I Tried Hollow Knight To Prove It’s Ridiculous

In retrospect, after reading the comments, I think I did a pretty bad job explaining my overall thoughts on the boss fights in hollow knight. Without spoiling the video, I think my problem with the bosses was how easy they were for me. Majority of the ones I did took me 2 tries max. The only exceptions was "Hornet" and "Watcher Knights", which took me around 8/5 tries respectively. The majority of bosses I fought were like 3 attack moves on repeat. This made it seem like it was very trivial and dampened my experience compared to a game like dark souls. In darks souls, since bosses would take me a significantly longer, it felt like it was so much satisfying to finally learn and adapt and then finally conquer the boss. I didn't feel this at all in Hollow Knight except for the "Watcher Knights" and it ended up being my favorite boss. I know bosses are about learning the patterns of them and dodging all of their stuff, thats the point of a boss but I hope the above explanation at least helps explain my thought process. I do realize that I did not fully beat hollow knight. There is so much more to the game. I only did 55% of it and then beat the "Hollow Knight". My point of this video was to just go through my experience of this game. I did feel like the bosses were the worst part of it. I am sure there is some sweet bosses I missed and maybe Ill go back and try them if I get the time. I dont want to anger the community of Hollow Knight, I wanted to make a video of a game that deserved it. I hope you can enjoy the video.

"very boss fight has been learn the moves and then dodge" that describes literally every video game...including dark souls

"It's easy", he says, repeatedly dying to the bosses he's claiming are easy. I can't wait to see him try and kill radiance.

Rarran: Damn the game is so easy, i feel like all the bosses are just simple pattern recognition Also Rarran: Skips every single challenging and innovative fight and platforming section.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t understand the “you fight all the bosses the same way, learn their patterns and then kill them.” Argument. That’s almost every game where there is combat, especially dark souls, since you had brought that up.

I feel like there's something about Hollow Knight that makes it one of those 'Try it -> quit -> try it again -> love it' type of games. I tried it once and got stuck not knowing where to go somewhere in greenpath. Quit, then picked it up from scratch months later and it became one of my favorite indie games of all time. I have a few friends who followed more or less the same pattern. People might overhype it (like they do most games) but I think it absolutely has earned the awards and much of the praise it gets.

I feel like he decided he didn’t like the game beforehand, and then tried to keep his integrity while slowly realizing he liked the game

idk if ive ever seen someone just not use the fireball for so long. explains why he thought the boss fights were too long.

The best part of most fights in Hollow Knight imo is not winning the first time (like Soulsborne fights), but getting them down WELL. Playing aggressively, never stop hitting while dodging everything. Like most new players, you seem to have played super safe, which might contribute to the 'snoozefest' shit talking The game even has a Permadeath mode and some Speedrun Achievements because thats kinda the point. 90% of bosses are not hard to beat, but can be challenging to do clean and fast. If youre interested I recommend the speedrun achivements a lot. Theyre totally doable to a skilled casual with some effort

Interesting that you say the boss fights are the worst part of Hollow Knight when people that aren't even big fans of the game praise it for it's boss fights. Not saying you're not allowed to have an opinion just interesting that you have the opposite opinion of a lot of people. Most people love The Mantis Lords and hate The Watcher Knights for being tedious.

I would love to see you tackle the 5th pantheon if you think the bosses are a bit too easy.

I think my issue is that the boss fights being called bad because they're about memorizing attacks and then just dodging them is... that's exactly how Dark Souls is other than having build variety. I don't understand how one can be good and the other can be bad when the only real difference is one's 2d and one's 3d.

Watching Rarren do the bosses in a way that takes him twice as long was maybe the first time I wanted to backseat game in so long. Also not ever showing things about characters when they’re a big part of the game is a choice

Watching rarran heal and then immediately take damage is too relatable.

"Game bad because bosses not annoying enough" is certainly an opinion you're allowed to have, but HK's main point isn't the boss fights anyways. They are an aspect and there are more challenging bosses later down the line if you stick with it, but there's so much to appreciate about the game and discounting the sum for a part feels like selling it short.

"The fights we're repetitive" Says the guy that purpousefully does every fight nail only to stall are you fucking kidding me

Rarran, the Hollow Knight being free is THE ENTIRE POINT.

I noticed that you utilized very little spells during the combat, which removes the risk reward system that focus has: do you use spells to deal more damage or do you save it for heals when you get hit. Using spells speeds up the fights and promotes the player to be more aggressive against the bosses, since more sword hits give you back the focus you used on spells. Glad you still enjoyed the game as a whole, even if some fights felt too monotonous :]

I don't think rarran ever figured out how to pogo enemies. Honestly it's such an important mechanic that he just completely missed...

Personally. I think alot of it when it came to bosses. Its less of an actual boss battle and more of a dance. There are some bosses that if you know their routine, you can effortlessly kill them. My favorite being the mantis village. It doesnt feel like a battle. It felt like I was dancing, nail meeting steel. If you ever do godhood. The sisters of battle is amazing as it really does become a blade dance. Every boss is like that and thats what I like about it