.
He tweeted some positive stuff about Godmaster if I remember correctly.
@@Wyzzlex He made an entire video on it:
ua-cam.com/video/Ece-wZ6VjFw/v-deo.html
Great critique, a few things that stood out to me:
-If you do a bit of snooping online the Grubfather is actually a good guy.(Something to do with how the bugs mature)
-I found the writing really good in this game, dunno if it caught your eye. Characters rarely delivered the tired cliches that many NPC's usually spurt out
- regarding the difficulty, from the footage show, it just looks like you are really, really good at the game. Some of that air juggling was insane. I find the ability to "break" the game with different equip combos and pure skill is highly rewarding. I feel that they needed to kind of have a cap on difficulty as not to drive too many players away, if you skim the steam reviews you can already see people complaining that the difficulty is way too high.
- It doesn't sound like you are an achievement guy, but I found them amazing, the speedrun and Steel soul added replayability and great new ways to experience the game, they even have exclusives per playthrough to encourage repeat runs.
- My favorite boss fights were Soul Master and Radiance. Soul Master because he is an introduction into the OH SHIT breakneck pace of some of the bosses where you are constantly moving and looking for tells and because of how damn fun teleporting is, feels like a fight straight out of DBZ. The fake out was also unexpected and really made it stand out in my memories of the game.
- Radiance because of the AMAZING introduction with the music kicking in perfectly and it really feels like a culmination of all your experience and mechanics for one final challenge.
It's not perfect but this is honestly one of my favorite games of all time and with the second DLC it will probably stay in that spot for decades.
i found this game difficult but the soul master was just dumb easy. first tried him.
the soul soldier actually gave me more trouble(i died 4 times)
the soul master gave too many oppurtunities to heal. still a good boss tho
@@NuggetOG Yeah he was a good intro to the increases speed, he wasn't that difficult but definitely memorable.
Giving abilities early would make it difficult for the devs to block off areas. This would harm exploration design.
Not to mention offer even less of a chance for some new players to take their time and not only explore but examine the world, its lore and absorb the intricately designed atmosphere.
They should add a new game + tho i would love to go through the game again with all of my stuff unlocked
@@Anxmaly666 That would be nice. I would also advocate for including Randomizer modes, for a fresh challenge every playthrough.
The obvious implication is the design of areas would be changed. Exploration could still be blocked in ways
@@bowserjjumetroid3645 There's an extensive randomizer mod and many other mods. Look it up.
The more recent updates would like to argue with, uh, quite a few of your arguments
Like?
@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts Bosses being added to areas (Hive Knight, for example), others being tweaked and improved, a couple of new areas to explore, and pretty much the whole game tweaked and refined.
ASquared >Nightmare King Grim and Pure Knight
Let me introduce ourselves
Mantis Lord also got a big "fuck you" upgrade so that he's not a glorified gigantic mantis traitor lackey with a huge health bar.
Also:
A B S O L U T E R A D I A N C E
@@PancakemonsterFO4 Pure Vessel*
There was meant to be an Abyss DLC. This was one of the Kickstarter goals that wasn’t met.
Yep. Neither was the colleseum. But team cherry is the best and made it. Along with instead of a second playable character. An entire new game
Bro that's so sad God damn
9:27
"how chill can he be if he's trying to take over the world though?"
that made me smile for more time than it had the right to
Coming back to this video I was so confused, especially when he mentioned Hive not having a boss. I literally paused the video and googled it because I KNEW it had a boss. Sure enough, it did. It was added with the free DLC. Honestly this is better than it being in the base game imo, because it shows the reason behind the lack of content: "Team" Cherry is literally 2 people. The fact that so much shit was added with **FREE** DLC on a game that lets be real, is permanently 75%, is ridiculous. I bought it on PC, bought it on switch, and might buy it on ps4 and never play it JUST to give them more money. Im so excited for Silk Song and if its 30 bucks Im getting it twice yet again just for the sake of it.
instead of that why dont you just buy a tshirt or something. plushies if they still exist
WAIT, hive knight isn't base game? I thought the same way u did
This game looks incredible. The complaints about lack of difficulty won't really apply to me as I'm sure I'll find it challenging enough anyway. Great video!
You should definitely play it. Difficulty is not an issue unless you're insanely good, like Joseph is.
Holy shit, you watch Joseph Anderson too? I'm a huge fan of your videos and your channel has helped me keep a bit more sane while I wait for the next JA video.
I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's more comfortably becoming my favorite for the year.
And don't sell yourself short! You might take to the combat faster than you think.
59h here, dont worry think as you are playing dark souls 3
Hey man, big fan of your channel, keep up the great work!
Good review, but you have to understand: you are crazy good at this game! Don't know if because your previous experience with games or because your four playthroughs.
But for other people who are not so experienced with platforms, this is an insanely hard game. One of the hardest games to come out in while. The elitists will soon chime in, calling me out, but you could easily see this in the first weeks after release, when I played, on the forums: every single day a new thread related to difficulty appeared.
I too believed I could never progress in this game: never liked or played platformers before, platformers with analog jump are like 5 times harder than fixed height ones for me and hundreds of hours of Dark souls and co. without a shield made me expect i-frames on a deep instinctual level and Hollow Knight has no i-frames in the jump system or the initial dash.
It took me 25 hours of practice to no longer be helpless at the game (even the first boss took my like 7 tries), but 100% of your suggestions related to difficulty would guarantee that I could never finish the game without an investment of time an effort which quite frankly would not be fun.
I still believe I will never be able to do level 3 coliseum without the cheesiest of the builds allowed by the charm system, max upgrades and probably a couple of hours worth of tries.
Was going to say the same thing. I felt pretty good just beating the true ending of this game at all, let alone doing it without upgrades or spells or anything like that. Plus his aerial combat is 10 times more fluid than I ever got, and he was attacking during boss patterns where I was just busy trying not to get hit.
I think the amount of players who have things "ruined" for themselves by making the game too easy is much smaller than the number of people who need to get those upgrades so they don't spend 5 hours dieing to the same boss fights. I did the mantis fight with no weapon upgrades, and it was satisfying admittedly, but it took a bunch of attempts, and each time you have to run back from a checkpoint. If I'd kept that mindset up I would have lost patience with the game long before the end, or it would have hugely stretched out an already pretty long game. Dark Souls players seem to love that mechanic, but there was a reason I played like 2 hours of that game and stopped.
I'd like to do a "hard mode" run, but I can't see myself doing it with just the benches. I'd have to abuse that teleport dream gate thing I think.
I definitely get how annoyingly easy it'd be for him at the end of the game, but with only a single difficulty setting the game is right on the border of being too hard for the vast majority of players. I'm at 99% completion, but I don't see myself ever beating that third colloseum fight.
DiabloQFDB I don’t find the game too terribly difficult most of the time, but even when it’s not being difficult, due to the inconvenience of dying and threat of losing your Geo (at least before you buy everything when Geo actually matters), it’s already incentive enough for me to play cautiously.
I got there my dude, It took me 2-3 hours. But I spanked that thing hard by the end of it.
See thats were we vary greatly, I prefer analog jump, and I've been doing platformers (puzzle-platformers, rogue-lits, 2D/2.5/3D) and all for nearly 3 decades...and I'm a fan of the super punishing "difficult-just-for-the-sake-of-being-difficult) type platformers....I 110% GOlden God Super Meat Boy and 108% master expo on Cave Story+ and (you want to talk CHALLENGING) lol.....difficult?
1001 Spikes make Hollow Knight look casual by comparison
I am not being elitest or arrogant (and for the average gamer yea I could see that) no hate or criticizing here
BUt analog is my way of playing...i dont like fixed JMP. Never have....Dark Souls, Salt and Sanctuary, Enter the Gungeon...1001 Spikes, Cave Story+, 660+ Hours of Binding of Isaac (and rogue-lites/rogue-likes (like-likes) dating back to Dwarf Fortress and Diablo (Diablo 2...lol all the 1000s n 1000s of hours...clans, US east hardcore ladder, lvl 97s, 98s, 99s...not so much difficult, just time consuming w/ an almost cult-like-devotion) Isaac is the same way, the SHEER amount of depth to that game...good ol' Edmund McMillen...I mean....I've already put as said over 600 hours on the Switch version....always learning new synergies and which works and which doesnt with over 1,600 room combinations, and a beastiary of 180+ creatures, and 400+ items, and learning which works with which, and its also luck....so the replay value is immensely high...still seeing things months later that I never saw the first few hundred runs LOL. Greed Mode ? shhhit Greedier Mode ? Ultra Hard....these are t he kinds of things most would throw the system out the window, or get mad, smack their legs while playing in bed due to anger, and frustration
thumbsticks + ultra punshing platformers + massive open worlds + huge beastiary + tedious backtracking and almost-unfair-like-design = what pushes me forward
I admit I'm a OCD-type-focused-masochist. I complete these games without walkthroughs, guides, hacks, or help 100% all nooks n crannies, every aspect of Hollow Knight including all DLC I will complete (and I wont MOVE on to the next game till I complete this one). Just how I am. But I can see how its def not for everyone.
53:43 "Having so much damage meant I didn't have to do any of this..." (In reference to the timing and strategy of healing).
Speak for yourself! I commend you for completing the game in the variety of ways that you did, and in fact I'm pretty jealous given that I thought of myself as being pretty good at the game before seeing this and a couple speedruns. That said, keep in mind that you are in the minority here - I understand that your commentary on difficulty can only really come from your own experience, but I think it's important to recognize that the game wasn't quite so easy for other people (including myself). I was grinning and nodding my head the entire time you were talking about the strategy of healing because I was remembering when I did the same thing on my playthroughs. What you described was most definitely still present in late game when the nail was upgraded (in fact, almost exclusively at this time) for me and, I presume, many other people.
I feel like the reason you don’t start with dash is because not having it allows you to learn how to dodge enemies without having an easy way out in the beginning. If you started with dash and relied on it to dodge enemies then later on when the game requires more precise dodges it will become very hard and frustrating.
Not really, dash is really easy and intuitive to use
@@pouihurmen yes, it is. I was saying that precise dodges around and with dash are trained well by starting you without dash. using dash isn't the hard part, it's finding the right positions to sit still for even a moment in fights
@@xiloscient3335 ah my bad I misunderstood the first comment. still don't know if I agree though, I don't think the bosses up until Hornet protector are that good at teaching proper positioning in the first place as they're all rather slow with simple movesets
The dreamers being boss battles isn't something I can agree with. For one thing, when you see Monomon there's dialogue indicating that they were waiting to be killed. And for another, using the dream nail on them with that music going on in the background really got to me emotionally. I was satisfied with an emotional payoff rather than getting an epic boss fight payoff. The piñata part of it could have been done better though.
They were supposed to be boss battles originally, but the devs cut them out. For time or for thematic reasons I do not know.
Just a single hit would have been too easy and clean for the conveyed message. They could have, however, done something to prevent spamming the attack to force you to acknowledge your actions, wanted or not.
Actually, the worm that eats the little worms is not something bad. I don't remember the name of the type of worm, but there is one that eats his children in order to let them eat it from the inside so that they can grow into adulthood.
And, well they're not exaclty worms. They're more like... larvae.
Parenthood!
Congrats, you just made this whole situation even more terrifying.
Not a fan of metroidvania at all but I absolutely love the art style and ambiance of this game. That and it's a blast to watch when the person playing it is good at it.
That's part of how crazy the price is, right? It even looks great! Such a cool style and so many different locations, characters, and backgrounds. So much work went into it.
Joseph Anderson Yup. I bought it during Summer sale for ~$10. Played a few hours and it's just not my cup of tea. Don't regret my purchase though, happy to support the devs. I can recognize the objective quality of the game, just doesn't fit my taste.
Was this made by the guys who made Don't Starve? The art style seems similar.
@Marc Shanahan No, that's Klei. They made Mark of the Ninja, Invisible Inc, etc. Team Cherry makes Hollow Knight- They're much smaller. Only 3-4 people. Klei is a bigger studio, around 30-40 people IIRC.
2 people in fact not counting the composer. They hired a third person to help them with the save system and some of the other smaller stuff.
“I’m disappointed that there was no boss at the end of the White Palace”
Kingsmolds at PoP: Allow is to introduce ourselves
They're not that hard, but dying to them is THE WORST
@@zotethemighty3707 something I had to experience... but going through all the rooms and realising how much better I've gotten was the BEST!
*chuckles in Pure Vessel*
White palace and Path of pain were bosses all by themselves
The reason the dreamers aren’t boss fights is because they don’t have the power to fight back, the seer says it themself they are sleeping and they used the last of their strength to lock you in the dream world before you get the dream nail and even then if you really think about it they still do have bosses. For monomon it’s uumuu, for lurien it’s the watcher knights, and for herrah it’s deepnest itself. Also I feel as though the reason the hollow knight is an easy boss is because although it’s being controlled by the radiance it still has trouble doing so because the hollow knight is still slightly hollow. Also on a final note it feels as though your bragging about your skill most of the time and honestly most of the things you say that are bad seem like extremely tiny things to me
Also it makes sense for them not to attack you. They were never bad. They were never villains. They instead wanted to help the kingdom.
Monomon was a teacher, why would she bust out a nail to kick your butt?
Hornet could have been protecting her mother as a boss fight
@@andymcclurg9916 But Hornet has little reason to do so. She wants the kingdom to be put to rest as much as you do.
@@juniperrodley9843 Which is why she doesn't try to stop you. She knows that you gotta do what you gotta do. She doesn't want it to happen, obviously, but at the same time she kinda does. Also she was probably the one to save you from the weird kidnapper dudes, as they are all found sliced uo later.
yeah, that scene wasn't meant to be a fight. It's meant to elicit emotion. Everything we know about the dreamers shows how they cared for hallownest in some way, and in order to save it we have to kill them.
I love cutscenes in games a lot of the time because of the better looking visuals (ex. Smash Ultimate)
And when I found that cutscene in City of Tears at first I wanted more but as I played I realized the game itself was just as good. The art looks like a cartoon optimized to be played as a game
It’s beautiful
This is the first video of yours that I'm enjoying early as a patron. However, this is a game that I've been kicking around the idea of playing, and after that glowing intro I think I unfortunately have to stop the video and go play it myself!
Happened to me with the Prey review... Watched it half-way before I realized that I just gotta play that game... Still didn't get to play it yet, I need to finish Pillars of Eternity first, so watching that review all the way to the end is going to have to wait for the meanwhile...
Yeah this is now my third game that Joshep have made a video of that I feel have to play before watching ;)
Good decision, especially if it's a genre you like. The video won't go anywhere.
mysterioso2006 High hollow knight producers!!!!
Joseph, every time I myself THINK I might have an idea for a video I''D like to do myself, you go ahead and make something that knocks it out of the park. Great job and very well said.
My first experience with deepnest was similar to yours. I got the wall jump ability, beat the mantis lords, and ventured into deepnest without a lantern. The difference was that, when faced with the oppressive atmosphere of deepnest, I decided to climb up towards the surface (which might not even have existed) and I ended up back in the fungal zone. It was great!
Hollow Knight is by far my favorite game of the year, and as nostalgic as I am about Super Metroid and how often I replay it compared to Hollow Knight because of the sheer depth of its movement systems, I believe that Hollow Knight stands as a beacon for the best Metroidvania title *ever*. The map design by itself is pure genius. I knew it was after my own 100% playthrough and through watching others play, but I swear every time I hear a new take on the game's paths or watch more content, the complexity continues to astound me. As great as the combat feels and as fun as it can be, I think it's carried by the exploration aspects. It's hard to say for sure, but I think if the game were set up more like Megaman or Shovel Knight, or even Ori, the combat would lose some (though not all) of its luster.
Hollow Knight truly is a *composition* in ways that most games can't approach, and I'm eagerly looking forward to every drop of DLC Team Cherry pushes out.
I don't know, there's a few Castlevania games that could give it a run for its money.
Love your channel, by the way.
Yeah. Liked Hollow Knight, but the Soma Cruz castlevania games and La Mulana are still better.
I've never played La Mulana, but it's a very interesting game. I originally thought it was a remake of an old NES game, but it turns out it was a doujin project from the very beginning. Maybe it's because Deceased Crab played it on SA and I associate him with crappy old NES games.
I actually *really* liked Portrait of Ruin. I think I've replayed that more than any other Metroidvania, although if pressed I would admit that Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night are better.
I mean, how can you not like a game that has a skeletal bartender who throws cocktails at you?
I never said PoR was bad, it was quite fun. The Aria games are simply the best Igavanias overall.
That last part was more of a rhetorical flourish than anything. I was just being emphatic. I'm curious, though, which of the two do you think was better, Aria or Dawn?
Excellent video! Hollow Knight is definitely my favourite game of the year, and you did it justice.
I just wanted to point out that, from what I can assume watching your videos, you are really skilled in action games. You said The Colloseum is a great area where finally the combat showed its true potential (and I agree, especially beacuse it's an optional area), but for a lot of people it was sincerely too hard. I think that if Team Cherry had inserted that kind of challenge and complexity into the main route it would have been for the worse to a lot of players.
A similar thing happened to me in regards to the plataforming. I really like the genre and am pretty good at it, therefore, I would have loved if the game had more challenging and complex plataforming sections; but I know for a fact that others considered the White Palace to be out of place and overly difficult. I'm sure Team Cherry could have made the game a lot harder overall, but decided against it to not overwhelm a lot of its player base.
I've been a patreon for a while now and it's my first time commenting. I'm a bit nervous hahaha. Really really great video!!
I agree. I had a level four nail and still haven't beaten Colosseum. I beat White Palace but it was quite challenging. Joseph is very very good, to the point where he may lose touch a little bit with the average scrub. Level four nail does, however, make the regular areas pretty easy.
Thanks Tobias! And fair point. I probably should have went into more detail on it in the video. A hard mode would be a good solution, or a lot more optional ways to push combat more.
I didn't find the White Palace to be particularly difficult, but maybe I was carried by my Super Meat Boy experience. Even the saw blades are similar there. *That* did feel a bit out place--all of a sudden here's this grinding machinery. I wish I had brought that up.
> plataforming
> platforming (just a friendly reminder and correction)
I definitely felt like I was using all the systems you said you could ignore during radiance even with the final nail. It was a long fight and took me well over 20 tries and in terms of difficulty very much felt like the DLC bosses in Dark souls 1.
You didn't find the White Palace that difficult? Wow. It's certainly a very twitchy platforming challenge in a game that's not focused around platforming. The Hiveblood charm makes it less tedious (wish I'd thought of that from the beginning!), but it was a slog for me. Definitely my least favorite part of the game.
The saw blades were 100% Super Meat Boy, and I was actually very disappointed in Team Cherry at this point for practically abandoning the game's down-to-earth tone. The whole rest of the game makes the Pale King seem like a charismatic and interesting figure, and the one area devoted to him has platforming challenges *instead* of lore or maybe even an interesting boss fight. I feel like they should have used the White Palace primarily for story instead of gameplay, especially when you consider what you have to do just to get there in the first place.
The last part of this game in particular shows roughness around the edges. As you mentioned, defeating the Dreamers is shockingly anticlimactic and leaves the player with the feeling that there should be more. The Abyss is underdeveloped, the White Palace is a massive departure from the style of the core game, and both of the final boss fights are a letdown compared to earlier parts of the game, particularly the Hollow Knight, who may be the easiest final boss in any Metroidvania I have ever played. Worse than Dracula at the end of SOTN, even. My last play session of Hollow Knight was a distinctly mediocre experience compared to the fun I had up to that point.
2:22 the sound of that enemy is so engrained into my memory that I can hear him squealing.
I’m honestly quite surprised that I’m not the only idiot who sat on the bench at Deepnest without a map, without having nail upgrades and without a lantern. For me, I wandered around for multiple hours until I finally found my way up the fungal wasted, and just to be jumpscared by the pit that leads to Deepnest AGAIN, and eventually I had to find my way back to the Mantis Village, probably traumatized lol.
This is a very in-depth analysis that I enjoyed, but I feel like it jumps all around the place. It's strangely ironic how I would say its pacing isn't great. What strikes me as odd is that throughout the video you oscillate between giving huge praise and calling it your favorite game, and nitpicking it so much it would seem like you deeply hate everything about it.
There is great truth hidden between the nitpicking; in fact, the game's several updates have adressed some of the issues talked about in this video. I think you might have tried to express what you felt were the weak points and downsides in your favorite game, and that just didn't come across the right way somehow. I agree that the game is far from perfect, but the critique didn't sit well with me most of the time.
A big thing I was bothered by is how a large portion of the criticism boiled down to "it was too easy", which is honestly just absurd, it's hard to believe you were being serious. This game isn't stupidly hard, but it is universally regarded as a Very Difficult Game. On your followup video you explain that you were simply asking for more difficulty options for hardcore players like you, and that's totally fair. But I don't feel like that serves as a basis for the criticism here.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. It's not the first time I've watched the video, glad I found it again!
I had to edit this comment to take into account the followup video, just to be fair :o
Watching this video, it feels weirdly like he was trying to figure out his style. But he clearly knew how to make cleaner critiques by the time he posted this.
Nice video! However, regarding your point about some areas feeling underused, particularly the Hive; Hollow Knight was funded through Kickstarter, and some of the 'mini-areas' would have been full areas if a stretch goal had been reached. This doesn't explain every underused area, but it does put some decisions Team Cherry made into context, like the Hive not having a boss.
Additionally, you noted that the ghost fights felt like they were bonus content, and you're not far off! Some of the Kickstarter rewards were getting a character of your own design into the game, either as an NPC or an opponent. The Kickstarter bosses were added as the ghosts so they wouldn't mess with the story too much, I think.
Nice job Joe, you succesfully avoided mentioning Dark Souls in this video.
...Or did you?
Joseph: is clearly a god at this game
Also Joseph: Wayward compass charm is mandatory
*Confused noices*
Yea compass is the best charm
yeah that was weird. Don't get me wrong, I suck at most aspects of hollow knight, but the map wasn't an issue for me to learn and I've only used the charm a handful of times
He has impressive mechanical skill, but he is also an idiot who cant find their way out of a paper bag.
"On the other end you have samus with the air control of a pregnant cow who miraculously discovers she can fly for a few seconds"
I'm laughing way too hard at that
"I am gorb"
-Gorb
Have you lost your son?
I loved this video. A couple of things, though:
20:17 Technically, Hornet does tell you to "seek the grave in ash," but to your credit, it's rather cryptic and doesn't immediately scream "Kingdom's Edge" to anyone who hasn't already discovered the area (which would be almost no one on their first playthrough). Also, I spent a lot of time exploring during my first playthrough, so backtracking was the first thing I did whenever I got a movement upgrade such as desolate dive, which opens up Crystal Peak and the Resting Grounds, and by extension, Kingdom's Edge.
And I actually have to respectfully disagree with your point that the player should start with more movement upgrades. Hollow Knight rewards exploration, and having more mobility in early game would help to highlight that, but it doesn't really take long enough to get the mothwing cloak to warrant adding it to the starting equipment.
wouldnt the game be over in a few hours since you would be able to go almost anywhere? i mean the reason of the movement being progressed is because of backtracking and new areas. like for example when i got the dash i remembered that a grub was unreachable so i went after i got the dash to save him.
(rip grub daddy, he will die when the grubs grow up)
@@NuggetOG No. Having a single dash ability would not for some reason make the entire game accessible instantly. And even if it did... So what? BOTW did exactly that and is considered the best game ever fucking made by every idiot with a recording program on their computer. I'd say having access to everything from the jump could even heighten the exploration experience.
@@angeliqueclarkson1158 it called a metroidvanias for a reason I’m not bothered to write a paragraph due to being on a phone tho
i would like to mention that the abyss could have been more fleshed out, but they didnt get to the goal on the kickstarter so they couldnt make it an actual area. you literally were going to go into the lake of void, like you said, and there were going to be multiple bosses. just thought i should add that.