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.

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.