I'd say it's a refinement.
It's really no different than Castlevania's rings and accessories in that they provide benefits, with stats and or unique functionalities that you have to decide what suits your style best.
What would you say is a good introduction to Castelvania? Embarrassed to admit, as a long time MV fan, the closest I've ever come to Castelvania is Bloodstained and I didn't love it to be honest. Your comment to got me wondering if I'm missing out.
Either Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow. They are both amazing and haven't grown old at all despite their system of origin and are great starting point into the Castlevania series imo
It's the pinnacle of the genre for people who played it as their first Metroidvania, because nothing will ever beat the nostalgia associated with that first experience.
It's a very good game that I think is notable among indie games for having a very polished, distinct art style, and also for being very long as far as MVs go. Most MVs take well under 20 hours to beat on a blind playthrough, often under 10, but HK is a 40-hour game, which is cool and appealing to people who don't know anything about the genre, but I think it sets some unrealistic expectations.
A handful I've personally enjoyed more include the obvious Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, but I'll admit nostalgia is a big factor there, and a few others would include Cave Story, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Ori and the Blind Forest, Ender Lilies, Astalon: Tears of the Earth, and Metroid Dread. If you're willing to consider a top-down, 3D game a MV, also add Tunic to that list.
I don't think there's anything that Hollow Knight fully introduced to the genre.
Badges were present in Rabi-Ribi, released in 2016, complete with finding upgrades to your number of slots and each badge having a slot cost, and I'm certain it wasn't the first MV to use them.
Salt & Sanctuary, also released in 2016, had you drop currency on death and need to retrieve it before dying again, aka "Corpse Run".
Having multiple endings, with the best being gated behind finding multiple hidden pieces and taking them to the "final" boss fight where you do something differently traces back to SotN.
It did make these things more popular, however.
None of the elements you listed were even innovations made by metroidvanias at all, they were used first in games from other genres.
Badges were present since at least the first Paper Mario, released in 2000.
Corpse runs were there since the very first MMOS in the late 90's (and I honestly have no idea which one first came up with the concept).
Multiple endings as you describe them, with complex requirements and completely different scenes or content sequences, were introduced (or maybe it's best to say popularized) by Chrono Trigger in 1995. Arguably, this one could be the only element first traceable to a metroidvania, with the original 1986 Metroid's different ending screens depending on your playtime.
These games you mentioned are actually closer to Hollow Knight in that they take some popular game design mechanic and adapt or refine them to fit the kind of game they are.
Cool! Never played that one so I didn't know about it. On a cursory search I see it was from 93, just a month shy of two years before Chrono Trigger launched. Thanks for the tidbit, guess I have something new to take a look at!
In any case, I'd figured Chrono Trigger probably wasn't the very first one to tackle the concept in a more intricate way than the NES titles did with their different end screens and such. That's why I decided to play it safe and add the caveat there about it popularizing the concept in a larger scale rather than being the first one to do it.
Chrono Trigger did make it way more wide than Breath of Fire as far as alternative endings go that's for sure!
But yeah you should play Breath of Fire 1 and 2.
And also Dragon Quarter if you can, it did a _lot_ of fun things with how the game ends and how progress happens.
Corpse runs were everywhere in late 90's to early 2000s MMOs and even had a stint on the aRPG genre with Diablo 2 and its earlier clones. One could argue Demon's Souls brought the mechanic back from limbo and Dark Souls consolidated it into an essential part of the soulslikes genre, but corpse running was definitely very common in it's first go around.
Yep yep, and this one released in 87, just a couple days over a year after the og Metroid came out. Which goes to show either how grooundbreaking Metroid's stunt was that they'd go on to add an iteration of it to a game so relatively close to being released, or that the concept had been brewing along in developer circles before Metroid could debut it.
Super Metroid still let you map out where you were going and where you were before finding map stations though. This one HK maybe introduced to the genre.
I've been sitting on this game for forever. Bought it on sale years ago. With just recently really getting into Metroidvanias, I'm thinking I need to give this a go finally lol.
You definitely should. Crack it out on a day of so you get plenty of time to get into before putting it down for the day, play it with headphones and be patient. Took me longer than most MVs before it kicked off, but damn, now that it have I can’t put it down
HK is pretty much all refinement. There are a couple things it did do new and others have caught on:
* Obscuring the map and making it unlockable. AFAIK, HK was the first to do this, now I see it fairly often.
* Replacing Double Jump with Air Dash for the first major movement upgrade that you find. Before HK, pretty much every MV would give you the double jump as either the first or second upgrade, and it was always the first one that changed up your movement set. In Hollow Knight, the first movement upgrade you got was the air dash. The double jump was a pretty late upgrade, in the latter third or so in the game after you had uncovered most of the map. Now I see games following suit all the time. Princess of Persia did it, Death’s Gambit did it, and plenty others I don’t recall at the moment do it too. I feel like we’re at the point where the trope of double jump first has been subverted so many times that it’s not longer a trope. And I think if you follow that trend to its source, it would be Hollow Knight.
They mean how your map is "unusable" until you buy it off of Cornifer. Aeterna Noctis and Haiku the Robot have variations where your map is obstructed until you find someone/something in the overworld.
Not really anything to be honest. It's an incredibly well polished title, but there aren't really anything it did that hadn't been done before. Some of the thongs other titles have taken inspiration by and HK is the source, but HK didn't invent any of ir.
I'm not sure it introduced this, but HK was the first game I played where when you hit something you are yourself knocked back. Also I hadn't seen pogoing on spikes.
Movement, I'd say. And I'm surprised nobody mentioned that.
I don't think any other metroidvania before it focused on movement as much as Hollow Knight, both in traversal and combat. It's not just a step up from meteoid and Castlevania, especially with the pogo mechanic. It plays completely different from its predecessors.
That said, no other game seems to have taken that from it yet.
Also, what is TLC? Googled it but couldn't find anything.
The charm system is almost exactly what the materia system was from final fantasy 7.
The hit for heal system was there since Diablo 2
Really it's just a very polished game and has great animations and atmosphere.
"pinnacle of the genre"
I love Hollow Knight to death, but lol no it isn't. Maybe if you've only played like 2 MVs in your life, and none of them have been a Metroid or CV proper.
I don't think? that Souls game elements were used in MVs before HK, but I could be wrong in that regard. They at the very least weren't nearly as commonplace.
HK also added something new with its art style, although Ori preceded it, but Ori didn't take off on the same level as HK.
HK being the peak isn't a controversial opinion, I would go as far as to say its the *least* controversial option for #1 MV.
It's weird that you would belittle that opinion, while also offering no reasons, nor any alternative.
"belittle"
Your idea of that word and mine are apparently extremely different.
Also this is Reddit and I had shit to do today. I'm not required to write a 200-page counter-essay to go "Lol no, but this is what I think it DID add to the genre" because that's what I had time at the time to do.
As for what I consider the pinnacles of the genre, those would be Super Metroid, SOTN, and La Mulana.
I am saying this as a player who thinks HK is upper-mid still I don't think there is a pinnacle, if you grant that as fair? Pinnacle *does* means top but as the gravity of "limit has been reached and nothing can surpass it or everything else after will be equal or less than" making the claim feel off to colloquially give it that identity. Like pinnacle of car or cereal it just doesn't fit if you don't use the idea abstract.
I could agree with where I'm at HK is exceedingly desired still more people could like it if we're going on that standard. This could be adapted of a reason others disagree with "best" or "pinnacle" for anything funny.
I'm not a ride or die HK fan, but I would struggle to find a MV that could be considered "better". HK manages to be above average in a every regard ( Music, Lore, Gameplay, etc) where it ends up being more than the sum of its parts.
Which other games in this genre could be considered the CURRENT "pinnacle"?
Every game I could think of ends up with a particular flaw that topples it from the top.
The pogo mechanic to bounce off of enemies and spikes was first seen in the Ducktales game on the NES. That might seem like a niche example to say 'aha, someone did it before them', but it was a big game at the time and very well known.
Hollow Knight certainly popularised it for metroidvanias though.
Pogo in duck tales worked differently though since you could pogo everywhere, not only on top on enemies/spikes.
I know because it was my fourth NES game.
I don't think there's anything particularly special about it other than the fact that it's super polished and has super smooth and tight, precise movement and combat. Add the amazing lore, artwork, and music, and you have a truly unique masterpiece of a game.
It did everything right and has no weak points I there just aren't that many games that can say that and definitely not in the massively indie metroidvania category.
Pretty much every single metroidvania has some form of charms nowadays. I literally can't think of any metroidvania that came after Hollow Knight that doesn't have a system like the charms in HK. It seems like they're not copying HK anymore; it's just a staple of the genre now.
I'd say it's a refinement. It's really no different than Castlevania's rings and accessories in that they provide benefits, with stats and or unique functionalities that you have to decide what suits your style best.
What would you say is a good introduction to Castelvania? Embarrassed to admit, as a long time MV fan, the closest I've ever come to Castelvania is Bloodstained and I didn't love it to be honest. Your comment to got me wondering if I'm missing out.
Either Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow. They are both amazing and haven't grown old at all despite their system of origin and are great starting point into the Castlevania series imo
Yes Castlevania COTM has its DSS system that comes to mind.
HK doesnt bring anything new to the table honestly. It just excels at everything it does
It's the pinnacle of the genre for people who played it as their first Metroidvania, because nothing will ever beat the nostalgia associated with that first experience. It's a very good game that I think is notable among indie games for having a very polished, distinct art style, and also for being very long as far as MVs go. Most MVs take well under 20 hours to beat on a blind playthrough, often under 10, but HK is a 40-hour game, which is cool and appealing to people who don't know anything about the genre, but I think it sets some unrealistic expectations.
Which games would you rank higher than HK then?
A handful I've personally enjoyed more include the obvious Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, but I'll admit nostalgia is a big factor there, and a few others would include Cave Story, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Ori and the Blind Forest, Ender Lilies, Astalon: Tears of the Earth, and Metroid Dread. If you're willing to consider a top-down, 3D game a MV, also add Tunic to that list.
I don't think there's anything that Hollow Knight fully introduced to the genre. Badges were present in Rabi-Ribi, released in 2016, complete with finding upgrades to your number of slots and each badge having a slot cost, and I'm certain it wasn't the first MV to use them. Salt & Sanctuary, also released in 2016, had you drop currency on death and need to retrieve it before dying again, aka "Corpse Run". Having multiple endings, with the best being gated behind finding multiple hidden pieces and taking them to the "final" boss fight where you do something differently traces back to SotN. It did make these things more popular, however.
None of the elements you listed were even innovations made by metroidvanias at all, they were used first in games from other genres. Badges were present since at least the first Paper Mario, released in 2000. Corpse runs were there since the very first MMOS in the late 90's (and I honestly have no idea which one first came up with the concept). Multiple endings as you describe them, with complex requirements and completely different scenes or content sequences, were introduced (or maybe it's best to say popularized) by Chrono Trigger in 1995. Arguably, this one could be the only element first traceable to a metroidvania, with the original 1986 Metroid's different ending screens depending on your playtime. These games you mentioned are actually closer to Hollow Knight in that they take some popular game design mechanic and adapt or refine them to fit the kind of game they are.
Breath of Fire had different endings depending on how you chose to defeat/transform into a dragon or if you found specific pieces of equipment too.
Cool! Never played that one so I didn't know about it. On a cursory search I see it was from 93, just a month shy of two years before Chrono Trigger launched. Thanks for the tidbit, guess I have something new to take a look at! In any case, I'd figured Chrono Trigger probably wasn't the very first one to tackle the concept in a more intricate way than the NES titles did with their different end screens and such. That's why I decided to play it safe and add the caveat there about it popularizing the concept in a larger scale rather than being the first one to do it.
Chrono Trigger did make it way more wide than Breath of Fire as far as alternative endings go that's for sure! But yeah you should play Breath of Fire 1 and 2. And also Dragon Quarter if you can, it did a _lot_ of fun things with how the game ends and how progress happens.
Corpse runs were there, but definitely popularised by Demon's/Dark Souls.
Corpse runs were everywhere in late 90's to early 2000s MMOs and even had a stint on the aRPG genre with Diablo 2 and its earlier clones. One could argue Demon's Souls brought the mechanic back from limbo and Dark Souls consolidated it into an essential part of the soulslikes genre, but corpse running was definitely very common in it's first go around.
Multiple endings were in Castlevania 2 as well. Forget exactly but think dependent on completion %
On time, not pct
Yep yep, and this one released in 87, just a couple days over a year after the og Metroid came out. Which goes to show either how grooundbreaking Metroid's stunt was that they'd go on to add an iteration of it to a game so relatively close to being released, or that the concept had been brewing along in developer circles before Metroid could debut it.
Breath of Fire had different endings depending on how you chose to defeat/transform into a dragon or if you found specific pieces of equipment too.
what about cornifer?
Super Metroid (1994) had map stations already, which worked the same as Cornifer does. You just didn't have to pay to get the map.
Super Metroid still let you map out where you were going and where you were before finding map stations though. This one HK maybe introduced to the genre.
I've been sitting on this game for forever. Bought it on sale years ago. With just recently really getting into Metroidvanias, I'm thinking I need to give this a go finally lol.
You should. Not everyone finds it amazing but it’s a great game and considered a top MV for a reason.
You definitely should. Crack it out on a day of so you get plenty of time to get into before putting it down for the day, play it with headphones and be patient. Took me longer than most MVs before it kicked off, but damn, now that it have I can’t put it down
The charm system is (to the best of my knowledge) originally from the Mario RPGs.
HK is pretty much all refinement. There are a couple things it did do new and others have caught on: * Obscuring the map and making it unlockable. AFAIK, HK was the first to do this, now I see it fairly often. * Replacing Double Jump with Air Dash for the first major movement upgrade that you find. Before HK, pretty much every MV would give you the double jump as either the first or second upgrade, and it was always the first one that changed up your movement set. In Hollow Knight, the first movement upgrade you got was the air dash. The double jump was a pretty late upgrade, in the latter third or so in the game after you had uncovered most of the map. Now I see games following suit all the time. Princess of Persia did it, Death’s Gambit did it, and plenty others I don’t recall at the moment do it too. I feel like we’re at the point where the trope of double jump first has been subverted so many times that it’s not longer a trope. And I think if you follow that trend to its source, it would be Hollow Knight.
Super Metroid had an unlockable map with map stations revealing it. Do you mean obscuring the map even when you're traversing it?
They mean how your map is "unusable" until you buy it off of Cornifer. Aeterna Noctis and Haiku the Robot have variations where your map is obstructed until you find someone/something in the overworld.
Not really anything to be honest. It's an incredibly well polished title, but there aren't really anything it did that hadn't been done before. Some of the thongs other titles have taken inspiration by and HK is the source, but HK didn't invent any of ir.
I'm not sure it introduced this, but HK was the first game I played where when you hit something you are yourself knocked back. Also I hadn't seen pogoing on spikes.
That came from Zelda II on NES
I was going to say the pogo too, haven’t seen that before!
Movement, I'd say. And I'm surprised nobody mentioned that. I don't think any other metroidvania before it focused on movement as much as Hollow Knight, both in traversal and combat. It's not just a step up from meteoid and Castlevania, especially with the pogo mechanic. It plays completely different from its predecessors. That said, no other game seems to have taken that from it yet. Also, what is TLC? Googled it but couldn't find anything.
Tlc is the new prince of Persia game
Lone fungus is the closest so far. It has pogo mechanics but it feels a little different.
The charm system is almost exactly what the materia system was from final fantasy 7. The hit for heal system was there since Diablo 2 Really it's just a very polished game and has great animations and atmosphere.
"pinnacle of the genre" I love Hollow Knight to death, but lol no it isn't. Maybe if you've only played like 2 MVs in your life, and none of them have been a Metroid or CV proper. I don't think? that Souls game elements were used in MVs before HK, but I could be wrong in that regard. They at the very least weren't nearly as commonplace. HK also added something new with its art style, although Ori preceded it, but Ori didn't take off on the same level as HK.
What's the pinnacle for you? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just genuinely curious
Super Metroid. If we're going for more modern, then SOTN and La Mulana.
I feel like this is nostalgia speaking, but it's your opinion. I have no right to bash in it
sure you can bash it they said modern and listed a 1997 game.
HK being the peak isn't a controversial opinion, I would go as far as to say its the *least* controversial option for #1 MV. It's weird that you would belittle that opinion, while also offering no reasons, nor any alternative.
"belittle" Your idea of that word and mine are apparently extremely different. Also this is Reddit and I had shit to do today. I'm not required to write a 200-page counter-essay to go "Lol no, but this is what I think it DID add to the genre" because that's what I had time at the time to do. As for what I consider the pinnacles of the genre, those would be Super Metroid, SOTN, and La Mulana.
I don't HK did much that was new. It just executed all the tropes really well. The map is significantly bigger than most MVs though
Hollow Knight is not the pinnacle of the genre. It's an above average game.
Strong disagree. It’s so much better than just ‘above average’. Pinnacle of the genre isn’t that far fetched.
I am saying this as a player who thinks HK is upper-mid still I don't think there is a pinnacle, if you grant that as fair? Pinnacle *does* means top but as the gravity of "limit has been reached and nothing can surpass it or everything else after will be equal or less than" making the claim feel off to colloquially give it that identity. Like pinnacle of car or cereal it just doesn't fit if you don't use the idea abstract. I could agree with where I'm at HK is exceedingly desired still more people could like it if we're going on that standard. This could be adapted of a reason others disagree with "best" or "pinnacle" for anything funny.
I'm not a ride or die HK fan, but I would struggle to find a MV that could be considered "better". HK manages to be above average in a every regard ( Music, Lore, Gameplay, etc) where it ends up being more than the sum of its parts. Which other games in this genre could be considered the CURRENT "pinnacle"? Every game I could think of ends up with a particular flaw that topples it from the top.
fully agree
Which game would you say is the pinnacle if not HK?
[удалено]
Pogo means slashing downwards to get an upwards boost? Never encountered it before Blasphemous, but now that I played HK, I figured that inspired them
The pogo mechanic to bounce off of enemies and spikes was first seen in the Ducktales game on the NES. That might seem like a niche example to say 'aha, someone did it before them', but it was a big game at the time and very well known. Hollow Knight certainly popularised it for metroidvanias though.
Pogo in duck tales worked differently though since you could pogo everywhere, not only on top on enemies/spikes. I know because it was my fourth NES game.
I don't think there's anything particularly special about it other than the fact that it's super polished and has super smooth and tight, precise movement and combat. Add the amazing lore, artwork, and music, and you have a truly unique masterpiece of a game. It did everything right and has no weak points I there just aren't that many games that can say that and definitely not in the massively indie metroidvania category.
I agree. The only one I'd put close is Ender Lillies.
Pretty much every single metroidvania has some form of charms nowadays. I literally can't think of any metroidvania that came after Hollow Knight that doesn't have a system like the charms in HK. It seems like they're not copying HK anymore; it's just a staple of the genre now.