A very simple, yet amazingly built game, and the sequel to Hollow Knight.
The world is so deep, and it’s amazing what you can build out of world building, mechanics and music instead of leaning on fancy graphics.
It’s punishing, though. It asks for a fair bit of skill and resilience, and a lot of it is just dying and trying again.
But unlike Dark Souls, it isn’t difficult for the sake of it. The lore and the story are what made me stick with it despite dying so much.
It isn’t hard all the time either. It’s in the punishing stretches that the game reveals who you are as a player. It punishes you for being greedy with hits, for not waiting your turn to block an attack and just swinging away. It punishes you for hoarding silk, the magic currency, because the whole point is balancing when to spend it.
Like its predecessor, it’s so well balanced that there isn’t a single solution that trumps all. When I’m faced with a hard boss (and there are many), it’s almost a mirror, because the difficulty shows me my own characteristics. Under pressure, am I the type who does what everyone else says, watching YouTube videos for the best strategy, hunting for a hack or a trick to get past it? Or do I do the hard thing and find my own way?