Hollow Knight. Xbox Series X. Review

Hollow Knight is a 2D Action-Adventure Metroidvania developed by Team Cherry. I've played 57 hours on the Xbox Series X and have gotten 112% in progress. In this article I will break down my thoughts on the various aspects of the game. This will be broken down to: Main Menu, Difficulty, Gameplay, Audio/Visual and overall impression of the game. This game is single player only and appears in the Xbox Game Pass library on PC and Xbox, So from this point on here is my Hollow Knight: Voidheart edition review for the Xbox Series X

Main Menu:

The main menu of this game changes based on the progress you’ve made through the game, but when you open up the game you get greeted with piano music playing in the background, and a dark and ominous atmosphere visually. There are four options that you can choose from in the main menu: Start game, options, extras and switch user.

Extras basically tells you about the DLC that is included with the Voidheart edition. And in the options menu you have Game, which is basically the language setting. Audio to control your volume. And controller to remap your controls and to toggle vibration.

All of this is pretty standard stuff, when you select the start game you are given a number of save slots to choose from and that’s where your progress will be saved. Overall I'd say the main menu is simplistic and easy to navigate.

Difficulty:

There are three separate difficulty options to choose from after you select a save slot these are:

Classic: classic is the standard difficulty of this game, but keep in mind that this game has been called by a lot of people to be a platformer soulslike game, meaning even the standard difficulty is quite challenging, however through learning the various enemies movements you can get through this.

Steel Soul: Steel soul is the more hardcore difficulty and is extremely challenging, the premis of this is that you won’t have the opportunity to revive if you die in the game. Death is permanent meaning you will have to start over even if you die once.

Godseeker: Godseeker mode is something you unlock after progressing through one of the DLC and it’s basically an option to only play within the confines of that dlc with most of the gear in the game so you don’t have to play through the entire game to reach that point again.

Overall I love the challenge that Hollow Knight presents and I think that this game's difficulty is part of what makes it the type of game it is.

Gameplay:

As stated before, Hollow Knight is a 2D Action-Adventure Metroidvania. You spend the vast majority of the game exploring the underground ancient kingdom of Hallownest. Armed with a nail which is basically just this game's version of a sword. You go through the game engaging with hostile bugs that you must fight at a short distance. There are some friendly bugs that act as NPC’s but for the most part they’re hostile. When you defeat enemies they drop the in-game currency ‘Geo’ which you basically use to buy in-game items, charms, ect. And you also gain ‘Soul’ when attacking enemies which you can use throughout the game to restore your health and use your abilities that you gain. When you die you lose all the Geo that you are holding as well as losing your max amount of Soul that you can get. Much like Dark Souls you can get these things back by going back to where you died, however when you do you must also fight your own shade and defeat it to retrieve your lost currency and Soul meter.

At the end of many areas you must defeat certain Boss enemies to advance the story,

these are generally large bugs with a lot of health and that deal a lot of damage. To bring the comparison back, think of it like how Dark Souls does it, where you have levels with smaller enemies, freedom to go where you choose but at the end of most areas you have a significantly stronger boss that you need to fight to get through the game. It's pretty much that. Personally I love the way that the gameplay is in this game and there’s many more aspects to it that I won’t touch on just to avoid spoilers, but it’s extremely fun.

Audio/Visual:

Visually this game runs at 4K at 60 fps, however in the last few months Hollow Knight got an FPS boost that increases the framerate to 120 fps, The artstyle is made from 2D sketches, scanned into the computer and enhanced from there to make the entire game feel incredible. Visually the entirety of this game looks clean, smooth and visually stunning and makes this in my opinion the best 2D game visually that’s out there.

The Soundtrack of this game is amazing and the sound effects of all the creatures fit the overall tone of the game. It gives you the sense that the entire world is alive. Even in the main menu the soundtrack gives you a sense as to what’s to come throughout the game.

There’s really nothing to fault here.

Overall Impression:

Hollow Knight is honestly the best platformer that I have played. It’s got an amazing challenge, great music, great artstyle and interesting NPCs and Bosses throughout the game.Since this game is on Game Pass I plan on replaying this game many times , and if it’s ever looking like it’ll leave Game Pass I'll definitely end up buying it. Because this game is something you wouldn’t want to miss out on.

And there you have it, my Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition review. Tell us your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have any questions about other aspects of this game that I haven’t touched on then they can be answered in the comment section as well

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