Hollow Knight vs. Ori & Will of Wisps

[CaptainCruch]

I own a Switch and I want to buy a pshyical copy of either Hollow Knight or Ori & Will of Wisps - Both games look interesting to me, but I don't have the time to play Both. Which one should I pick?

[Voor]

I had a thread on this. In addition to these, I think I was also considering Shovel Knight and Celeste.

I’ll try to find the thread.

[Retro STrife]

Both have gotten rave reviews. I have not played the Ori games, but judging from how the Critic reviewed the first Ori and Hollow Knight, and because of how highly I regard HK, I’m pretty confident HK is the superior game. As a big fan of Metroidvania games, Hollow Knight is the best Metroidvania game I’ve ever played outside of the Castlevania games (like SOTN). I can’t recommend it enough if you’re a fan of the genre.

The bad news though, since you mention being limited on time, is that HK is a far longer game- at least double the length of Ori (according to HowLongtoBeat.com). HK is the longest Metroidvania I’ve ever seen, but it is worth it and will hook you for 30+ hours before you even think of getting bored. I personally played it for around 70 hours, getting near 100% complete.

[Paul Campbell]

Hollow Knight is now, officially, my favorite game of all time, surpassing all my original favorites from my childhood, in the 8 and 16-bit days. But the Critic isn't exaggerating about it being a slow-burn game. I actually played it for a couple hours, couldn't get into it, and put it down, assuming I would never touch it again because it obviously wasn't hitting me the way it hit everyone else. Luckily, after having just read a player mention how they actually kind of hated it before eventually growing to love it, I found myself in a bit of a chasm, not feeling excited about any of the games I was currently bouncing between, and I decided I might as well plow ahead and see if the game could change my mind.

I now am now over 100% completion in the game (I have NEVER EVER EVER been the kind of person to give a flying crap about completion percentage until Hollow Knight), and I have clocked over 100 hours, much of it being spent trying to get through the challenges that come at the end. The fighting style and system is so incredibly addicting, fluid, and fun, that I'll actually turn the game on when I only have a few minutes available, just to give myself a boost of adrenaline.

So I'm going to tentatively recommend Hollow Knight.

[charlie]

I haven't played Ori, but I have played and 'lame ending' beat Hollow Knight. It's a great game, very fun. Lots to do, good scaling difficulty, etc. It's easily in my top ten of all time. It's the best modernized old-school game I have played, takes the best of both worlds.

Shovel Knight was sorta fun, but got frustrating quick. It's 100% true to it's old-school roots, and came across as kind of tedious to me. Maybe I shouldn't have tried it right after Hollow Knight.

Just ones dudes opinion...

[DrLitch]

What has not been mentioned is that Hollow Knight can be brutally hard and does not hold your hand. It is by far the most difficult Metroidvania ever released. To play this, use a walkthrough that will allow you to get the items you need at the opportune moments to get through. The game does not tell you anything and important information is lacking like "power up your nail" or "collect geo and max out your number of charm slots" or "there is a stupid insect that sells charms at this location". Plenty of lore though. Of course when I played I had nothing but what the game defaulted you with. I tried to beat the Colosseum level (there are three trials) and spent hours and hours trying to do it as a weakling with no nail powerup, no strong spells, and no tricks like zipping through enemies causing them damage, and no charms like increasing your strength or giving you extra hit points. After beating the first two trials and taking about 3 hours to beat the third trial it was disappointing that this whole section was unimportant and did nothing to progress my character.

On a second playthrough I had enough familiarity with the layout that I finished with above 100% in about 40 hours. Still, it is a slog.

My advise, if you are not going to use a walkthrough, play Ori & Will of Wisps. Hollow Knight is a good game if you do everything right, but it is a frustrating and difficult game if, like me, you like to explore. You will always end up in a tough part exploring around and when you die you have to pick up your ghost from the very spot you died. The scream "Eff You" could be heard for miles when I lost $30K geo when I died in a very thorny section and did not even have double jump ability. I gave up for months when I ended up trapped in Deepnest with no way out (you need that wall cling/leap ability). I eventually got out bouncing on this giant worm that needed the sort of timing in Super Metroid where you can bomb yourself very high. Super Metroid never requires you to use this bomb move. If it did it would immediately get a full letter downgrade. Hollow Knight should be A+ but it is not as well designed as people think. B+ because the game should never allow a player to be trapped and have to use insane timing skills to get out of their predicament. There are too many flaws and the large map of the game is not at all well connected. The Tram is useless and your ant like bug has too few stations. I am looking forward to the sequel though...