Overview
Hollow Knight is the debut major release from Team Cherry — a three-person studio from Adelaide, Australia — and stands among the finest Metroidvania titles ever created. Released on February 24, 2017, it has since sold over 5 million copies across all platforms, earned a Metacritic score of 87-90 depending on platform, and remains a defining example of what independent game development can achieve at its highest level.
At $14.99 USD — with four substantial free DLC packs included — it offers one of the greatest price-to-content ratios in gaming: a 40-60 hour experience at a price most games charge for two.
Hallownest: A World That Breathes
You play as a small, nameless knight who descends into Hallownest — a once-prosperous insect kingdom now reduced to crumbling architecture, forgotten murals, and wandering remnants of its former inhabitants. What you find there is a world defined by isolation: physical, emotional, and civilizational.
The kingdom of Hallownest is the game's most extraordinary achievement. Every region carries its own distinct visual identity, inhabitants, history, and atmosphere:
- Forgotten Crossroads — the first descent, grey and decaying, establishing the world's tone of faded grandeur
- Greenpath — living, overgrown, deceptively peaceful, introducing the first major lore-bearing NPCs
- Fungal Wastes — mushroom-dense and hostile, home to the Mantis tribe and their unforgettable boss encounter
- City of Tears — a rain-soaked metropolis of faded grandeur, the game's atmospheric centerpiece
- Deepnest — pitch-black horror biome that deliberately withholds the map, producing genuine dread
- The Abyss — profound darkness, the game's emotional center, where the Pale King's tragedy is laid bare
- Kingdom's Edge — desolation at the furthest reach of the world, orange dust cliffs and the game's most demanding optional boss challenges
The world is interconnected in ways that consistently reward exploration. Shortcuts open between areas that seemed unrelated. Hidden passages lead to secrets that recontextualize lore established hours earlier. Every corner has something worth finding — a trapped Grub, a hidden Charm, a memory fragment that makes the world's history click into place.
The Infection: Isolation Embodied
Hallownest's decline originates from The Infection — a mysterious corrupting force that severs bonds between inhabitants, driving them toward mindless hostility or paralyzed isolation. The Infection functions as the game's central metaphor: the way external forces fracture communities and cut individuals off from meaningful connection.
This theme is never stated directly. It is expressed through the NPCs encountered, the journals discovered, the architecture of places that once held life and now hold only echoes. The Pale King built Hallownest's civilization and its downfall simultaneously. Understanding his bargain — what he gave up, what he created, what he could not contain — is one of the game's most rewarding revelations.
Combat: Precise, Deliberate, Deeply Satisfying
Combat in Hollow Knight is built around the nail (a small sword) and Soul (a resource gathered by striking enemies, spent on spells or healing). The system is precise, deliberate, and deeply satisfying once internalized.
Combat mechanics expand significantly as the game progresses:
Nail Arts — unlocked from three scattered Nailmasters — provide powerful charged attacks with distinct combat applications:
- Great Slash: raw damage for staggering tough enemies
- Cyclone Slash: multi-hit spin useful against groups
- Dash Slash: range-extending forward strike
Spells transform the SOUL economy into an offensive toolkit:
- Vengeful Spirit / Shade Soul: horizontal projectile, upgradeable to enhanced version
- Desolate Dive / Descending Dark: downward strike with shockwave, excellent for grounded foes
- Howling Wraiths / Abyss Shriek: upward spread attack ideal for airborne threats
The healing tension is the system's masterstroke: spending SOUL to heal means forgoing offensive magic, creating genuine risk-reward decisions in sustained fights. An aggressive player takes damage but deals damage faster. A cautious player heals frequently but loses offensive pressure.
The Charms System: Build Identity in a Metroidvania
Hollow Knight's 45 Charms are one of the most creative progression systems in the genre. Equipped via limited Notch slots, they modify fundamental gameplay behaviors:
- Quick Slash — dramatically increases attack speed
- Fragile/Unbreakable Strength — increases nail damage significantly
- Hiveblood — regenerating heart masks that eliminate the need for SOUL healing
- Grubsong — generates SOUL when taking damage (rewards aggressive play that accepts hits)
- Shaman Stone — boosts spell damage for spell-focused builds
- Mark of Pride — extends nail range, fundamentally changing spacing in combat
- Longnail + Mark of Pride — combined, creates dramatically extended reach
- Fragile Heart — adds two bonus Masks (health points) for survivability
- Quick Slash + Fragile Strength — a classic power combination
Combining Charms creates emergent playstyles not explicitly designed into the game. A Shaman Stone + Quick Slash + Steady Body combination creates a melee-aggressive mage playstyle entirely distinct from a Hiveblood + Long Range defensive playstyle. The system gives Hollow Knight replay depth uncommon in Metroidvanias.
Boss Encounters: Discipline at Every Scale
Boss encounters are the game's greatest tests of what the player has internalized. Each demands pattern recognition, positioning, and patience rather than damage-per-second optimization.
Standout encounters include:
- Mantis Lords — three-phase duel against acrobatic mantis royalty; widely cited as the finest traditional boss fight in the game
- Broken Vessel / Lost Kin — emotional weight fused with punishing pattern memorization
- Hornet — two encounters across the game, both demanding complete mastery of dodge timing
- Soul Master / Soul Tyrant — high-speed projectile management in a cramped arena
- Nosk — a shape-shifting horror encounter in Deepnest's darkness
- Grimm / Nightmare King Grimm — the Grimm Troupe DLC's centerpiece, among the most technically demanding and visually spectacular fights in any Metroidvania
- Pure Vessel / Hollow Knight — the Godmaster DLC's final challenge and the base game's true final form
- Absolute Radiance — the pinnacle optional challenge: all 42 bosses preceding this in sequence with no checkpoints in the Pantheon of Hallownest
The Godhome Pantheons (Godmaster DLC) offer some of the most demanding optional content in any action game — the Pantheon of Hallownest requires defeating every significant boss back-to-back with no checkpoints. It is a challenge that rewards hundreds of hours of skill investment.
Lore and Environmental Storytelling
The history of Hallownest is available to anyone willing to pay attention. Item descriptions, NPC dialogue, environment details, and Dream Nail memories piece together the story of a civilization built on a terrible bargain.
The Dream Nail — obtained mid-game — reveals character thoughts when used on NPCs and grants access to dream bosses. It is both a narrative delivery mechanism and a combat tool, representing the game's elegance: systems that serve multiple purposes simultaneously.
The five endings reflect different resolutions to Hallownest's cycle of isolation:
- Hollow Knight — sacrifice to the Black Egg, perpetuating the seal (incomplete resolution)
- Sealed Siblings — Hornet joins the seal (slightly more complete but still temporary)
- Dream No More — destroy the Radiance through the Dream Nail (the base game's true ending)
- Embrace the Void (Godmaster) — enter the Void and face Absolute Radiance
- Delicate Flower — a side-quest resolution with its own emotional weight
Each ending asks different questions about sacrifice, purpose, and whether breaking a cycle is worth the cost.
The Free DLC: Extraordinary Value
Four substantial free DLC packs were released in the two years following launch, now included in the base price:
- Hidden Dreams (August 2017): Two new dream boss fights — White Defender and Grey Prince Zote — plus new music and Stag travel routes
- The Grimm Troupe (October 2017): A full new questline, Grimm and Nightmare King Grimm as major bosses, five new Charms, and a branching conclusion
- Lifeblood (April 2018): New boss (Hive Knight, Lifeblood Core), Lifeblood Charms, substantial visual and audio polish across the entire game
- Godmaster (August 2018): Godhome — five Pantheons containing all major bosses in sequence, new bosses including Pure Vessel and Absolute Radiance, two new endings, and multiple NPC quest completions
All DLC is completely free — bundled into the base $14.99 price. Team Cherry's refusal to sell content they felt should be part of the complete experience is consistently cited as an extraordinary act of goodwill that contributed directly to the game's sustained cultural standing.
Is Hollow Knight Too Hard?
The game does not have difficulty settings and does not apologize for that choice. First-time Metroidvania players will find the early game disorienting — the navigation system deliberately withholds maps until Cornifer the cartographer is found in each region, and there are no objective markers pointing toward progression.
The first four to six hours are the game's roughest segment. Health is low, abilities are limited, and the world feels hostile and large. Players who push through this opening — who find the Mantis Claw (wall jump), the Monarch Wings (double jump), and the Mothwing Cloak (dash) — discover that the game opens dramatically. Movement becomes expressive, exploration becomes rewarding, and combat becomes creative.
The Godhome Pantheons represent a separate tier of difficulty entirely — optional, brutally demanding, and designed for players who have already mastered every other system. They are not representative of the base game's difficulty curve.
Christopher Larkin's Soundtrack
The music deserves its own mention. Christopher Larkin's original score is praised as one of the finest in indie gaming. Orchestral, melancholic, and atmospheric — blending strings, brass, and occasional choir — it shifts seamlessly between the gentle wonder of exploration and the desperate intensity of boss encounters.
Notable tracks: "Hollow Knight" (the main theme), "Greenpath" (the game's emotional warmth), "City of Tears" (melancholic grandeur), "Mantis Lords" (tense precision), "Grimm" (theatrical darkness), "Radiance" (cosmic horror). The soundtrack is available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and YouTube, and has accumulated a passionate following independent of the game.
Is Hollow Knight Worth It in 2025?
Unambiguously: yes.
The hand-drawn art style does not age. The $14.99 price tag — for 40-60 hours of content plus four DLC packs — remains unmatched. The Silksong sequel remains anticipated, driving players to discover or revisit the original regularly. The active subreddit (r/HollowKnight, 400,000+ members) and speedrunning community keep the game culturally present.
Players who appreciate demanding combat, exploration-driven progression, dense environmental storytelling, and extraordinary value will find Hollow Knight essential. Players who need difficulty options, explicit narrative guidance, or frequent fast travel may find the experience demanding — and that demand is part of the design.
System Requirements
PC Requirements
| Spec | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 7 SP1 | Windows 10 64-bit |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E5200 | Intel Core i5 (any) |
| RAM | 2 GB | 4 GB |
| GPU | GM965 Integrated Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or equivalent |
| Storage | 9 GB | 9 GB |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 | DirectX 11 |
Hollow Knight runs on virtually any device. Old office laptops, gaming tablets, and budget PCs all run it smoothly. It is one of the lowest hardware requirement games in any list of high-quality titles. Nintendo Switch also runs it at a stable 60fps.
Final Verdict
Hollow Knight is a masterpiece of the Metroidvania form — a beautifully crafted world that rewards exploration with lore, combat mastery with satisfaction, and patient attention with emotional resonance. It asks you to sit with loneliness and find connection within it. Team Cherry built something that rivals and often surpasses the work of studios with ten times the resources.
At $14.99, it is one of the most extraordinary value propositions in gaming. Hallownest deserves every hour you give it.
Score: 9/10 — One of the finest independent games ever made. Essential.
