Video Gamers Podcast - Hallowed Hollow Knight - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back and going into the depths of Hallownest to chat all things Hollow Knight. One of gaming’s premium entries into the Metroidvania genre, Hollow Knight has a ton to offer and we break it all down in an epic episode from your favorite gaming podcast.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we hop into this week's episode, we would like to ask you to consider supporting our show through Apple subscriptions or Patreon. We are an independent podcast run by two dads, and each of us have our own day jobs. We are supported by listeners like you, so if you enjoy the show and would like to see it continue, just think of it as tipping one of your favorite pods. You can subscribe for as little as $5 a month on Apple or Patreon, and either way, you will get ad-free episodes a full day early, and more importantly, you will get two extra Quick Take episodes every single week. That means that you will get a grand total of four shows

every week to listen to. Thank you to all of you for tuning into this episode. We especially want to say thank you to all of you who already helped support the show through Apple or Patreon. All right, guys, we're done with all the boring stuff. Let's get into the episode. Hello, squad mates. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, where we break down all things related to gaming. Today is a Deep Dive Monday, and we are going to be talking about a game beloved by many called Hollow Knight. Before we jump in, we want to let you all know that if you want access to two extra episodes every week, and you want to help support the show, on over to multiplayer squad.com to become a patreon supporter also make sure to rate our podcast five stars on apple and on spotify

i am your host paul and then joining me armed with only a nail he's lost in hollow nest desperately listening for that humming looking for papers strewn about on the floor. It's Josh. I have a really bad habit of biting my nails, Paul, so I have a feeling I'm going to be stranded. Oh boy. All right. So Josh, before we jump into the game here, why don't you tell the people a little bit about why we decided to cover Hollow Knight on today's deep dive. So we say repeatedly, and hopefully people don't get tired of this, and hopefully they understand what we're saying, but we have one of the best communities that exists in all of gaming.

We really do. We really, really do. It is on our Discord server. There is a reason that we continue to talk about it. The Discord server is free to join. But if you've ever wanted to meet amazing gamers that are absolutely just completely supportive of each other, they run the range from young to old. It's a phenomenal community. So one of our longtime listeners of the show, we've mentioned him before. We have mad respect for him by the name of Ace of Shame.

I logged in one day and Steam splashed up on my screen and said, Ace of Shame has gifted you Hollow Knight. And I went, oh, dude, like, that's so awesome. Like, thank you, Ace. And I actually messaged Ace and I said, dude, thank you so much. I've been meaning to play this game. I hear it's great. There is a lot of hype behind Hollow Knight. I am very familiar with that. But this is the perfect excuse to try this game out. And he just said, it's an awesome game. I really hope you guys enjoy it. And that was it. No strings. No strings attached.

Yeah, no strings attached. No nothing. Just, Hey, I, you know, thank you guys for what you do. I wanted to give you a game that I love. I hope you love it as well. It was really just such an awesome, like human gesture, you know, to, to do for somebody. And that was it. And he gifted it to you as well. Um, and so I started playing it. I think I played it for maybe 45 minutes or an hour. And I went, dude, I'm really enjoying this game. And then you started playing it and you went, hey, I'm really enjoying this game. And then we both kind of went, I mean, if we're both playing it and we've never reviewed it, should we do a deep dive on it?

And we both kind of went, yep. Yes. And here we are. Here we are. Yeah, we really do have a very generous bunch in Discord. One of the coolest trends that we've seen here over the last couple of weeks is where people are donating keys or codes for various services and letting us auction, not auction them off, that's the wrong word, raffle them off to someone. So we had like one person who had a Spotify code that they weren't going to use for four months of Spotify Premium. Another person was giving away – actually, Ace was giving away codes of two copies of Blasphemous.

And so we've just been raffling these off for free. So if people want to give away keys or if they have codes sitting around that they're not going to use, we're giving them to other listeners of the show. And I think that that's really awesome. And it really is building a nice community online. So yeah, shout out to Ace of Shame, who's a legendary supporter and gifted us Hollow Knight. And next thing we knew, we're deep diving it. So it was not really on our radar. And famously, I always made fun of the fact that I always confused Hollow Knight with Shovel Knight. Yes. And Ace is a huge fan of both and chose Shovel Knight for his legendary game. And here we are now covering Hollow Knight as

well, which is quite fitting. All right. And then Josh, you've got a couple of reviews people have left for the show. I do. Hey, I'm going to pause real quick and say thank you to everybody that has been listening and leaving reviews because after kind of picking on, I forget his name, but he said he was a longtime listener and it's the first time he had left a review. All of a sudden we got a flood of reviews in. So I don't know if that was like the Kickstarter for people to be like, yeah, I should probably get off my tush and leave these guys a review or what. But we had just a lot of them come in. So thank you for that. It really makes all the difference in the world. It's super awesome for Paul and I to read these. I mean, we do this because it's a passion of ours, but to see the response to what we do is honestly like a really

incredible thing. It just, it really makes us feel all warm and happy inside as well. So, okay. So two reviews, we have a lot more than that, but we'll try to get to those in future episodes. This first one comes in from Dr. Awesome pants. Now I, I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of the title, but it says waffles are better than pancakes. Long time debate going on here. And it says, I love this podcast so much i first listened to this podcast around a year back a year ago back when todd i miss him was still on the pod and then never picked it up until fast forward to that summer i started listening to it again and fell in love with it all over again i love the games you talk about and your opinions about games even if i don't agree with them lol

i have an xbox series s and i'm thinking of upgrading to a pc i like waffles way better than pancakes so am i on team insanity yes you are no team sanity are the ones that support waffles oh no yes no it's insanity is waffles but um so this one's great because you know that's kind of the thing with podcasts is, you know, hey, we love having our regular listeners. We totally get that. We put out two episodes every single week. We know that people can't listen to every single episode. But it's really cool to have people that remember the show and maybe life happens and they don't get as much time to listen to a podcast.

But then come back and go, oh, man, I remembered why I love this show. And that's really neat to see. So thank you, Dr. Awesome Pants, for coming back to us there. Yeah, thank you. Such kind words. We really do appreciate it. And then this next one comes in from Witpip1922. And it is titled Longtime Listener, First Time Reviewer. Becoming a trend. There you go. Hey, I like this trend, though. And it says, I had never listened to a podcast before. And one day while working, I decided to give it a go with a gaming podcast. After searching for one that was easy to listen to and wasn't filled with not

so family-friendly content, I stumbled upon the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. I have listened to and wasn't filled with not so family-friendly content, I stumbled upon the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. I have listened to most episodes and am currently catching up from a break I took from listening while I switched jobs and routines, and man, is it great to be back. The hosts are great and really know how to break down games and give insight on whether or not if it is worth grabbing. I'm not totally active in the community because I am a dad gamer juggling games and kids, which can be a chore. The best part of the podcast is obviously the host Josh, because my name is Josh as well. And it's hard to beat a guy named Josh with a name like Paul. I did not write this review. I didn't write this review, but I love it. And yes, it did come from another Josh, but...

And your name is Josh and you approve of that message. I approve of this message. Number one, I've always said, you know, that, you know, Hey, I picked these out to read. So team Josh unites. That's okay. I I've, I've got people joining me on team waffles. That's all I need. Yeah, that's true. I think you're winning that battle to be honest, but Hey, you know what? It's If there's something that Paul and I definitely understand, it's the being a gamer dad. Life happens. Kids happen. Sometimes we don't get as much time for gaming as we would like. Sometimes you get tired of gaming for a little bit. It's hard to sit down. Sometimes you just want to do different things. One of our listeners, Yoda, was talking about that the other day. And he just says, hey, do people get tired?

People are like, yeah, absolutely, man. That's just part of life. But we do appreciate Mr. Witpip1922. Even if you don't get as much gaming time as you'd like, we really appreciate you tuning in and listening. And thank you for the review. Yeah, absolutely. I can double down on everything Josh just said. Thank you so much.

All right. Well, Josh, that's it by way of housekeeping. I think we're ready to deep dive hollow night. Let's do it. Do it. All right. Starting off here. I've got a description of hollow night on steam.

Forge your own path in hollow night, an epic action adventure through a vast ruined kingdom of insects and heroes. Explore twisting caverns, battle-tainted creatures, and befriend bizarre bugs, all in a classic hand-drawn 2D style. All right, now before we jump in to breaking down the game, I did want to share just a little bit of background about the game.

I thought this was kind of interesting. So Hollow Knight was started by two developers. Their names are Ari Gibson gibson and william pellin and they hoped to raise 35 000 on kickstarter to make it they ended up raising 57 000 so they were able to hire two more people to help make it and their idea was to make a metroidvania game that would quote replicate the sense of wonder and discovery of games where there could be any crazy secret or weird creature. So Hollow Knight released in 2017 on PC. The following year, it came out on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, and the game currently goes for $15 on Steam.

Now, Josh, one of the words there in the description was Metroidvania. If there are some listeners of our show that may not be familiar with that genre, will you give them a little bit of a rundown of what that means? Not only am I going to give them a rundown, Paul, I am going to give them the official Wikipedia definition because I think it's actually better than what I could come up with off the top of my head. Fair enough. Because it's like i can explain one but this actually describes it a lot better so what you do is you take you take a metroid and you take a castlevania yes and you mush them together exactly so a metroidvania

is a sub-genre of action adventure video games so obviously there is a lot of action involved in these uh it's focused on a non-linear and utility gated exploration and progression. Okay, now that's a mouthful, but this actually breaks it down a little bit better. So Metroidvania games feature a large interconnected world map the player can explore, though access to parts of the world is often limited by doors or other obstacles that can only be passed once the player has acquired special items, tools, weapons, abilities, or knowledge within the game. Yep. I think that does a pretty good job of summing it up. It really does. It's usually some kind of big castle or big map. It's usually divided into individual zones that

feel very different. They probably have different enemies. And basically, you start to learn additional abilities. Maybe it lets you turn. And basically, you start to learn additional abilities. Maybe it lets you turn into a bat where you can fly. And now all of a sudden, you can reach new areas that you couldn't reach before. Or maybe it's a double jump or wall running. Whatever it might be, there's some kind of progression by learning new abilities that let you reach new areas. And basically, you just kind of work your way through these Metroidvania settings. And these were really popular back in the NES days, and it really grew in popularity. I think they kind of fell out of favor for a little bit, maybe in the late 90s, early 2000s. Weirdly,

they're back. They're kind of like all the rage josh we've got the ori games we've got hollow knight we've got blasphemous we got bloodstained ritual of the night a couple years ago it's almost like reaching this new peak of popularity it really is if i had to dumb down the metroidvania game play or genre it would be it's a mix of exploration, usually combat, um, you know, boss fights, uh, backtracking. I mean that, let's be honest, that's a big part. That's a big part of the Metroidvania. Yeah. You're re-exploring the same old areas, discovering new secret passageways or whatever it might be. Right. Yeah. If you've ever been in an area and it's like, Hey, I can't jump up to that ledge, but I see a treasure chest up there and I really want to know what's in that treasure chest. In a Metroidvania, you'll be able to eventually go back to that area

and jump up there and get that treasure chest. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, Josh, the developers said that their focus on this Metroidvania was a sense of wonder and discovery. Do you think they hit that mark with Hollow Knight? As a Hollow Knight pun, they hit the nail on the head, Paul. I think they did, too. I think this game does a really good job with a sense of wonder because you reach these new areas that are kind of like larger than life like one of the areas and you're gonna have to forgive me i don't remember the names of all these areas like deep nest and i think there's like a like crystal peaks or i don't

remember them all but like all of a sudden you're surrounded by like giant mushrooms and spores and things sparkling in the air and it's kind of of like, well, what's this area? Like, what's the deal here? And then you start to discover it. And every area feels different and unique. The game lets you see certain things that you can't access right away, but it makes you wonder, what can I do with this later? The game loves giving you rancid eggs. And it's like, what on earth am I going to do with these rancid eggs?

Did you have to Google what rancid eggs were? Of like what on earth am i gonna do with these rancid eggs did you have to google what rancid eggs were of course because i had 10 of them i'm like what am i supposed to do with these stupid things so yeah they they really do i think do a very good job of a sense of wonder and discovery and i think that that also shows that they know what makes a good metroidvania like if you don't have a good sense of exploration and discovery, it's just going to break down and it's not going to work well. Yeah, that's true. It is a very large portion of the game.

And if you don't do it right, then a game just becomes really grindy and almost like work at that point. Yeah, especially Metroidvanias. By nature, they do become grindy because you're retreading old ground over and over. So you got to make sure it's interesting to keep your attention all right now as far as the storyline goes we're not going to spend very much time on this at all you do not play as the hollow knight which i assumed picking up this game you do not have a name in this game you are just simply a knight the hollow knight is actually the big bad in this game. But you just so happen to run

across a little town called Dirtmouth, and it sits on top of Hollow Nest, which was a giant kingdom that has basically fallen into ruin due to something called the Infection. And back in the day, the Infection was basically locked behind a couple of seals in order to magically keep it quarantined, I guess is the best word. Although apparently the seals are not fully working. So the infection was still taking over and destroying all of Holonest. And so your goal is to basically, which you don't know initially in the game, in the beginning, you're just kind of discovering these new areas and running through it. But eventually your goal is to break the original seals and then be able to face the infection head-on and be able to restore Holonest to its glory.

Now, the story itself is not really central to the game. They give you little morsels as the game goes on. You're not hit with any major story reveals or anything like that at any point. I would say the game focuses much more on gameplay. But also to note, the game does not have voice acting where they are narrating the dialogue. You're reading the dialogue and characters kind of make gibberish sounds kind of like on the Sims. So I would not say it's terribly story forward. Did you care about the story? Were you kind of drawn in by the lore and all that? I was in a sense. And it's like you said, I think where the game shines in relation to the story itself is that they give you these little glimpses here and there of what happened to Hollow Nest. Why has it fallen into ruin? You do meet characters and the gibberish is kind of

unique to each character that they speak, which I thought was kind of cool. But there is this weird underlying tone to the story where you get just these little glimpses, just peeks into what happened or what is happening. And it's very sporadic. And it never... Like you said, there's never a big reveal. There's never a big aha moment or anything like that. But it really kept me wanting to know more because I'm getting these snippets and it's starting to put things together a little bit. I get that there's a big bad and there's something that happened and all this is going on. So it really dangled that carrot for me to want to know more about the lore and about the story and what is actually going on, I felt like it's like hot sauce, right? It's like you would never want to eat it by itself,

but if you put it in something, it's like, oh man, that really kind of helped accentuate it a little bit. And so at that point, I feel like it did a very good job in that regard. Yeah, I feel like you need some kind of carrot, like you needed an incentive to explore all these areas. And I feel like the story has just enough that you understand why you're doing what you're doing. But I would not say that the scheme really excels from a story standpoint. But I would say for Metroidvania games, what is going to matter the most are the mechanics and how the exploration works. Those are the things that are central. You cannot mess those up, otherwise you have a complete failure of a game, which is why a lot of Metroidvanias do tend to fall flat. Now, let's go ahead and we'll talk

about some of the mechanics first, and then we'll swing back around and talk about how exploration works in Hollow Knight. Now, first and foremost, I think that the movement mechanics are really top-notch. So one thing I really love is that this game does not have any acceleration or deceleration of the character. You go from 0 to 100 immediately and 100 to 0 immediately, and the game has very smooth movement abilities. Now, there are a lot of things that you discover later in the game, so we won't necessarily ruin a bunch of those by spoilers. But you do get some things early on, like the ability to dash.

And all of those movements, I think, are incredibly responsive. And it really allows you to dodge and to escape from any enemy interaction in the entire game. If you get hit by something, it's simply because you did not evade properly, and you ended up being hit. But I actually find it to be quite a blast to move around in the world. Dude, the controls in Hollow Knight are on point. They really are. I could not find fault in any of the controls in the game. It's like you said, if I miss a jump, it's because I missed the jump. It's not because... Here's a classic example. And it's funny because I was playing Donkey Kong Country. My wife got Donkey Kong Country on the Switch, right? And I was so infuriated by the fact that there's so much time in between when you stop running

and Donkey Kong kind of like he slides a little bit. There's that lag. And you see this in a lot of Nintendo games. Mario is the same way. You push sideways and it's like it takes him a half second to get moving. And I find that infuriating, right? Like, I guess I used to either just be used to it or what. But Hollow Knight has absolutely none of that.

You press jump, you jump. You press left, you go left instantly. And so the mechanics in regards to the controls in this game are absolutely spot on. I mean, they're exactly what they need to be. There is no fault in any of those that I could find. Totally agree with you. Now, every Metroidvania game has some kind of HP mana system. Maybe you have a certain number of lives. Maybe it's using something else. The way it works in Hollow Knight is pretty unique. So basically, instead of having an HP meter, you have a certain

number of masks. When you get hit, one of the masks goes away. And if you lose all of your masks, then you die. Now, in this game, you do not have a set number of lives. If you lose all of your masks, the game will automatically teleport you back to the last bench where you rested. And then you basically just carry on your merry way. Now, you will have lost the currency that you earned, which in this game is called Geo, but you can go back to where you died, you fight a very weak shroud of your old corpse, and then you're able to get that money back. So you have unlimited lives. There's really no such thing as lost progress, because whatever you have learned or figured out, if you die, you still have it. The only thing you can lose in this game is Geo, which honestly is pretty easy to farm, and ultimately, eventually you buy everything you need, and it's all excess. So it's really not a big deal. It's just slightly inconvenient and then instead of having mana you have what they call a soul meter

so anytime you do damage to an enemy your meter goes up and then you can use that soul to either heal yourself or to cast spells and over the course of the game you do learn multiple spells and different things that you can do and so that's kind of the system that they have here in this game uh what did you think about the system of like system that they have here in this game. What did you think about the system of health and mana here in Hollow Knight? I actually really, really enjoyed it. I thought the ability to stop and heal yourself was... At any time. At any time.

No potions. Yeah, no potions, no running back to town and having to buy health potions or anything like that. You actually get the ability to heal by killing things. So there's this really neat kind of risk reward where it's like, I'm down to one mask, which are just basically times that you can get hit, right? If you get hit, something, maybe like a big explosion will take two masks from you or something like that. But for the most part, it's kind of like you get hit, you lose a mask. And so if you're running around with only one mask left, it's like I need to fight things to kill them to get soul so that I can heal. But I only have one hit I can take before I die.

Yeah. And so it's like, I don't want to fight things, but I have to fight things. One of the funny things with Metroidvanias is is i'm sure you did this at least at least seven or eight times you're low on health so you run off screen you run right back you kill the one mob you run off screen you run right back kill the same mob and you do it over and over to farm the soul so that way you can heal and then you carry on your merry way so you end up doing some shenanigans like that yep absolutely and it should be said that with the healing mechanic, which I really was a huge fan of in this game, that there's like a pause. So your guy kind of, you can't heal while running. You can't do any of that, but you have

to kind of just stop and your guy like kind of charges up and grunts a little bit or whatever he does. And then you start to heal. So there's a pause there. And it just basically means that it's not easy to always stop and heal. And again, you have to be cognizant of that because I know in a lot of the boss fights, I would try to stop and heal. But the delay in between the attempting to heal and the heal actually starting was long enough that more often than not, the boss would hit me and I would die before I could ever get a heal off. And it's also not an instant full heal. When you start to heal, it heals a chunk of health at a time. So you have to remain motionless longer to heal a larger health pool, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. So you can find fragments over the course of the game that increase the number of masks you have. So your HP pool does go up. Same with your soul meter. But in the beginning of the game, I think you only get four or five masks. I feel like it's four or five. Yeah, I think so. And if you have a full soul meter, it lets you heal for three. So the game does not rely on you having to go buy more consumables. That's one of the things I don't like in Metroidvanias. A lot of times you are dependent on having food or having potions. Nope.

In this game, as long as you kill stuff, now you can heal. And I think that that works really well. Now, I will say the weapons is kind of an odd choice for Hollow Knight. You mean weapon? Weapon. Okay. Now, first of all, why do you fight with a nail? Why is it not a sword?

Because you're a bug. It acts just like a sword. It's just small. So from the perspective of an insect, it's a nail? Yeah, because we didn't say this, but everything in Hollow Knight is insect. They're all bugs. So Hollow Knight, everything you come across is a bug. I don't even know if humans exist in this world. But yeah, everything is related to bugs, little crawly critters, whatever.

And so my thinking was that because they're all small and they're bugs running around, that a little nail would be equivalent to a sword for one of those. So it made sense to me. I guess. It's just funny because you literally swipe it like a sword. You're not like jabbing things like a spear. You're not stabbing things. No, no.

Yeah, yeah. You literally, it functions exactly the same as a sword. Now, over the course of the game, you do get to level your nail up, and you do replace it with like a different type of nail down the road. But this is not like one of those Metroidvanias where you can use a mace and a shield or two daggers or a two handed sword. It's no matter what you're holding,

no matter how many times you've upgraded it, it operates exactly the same. So the combat itself does not ever really shake up as far as your default swing goes. Now, I think the one thing that we definitely have to talk about before breaking down the combat are the charms. And I think the charms might be the coolest thing that sets this apart from other Metroidvania games. Do you want to talk a little bit about how charms work? So, yeah. And it's funny because the other thing that we need to mention is Hollow Knight does absolutely

squat to tell you anything at the start of this game. It really just drops you in and then you kind of have to figure this stuff out. So charms, you get these little slots that you can equip. I think you get like three maybe to start the game off with. I can't remember if it's three or four. But basically, as you play or beat bosses or whatever, you can discover these charms. And these charms do a multitude of things. One of them is you can get a charm that sends out little moths or butterflies to collect geo, which is the currency in this game for you. Because otherwise, you actually have to run over it as if you were Mario collecting a gold coin or moths or butterflies to collect geo which is the currency in this game for you because otherwise

you actually have to run over it as if like you were mario collecting a gold coin or something so you know you can get a charm that does that you can get a charm that puts a shell around you while you're attempting to heal like i told you know i just mentioned that healing is kind of risk reward there but you can get a charm that will put a hard shell around you so that if something does attack you while you're trying to heal, it hits the shell instead and you're able to pop your heel off or something like that. There are a lot of charms in this game. 45. 45. So there are 45 charms in this game. And I think I discovered maybe half of those, to be honest with you. I really like the aspect that it does because charms really help to change the feel of combat in the game and what your character is doing.

You can get charms that focus on movement. You can get charms that focus on combat. You can get charms that focus on quality of life, not having to run over and collect your geo. You can get charms that make you stinky and change how characters interact with you. I mean, they do all sorts of number of things in this game, which I think is amazing that they have so many of them and how they interact with different aspects. One of the things about charms, did you know that you can over charm yourself? No, I thought because the way it works is you have only a certain number of notches, and the charms themselves will take up anywhere from one to five notches.

So that's also part of the strategy. Do I equip several one-notch charms, or do I want to use this one big one? You're telling me you can exceed the limit? You can exceed the notch. Yep. So notches are, like you said, the slots that you can put charms into. So, and you want to use a lot of charms. So it's funny because if you click a charm, it'll kind of shake and it'll say, no, your

notches are full. And if you click it repeatedly, it will forcefully install that charm. I had no idea. But you are now considered over charmed. And what happens, see, this is why I say Hollow Knight doesn't tell you everything, right? You are now over-charmed. And anytime you take damage, you take double damage. Oh, interesting.

So there's, again, risk-reward there in saying, hey, I really want to be able to equip this charm, but I don't have enough notches to do that. Am I willing to risk taking double damage for the benefit of having more charms active than I would normally be able to do. How funny. Yeah, that's not the only thing that they don't teach you. I remember when you and I were talking, I could not get past a certain area. And you mentioned that you can hold down plus attack and you can bounce off of like certain enemies or certain surfaces.

And I just thought it was an area i couldn't get through yet and they don't teach you these things in the game they do give you some tips and hints like they they do teach you about like the compass and the map and we're going to talk about those in a few minutes but a lot of this game you either just have to figure out on your own or you just got to take to youtube and start watching tutorials and apparently you can still learn stuff that you didn't know yeah which is which is great. I mean, that kind of tells you a lot of there's a lot more depth to this game than I think is readily apparent on the surface of it. People that have put hundreds of hours into this, they play with all these kind of crazy charm builds and stuff

like that to really, really mix things up a lot. So there is a lot of customization that is provided to the game through the use of these charms. Yeah. And you actually mentioned my favorite charm in the game, which I did not normally use, but the Defender's Crest is the one that says, makes you emit a hero odor, which really are, which are just brown pillows of gas that constantly surround you but it will actually change dialogue options with characters which is very clever so there's a lot of little you know no pun intended there are a lot of charming things in this game that you discover along the way that they really did put in a lot of time and care even with like minor things like

interactions if you have this charm equipped now we do need to talk a little bit about the combat. So once you've got, you know, really responsive movement, we're running around this giant map of Hollow Nest. Did you feel like it was fun to fight and to destroy other bugs? I thought the combat was great. Honestly, there was a learning curve and I failed at that learning curve in the beginning. And I lost many a boss fight multiple times. But once you start to learn the combat and the combat is as responsive as the movement. So when you push the button to swipe your sword, instantly, boom. So what happens is this leads to a lot of mechanical ability to jump towards the boss, swipe your sword midair, turn around in midair, and jump away before the boss can even hit you.

It's very, very well done. It's very tight control scheme. I thought the combat was a lot of fun. Like you mentioned, the ability to swipe up into the air left and right and then down because the game doesn't tell you that you can swipe down all of a sudden that clicks and you go wait a minute like i can swipe down and bounce off of things so now it's like oh well you can jump off of spikes there's many areas in the game where you have to master this mechanic and and i'm telling you it was some of the harder platforming that I've experienced in a while to

make it through some of these areas where it's like, you have to perfectly time a downslash to not die to spikes that are under you to then ricochet off of that, to downslash on top of a bug, to ricochet off of that, to get up to some high ledge that you wouldn't be able to get to otherwise or something like that. So, you know, well. Combat-wise, there's your trash bugs that are just all over the place. Some of them can be supremely annoying. They get harder as the

game goes on or in certain areas of the game. But I felt like every boss fight was just really fun, man. And I think that's a testament to the actual combat mechanics in the game. As simple as they are, they are very simple. That's the one thing that I think will put some people off, is that there is not a lot of depth to the combat. Like you mentioned earlier, you don't get multiple weapons, you don't get multiple swords or axes or the ability to throw your sword or anything like that. You do get some abilities through charms that will allow your sword to swing further and things like that. But again, that's a build. Do you want to play the game that way? Because you're going to make

sacrifices other places if you do. Yeah, the combat is a little simplistic. One thing that I complained about early on is that you start to learn spells, but since spells and healing both use the same soul meter, I would say I used 95% of my soul toward healing myself, and the other 5% was accidentally casting a spell and wasting my soul meter. So, eventually... That was 100% me, Paul. That's 100%, right? 100% me, Paul. That's 100% me as well. You have to use your soul to heal. And so I found myself a little frustrated that I was not able to cast as many spells. Now, I will say I ended up equipping a charm

that greatly increased how much soul I would harvest. So I don't know the numbers, but my guess is it was going up at least twice as fast, maybe even three times when I would harvest. So I don't know the numbers, but my guess is it was going up at least twice as fast, maybe even three times when I would do a hit. And that was allowing me to start to pepper in more of the spells, which definitely helped. So I think that the combat, it starts off like a one out of 10 as far as complexity and fun. Like you really are just pressing one button to swing and another button to jump. And it's very simple. But before you know it,

maybe like 10 hours into the game, you're dashing, you're double jumping, you're casting spells. There's a lot to do. So I do find that it increases over the course of the game, which is kind of necessary because you're rerunning through these old areas. You got to do something to keep that combat fresh. And on top of what you're saying about the bosses,

the bosses, I think, were very memorable. And I thought that they all had a very unique something about them. Like, this monster will go underground, or this monster will throw this kind of item. Or after I defeat this one mantis, now there's going to be two, and now I've got to fight two of them at the same time. So I felt like the boss mechanics were very unique and very interesting. And the game has an awful lot of optional bosses and secret passageways, things that you can find and go to. And those are things that you can totally bypass if you want, or you can do them and they're going to unlock new charms and new abilities that you can use in the game. But I think we do need to start

talking a little bit about the exploration. Now let's rewind and go back to your very first playthrough, starting the game up. You really doesn't. I've said it doesn't hold your hand. It doesn't explain anything. But I think the biggest travesty that this game does is it does not give you a map. So you do not know where you are. And when you're in Hollow Nest, which is a lot of tunnels and areas like that, that kind of look similar, that you legitimately get lost. I remember being lost. I remember spending a lot of time trying to find my way back up to the little town of Dirtmouth that's at the top, that's the hub, and just getting frustrated. Honestly, just being like, I really hope this whole game is not like this because I have a very good sense of direction in real life. But when I'm stuck in a dark, dingy tunnel underground somewhere, I don't necessarily remember how I got there or how to get out

of it at that point. Well, especially because Metroidvanias are kind of intentionally built kind of like a maze. And so in the beginning, you do not know at all where you're at. Now, you only have access to a small portion of the map, but you will absolutely be lost. The game wants you to be lost. And the reason that I say that is that they intentionally withhold these tools from you in the beginning. They just want you to explore. If you die, so be it. Just go start running around, start exploring, and you'll figure it out. Now, eventually, you do end up meeting Cornifer, who is this dude that makes maps, I guess, just as a hobby. And the first time you enter a new zone, you can find Cornifer,

and then he will sell you a map. Now, the problem is he sells you the first map to the first area, but you don't know where you are. So you can pull up the map and it does you absolutely no good because you cannot navigate your way through it. You don't know where you are. Imagine just like being teleported to the middle of a foreign city and there's no street signs and someone hands you a map. It'd be like, okay, well, that's great. I literally don't know where I'm starting. So how is this map going to do me any good? And then pretty soon they finally give you a charm, which is the compass. It's the very first charm that you get. And as long as you have the compass equipped, now when you pull up your map, it does show you are here and then you're able to actually use it. So the compass,

at least for you and me, for having only one playthrough, we had to keep the compass on at all times. It's a non-negotiable. You have to keep it equipped. I never once unequipped the compass. During my entire playtime with Hollow Knight, I never unequipped the compass at all, which takes up a slot, which means that you're not able to equip all of the charms that you want to equip. I get it. Hollow Knight does an amazing job of progression. The game starts off very simple. It's like you said, the combat feels simple, but then it progresses as the game goes on. The movement mechanics and all of the other mechanics, it slowly introduces these abilities and things that you accrue through your playtime because it would be overwhelming if you had all

that stuff up front. So the game's progression, actually, I find to be very, very good. Why they have to start you off in the bottom of the barrel with no map, no compass, no way to understand how to get around, it kind of lends itself to this initial frustration. And what's really funny is i was a little bit ahead of you in playing hollow night and i remember you chatting with me and saying dude i was so mad like you were like this game sucks i keep dying and i don't know where i am like you were asking why do people like this and i went paul it gets better dude trust me it gets better and then it's funny because like you got the map and the compass like the next day or whatever and you're like dude this game's great yeah it was like it was like they wanted to intentionally abuse you so that way when they give you this gift of a map and compass that you're

grateful for it but it's like every metroidvania game has a map system that you can pull up because you have to. One thing that is kind of funny is that you have to buy a map for every single area. Now, Hollow Knight has an enormous map. Yeah, it's big. The individual zones are actually quite small. Now, they do take a few minutes to run through it all. But the problem is you have to buy a map for every area. Now, the only way you can buy a map is by finding Cornifer. And the only way you can find him is that you'll start to hear him hum, which by the way, there's a YouTube video. You can listen to him hum for 10 hours straight in case you're a big fan of Cornifer. And you'll see little parchment paper on the ground.

And that means that you're getting close to Cornifer. Now, the problem is that there's... I legitimately don't know. I'm guessing 22 different zones, something like that. So you're almost constantly in a new area. So you press the button to pull up your map, and it says you do not have a map for this area. And then once you buy the map, you kind of now know that area. So it's almost like,

I wish you just gave this to me in the beginning because I don't really need it as much anymore. I almost just kind of wished they just gave you one master map and then they're not going to mark like the secret passageways. You've got to discover all that. But I kind of wish they gave you at least somewhat of a rudimentary map in the beginning

there were a few zones that i went into that i explored a lot of that zone without unlocking any of the the map because i had not found corner for yet yeah and when you die in a zone where you don't have a map and you don't know where your shade is, that can make it very difficult to get back to your shade because it's like, I have no idea where I went at this point. So, Cornifer is not always at the very beginning of a new area. If they had put him at the beginning of a new area, I think it would have increased the quality of life a little bit. On the flip side of that, anytime I heard him humming or saw a paper that he had left on the ground, I got very excited.

Would you cheer out loud? Oh, yes. Oh, dude, I was so happy. Finally. Yes. Finally. Yep. Dude, 100%. So, I mean, they may be onto something there in the sense that it's like, I freaking love Cornerfer. Anytime I'd come across that guy, I'd be like, yes, give me that map! Give me that map! But they did make it where

he's not always easy to find, and that could lead to some headache at the same time. There's also one zone when he is not humming, and he is harder to find because he is scared and doesn't want to make a lot of noise because he's in a dangerous area. So even that is kind of annoying annoying now metroidvania games by nature you got to travel a lot you're

retreading old ground because you got to test out these new abilities uh hollow knight does give you a few forms of quick travel so there are things that they call stagways which is a big giant beetle with a saddle and however many different points you have unlocked you can hop on the stag and he'll take you to another area the game also has a tramway so as you get a little bit deeper in the game you do have a tram that connects a few areas and then as you get closer to the end of the game you do get a very handy ability to place a dream gate it lets you place it wherever you want, and you can always teleport back to it. So if you have that boss that you keep dying on,

earlier in the game, you might have to fight your way for a good four to five minutes just to get back to the boss. You can plop down that dream gate, you die, teleport straight back, and start that fight over again. So the dream gate really is handy toward the end of the game. And retreading old ground, I think, is probably one of the things you and I had our biggest beef with. And that's not even really Hollow Knight. That's just kind of all Metroidvanias. But I did find myself like, oh my goodness, I got to run through this again. Or you look on the map

and these two places connect, but it's a shortcut that you forgot to activate on the other side. So you wasted eight minutes to get to this point of the map. Now I got to go 15 minutes to go a different way

just so I can now hit this log and now the passageway opens and now I've got that shortcut for later. Yeah. Or there's parts of the map where there's not a save point nearby or there's not a quick travel point nearby. So you wind up having to just hoof it for a decent distance. Those places in the map do exist. And so it's not unheard of to spend five minutes just trying to run from point A to point B to get somewhere because there's not a fast travel point nearby or a tram. Here's the one thing I don't understand.

The fast travel points are great. What's the difference between that and the tram? Why? It's almost like somebody went, well, we need fast travel. But it's like, well, Bob's idea of having trams came in first. So we have to roll with that. But we like Jeff's idea of these bugs that help fast travel you, so we're going to go with that too. Honestly, I don't really know, Josh.

It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You find this tram pass late in the game, and I don't know about you, but I had found these broken down trams, and it would say that there was a slot for an item. You knew you could do something with them. Yeah, you know that there was like a slot for an item you knew you could do something with yeah yeah you know eventually you're going to use it i i don't totally understand why i need to like take a tram to another tram and then run to a stagway and then take a stag to this other area it's a little goofy but i guess it's better than nothing but ultimately i found the fast travel to be a little bit lackluster i really enjoy castlevania symphony of the night that's my all-time favorite and you know what

they give you they plop down 80 points across the map that you can instantly teleport between them all and it's pretty handy it's it's very nice um at this point i think we can just kind of like open it up and talk about whatever we want to talk about things that work well things that didn't work well things that annoyed you like what kind of stands out i will say this because we have not talked about it but the music in hollow knight is some of the best in a video game. I absolutely love the soundtrack for this game, dude. There's certain zones that you go into where I would just sit there for a minute and let the music play. Absolutely gorgeous. Whoever composed the music for this, it did a phenomenal job. I'll also say that the music ties into the atmosphere of this game phenomenally. I think that Hollow Knight has this very, very unique atmosphere to it where it's very peaks with all this amethyst and pink crystals and stuff going on.

And then there's a mushroom forest with these bouncy mushrooms that have spores pouring out of them. And then you get down into this old, ancient, abandoned city where it's obviously there was some gigantic bug civilization that used to live there and stuff like that. So the atmosphere in Hollow Knight is absolutely top-notch, in my opinion. And the music that goes along with that, and the hints at a background story or something going on, some old tragedy that befell everything, and you're trying to maybe help out or do something because you're not really 100% sure. To me, it all ties together in this very memorable package for a video game, which I think is probably one of the overall reasons that Hollow Knight stands out to so many people. Because Metroidvania genre has been around for a very long time.

And like you said, there's probably thousands of video games in that genre out there. I feel like some of them do it very, very well. And I feel like that it's the sum of all of its parts. No single part of Hollow Knight is very, very good. But when you put everything together, I see why people like it so much. Yeah, I think one of the problems is that since Metroidvanias have been around for so long, and the fact that there are a lot of good ones, Castlevania Symphony of the Night is absolutely one of my all-time favorite games. And there are probably at least seven or eight times that I told you, why would Hollow Knight do this? Symphony of the Night did this, which was so much better. And that game is 20 plus years old. So to me, I kind of felt like Symphony of the Night to me is the best Metroidvania.

We're more than 20 years past that. And I feel like we're still getting inferior products. I would still rather go back and play Symphony of the Night or something like Bloodstained, which is the spiritual successor. I thought Hollow Knight was great as far as Metroidvania goes. Either you like them or you don't. But I did find myself constantly saying, why is it not more like Symphony of the Night? I think part of it, and we'll get into rating this. This is not rating. This is just kind of pulling everything that we've talked about together a little bit before we get into that. But I think that there is a huge portion of the population that just simply isn't as old as us, right? So they don't know. They didn't have the experience of Symphony

of the Night and stuff like that. And so when you take a modern game that does an awful lot in the Metroidvania genre very, very well, I think that's what makes it stand out to so many people. Even though if you go back in history, maybe there's games that have done it all better. But I don't know that there's a Metroidvania that has done it like Hollow Knight has in recent times. Yeah, there's probably something to that. When I think of Castlevania, I'm thinking of the fact that enemies drop inventory items. There's no inventory in Hollow Knight. You get one weapon, you can swap some charms, but that's it. Castlevaniavania you're finding new shields you're

finding new weapons if you get these items that match i can press two buttons and they do a special combo move i can do button combinations like a fighting game and i'll cast spells i feel like it's just uh there's so much more to keep your interest in some of that stuff from other entries like i i played the new ori games and i'm like these are perfectly fine i don't know why everyone's going crazy about they're pretty but they never grabbed me no they're not that fun compared to other entries so maybe there is something to be said for that i thought hollow knight was perfectly good i i enjoyed my time playing it i don't think it's the best metvania, but I definitely liked

it more than the Ori games, that's for sure. I think one of the funnest things about Metroidvanias is when you and I would talk about our progress. So at one point, I remember telling you, oh, I found this shopkeeper that will sell me extra notches for the charms. And you're like, oh, are you serious? I haven't found that guy. And then you would tell me about some ability you had unlocked. I'm like, Oh, I don't have that yet.

So it was kind of neat to like compare notes because the fact that it is nonlinear, you're kind of just running around blind, hoping you discover something fun. And you and I were finding different things at different times. And I do think that that made the experience also a little bit interesting as we would catch up yeah yeah for sure all right uh i think the last thing i would mention is i really hated the waterways that was one area where you would do a little bit of platforming there's not a whole lot of platforming in the game the problem is that if

you fell you were in the sewer and you would have to swim all the way to the right and i did this multiple times and you would have to fight these enemies but you can't swing your nail while you're in the water so i'd have to jump out of the water and try to time it right and fight swim all the way to the right climb back up do the platforming again so the uh the waterways in particular i was not a fan of uh oh and then the last thing you know we did talk a little a little bit about the graphical style one of those early developers one of the two guys who started it he actually hand drew the game and they just scanned and uploaded it straight into the engine wow Wow, really? So what you're looking at on the screen are literally hand-drawn by one of those guys.

And that's also why it gives it kind of like that Cuphead unique hand-drawn look. Yeah. Yeah, like I said, it is a very memorable style of game. The atmosphere of it, the sound design. I mean, there's a lot that stands out to it, which I think helps lend itself to the overall popularity and memorableness of Hollow Knight. Yeah, I think so too. All right, well, now that we shared a little bit

about what we think about Hollow Knight, Josh, you've got a couple of Steam reviews for us. I do. I've pulled some reviews. We always do this for any deep dive. We try to break games down. We try to hint at some of our thoughts and opinions on it. We'll get into our ratings here in just a little bit.

But we like to let everybody kind of know what other people out there think, how is the game rated and what some of the pros and cons that people find. So always pull a couple of positive reviews, a couple of negative reviews. I'll start off with a positive review. This one's a little cheeky. This guy has 53 hours on record, so has played through the game. And they recommended it, but they said this game is full of bugs.

Hilarious. Right? I know. It was too cheesy to not throw in there. Because if you don't know, it's like, wait a minute, why are you recommending this? But Hollow Knight, like we said, is nothing but bugs as the characters and all that. So sorry for the dad joke, but I had to put that in there. I'm for it.

Okay, but that was a positive review. All right, so here's a negative one. This guy has 10 hours on record, so gave it a fair shot. And he says, I want to leave a positive review because it's a beautiful game. It's well made. It runs nicely. It is competent as a whole, and I respect Team Cherry for what they accomplished. But there is no way I would actually recommend this to people who have similar tastes as me.

I don't find wandering blindly and excessive backtracking to be an enjoyable experience. So while it is a great game, one that deserves the hype and one you might enjoy, I don't recommend it. I love everything about the game except for actually playing it. I can understand what they're saying. You know, there are times where I never felt like I had to slog my way through Hollow Knight. I can say that. But there are many a time where I was playing and I was going, I'm not really having a ton of fun right now because I'm backtracking so much.

I either didn't go to the right area to fight the next boss in line that would give me a mechanic that I needed to progress. And so I was just wandering this giant map looking for something. Do you know what i mean where it was like oh i never went down this one corridor to explore and the boss was down that way that gives me this ability that now unlocks a large portion of the map and now i know what to go do and so i would just wander there is a lot of wondering now i think that's just part of the nature of metroidvanias in general but i I think Hollow Knight is probably a little bit more guilty of that than some. Just because of the size of the map and everything's underground, a lot of the zones look the same within that zone. They have their own flair, but if you're in Crystal Peaks, there's just pink crystals everywhere. I don't know what part of Crystal Peaks I'm in or something like that. So I do agree with the complaint on that negative review for sure. Yeah. I think most people would say nonlinear slash open world is always better. I don't know

if that's always necessarily the case because sometimes you just want a little bit of direction of where to go in Hollow Knight. In the beginning, I was not looking up anything online. The first, I don't know, maybe like 14 hours I played, I was just playing it completely blind. But eventually, I hit a point where I did not know where to go. And I would pull up the map. Okay, that looks like a corridor. Let me check that.

Nope, I can't reach that yet. Let me go to the next one. Nope, I can't reach that ledge. Let's go to the next one. Nope. I can't reach that ledge. Let's go to this next one. And I did that for the whole map. And obviously I must've missed something. And I was like, I'm not doing that again. I just literally played a full hour and made zero progress. Right?

Yep. I, I've been in that exact boat, dude. Yep. And from that point on, I just, I said, you know what? We got a deep dive. We're on a time limit. I can't play this game for 100 hours until I stumble into the right areas. And so there were a few times that I put in,

where do I go after this area? Where do I go after the Ancient Basin? Where do I go after whatever? And then that would kind of guide me where I would see posts on Reddit that would say, oh, well, do you have this charm? Okay, well, then you want to go here and you're going to get there by going to the very southwest of this area. And then I did follow those instructions. I was not following a step-by-step guide, but there were times that I just needed a little bit of a pointer. Just go that way and then I'll find it.

Right. But the problem is that when you have four different directions you can go and you don't know which direction to go, that becomes an issue. And that, that does lead to some frustration for sure. And I'm with you, man. There was one or two play sessions where I, like you, I spent an hour and accomplished absolutely nothing because I was just wandering around trying to find what I had missed at that point. Okay, so this next one is recommended. 77 hours on record. This person has played through a good bit. In my opinion, one of the best Metroidvanias ever made.

Beautiful art, incredible soundtrack, tight, fluid movement, incredibly challenging, but in a way that creates a sense of accomplishment. You can feel yourself getting better each time you try a fight or a tough platforming segment. Cannot recommend this game enough. I had no interest in Metroidvanias before this game.

They're now one of my favorite genres. Please release Silk Song. I'm desperate. Silk Song is the sequel, I guess, to Hollow Knight, which is not released yet, but yeah,

there's been some hype for sure coming up for that. And then this last one is six hours on record, not recommended. This is the game that made me realize I really don't like Metroidvanias. Are you sensing a trend here? Retracing my steps over and over and over grows tiring. Distances between checkpoints and fast travel points are also way too far to mitigate this. I hit a point where I couldn't figure out my next goal, wandered around for about 45 minutes trying to figure it out, and finally just quit. Graphics, controls, and presentation are all very good. I can see people who enjoy this genre

really loving this game. I get the appeal, but it just wasn't for me. And I think that's fair. Spot on. If you don't like that aspect, it's just like I said, it's part of the genre. It really is. I do think, and I've said this once, I do think that Hollow Knight's maybe a little bit more guilty of some of that backtracking and the lack of direction. But this is the overall complaint that you see with a lot of the negative reviews yeah and the fact that there are no rare drops and there's no inventory system like with castlevania if i had to backtrack sometimes that was annoying because that's a part of every metroidvania but at least i know there's a chance I might get a rare drop off of a mob.

And so at least there's any carrot dangling in front of you will keep you going. Whereas Hollow Knight, I felt like that was just kind of missing. I needed something a little bit more. Maybe if the game just gave you a couple of slots, even just for armor or something, maybe that would have helped in that regard. But yeah, I can definitely understand why people would critique those parts of Hollow Knight. I get it. Yep. All right, Paul. So that's some reviews from the gamers that have played this on Steam. What we do after that is we try to guess. We've had some negatives. We know what

people think the negative aspects of the game are. We know what people think the negative aspects of the game are. We know what people think the positive aspects of the game are. And then what we do is we are going to guess what we think the overall rating for this game is on Steam, which uses a scale of 0 to 100. I believe I won last time.

Sure did, buddy. So I guess I get to go. I mean, you get to pick pick do you want me to guess first yes as the loser the only the only strategic answer yeah right okay so i do know i i i have not looked up reviews i did write my guests down before going to steam and and looking at these reviews and stuff like that i know that hollow knight is beloved like i i think anybody listening to the show has heard of this game it always always comes with a very positive connotation. So I went high. I said, man, I feel like everybody really likes this game. I went with 95%.

Oh, my notes. I have written down 95%. That was my initial guess. So what are you going to do? Are you probably gonna go one over or one under one over or one under yeah i i feel like if you polled gamers and said what's the best metroidvania of the last 10 years i think hollow knight might be your most common answer um i can't believe i'm gonna say this i feel like the the the statistician within me says, take the points, go 94. You've got so much more breathing space. I'm going to say 96.

I think this is going to be 95 or 96. I think one of us hit it on the dot. That's my prediction. 96% is getting into top games of all time type territory on Steam. Well, Paul, it's a good thing you didn't listen to the statistician side of you because this game has a 97 percent overwhelmingly positive rating on steam 97 it is a very much beloved game sheesh that's high i i mean i i get it, though. You know? I see why people love this game so much.

I really do. You know what? I gotta compare this. What is Bloodstained? I gotta look this up now. Uh-oh. What's Bloodstained compared to Hollow Knight? Let's see.

I gotta look this up. On Steam? Yeah. All right. Bloodstained, which is a more costly game. It's $40. 94% positive. All right. So at least it's in the same realm. I can live with that. It is in the same realm. I think Bloodstained is better, but I think they're both good. All right. So I win.

You win. I get to introduce the next segment. You get to intro this next segment. I had a very terrible pickup line picked out too, Paul. So I'm glad you won this one. Oh boy. I don't know if this one's going to be any better. All right. Let's hit that music. Hey there, Ms. Knight. If you were a burger at McDonald's, you'd be the McGorgeous.

All right. Welcome to this next segment, which we call Make Love, Marry, or Murder. This is where we talk about the game. And, and you know it's a little bit of a rating is this a game that's marriage material is it worth the price you should buy it commit to it put in the hours have fun playing it is it a game that is maybe good for a small dose or maybe if the price is right maybe it's worth picking up where it's just dating material or is it a game that you want to murder? All right, Josh, I think I'm going to give you the honors.

I want to know what you're going to rate this first because a little part of me says you could talk me into any three ratings and I think you'd be perfectly valid. I love, so for people listening, Paul and I, we never tell each other what we think about a game. We don't.

We can hint. We hint. You can hear frustrations. Yeah. Honestly, you can hear what we think works, some of the things we complain about. We try to give an overall view of something, but we never tell each other what we actually think about a game until this moment. I will sometimes try to dodge and weave to throw Paul off the scent of what I think about a game sometimes. For this one, for me, it's a Mary. I found this to be an absolutely incredible

game. I am not a huge fan of the Metroidvania genre, believe it or not. I like the Metroid games on Nintendo, but I have the same complaints. I just played Metroid Dread not that long ago, and exact same complaints. I got lost so many times in that game that it just starts to get frustrating for me. So not my favorite genre out there. I don't know that I would ever voluntarily pick up a Metroidvania because they generally just don't click with me. There's other games that I'd rather play. I played Bloodstained on the PC. I think it's a great game. I played Hollow Knight and I think it's a phenomenal game. I really, really do. So I think that there is an awful lot to enjoy about this game. I think it's approachable for people that have not played it. I think the

difficulty level is spot on. There are some very challenging points in the game, whether it's platform-based or boss-fighting-based. But everything in this game just screams very, very well-polished. I think it's like a 30-hour, 25, 30-hour game that you can pick up for $15 now. It is a game that begs to be played by just about everybody, in my opinion. So it's actually a pretty easy Mary for me. Okay.

I'm going to give it a make love. And what I would say is the price is right for picking this one up. And I think you got to fight through the first hour, which is going to suck. I agree with you there. And then it's going to be fun. And one thing that I think you got to fight through the first hour, which is going to suck. I agree with you there. And then it's going to be fun. And one thing that I do like with Hollow Knight is that you do hit those new abilities in pretty rapid succession. You're not stuck playing the game for

eight hours without having a dash move. You play for an hour, here's dash. You play for an hour, here's double jump. And you're going to get other abilities as well that we won't get into. So the game does kind of hit you with that endorphin rush every hour or so that keeps you going. And I would say, roll with that. And as soon as you hit a certain zone that you hate, or as soon as you say,

I don't want to backtrack this area again, then just quit. Enjoy it for a good eight to 10 hours. I think that's when the game really peaked for me is somewhere in that area. Maybe like five, like hours five to 10, I would say were so great. And then I just found such diminishing returns after. So I think it's, it's really good to pick up at 15 bucks. Don't feel any pressure to finish it.

As soon as it starts to feel a little naggy, drop it. Don't put a ring on that finger. I'll say this in response to that. Don't be afraid. I wish that when I was getting frustrated with these play sessions where I accomplished absolutely nothing and had spent an hour playing the game, I wish that I had gone to Google and just said, hey, where do I go next? Because there are non-spoiler walkthroughs or guides that will

just say, hey, I'm stuck. Where do I go? But don't spoil anything for me. And those were very, very handy for increasing the enjoyment when the game was starting to slog a little bit. And I wish I had done that sooner. To be honest, I was being a little bit stubborn on wanting to just experience the experience. And I think that came at the detriment of that came with some frustration. So I think if you get to that point, because I feel like it's there for just about everybody, don't be afraid to get that hint that the game does not give you. Yeah, there's no extra metal for not looking anything up and almost every reddit post i looked up was actually really careful to not spoil things right

they were very good to say well do you have this charm if you do and then there'd be a spoiler link where you would click it or if you don't then here's a spoiler link and you click that so yeah don't don't hesitate to use a little bit of help in this one. All right. So we've got one marry. We've got one make love. Josh, let's go into our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up.

All right. For anyone out there, if you have not yet heard a deep dive in the past, at the end of every deep dive, Josh and I have to attempt to rank this game against every other deep dive episode that we have done. You can go to multiplayerpodcast.com and right there on our main page, you just have to scroll down a little bit. You will see our master list, which is currently sitting at 64 games. We've got things like Overwatch clocking in at number one still. We've got Divinity Original Sin 2 at 10. We've got Raft at 30. We've got 12 Minutes at 50.

We've got Halo Reach at 60. Taking a look here, where are you looking to put Hollow Knight? Because for this segment, even if we have different opinions, we have to come to a consensus. We have to agree on where to put it. And I don't even know where to start with this one. I really don't. I have a feeling you and I are going to disagree a little bit on this one. I know exactly where I want to put Hollow Knight. All right. What are you thinking?

I want to put it in the 18 or 19 range. Whoa. So you want to put it up there with Rainbow Six Siege, The Forgotten City. I think it's such a good game, dude. I really do. I really do. It's so enjoyable.

Like, I'm not saying it's a perfect game, but it's a memorable game. I want to literally go download the soundtrack for Hollow Knight. You know what I mean? Some of the boss fights were so much fun. They stand out in my memory. I can visually see me fighting the Mantis Lords and stuff like that. I think that that's rare for a video game to have that kind of memorable impact, you know? And I think the only thing that goes against Hollow Knight as a whole is just that it's a Metroidvania. If you don't like the genre, you're not going to like Hollow Knight. If you like the genre, I think you're going to love Hollow Knight, unless you're Paul,

who has played Metroidvanias for decades and knows that there are better ones that do exist. I am not debating that it is the best Metroidvania. I don't think that it is. You know what I mean? But I think that if you're trying to hold a new game up against a game that is 25 years old that maybe defined the genre, that's hard to do. Do you know what I mean? And so it's like, I'm trying to rate Hollow Knight on what I think it is currently.

And I think that's one heck of a video game. Okay. I hear you. So maybe you were just, you know, quote, trying to throw me off the scent. I'm not going to throw your whole body under the bus,

but I am going to like bump your feet under the bus here. Right before we recorded, you might have said, I don't plan to play this game again. Yeah, because I played it and everybody out there knows that once I play a game, I'm done with that game. I did not hear you say that about some of these other games in the range that you're talking about. Like Resident Evil Village, I believe you said if there were dlc you couldn't wait to jump into it hollow knight has you know additional content that i don't think you're really interested in so i'm i'm just wondering if you're maybe shooting a little bit too high when i'm when i'm looking at the leaderboard i was looking at the 30s.

I would put it below the likes of No Man's Sky, Stardew Valley, Far Cry 5, Killing Floor 2, Shovel Knight, Raft. So you would put Hollow Knight below Shovel Knight? I would. I liked Shovel Knight more, even though it was much, much shorter. Really? I just think Hollow Knight is such a more complete, better video game than Shovel Knight. And that's not to say that we didn't enjoy Shovel Knight, but I just think in terms of the leaderboard, Hollow Knight is a much more complete all-around game that I think is much more enjoyable for the masses than Shovel Knight would be.

Hollow Knight definitely gives you tons more hours, but for me, I'd rather take 10 hours of Shovel Knight over 30 hours of Hollow Knight. So, okay, so if you're looking at the late teens and I'm looking at the 30s, I guess we just got to land somewhere in the 20s. Are there any non-negotiables that you see? No, I mean, Deep Rock Galactic, I think, is a phenomenal game. I still think we have that game rated too No, I mean, Deep Rock Galactic, I think, is a phenomenal game. I still think we have that game rated too low, in my opinion. But I feel like there's no way I'm ever going to get you to put Hollow Knight above Stardew Valley, because you love Stardew Valley so much. Well, and No Man's Sky. How do you put Hollow Knight above No Man's Sky? That seems kind of

wild. There are a plethora of people that... I mean, 97% positive rating on Steam. There's a gajillion people out there that seem to think that Hollow Knight belongs in the upper echelon of games. Well, there's a difference though, right? This is the difference between Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. If everyone thinks that it's a 6 out of 10, that's a positive. But overall, you might have something that has a higher rating, even if some people hate it, because those who love it, love it even more.

Okay, so where do we put this? I would like to put it, if we're going to compromise, I think the right spot for me would be 26. And I'm coming way down because you said 30 and I was in the teens. So I'm coming way closer to your rating than my rating on this one. I think my biggest beef... See, this is the problem. I would take No Man's Sky and Stardew Valley and I'd bump them both up 10 spots and then I would feel so much better. And then I'd say, keep Hollow Knight at like 20. And I wouldn't even really care as much.

We're not too far off from a leaderboard review. I know. We need one. Because there are some games on here that I think are in the wrong place at this point that could be throwing some of this off. Yeah. But I mean, I think that Hollow Knight belongs in the upper echelon in the 20s minimum. Yeah, I think that's probably a good semi placeholder.

We can put it above Stardew Valley, but below No Man's Sky, since I think both of those are better. I think that's a nice compromise. So we can plug Hollow Knight in at 26. Although I would not be surprised at our next leaderboard. Hollow Knight might get bumped up higher. It's just that there are some games above that I want to drop below No Man's Sky and Hollow Knight. So we're just going to need to do another review at some point. I think we are due for a leaderboard review episode because there are some that need to

get fixed, which happens from time to time, right? Like we admit that recency bias when you get a big list, sometimes you go, hey, this list is great, but we need to fix it a little bit and move this here and put that there kind of thing. Yeah. So I think that's a fair compromise. I'm higher on it than you are.

You're lower on it than me. So we'll compromise and say hey we'll kind of split the difference a little bit all right so we'll clock it in there at 26 final answer we will lock that one in and then for those of you out there if you wanted to know what our next deep dive will be two mondays from now we will be releasing an episode on god of war 2018 the uh famous ps4 originally an exclusive smash success on the playstation 4 now it is also available on pc you and i both played it on ps4 we have both now played it on pc we each have multiple playthroughs that is going to be a blast to talk about famously you and i have both talked about it being one of our favorite games that one will definitely rank up there and that's always fun

when you can either just gush on a game or completely rail it yes that one will be fun to just really sing its praises it's it's no surprise i mean we love god of war uh so yeah anything else to say to the people before we close this episode out? I'm sorry, Paul rated Hollow Knight solo, everybody. Yeah, that's a good,

that's still a good rating. I have always said, I mean, it's with the likes of Stardew Valley and No Man's Sky, dude. This is not, this is not slanderous at all. Yeah.

The problem is when you say it's like number 26 out of 64, it sounds mediocre, but I would say we have a good like 40 games that are really, really good. Like we've got borderlands three down at 36. It's like, we've just covered a lot of good games. All right.

Well, thank you to everyone for listening. Make sure to go rate us five stars. Come visit us on discord. Come hit us up on patreon at multiplayer squad and we'll see you for that next episode on thursday for this week in gaming we'll see you guys then