I bought the game on a whim for the switch, but I feel ill prepared. I don’t usually play heavy action games like this and I hear it’s especially hard for what it is. But I want to try.
Hollow Knight is a solid contender for my favorite game, so good choice! I’m going to try to keep things spoiler-free as much as I can since a huge part of the experience is exploring and slowly unraveling things. Here’s a list of (hopefully spoiler-free) tips that I think might help.
Not much will make sense at first.
Hollow Knight follows the Dark Souls school of lore: You don’t get an exposition dump in the beginning giving you the whole background behind what’s going on. It’s perfectly fine to be confused about what you are doing and why. In fact, I’d say that’s an intentional choice that winds up making a ton of sense after a certain point in the game.
Careful looking up info
Because of this fact and how long it’s been out (as well as how popular it is), it’s unfortunately very easy to spoil things. Be careful with that, and make sure to tag on “spoiler free” to any searches you do on the game.
It’s difficult, but fair
You’re likely going to die a lot, that’s true. That being said, there aren’t really any situations that I can think of where I had no way to avoid dying. The nice thing is, the game sort of sets itself up in a way that you (hopefully) learn different techniques over time, and the fact that it’s a metroidvania means you get upgrades drip-fed to you, so you don’t have a million things to try to learn at once. I’m not great at games nowadays, but I did still manage to beat the game. I never completed the boss rush stuff, but that’s more because I’ve never been a huge fan of boss rushes in general.
It’s methodical
You don’t have a time limit during fights. Feel free to take your time learning an enemy’s attacks; there are generally tells you can keep an eye out for so you can prepare to react appropriately. Don’t be afraid to keep your distance as much as you can while in a fight.
Don’t forget your Soul
Soul is the game’s “magic” system, and it’s a pretty big help in keeping you from dying. You recharge it a bit each time you hit an enemy, so as long as you’re able to run in, hit an enemy, and get away without getting hit, you can recharge enough for another use. There are also generally minor enemies in each area that are relatively easy to deal with - these are basically prime candidates for recharging Soul if you’re low.
Be sure to explore
There are going to be quite a few dead ends during your journey. These are usually places you just don’t have the tools to deal with yet, so if it seems like you can’t progress, try somewhere else and come back later! Another thing to keep in mind is you’ll sometimes hear or see weird stuff on your journeys - it can be worth putting in some extra effort to see what the source is. Something that I would say is important for this is the map and quill you can buy in the shop in the first town. It updates when you sit down at a bench, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to “work” right away.
If you’re having money troubles…
Grab the “Gathering Swarm” charm from the store in the first town, go sit on a bench, and equip it. It won’t make your money problems disappear, but it’ll help.
Enemy spawn mechanics
Enemies only respawn when you sit on a bench. Yes, that goes for the entire map. Yes, I have cleared a significant number of enemies across multiple zones without sitting on a bench and verified this (it was to help me finish a specific side quest). No, bosses will not respawn.
Hopefully this gives you a decent set of tips to get you started! I hope you enjoy your journey as much as I did when I played the first time!
I think you might have just sold me the game. Someone should pay you.
I’m so glad to hear it, and I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to pick it up! As for payment, my Hollow Knight evangelism is strictly because of how much I enjoy talking about it; the only payment I would ever accept is the team finally releasing their next game (Hollow Knight: Silksong).
I greatly appreciate this write up. Thank you.
My pleasure, I hope it helps! Just don’t get discouraged if you’re having trouble - there’s one platforming challenge (completely optional, don’t worry) that took me something like 2 or 3 days of 8-hour sessions to finally get through. Like I said, I’m not really a great gamer nowadays thanks to not having much time to keep my skills sharp (I used to play Kaizo Mario hacks on a regular basis when I was younger), but it was a compelling and enjoyable enough game to motivate me to keep going.
Wow this is amazing!
Thank you! Like I said, Hollow Knight is possibly one of my favorite games, so if there’s a way I can possibly make it more accessible for more people to experience without also spoiling that experience, I’m going to take it. I could gush on and on about how great everything about it is (art, music, story, mechanics, design, etc.) but it’s one of those things where it’s best experienced for yourself.
A friend of mine started playing it some months ago (it was her first game of this kind). After the first boss they went “YAY! I’ve beaten the game”. I let them enjoy the feeling for a second before revealing the truth lol.
They eventually dropped it because it was becoming too difficult (which it is, especially if you’re not used to hold a controller), but I plan on convincing them to give it a second chance
Oh, that’s heartbreaking lol, I can’t imagine the sorrow they must have felt!
If they don’t take to it after trying to convince them again, maybe you could offer to stream it for them? I did that for a friend of mine who isn’t great at games - we sat on the couch together, I played through, and we talked about things as they were happening (and I gave chunks of lore as they became appropriate to discuss). I like doing that for games I really want my friends to experience if they aren’t interested in playing themselves, since you can kind of be a tour guide and make sure they get to see things that you might have missed your first time playing through, and you get to spend time hanging out with that friend. I’ve done similar with Undertale to great effect!
Unfortunately it’s not really my cup of tea (I enjoy watching it too, but it’s not one of those game I’d like to play if I have time to). I’ll try with other games I enjoy more though
That’s entirely fair, no game is really for everyone! You can definitely try this idea out with pretty much any game out there though, then you get to share the things you enjoy with the people you enjoy spending time with as well!
I thought “souls like” just means it’s hard as fuck and there is no easy mode.
Whenever I see the “souls like” tag I just hard pass.
It’s unfortunately become a catch-all phrase meaning “this is hard and you’ll die a lot, git gud lol.” In this case though, there’s a lot of parallels between Dark Souls and Hollow Knight on multiple levels: Themes, gameplay and design philosophies, how lore is dispersed… I can’t really elaborate without going into a ton of detail and spoiling things, but needless to say, there’s an actual reason for that tag here. I would also say that, while there isn’t a specific “easy mode” to switch to, there are different ways to tweak the difficulty while you play. Charm loadouts, putting extra time and effort into finding hidden power-ups (health expansions, for example), and the fact that some of the most challenging portions of the game are basically optional unless you’re looking to experience every piece of the lore personally.
I personally don’t see any problem with just looking stuff up after playing the game if you’re satisfied with the experience you had, but your mileage may vary there - I don’t have as much time to spend on gaming, so my tolerance for grinding or bashing my head against a challenge repeatedly is directly tied to how fun the actual gameplay is for me. I was much more tolerant of the difficulty in Hollow Knight because the controls are so tight and responsive that it’s just fun for me to play and improve in.
That’s good advice about the bosses. It’s like learning a dance for many of them, you won’t succeed unless you know the moves and what your part of the dance is. You can’t just run in, do the equivalent of a circle strafe and breeze through first time.
there’s a lot of bugs so watch out for those
Omg first instinct was to downvote, but then realized the pun. Joke went whoosh
I reluctantly give you an upvote. RELUCTANTLY.
There’s been some great advice in this thread. In the future though here’s a shout out for one of my favorite wikis out there, the before I play wiki .
It’s great and has useful tips for all kinds of games. Good luck in Hollownest!
Thanks for sharing! That’s a great Wiki, didn’t know that one yet.
No problem! Don’t forget to contribute if you think you have some good spoiler free tips 😁
Man I envy you so much right now, just go blind. You may get lost a little bit but just enjoy the ride. I won’t exaggerate but it may be the greatest game in human history :)
Don’t look up walkthroughs until you’re really stuck for a long time. Discovering stuff is a huge part of the game and part of the fun.
Getting lost is part of the experience.
I got lost on where to go countless times. The initial response of your brain is This is not fun. I braved through it and instead said I need to get lost less so I invested more time to getting maps and mark dead-ends or impassable places and it made the game one of the best games I’ve ever played.
You’ll get lost and die a lot, maybe even take a break for a while then come back to it. But that’s the best part
If you find yourself in a fight that you keep dying to, you may try exploring other areas to make progression elsewhere before coming back and trying again.
I LOVE Hollow Knight. It’s one of those games I wish I could erase from my mind and play from scratch again. As someone relatively new to gaming (when I started playing), it was infuriatingly hard at times. But it definitely made me a better gamer – probably moreso than any other game I’ve played.
My advice would be to definitely pick it up and give it a try. Don’t be too intimidated. The music and art are gorgeous and it’s an absolute blast once you get into it! And if you get frustrated, take a break and come back a little while later. I had so many occasions when I immediately succeeded after a 30-45 minute break.
Also: I agree with what everyone says about not looking stuff up unless you have to. Spoilers make the exploration aspect way less fun and exploring is one of the best parts.
Die and retry… I made it to 98% but it goes to 112% I believe.
Also, it is gorgeous and the music is awesome and those 6 beetle things still haunt my dreams.
I’d say go in dark, the exploration and discovery is the best part of the game.
If you’re not playing hand-held, make sure your TV is set up to minimize input delay (usually called “game” mode or something like that). An extra few tens of milliseconds of lag can make a game like Hollow Knight unplayable :(
Ah, good advice, though I almost always play on handheld mode and have the oled screen switch for this reason.
No, you can just go in blind and enjoy the journey.
If you like it, make sure to try Ori and the Blind
I bought that game too because it was on sale. Maybe I’ll flip flop between it and Hollow Knight.
Its a good game. Bit easier than hollow Knight, but both are amazing
Oh man you’re in for a treat! One suggestion: when you get to the late game, if you haven’t and can, switch to a controller, late game can be difficult, much more so if you seek optional areas, those can be crazy hard and plain impossible on a keyboard.
And prepare for feels. It’s surprising how invested you can become on a bunch of bugs.
I second the controller, and that it’s a good idea to learn to use directional pad rather than joystick, because precise movement is going to matter a lot in the late game.
I anti-second the controller - there’s no benefit to it, and as the other commenter said, you’re going to want to play with the d-pad anyway. Play with whatever you feel more comfortable with, there’s no difference between the two.
