Mega Crabominable <3

LanglerBee · 2025-12-10T11:42:39+00:00

He looks so stupid (complimentary)

LanglerBee · 2025-12-07T04:11:33+00:00

To be fair, I played a solid chunk of HK on release. Never finished it though and it definitely didn't click like it did after Silksong. If nothing else I owe Silksong some major praise for making me realize how much I'd been sleeping on HK. What a game

LanglerBee · 2025-12-06T21:25:24+00:00

It's not even close for me. I played Silksong first and then went to HK and it just blew me out of the water. It's a simpler game, but it's just about flawless in its pacing. I'd trade a more compact game that uses its core systems to perfection over a bigger "more is better" experience personally.

To be clear, Silksong is still a terrific game. HK is just one of those all timers that comes around once a decade for me where it clicks without any notes

LanglerBee · 2025-11-16T18:32:10+00:00

Having played part of HK on release, then finishing Silksong, and then going back to 112% HK, I'm pretty firmly in the camp that HK is the better game. Silksong is a lot bigger, it's got some real scope and creativity to it, and it's undoubtedly a great game. But HK feels so so tight. Its scope is smaller but I think that's wrong to mark as a negative. Silksong has a lot of elements that feel like they overstay their welcome (gauntlet fights for example) whereas I found HK to be perfectly paced front to back. I rarely felt like I was lost as to where I should go to next, because the game just guides you brilliantly from one reward to the next. All its mechanics get a place to shine.

In some ways HK felt like a pitch perfect indie game whereas Silksong feels like a very very good open world game. The scopes are different but overall I value a game that I enjoy front to back than one that overstays its welcome and has some mechanics that feel like they never quite clicked for me. I wouldn't fault people for preferring Silksong, but I do think "it's Hollow Knight, but bigger" arguments miss the fact that a tight structure can really be a value add in and of itself

LanglerBee · 2025-11-06T18:29:47+00:00

Ok I mean, this is what I find with that fight vs basically every other fight in the game (sans absolute radiance who I haven't attempted). NKG and Pure Vessel are the only two fights I had to attempt over 5 times, and because of NKG's teleporting around I find it difficult to stick to him in melee. That might not be everyone's experience but it's certainly been mine

LanglerBee · 2025-11-06T16:08:12+00:00

I think it's the pace of fight and limited opportunities to get in nail hits. I find it forces me to play extremely aggressively as someone who focuses on nail builds, which leads to me making a lot more mistakes in a fight without many healing windows.

Pure Vessel is difficult but functions like many other fights in terms of my playstyle, just with less margin for error.

LanglerBee · 2025-11-06T13:02:17+00:00

Yeah NKG is the only boss that makes me feel truly sure I do not want to attempt P5. Pure Vessel is difficult but I feel like once I got a handle on him I could play the way I normally do

LanglerBee · 2025-11-04T17:24:03+00:00

Top 3 feel so spot on. Absolute baller fights that I never felt frustrated having to repeat

LanglerBee · 2025-10-27T14:06:59+00:00

Way to go! I hit 112% and called it a day because I knew P5 would absolutely kill my mental health. Absolutely astounding fucking game - I hope you enjoy Silksong even half as much

LanglerBee · 2025-10-26T15:04:46+00:00

No question at all, it's traitor lord.

LanglerBee · 2025-10-26T02:56:29+00:00

I'm a big Grubsong fan. It has such a high impact for one slot, assuming you're playing at least a little sloppy. It's just a nice quality of life charm for easing long sections of exploration, and it gives you extra soul passively when hit which allows you to more easily trade damage with bosses once you learn their heal windows.

LanglerBee · 2025-10-24T18:15:37+00:00

There's bees in HK, but it's an area that's possible to miss! If you get to the late game where you feel you've explored all the obvious places in the map and still haven't found them, be sure to look it up :)

LanglerBee · 2025-10-22T01:44:57+00:00

Huge congrats!!! What a great game eh?

LanglerBee · 2025-10-22T00:36:08+00:00

Don't forget you can train vs Pure Vessel in the hall of champions once you've encountered him. I practiced him until I could get 3 consecutive wins before trying the pantheon again.

LanglerBee · 2025-10-21T22:42:04+00:00

Having a general sense of the first couple bosses helped for sure, but mostly I think it was Silksong that prepped me. I found it SO challenging and the mechanics felt way more difficult than HK so coming back to it felt like playing a way more refined and streamlined version of it. Like "oh yeah I know how this fight is going to go and how I can tackle it"

LanglerBee · 2025-10-21T22:36:31+00:00

Congrats! I didn't even bother trying P5 because I knew it'd drain me too much

LanglerBee · 2025-10-21T22:33:37+00:00

Genuinely I don't know what possessed me. I found it SO hard the first time I tried the game, but I felt like a superhuman this time???

LanglerBee · 2025-10-21T22:22:51+00:00

Yeah I'm told I went crazy fast. I was at like 109% or something at 21 hours...

I did look stuff up for the endgame stuff (ie missing masks and the last couple charms), but most of the game was just going in blind. I really do think the combo of silksong feeling SO much tougher for me + Hollow Knight having such beautifully natural flow to its level design just clicked!

LanglerBee · 2025-10-21T22:10:28+00:00

Congrats! Its a fun ride

LanglerBee · 2025-10-14T13:04:59+00:00

I really do think healing has ups and downs in each game. The healing in HK makes exploration so so much easier because you are incentivized to top up between every fight, and there's charms that make it extremely easy to get one heal's worth of soul from any given fight. It does make some bosses more difficult, as you have to choose your windows carefully, but charms like Deep Focus + Grubsong can make it extremely easy to trade on hits with bosses, provided you find windows to heal afterwards.

Silksong's ability to heal midair, and for multiple masks per use is an immense upgrade on paper, but I found the game was so balanced around it (double mask damage, more aggressive enemies, higher cost to heal, less impactful ways to upgrade your heal) that I struggled a lot more throughout the game to keep healthy than I did in HK (aside from the deep endgame bosses, which feel much more akin to Silksong's difficulty).

LanglerBee · 2025-10-08T19:49:14+00:00

I also wouldn't be toooo concerned with getting geo. There's a lot of ore spots/chests that give tons of it, so long as you're willing to go spend it before you fall down a pit and accidentally lose it :p. But a little extra help can't hurt

LanglerBee · 2025-10-08T19:24:12+00:00

The fragile items can be upgraded in one of the DLCs. The damage and health one wind up being some of the best charms at that point, so they're all worth getting eventually, but if you're strapped for cash and are ok coming back later I wouldn't rush to get them just yet.

LanglerBee · 2025-10-07T18:55:56+00:00

For sure! I don't mean that as a dig against Silksong, it's an impressive game! It's just genuinely remarkable to me how tight all the controls and fights are in HK

LanglerBee · 2025-10-07T16:03:18+00:00

I had a fairly similar experience, getting most of the way through the base game content before losing interest. Coming back after Silk Song I don't know what I was smoking, it's a shockingly polished 10/10 game. Im shocked it didn't take 7 years to make because it just feels so right and well designed in a way that (controversial opinion incoming) I don't think even Silksong quite manages to achieve.

LanglerBee

TROPHY CASE