newgrounds on homestuck end of act 5 vibes
wow the parallax is intense! do they have middle layers moving faster than front layers in stone cases? because it seems like objects rotate in 3D as you pass them
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i don’t think you want middle layers to move faster than front layers – like in the real 3d world, planes nearer you will always appear to move faster than further planes when your relative motion between them is the same. i can’t think of a situation that would invert that.
from what i’ve seen it’s normal parallax, just with quite a few layers.
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Terrible news I found a stance that changes the divekick to the classic Hollow Knight / Ducktails pogo move and it trivialized one boss. Going back to (worse) dievkicks instead to not strip Hornet of all her uniqueness
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I’m not too far in yet but I think I’m approaching the game with kind of a bad attitude. After continuing to hear how much harder this game is than the original, I just know there’s going to be a boss that will stop me dead in my tracks and that’s keeping me from enjoying the game as much as I might otherwise.
But I am enjoying it. It definitely starts out harder but nothing unreasonable so far. It sure is unforgiving, though, even in minor enemy encounters.
I did have to turn off that hero’s voice setting almost immediately. It’s like what if Link in Zelda 64 made noise with every single movement instead of just some of them, and louder.
When you have the map open, I like how you can see her holding the map and walking with it in the background.
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ooo just like stalker when you open the PDA
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hey the dash/run feels good!
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yeah, maybe i’m just not used to seeing enough layers composing the same object to give an impression of concavity. it seems like the middle layer can disappear behind the front like this:
BBBBB___ → BBBBB
___MM___ → __MM_
_____FFFF → _FFFF_
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ooh where i want to see the concave
I had forgotten how broke Hollow Knight likes to make you feel. You get nickel-and-dimed for everything. Want to unlock this savepoint you just reached? That’ll be 30 beads. Want to be able to see it on your map? That’ll be another 50
(This is a gripe but also, it’s good actually)
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It’s pretty clever. If you don’t back down from fights it’s pretty easy to get beads, but skipping fights isn’t that hard. It really encourages you to take it slow and murder everything on your first pass through an area.
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I wanna buy that key from the starting village shop soooo bad but every 5 minutes I have to drop mad beads at a kiosk. It does rule.
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Also it means it’s a real decision whether to go pick up loose beads that scattered onto lower platforms
Then, just when I thought I obviated that by paying 120 beads for the bead-attracting equipment, it turns out I have to choose between equipping that or the one that lets me see an icon for my own location on the map
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this feels like performative Dark Soulsing the same way that Wukong did to me… I have to think a bit more about why actual From games almost never seem worthy of their stereotypes about punishment or difficulty whereas a lot of their most beloved and obvious homages all feel to me like they overinvested in their worst aspects.
perhaps this has something to do with why few people agreed with me that the Souls games are fundamentally very, very funny comedies whereas almost everyone ripping them off mistakes them for tragedies…
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Unlocking the dash was a pretty big deal. You can really feel athletic in this game! Loved the fast, balletic fight with Lace.
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i think i like this game more than hollow knight but it’s for a lot of smaller details that they’ve executed slightly better this time (it’s very possible og hollow knight gets to this eventually but i couldn’t be assed after 8 hours of slogging through that game)
- main character is cooler
- divekick is more interesting and first movement ability is better
- areas are more varied and colorful
- lots of cute little background details and interactions; i don’t remember the npcs being this adorable. all the voice work is great.
- funny level design gags (traps, having to climb out of the same hole multiple times)
on the other hand they’ve still carried over lot of design decisions that i disliked in the first game.
all the character “progression” is so triple-a brained – it straddles this line where i can’t tell if the designers actually like the mechanics they’ve made or if they just needed to invent a slew of inconveniences for the player to be able to upgrade out of.
the biggest offender in my mind is the map system, where they’ve split out every possible aspect of the map into its own upgrade. do they want the game to be playable without the map? if so, they’ve undermined themselves – i don’t particularly care to pay that much attention to navigation, because i know i’ll eventually get a map to trivialize it.
like a game without a map has to be designed differently than one with a map, but this game awkwardly straddles this line where i find the areas don’t have many memorable landmarks, so it’s kind of pain in the ass to navigate without a map, but then it has “well you eventually have a map” to fall back on so the designers don’t seem particularly interested in improving mapless navigation.
and this is coming from a guy that likes nes metroid! but like at least i know the designers WANT you to get lost in metroid because there’s no way to grind out a way to trivialize it. getting lost is part of the intended experience. is it part of the intended experience of hollow knight? i can’t be sure. it’s only intended for people that are bad at the combat and keeping their beads? huh?
this weird like couching of design ideas is present in trinkets, too. like in hollow knight 1 the only interesting wrinkle to the combat early on is the pushback you get when you hit enemies, and one of the FIRST trinkets you find is one that disables that pushback. it just feels like they designed a system with friction to give you the illusion of progress when they disable that friction, instead of designing a system with friction because that friction is actually enjoyable.
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Funny how the game lets you grind (almost demands it) but not for anything that would help at all with the difficulty as far as I can tell.
The five life points are deceptive when so many things take off two in a single hit (and sometimes four if you’re unlucky since there seems to be no invulnerability window at all). It takes a lot to get a sixth, but doing so would help with only the most basic enemies that hit you for only one damage.
It seems you get only one chance to do some things. I found a character in jail that I could free but didn’t immediately. It was gone when I returned. And I’ve run all over the docks trying to remember where the map seller was. I’ve concluded that she’s gone.
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I agree this is absolutely better than the first which I thought was genuinely quite bad in a kind of deceptively Calvinist way that made me very skeptical of people who regarded it alternately as an homage and an antidote to Souls games’ perceived inaccessibility, but I think I might actually be trying too hard to reserve judgment and avoid coming to the conclusion that people like Hollow Knight because it’s a grindy metrovania
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had i been more charmed by the presentation of the original, i could see how i might’ve got there. there are many games i’m happy to grind & hang out in because the setting is so compelling or inviting or cozy.
like sea of thieves is a huge waste of time but the “down time” in that game is much better than any of the ostensible goals. sailing in the middle of nowhere with slightly choppy water and a storm cloud looming on the horizon is such a vibe.
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Or perhaps they like a stylish, charming, tough but manageable game that wants you to feel small and fragile that rewards slowly piecing together and understanding your environment and the nuances of your moveset.
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