"Go into this blind," they said.
"It'll be so much better that way," they said.

Turns out after you start enjoying the game it changes completely and just sucks. Brilliant.

Pretty much the perfect sequel to one of my favourite games of all time. Just improves nearly everything in subtle ways and becomes the definitive version of Spelunky.

If you don't mind a hard game that'll take you hundreds of attempts to even get to the final boss, give this one a shot.

One of the most emotionally resonant games I've ever experienced.
I'm just glad that I got over my 2015 phase of hating "non-games" or whatever because I would hate to have hated this.

It's short and fairly expensive for what it is, but I would recommend The Beginner's Guide to anyone who is open to games that don't involve killing anyone.

Oldschool for the sake of being oldschool. Inauthentic pixel art, outdated checkpoint system, inability to save and quit mid level for people who have things to do with their life.

Easy to get into tower defense game that has done a great job to keep me engaged for 25 hours by now.
I'm really into the idea of tower defense games but I find that many of the modern games of the genre get way too complex way too quickly so this relatively simple one is quite a nice relaxing experience.

Original review written 5 hours into the game:

Really wish I could like this more than I do. The artstyle, graphics, animation, soundtrack, just every technical aspect of this game is excellent. But the gameplay just isn't fun.

I've played for around 5 and a half hours right now and just don't feel any motivation to start the game again.
Not quite sure where I have to go and not willing to aimlessly wander around previously explored areas for 45 minutes.
I've only unlocked one single new movement option which is a simple dash. In 5 hours of gameplay. (Granted, at least one hour of that is probably just backtracking)
Bored of combat that seems to boil down to the worst of Dark Souls' "dodge and punish" style encounters.


Revised review after many more hours of gameplay:

The first 10 hours of this game were exactly as I described. Just a total slog to get through, genuine 2/10 experience.
As you unlock more movement tech, the travel gets less tedious and as you get more adept at the combat you tend to just breeze through old areas a lot quicker.
Unfortunately the combat really doesn't get much better than described in the first iteration of this review. You dodge and then you punish you enemy's miss with an attack of your own. Sometimes you can't figure out an enemy's attacks and die until you learn their patterns. This happens a lot with bosses in the second half of the game, where you just feel like you're getting totally screwed over by patterns you have zero chance of predicting or reacting to on your first try.

Context for the next part of this review: I'm the kind of person who feels almost forced to 100% games and go for every achievement listed on a game's page no matter how stupid it may be. Keep that in mind for the following complaints.
- Having an achievement that requires me to beat your game in under 5 hours sucks.
- Having an achievement that requires me to 100% your game in Steel Soul mode (whatever that even is; knowing this game it's not pleasant) really sucks.
- Locking me out of most of the good endings (or so my expert friend told me) unless I play a totally out of place Super Meat Boy area is awful game design. I'm not really bothered by the difficulty of this area but the way that difficulty ties into the systems of this game. Because the game is a Metroidvania with a health system that simply doesn't lend itself to tight punishing platforming. I didn't mind most of the minor platforming challenges during the rest of the game but building and entire area around that just showed me how unpleasant Hollow Knight could become.

So overall I guess if you can look past a really unpleasant first third of a game and are able to ignore non-fun optional challenges, this game is probably for you.
But with the first *and* last third leaving a sour taste in my mouth, and the middle third only being an 8/10 experience at best, I really can't recommend this.

Basic concept is solid but the game introduces way too many mechanics to let any of them shine.
Especially the user-created levels could really benefit from the old philosophy "less is more".
Levels get way too long way too quickly, which means you're going to be playing the first half of every level over and over again every time you make a single mistake.
Not very fun.

Your enjoyment of this game is probably going to be directly proportional to the amount of messing around your group of friends usually does in games. Which, for me, made this quite fun.

Let me say one thing first: The game itself is excellent.

However, this port of it is one of the worst things I've ever tried to play.
The game launches at 860x480 and crashes if you try to change that.
A standard Xbox 360 USB controller isn't supported by default so you have to rebind all the controls. However, something is wrong with how the game detects your inputs, which results in you having to control your movements with the right analog stick while needing A, B, X and Y for combat.

So overall, I'd say get this game on console and avoid this heap of trash.

Do you want to start hating cool things like spaceships and lasers? This might be the game for you.