What Metroidvanias do you think are better? I've played a ton of Metroidvanias and I completely disagree. Hollow Knight has excellent combat and arguably the best map layout in any Metroidvania. The only Metroidvanias I consider its peers are Super Metroid and Rabi-Ribi.

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rimunroe 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not the person you're replying to, but I personally preferred Ori and the Blind Forest a lot, both in terms of movement and story, but also in terms of the satisfaction of the backtracking and world as a whole. I felt like Hollow Knight did a poor job of nudging players in the right direction, and found the combat to be a bit more finicky than I care for from the genre. I'm not a huge fan of the art style either, at least as far as the environments are concerned.

The satisfaction of feeling your set of abilities and options for gameplay increase and grant the ability to overcome previous obstacles is the main thing I expect and want from a Metroidvania. I felt like this was Hollow Knight's biggest weak point. It just didn't feel like you gained new abilities at as steady a pace or as though they opened up enough of the world each time compared to other games in the genre, including Ori and the Blind Forest. I think Super Metroid still has the best progression among Metroidvanias, but it's possible that's colored by my having first played it at a young age.

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vunderba 2 days ago | parent [-]

I was just gonna say this was one of the most annoying parts to the original hollow night - the environments kind of blurred together after a little while, and I found myself backtracking more than I would've liked.

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vunderba 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

While I wouldn't necessarily consider it better, the sequel to "Ori and the Blind Forest", "Ori and the Will of the Wisps" is easily on the same level as Hollow Knight.

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mjr00 2 days ago | parent [-]

Ori + its sequel are not on the same level as HK, in my opinion. The combat in the original is really bad/way too easy, and the exploration is just okay. The sequel drastically improved the combat, but the map is significantly worse; it's essentially just a "hub and spoke" where you go to one of 4 (IIRC) separate disconnected areas, grab the powerup which does more or less nothing in the other areas, use it to finish the area and beat the boss, rinse and repeat until the finale.

That being said, they are still very good games; excellent atmosphere, artwork and presentation, some genuinely haunting, creepy, and awe-inspiring areas. But I think Hollow Knight is a tier above them.

	▲	rimunroe 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> The combat in the original is really bad/way too easy, and the exploration is just okay Personally I find combat to be one of the less important aspects of Metroidvanias. I prefer the main source of difficulty coming from platforming around environmental hazards. I felt like exploration in Hollow Knight was a bit too broad, and lead to too much unnecessary backtracking. Backtracking is a balance. It's a staple of Metroidvanias, but if the backtracking search space is large enough and places aren't distinctive enough then the search for a previously insurmountable obstacle can start feeling like looking for a needle in a haystack. That was my experience in Hollow Knight, and something I felt like the first Ori game did better.