BOOKS & GAMES
GAMING
Reviews and commentary on my
favorite video games.
Games as Art
Technically, most video games are art. Video games are a medium, just like books, film, animation, drawing, music, and so on. Video games are a unique kind of art because they’re interactive — they focus the emotional developments of the story directly on you, the player. Even if the character you’re playing as is an established individual in-universe and not a blank-slate stand-in for yourself, everything that happens in a game still happens to you, often as a result of your own actions. That leads to styles of storytelling that can’t be experienced in any other medium. There are many games that I think are exceptional works of art, but for the sake of keeping this answer brief, I’m going to limit it to five. Art is subjective, so what is and isn’t art can only be determined by arbitrary criteria, but I’ll be focusing on three things: Beauty: Is the game pretty to look at? Is it excellent purely from an aesthetic standpoint? This includes the actual artwork of the game, but also its music and atmosphere. Craftsmanship: Is the game well-designed? Is there obvious care and thought put into the gameplay and the overall experience? Storytelling: How well does the game utilize its unique medium to tell a story? What kind of emotional impact does the story leave on the audience? What ideas does it express? Hollow Knight I’ve become something of a connoisseur of Metroidvanias. I’ve played almost all of Koji Igarashi’s games, beginning with the illustrious Symphony of the Night, which is an excellent game that has aged very well. But despite my growing familiarity with the genre, Hollow Knight is still the absolute apex. From an aesthetic standpoint, the game is gorgeous! It has some of the most atmospheric environments of any game I’ve ever played, and they’re so detailed! The character designs are unique, very cute, and all animated by hand. The backgrounds are so beautiful that literally just stills of this game could be considered art. The music is also excellent, putting Christopher Larkin among my favorite game composers. The music contributes a lot to immersion and atmosphere. As soon as I heard the background music for the first area, the Forgotten Crossroads, I was hooked. From a craftsmanship standpoint, it is exceptionally well-made in every possible way. Its gameplay is smooth and simple, so it’s really easy to get down. Its lore was literally written around the game mechanics, so there’s good gameplay and story integration. The animation is fluid and beautiful to look at. The lore is well-hidden and cryptic, but not so much so that you’re completely in the dark. The difficulty balance is consistent. Exploration is rewarding, and strikes a nice balance between getting lost enough to explore organically but not so lost that you’re frustrated. And if you have no interest in its lore and barely even notice the lovely backgrounds, it still works just as a game! Hollow Knight is hard — it forced me to build skills that eventually came in handy when I began to take on harder Soulslikes and eventually FromSoft itself. From a storytelling standpoint… well, there’s not a lot I can say without going straight into spoiler territory, so what I’ll say is that it’s very impressive when a game can tell a coherent story without having to say a whole lot. Games are uniquely suited to communicating their stories indirectly, because you don’t lose out on any actual content. 90% of Hollow Knight is just you wandering around, but it never feels boring, because there’s always something intriguing to look at or contemplate the purpose of. Sometimes you get useful information, and sometimes you find a mystery that will forever remain unexplained. Sometimes you find a boss in a completely out-of-the-way spot that you would never have found if you hadn’t stumbled across it. Half the fun of this game is trying to figure out what’s going on; it’s satisfying once you do, and still rewarding to play even if you don’t. I think that sense of mystery is what keeps people coming back to it. Thematically, Hollow Knight considers when or if the ends justify the means, the balance between life and death, hubris, whether it is worth trying to preserve something vs. when it is time to accept that it is gone, what is left after a civilization collapses, free will and how it relates to power, and how to deal with things that are dark and difficult. Much like FromSoft games, most of the lore revolves around religion, and how various cults interact with one another. Parenthood also plays a role in the story, and insects’ ideas of what parenthood is tend to be inconsistent. This is almost more art than game, because the artistry that went into every aspect of it is palpable. I think that’s why people are so impatient for Silksong — we all want to repeat the experience of playing Hollow Knight for the first time. Nothing can possibly top Hollow Knight except for its own sequel, so the bar for Silksong is extremely high. Undertale I’m much more of a gamer now than I was when I first played Undertale back in 2016. It is still one of the best games I’ve ever played. And… to be honest… it’s kind of hard to explain why. Now that the hype has largely died down, Undertale seems like exactly what it is, a cute and quirky RPG that twists the tropes associated with its genre. So what is it about this short, simple game that sticks with people? Why did it inspire so much other art from its fans, in the form of fanart, fanfiction, comics, animatics, soundtrack covers, and entire AUs with their own separate fanbases, many of which got millions of views? Aesthetically, this game is technically the weakest on this list. It was made almost entirely by one person, so most of the art is very simple pixel art with little dimension. But Undertale doesn’t lose anything from having simple art. Its environments and character designs are still very distinctive and memorable. And what it lacks in graphics, it makes up for with its soundtrack, which I will in all seriousness declare to be a work of genius. Toby Fox composed the entire soundtrack himself, and makes excessive use of leitmotif to enhance the game’s emotional storytelling. You probably won’t notice all the different uses of leitmotif the first time you play, but it’ll subconsciously register, linking characters and events without you even realizing it. When you do realize it, it hits you like a truck. The songs also just sound great on their own, which is why they were covered by every conceivable instrument back when Undertale was big. Undertale’s simplicity also enhances its nostalgia factor and makes its gameplay easy to understand and to master. From a design standpoint, Undertale makes the most of what it has. It’s a very short game, only about six hours, but it doesn’t feel short. Gameplay and story integration is really on-point in this game, almost giving FromSoft a run for its money, because every single mechanic exists in-universe. You aren’t supposed to know that going in, though, which is why it’s a shock when characters suddenly react to the mechanics or reference them in a more pointed way than a simple fourth-wall break. And that brings me to the story. Oh boy. Where to start? What Undertale does is comment on the nature of games like itself, creating a singularly unique experience for the player. On the surface, it’s a lighthearted, humorous adventure story about a child traveling through an underground world full of monsters, most of which are friendly. Undertale’s tagline is “the friendly RPG where nobody has to die,” and it provides you with a way of sparing every single enemy you meet instead of killing them. The game’s ending varies depending on how many monsters you kill and which monsters you kill. But it’s not just the multiple endings that make this game exceptional — plenty of games have multiple endings, but Undertale has an absurd amount of developer foresight throughout the entire thing. Toby Fox knows gamers so well that he can predict every single thing they might try to do, and build in a unique response for all of them. Most of them are designed to shock the player, either for the sake of humor (such as a tempting sign that, when you reach it, reads “Congratulations! You failed the puzzle.”) or for the sake of gut-wrenching drama. The developer foresight might make it tempting to try everything, just to see what responses you’ll get, but this will backfire. Everything you do carries weight in-universe, and the game can turn dark real fast. This is one area where its popularity worked against it. Undertale is really meant to be experienced blind, so that it catches the player off-guard the way it’s supposed to. If you go in knowing all the ways your choices can affect the game world, you might end up ruining the experience for yourself. Fans who attempt to force prospective players to play a specific way will definitely ruin the experience. Undertale’s character writing is probably its strongest point, even beating out the music (which is saying a lot). Every one of them is well-developed, interesting, and complex. I’ve never cared about any group of video game characters this much. The audience’s emotional investment in them is part of the game’s impact. Thematically, Undertale questions how players relate to the games that they play, what makes actions right or wrong, what might drive a person to do the wrong thing, how to deal with with depression and nihilism, the nature of war and the effects it has on society, the lengths that people will be driven to when desperate, and even the effects of media on people’s lives. All of that from a simple, kid-friendly, extremely silly RPG. Hades Funnily enough, Hades has a similar objective as Undertale — escape the Underworld, and make friends along the way. But its setting, characters, and lore are all taken from Greek mythology. I have high standards when it comes to things based on Greek mythology, and Hades actually takes its source material seriously and does it justice. Even the game’s protagonist is an impressively obscure reference. You play as Zagreus, the prince of the Underworld, who is getting a little sick of spending all his time in the land of the dead and decides to escape. Hades, his father, attempts to stop him at every turn. This game has one of the coolest aesthetics I’ve ever seen. It manages to look modernized while still having mostly ancient or ancient-inspired clothes, items, and architecture. The area designs are especially cool. I really have to hand it to the game’s art direction. The character designs are all very distinctive and awesome-looking. According to the developers, making a game about Greek gods necessitated that all of the characters be as physically attractive as possible, so this game has gained notoriety on the internet for being the “bi panic” game. (It helps that you can romance both a male and a female character, without having to choose.) I have to admit, the character designs are definitely one of my favorite parts of the game, and I’m excited for Hades 2 just because I’ll get to see the artists’ take on all the gods who didn’t make it into the first game. The music is also amazing, combining Greek guitar melodies with Doom-style electric guitar and techno. It’s energizing, dramatic, and fun to listen to. The composer, Darren Korb, also voices Zagreus, Orpheus, and Skelly. Did I mention the voice acting? The voice acting is excellent. From a craftsmanship perspective, Hades made me like roguelikes. That’s saying a lot. Hades allows the player to choose which weapon they want to use for the run and which rewards they want to get from the next room, and gives you some freedom designing your own build, so you never feel shortchanged by the algorithm. Its story also isn’t entirely dependent on you completing runs, which means that you can advance subplots without making it all the way through, making runs feel productive even when you die. And best of all, there are ways of making the game easier if it feels too insurmountable. (I still haven’t beaten the Final Boss without God Mode.) I’m not as familiar with roguelikes as with Metroidvanias, but I still feel comfortable designating this an incredibly well-designed one. Once again, story is where this game really shines. There are so many unique lines of dialogue that you can play for literally hundreds of runs and still never hear the same lines twice. The characters react to any progress you make, which means that most actions will have unique responses. That makes the characters feel like real people, and their reactions feel organic. And as with Undertale, I can’t praise the character writing enough. Every character has so much personality that getting to know them ends up becoming the main focus of the game. There is so much going on in the background that you’ll actually be excited to die and end up back where you started to see what new developments there are. Zagreus is probably the best-written character, in my personal opinion. He completely subverts the stereotype of the edgy roguelike protagonist. He’s a himbo who’s sincerely nice to everybody (except maybe Theseus), even as he hacks and slashes his way through Hell. Much like Undertale, Hades makes the point that things will go well if you go out of your way to be nice to people, though it’s a little less overt with that message. Thematically, the game is primarily concerned with family, and how to patch up rocky relationships even when they seem like they’re past breaking point. Bloodborne Bloodborne is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played, and I still can’t believe that I managed to get through it twice. And yet, it also seems perfectly suited to me. It took me a long time to love Bloodborne, since it was so frustrating the first time through, but every time I play it I love it more and more. Bloodborne is as good as horror gets, in any medium. Aesthetics are literally the reason I played this game. I spent hours fighting through hordes of Henchmen swinging their torches and pitchforks at me and screaming “AWAY, AWAY!”, dying horribly, losing hundreds of blood echoes, and nearly throwing my controller, all for the utter magnificence of its Victorian Gothic setting. Bloodborne is seriously one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, and if the streets of Yharnam weren’t so full of dangerous monsters that demand all my concentration, I’d literally just want to explore it and enjoy the decaying, blood-drenched scenery. The architecture is spectacular! While the aesthetic section is mostly focused on beauty, I have to give Bloodborne points for its deliberate use of ugliness. The monster designs in this game are grotesque, but always in a way that feels appropriate and not like it’s intended as cheap shock value. Bloodborne mostly lacks music except during boss fights, but when it does have music, it stands out. The creepy Latin chanting in Yahar’gul is especially notable, since it’s the first time you really hear any music, and it becomes even creepier once you realize that it’s diegetic. Another shout-out goes to the ironically-named “Soothing Hymn” that plays when you enter the Upper Cathedral Ward, which is one of the most unsettling experiences I’ve ever had while playing a video game. I felt real terror waiting for a werewolf or one of those damn brainsuckers to jump out of the dark at me. “Lullaby for Mergo” is by far the creepiest music-box track I’ve ever heard, and I listen to Nox Arcana so my standards are high. I love it. Gameplay-wise, this game is kinder to me than Dark Souls would be. I like that it rewards hyperaggression, because that’s how I typically play these kinds of games. Once I got the combat down, it felt smooth and more intuitive than I expected. Also, once I was past the first level (which was a bitch, let me tell you) the combat rarely felt unfair. That’s saying a lot, given how difficult it is. Some things feel unfair (Yahar’gul Part 2: Electric Boogaloo gets a special mention, and so do the damn chalice dungeons( but usually it’s your own fault when you screw up, and you can fix it once you know what you’re doing. Bloodborne is technically a linear game, but it doesn’t feel like one. Its exploration feels organic, and it’s easy to get lost in its sprawling ares, most of which have shortcuts to make them feel interconnected and to make it easier to traverse them. Sometimes the areas even loop in on each other, Metroidvania-style: one of my favorite moments was when a well-hidden cave in the Forbidden Woods led to a cavern with a well-hidden ladder that brought you right back to where the game started, and rewarded you for your effort. Bloodborne’s story is hard to parse out the first time through, though there’ll still be enough intriguing mysteries to keep you interested. Whatever horrors surround you, you know that your objective is to kill whatever monsters you come across, and you do so. When you pay attention, the story starts to unfold, and then the truly horrifying and bleak nature of Bloodborne’s world really sinks in. I’ll refrain from explaining it for the sake of spoilers. All I’ll say for now is that thematically Bloodborne deals with many of the same things as Hollow Knight, and many others besides: hubris, the inherent horror of pregnancy and birth, parenthood, religious corruption, how people get screwed over by forces beyond their control (human or nonhuman), the bestial nature that lurks within humanity, the nature of divinity, addiction, and madness. Bloodborne also goes through a crazy genre-shift about halfway through and pulls it off, with flying colors. Journey I recently revisited this game, and was reminded of why I fell in love with it the first time I played. Journey is so simple, but so beautiful. You play as a little monk-like creature traversing a desert to reach a distant mountain, passing through the ruins of a civilization (noticing a theme here?). You have a magic scarf that allows you to fly short distances, and you can collect glyphs that lengthen your scarf. That’s it. There’s no combat, and only occasional easy challenges. It’s only three hours. And yet, this is probably the most profound game I’ve ever played. Aesthetically, I find Journey almost as remarkable as Bloodborne, though its aesthetic is very different. Most of its architecture is inspired by Arabic and Ottoman architecture, and the magic fabric is inspired by Chinese prayer flags. The desert landscape is stunning. And the music… I’ve raved about music all throughout this answer, but Journey would literally be lacking half of its experience without its music. If it were silent, it would be just a monk-like creature walking in a desert. With the music, it becomes an entire epic that brims with significance, like you’re participating in an ancient myth. The music is responsible for most of the emotional gut-punches that the game delivers. When I heard that Austin Wintory was doing the music for the upcoming game Strayed Lights, I immediately put it on my wishlist. This game almost beats out Hollow Knight for sheer atmosphere (to the point where it was actually the first thing I thought of when I started playing Hollow Knight). The game mechanics could not be simpler. You walk, fly short distances, and make a little singing noise. Flying takes a little bit of practice (I’ve gotten better at it since playing Journey’s successor, Sky), but other than that, it’s easy to get down. It’s also technically a multiplayer game — you can encounter other travelers (who all appear as near-identical monk-like creatures), and help each other overcome challenges by calling to return the magic light to each other’s scarves. The game already encourages your emotional investment through its visuals and music, but doubles it as soon as another person shows up and you’re struggling through the journey together. Despite being so simple and short, it’s got high replay value, because there’s so many things to discover. If there are other people involved, then each experience is slightly different. It’s a linear game, but still rewards exploration and encourages you to explore. There are even little easter eggs in places, and trophies for sequence-breaking. When you start the game over, you might ask what the journey was all for, whether it was pointless. Is it worth going through the whole thing again, and again, and again, and if so… why? Why are you here? There’s not really much of a story… and yet, Journey tells the most fundamental story, the story of spiritual ascension. Most of the songs on the soundtrack are named after stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (The Call, the Road of Trials, Temptation, Descent, Atonement, Apotheosis). The monk-like creature experiences their trials in the desert, descends into a figurative underworld, ascends to the top of the mountain, and experiences literal and figurative rebirth. You could see it as a metaphor for life, an initiation, a trek through purgatory to reach the afterlife, a quest to accomplish something amid the ruins of what came before, or simply what it is, but it’s almost certainly going to mean something to you. It is impossible not to start bawling at the end of this game, especially if you are lucky enough to experience it alongside another player. Half of the reason that happens is because it’s a game, because it’s interactive. You completed the journey. You reached the top of the mountain. You helped another person along the way. And when it’s over, you feel a bittersweet sense of accomplishment, and maybe of dedication. Journey is usually my go-to example whenever anyone complains about video games being too violent, being a waste of time, or being mindless. More than any other game on this list, Journey will challenge your notion of what a game is. Video games are a unique and practically brand-new art form, and one of the reasons I love them so much is because of their storytelling. I became a gamer because it’s worth putting in all that time, effort, and frustration for the payoff of completing the story. I wouldn’t feel that way if video games weren’t art. They aren’t just something to do, they’re something to experience.
Why Undertale Works
It’s hard to describe exactly what the experience of playing Undertale is like. I really wish I’d gone in blind, although watching the phenomenal ending was part of what convinced me to play it in the first place. Developer Foresight is one of the most impressive things about the game — not the fact that it’s there, but what Toby Fox does with it. The game goes out of its way to subvert your expectations, which makes it both a homage to RPGs that came before it and a deconstruction of the genre. For example, most players (who go in blind) expect that Flowey will be a friendly guide who will teach them the mechanics of the game, but Flowey lies to you and tries to kill you. Flowey’s detailed knowledge of your actions, revealed at the end of the Ruins level, is often the player’s first taste of Developer Foresight and the first time they get called out by the game. If the player kills Toriel by mistake, the fact that Flowey knows about this even after a reset often completely shocks new players. This game does not allow you to get away with anything, and makes you really consider the moral implications of your actions in-universe. Not everyone agrees with or appreciates the game’s philosophy. Some people think that it attempts to force you to play it a specific way. I disagree — you can play the game however you want, and various NPCs will attempt to influence you one way or the other. Flowey manipulates you no matter what you decide to do. If you’re a pacifist, he’ll urge you to kill, and if you’re not, he’ll guilt-trip you. The game does not tell you how to play it, rather, it responds to your actions and encourages you to assume responsibility for them. Undertale succeeds in integrating gameplay and storytelling to the point where the game mechanics exist in-universe, which forces players to assess their relationship to the game world. If you go in blind, then the game will authentically react and respond to your actions and choices as you go through. There is a unique response for every little thing you do, even if you reset, which can result in some hilarious gags, but it also calls you out on your behavior so you don’t take anything lightly. You can’t cover your tracks. After a Genocide Run, even Chara is pissed off if you “think you’re above consequences,” and try to reenter the game, because what was the point of destroying the world if you’re just going to go back into it? The Genocide Run is not called that for nothing; it cannot be completed accidentally, nor can you claim self-defense. You have to actively seek out and murder every individual monster to complete it. I think that Undertale is an exercise in the philosophy of gaming. It gives you, the player, a lot of power, and then treats you as if you were a godlike entity with that kind of power over a world because in-universe, you are. Its objective is not to control the player’s behavior, but to make the player question themselves. That kind of moral questioning and self-awareness is uncomfortable for a lot of players, especially because the characters in the game are questioning you directly and not simply an in-universe character that you can easily disassociate with. The game calls you out. You there! Yes, you, behind the keyboard! I think that is sheer brilliance. But, of course, Undertale’s moral philosophy does not carry the entire game. If it did, the game would probably be no fun to play. It’s not just deconstruction tropes or attempting a philosophical dialogue. A game needs more substance than that. And oh, does it have substance! For one thing, humor. Even Undertale’s humor is subversive, and also makes liberal use of Developer Foresight. Everything from Flowey’s “Don’t you have anything better to do?” to all the delightful weirdness that is the Temmies, to Mettaton saying, “Toby? What the hell is that? Sounds… sexy.” And the puns. The veritable cornucopia of puns. One of the most enjoyable things about Undertale is stumbling across new funny things. Like Sans selling tickets made of toilet paper to Shyren’s concert. Or the Hot Cat that meows when you eat it. The humor is another feature used to deconstruct and make the player think about video game conventions, albeit in a less abrasive way. For example, the irresistible sign in Waterfall that reads, “Congratulations! You failed the puzzle.” Or, if you FIGHT the training dummy but repeatedly miss, you get the flavor text, “Dummy tires of your aimless shenanigans.” The dummy will leave the screen, and the look on Toriel’s face is priceless. As great as all of that is, I would still say that the characters are by far Undertale’s strongest feature. Every major character is fully developed and interesting. Almost every successive character plays with your expectations in the same way that Flowey does — Toriel remains kind and sweet even in the process of fighting you, which she believes is for your own good. Sans is ominous, then laid-back and comical, and then turns out to be a lot more powerful, knowledgable, and complex than he appears. Papyrus seems like a goofy incompetent villain, but is actually a goofy incompetent cinnamon roll. Undyne seems absolutely menacing, but when you actually meet her, she acts like an over-the-top anime protagonist. Mettaton is introduced as a terrifying killer robot, turns out to be a flamboyant TV host, and then tries to kill you whilst still being a flamboyant TV host. Asgore is built up simultaneously as a friendly and kind of dorky old man, and also as a horrifying murderer of children; you don’t learn that the terrifying Asgore and the goofy King are the same person until Undyne confronts you the first time. And then, Asgore turns out to be both. These subversions furthers Undertale’s themes of playing with your expectations, but it also helps the characters themselves feel more dynamic and interesting. I could spend ages analyzing each individual character and their role in the story. Sans is probably the best known of Undertale’s characters, and his character is one of the most mysterious and compelling, but for an example, I’ll use Dr. Alphys. Alphys is a somewhat shy lizard/dinosaur monster who seems relatively young despite her position as Royal Scientist. She’s an anime fangirl, she’s socially awkward, and seems to be insecure. In short, she’s a total dork. (She’s probably a caricature of much of Undertale’s target audience.) She guides you through Hotland, but at the end, her robot, Mettaton, reveals that it was all an act. She deliberately made it difficult for you to travel through Hotland, and solicited Mettaton to attack you, just so she could insert herself into your story and make herself look like a hero. If you’re on a Pacifist run, you realize that Alphys really struggles to be honest with other people, and she tells lies to make herself look better than she really is. If you (and Undyne, and Papyrus) help her to be honest with herself and others, she finally goes to confront her demons and own up to her mistakes — a science experiment that went horribly wrong. It takes serious guts for Alphys to deal with her secrets, but it makes her a better person overall because it improves her self-esteem and takes an unbearable load off her back. And of course, Undertale cannot properly be discussed without commenting on the music. First, the melodies and compositions are wonderful just on their own. Every single character track perfectly sums up the personality of its subject — you immediately know who Sans is upon hearing “sans.”, immediately have Papyrus figured out upon hearing “Bonetrousle,” know what to expect from Undyne upon hearing “Spear of Justice,” etc. The area themes are all extremely atmospheric and distinctive. Walking on conveyer belts at the airport immediately puts “Another Medium” into my head! And anyone who’s ever played the game will be able to tell you how they felt upon first hearing the title track. Toby's soundtrack is genius. The various leitmotifs add an element of musical storytelling to the game, connecting characters and events through the melodies, and inducing nostalgia in the player. The leitmotifs permeate the story, intertwine, and surprise, much like the character arcs and thematic threads. Some of them are very subtle. It took me forever to hear “Ruins” in “Waterfall.” I’ll use Alphys as an example again—“Here We Are” is one of my favorite tracks, and it’s a much darker version of her theme, to accompany her backstory. It was so cool when I figured that out. Something in my subconscious recognized the melody when I first entered the True Lab, but I didn’t register it at the time. Through the soundtrack, Toby subtly engineers the player’s emotional reactions to the story, so that they will feel the same things when the same melodies pop up, even without consciously recognizing the melody. This supports the emotional impact of the story. The game wouldn’t work as well without the complexity of the soundtrack. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen covers of it done with every possible instrument or soundscape. And like all the best pieces of art, Undertale can be interpreted many different ways. It isn’t just a moral lesson about being nice to people, or a commentary on morality in RPGs and a philosophical analysis of coimpletionism. It carries themes of dealing with depression and nihilism, the nature of war and the effect it has on society, prejudice and power between different social groups, the lengths that people will be driven to when desperate, or even about the influence of media and the effects it has on people’s lives. Personally, I interpret it as a story that emphasizes the extreme importance of self-awareness. Undertale has also inspired so much art. Artists draw fanart, musicians make covers, animators make videos… I wrote a novelization, myself. For every piece of fanart that makes you cringe to high heaven, there’s something spectacular like this. Undertale leaves a mark on everyone who plays it. I honestly don’t know what it is about this game that makes it such a masterpiece. Something about it just works, in the best possible way. It can’t really be described. It really has to be experienced.
Why Hollow Knight Works
Hollow Knight has been consistently ranked among the best metroidvanias of all time, and I personally consider it a shining example of the genre (even after having marathoned all of IGA's games). So what makes it so good? Exploration and Backtracking This is probably Hollow Knight’s strongest quality, and absolutely essential for any Metroidvania. It has a massive world map. You do not start off with a map, so you are wandering blindly in the Forgotten Crossroads until you come across Cornifer, the cartographer. One of the first things Cornifer says to you is, "Getting lost and finding your way again is a pleasure like no other. We're exquisitely lucky, you and I." That is a perfect summation of the way exploration works in this game. Every time you enter a new area, you have to find Cornifer to buy a map. When you get the map, it is incomplete, with only roughly drawn rooms representing Cornifer’s work so far. It is up to you to complete the rest of the map as you go along, and you can only do that if you have a quill to draw more of the map, and you can only draw more if you are seated at a bench. The result is that whenever you enter a new area, you will be wandering the labyrinthine caverns with only a vague idea of where you’re going. You will get lost. You will have to rely on familiar landmarks to find your way. There are a lot of environmental teases, vague hints in dialogue, and other little tricks to help guide you in the right direction, but you’re mostly on your own. Some players might find this incredibly frustrating if they struggle to remember all the landmarks and vague information, and end up wandering aimlessly, feeling as if they don’t even have an objective. However, for a lot of other players, this makes the game so much more enjoyable. As Cornifer said, getting lost and finding your way again can be exhilarating. It is awesome to get lost and accidentally stumble across something significant! Hollow Knight perfectly strikes the delicate balance between letting the player explore on their own terms and helping them along so they don’t get stuck. The game starts off relatively linear, but linear in the style of a true Metroidvania. Once you’ve explored the Forgotten Crossroads and gotten a load of all its tantalizing hints, you fight the first boss, False Knight, and get your first upgrade, the Vengeful Spirit spell. You can use that to get past the large pillbug that is blocking the entrance to Greenpath. After defeating Hornet in Greenpath, you get the Mothwing Cloak, which allows you to get into Fog Canyon and then to the Fungal Wastes. In the Fungal Wastes, you get the Mantis Claw, which allows access to the City of Tears. You still have to go a little further before you get an actual objective, and can begin working towards the Final Boss. The first third of the game is just wandering, exploration for its own sake. There are sequence-breaking options that make the initial playthrough feel organic. You can get into Crystal Peak early through a darkened tunnel if you buy the Lumafly Lantern from Sly, which is available as soon as you find in him in the Crossroads. Beating the Mantis Lords in the Fungal Wastes grants you access to Deepnest fairly early on in the game, and if you manage to survive Deepnest and get the Tram Pass, you can get to the Resting Grounds to pick up the Dream Nail before going to Crystal Peak. On the other hand, because there are other entrances to Deepnest, it’s possible to enter it without fighting the Mantis Lords at all. In fact, once you have the Mantis Claw, there’s almost always multiple ways to get everywhere. Although you’re probably going to get to the Fungal Wastes through the Queen’s Station, if you missed the entrance to Fog Canyon, then you could get to the Fungal Wastes through the Forgotten Crossroads as well. There are so many interconnected pathways that there are a lot of satisfying “Oh! I’m back here!” moments that are essential to Metroidvanias. Each upgrade also opens up a lot more than is strictly necessary. Getting the Mantis Claw is necessary to progress into the City of Tears, but it opens up much more of the map than that, for example, the Howling Cliffs, an area that is back past the King’s Pass where you started the game. You’d have to go back there to realize that the Howling Cliffs exists at all! Entire areas can be extremely well-hidden — to reach Kingdom’s Edge, you’d have to swim under the far wall of an empty Stag Station. The order in which you explore things the first time you play the game is likely to feel very organic. For example, in my first playthrough I managed to completely miss the upgrade called Isma’s Tear, which allows you to swim in acid, until very late in the game. Isma’s Tear is necessary to reach the Final Boss, but it also opens up the Queen’s Gardens, an area that is unnecessary to finish the game but necessary for the True Ending. There are also completely sequence-breaking techniques (like using the nail to pogo-jump off of objects or enemies instead of bothering with double-jump) which are encouraged by the developers. Each upgrade opens up a lot more than is strictly necessary. Getting the Mantis Claw is necessary to progress into the City of Tears, but it opens up much more of the map than that, for example, the Howling Cliffs, an area that is back past the King’s Pass where you started the game. You’d have to go *back* there to realize that the Howling Cliffs exists at all! Entire areas can be extremely well-hidden — to reach Kingdom’s Edge, you’d have to swim *under the far wall *of an empty Stag Station. The order in which you explore things the first time you play the game is likely to feel very organic. For example, in my first playthrough I managed to completely miss the upgrade called Isma’s Tear, which allows you to swim in acid, until very late in the game. Isma’s Tear is necessary to reach the Final Boss, but it also opens up the Queen’s Gardens, an area that is unnecessary to finish the game but necessary for the True Ending. Attempting to reach the True Ending will take you far out of left field repeatedly, because it involves convoluted actions and going back to teases that you probably forgot about entirely to traverse the very edges of the map. Level Design, Atmosphere and Music Each area is visually distinct. The Forgotten Crossroads is fairly straightforward in its design, since it is the tutorial area, but after that, there’s a lot of variance. Greenpath introduces toxic acid pools that you can fall in if you’re not careful. The Fungal Wastes is more vertical and has more acid pools, volatile enemies, and bouncy mushrooms. The City of Tears’ architecture feels very different from the natural caverns, and you will ride a lot of elevators. Crystal Peak has a load of conveyor belts, sharp crystals, laser beams, and smashing mechanisms ready to crush you. Deepnest is mostly pitch black, labyrinthine even by this game’s standards, and full of creepy-crawly things that will jump out at you from anywhere. Fog Canyon is very vertical and filled with exploding jellyfish that really add a dangerous edge to its peacefulness. The Queen’s Gardens is beautiful, but so overgrown that you will have to expertly maneuver around thorns and spikes… on platforms that will dump you after you land on them. One of my personal favorite things about Hollow Knight is its aesthetic and atmosphere. In addition to varying level designs, each area has a unique visual style, color scheme, and ambiance. The initial tone of the game is very melancholy, with the environment being a cool blue. The first area, the Forgotten Crossroads, actually reminded me of Journey (by thatgamecompany) because it consists of exploring a ruined civilization with calming, ambient music in the background. Now, I can get through the Crossroads in less than an hour, but when I first started playing, the Crossroads alone felt huge. I love how mysterious it all feels! There really is nothing like that feeling of going in blind, knowing nothing, and hearing the ruined kingdom call to you. Hornet is the second boss, and she is a tough challenge for new players. I remember feeling like nothing was ever going to be harder than Hornet (in hindsight: LOL). This is important, though, because Hornet required me to make adjustments to my playstyle. Many of the Hollow Knight bosses use extremely fast-paced attacks that leave little-to-no time to heal. The bosses require a lot of very precise movements and strategizing to survive them. Hornet really does act as a gatekeeper to the rest of Hallownest, preparing you for what lies ahead. The music for the boss fights is impressive, too. Not every boss gets its own theme (with most of them getting either faster versions of the area theme or “Decisive Battle”), but the ones that do are extremely memorable. Hornet’s theme is one of the most distinctive, but I also really like the Mantis Lords’ theme with its harpsichord, the Dung Defender’s theme with its pure heroic knight energy, and the Ghost Bosses’ spooky battle theme. The Final Boss’s theme deserves special mention, since it’s an intense variation of the game’s main theme that perfectly expresses the Final Boss’s agony. When you die in combat, you return to a bench and leave behind a Shade, a ghostly imprint of your previous life. Not only are Shades immensely important to the lore, but leaving behind a shade will take a third of your Soul Gauge away and you will lose all your Geo. All of it. You will have to track your Shade down to the spot where you died and kill it in order to restore your Soul Gauge and get your Geo back. This mechanic was so infuriating at the start of the game, since I died often and couldn’t sustain enough cash to buy anything important, and it’s quite easy to die in inconvenient spots. Luckily, there is a service that allows you to remotely retrieve your Shade, but you have to know about it, or else think to use a Simple Key on that strange door at the edge of Dirtmouth. Opinions on the Shade are split. I hated it at the start of the game, and distinctly remember thinking who thought this was a good idea? I think that the Shade makes interesting contributions to the game’s lore, but it’s still annoying. More seasoned players have commented that it discourages exploration because it forces you to return to the place that you died. But honestly, if this is the game’s biggest flaw, that’s saying something. Collection Items Although combat itself is simple, it can be made endlessly complicated with charms. Charms are little buttons that you can buy, will find lying around in secret rooms or after platforming challenges, or be awarded for fighting bosses. Each one is unique, and all of them augment your abilities in various ways. For example, they could lengthen your nail, or allow you to get in more hits at a time, or strengthen your spells, or reduce the amount of time it takes to heal, or give you unique abilities, etc. Your ability to use them is limited to the amount of Charm Notches you have, which you can also buy or be awarded. Mixing and matching charms and finding the best combination for each situation can feel like half the game. There are a lot of other things to find hidden throughout Hallownest, which makes exploring in out-of-the-way places, finding secret rooms, and fighting optional bosses feel rewarding. This is great, because one of Symphony’s weakest points was the amount of useless crap you find everywhere. And Bloodstained, well-designed as it is, hinges so much on grinding that I will often spend entire play sessions just grinding without making any real progress. Pretty much everything you find in Hollow Knight is useful for something. In addition to Charms, there’s Mask Shards, which give you an extra hit point once you collect four of them, for nine hit points total (without any augmenting charms). There’s Vessel Fragments, which give you an extra Soul Gauge once you collect three of them, for three extra Soul Gauges total. There’s Grubs, little caterpillar-like creatures stuck in glass jars hidden all over the place, which will continue to reward you in the Forgotten Crossroads once you find them. There’s Pale Ore, which you can use to reforge and upgrade your Nail. There are also three well-hidden spell upgrades. There’s also Essence, gathered from Whispering Roots, Dream Bosses, and Ghost Bosses, which upgrade your Dream Nail. There are three characters at the edges of the map that can give you special combat moves. There’s Rancid Eggs, which you can trade to an NPC to remotely retrieve your Shade. Finally, there’s some assorted junk from Hallownest’s history that you can sell to an NPC in the City of Tears for Geo. Lore Hollow Knight is cryptic, to say the least. When you start the game, you’ll be told almost nothing about its context or what your objective is going to be, so all you can do is explore. The lore of Hollow Knight is intriguing and impressive in its mystery and depth, which is why it's a post of its own. See below. DLCs There are four free DLCs that are automatically included with any copy bought recently. The Lifeblood update is a general update that fixed some things or made other things more difficult, adding the Hive Knight as a boss. The Hidden Dreams update added two Dream Bosses, the White Defender and Gray Prince Zote. But, the two that are really worth talking about is the Grimm Troupe DLC and the Godmaster DLC. The Grimm Troupe is a Halloween-themed DLC that introduces a mysterious, unsettling ensemble of circus performers, led by the dark and charismatic Grimm. Completing his side-quest will give you a familiar-charm that you can upgrade, and two boss fights. Grimm’s normal boss fight is fairly standard difficulty, while his dream version, Nightmare King Grimm, is ridiculously difficult. I love the aesthetic of Grimm, the fact that his attacks are Castlevania references, the music that goes with the boss fights, and pretty much everything else about this DLC! It also includes all of its own lore, and multiple resolutions to the side-quest. The Godmaster DLC is a massive boss rush. It also comes with all its own lore, and also revolves around a creepy masked cult. This one seeks to attune itself to powerful entities, and all of the Hollow Knight bosses become gods that the cult worships. Godmaster includes some unique bosses and unique variants of bosses. Just when you thought the bosses were hard enough to begin with… You want to fight all three Mantis Lords at once? You want to fight Markoth without a floor? Each separate boss rush is called a Pantheon, and beating all four Pantheons unlocks the Pantheon of Hallownest, a gauntlet that forces you to fight every single boss in succession, ending with an even harder version of the True Final Boss. Beating that will give you yet another unique ending to the entire game. Secrets (spoilers) Ranging from the standard but satisfying to the totally incomprehensible and mysterious. Here’s a short list, from the top of my head: Nosk, a boss that is required to upgrade your nail to its maximum potential, is behind breakable walls. The Weaver’s Den in Deepnest The tiny chamber behind two breakable walls (secret-room-within-a-secret-room) with nothing but a Seal of Binding. The totally inexplicable secret room in Grimm’s tent, with what seems like a faded red seal. A breakable floor in Kingdom’s Edge will open an entire secret tunnel where, eventually, you’ll come across the Quick Slash charm. But inside this whole secret tunnel is a small, easy-to-miss door that will lead to multiple breakable floors that take you deep into the bowels of the earth where there is a massive store of Geo. And within this whole secret-within-a-secret is a lore tablet in a small chamber off the wall, which you need the Spore Shroom charm to even read. And that lore tablet is a riddle that will help you track a mysterious character throughout Hallownest, if you can even make sense of it. The weird arthropod-shaped metal thing in the Beast’s Den Joni’s Repose in the Howling Cliffs. The King’s Workshop and the Nursery in the White Palace The Vetruvian Grub The Shrine of Believers, an extremely well-hidden spot in the Resting Grounds. First, you have to go into the Spirits Glade and walk into the cave above the waterfall, to where you see three giant moth statues. Double-jump onto a tiny, invisible ledge on the upper-left and dream-nail the left moth statue’s head. You’ll find yourself in a shrine of lore tablets with mysterious, cryptic messages “from another world” — they were left by Kickstarter backers. Finally, this game was hard. It frequently tested the limits of my patience and determination. I haven’t even really talked about its absolutely brutal platforming. How? How did Team Cherry manage to create this masterpiece out of a flash game? Hollow Knight is, without a doubt, one of the best Metroidvanias of all time. I think one of the reasons why it’s so good is because everything it attempts works, and every aspect of the game is solid. It is packed with high-quality content, it is well-designed, it is aesthetically magnificent, and it has so many original ideas and intriguing unexplained mysteries that YouTuber “mossbag” is still making lore videos three years later. That’s a really impressive feat for a small team of indie developers, especially since this was their first shot at a game of this magnitude. It absolutely deserves all the praise it gets.
Hollow Knight Lore
Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania from 2017 described as “A Bug’s Life meets Dark Souls.” And that’s a pretty good summation. The protagonist is a mysterious insect that traverses a ruined kingdom underground. Its lore is incredibly cryptic and difficult to figure out, but once you do, the lore is even more mysterious and complex. The coolest thing about Hollow Knight’s lore? The gameplay came first. All of the lore developed as a way to explain the game mechanics in-universe, which results in a unique method of storytelling. As a Metroidvania, the game is mostly exploration-based with very little story and even less exposition. Much of the game is just trying to figure out what the hell is going on. The protagonist knows perfectly well what is going on, but never speaks, and the other characters who are aware of the circumstance speak to it as if it understands while the player may have no clue what they mean. Almost nothing is stated directly. It’s up to you to piece together the plot and worldbuilding from cryptic dialogue, journal entries, and lore tablets. Therefore, everything beyond this point will be spoilers. I do not suggest reading this if you haven’t played the game. If you have played and you still have no clue what that was, maybe this will help! There’s a lot to cover. I guess I’d better get started. Seriously, last chance to turn back, because I’m about to spoil everything. A lot of the mystery will be ruined for you. It all starts with a creature called the Wyrm. A Wyrm is a powerful, ancient being, more like a god than anything else, capable of controlling bugs. They are extinct by the time the game takes place, but it’s implied that they had a habit of building kingdoms wherever they went. Kingdom’s Edge is littered with snowlike ash that is in fact the decaying corpse of the Wyrm. “This ashen place is grave of Wyrm. Once told, it came to die. But what is death for that ancient being? More transformation methinks. This failed kingdom is product of the being spawned from that event.” The “being spawned from that event” is the Pale King. The Pale King seems to be a reborn form of the Wyrm (since he is still referred to as such by other higher beings), and he built a kingdom called Hallownest. “Higher beings, these words are for you alone. Beyond this point you enter the land of King and Creator. Step across this threshold and obey our laws. Bear witness to the last and only civilization, the eternal Kingdom. Hallownest” The Pale King granted his citizens sapience, something that insects naturally lack. For expanding their minds, the insects worshipped him as a god—we’ll come back to that. He was able to create a sophisticated civilization of many different kinds of insects, and ruled them as a literal god-king alongside his queen, the White Lady (or the Root), a treelike higher being. He attempted to unify the varying factions of Hallownest under his rule: Mosskin are a species of bug covered in leaves that live in Greenpath. They worship a sluglike being called Unn that created them through dreaming them. “The greater mind once dreamed of leaf and cast these caverns so. In every bush and every vine the mind of Unn reveals itself to us.” They wait for the call to return to Unn, but it will likely never come, since Unn is severely weakened. The Mosskin tolerated the intrusion of the Pale King, but they lost some of their land to the White Lady. The Fungal Tribe are a species of sentient mushrooms in the Fungal Wastes. They have a hive mind and their own language. They accepted the Pale King’s rule because of his clairvoyance, but guarded themselves against the beasts of Deepnest. The Deepnest is a brutal, violent array of dark tunnels filled with monstrous bugs. Its arachnids used to be the most intelligent creatures in the land until the Pale King came along and granted sapience to everyone else. It had a nameless king who took a commoner, Herrah, as his mate. This king rejected the rule of the Pale King and forced him to stop his colonization of the Deepnest. Herrah outlived her husband, and struck a deal with the Pale King. Among her loyal followers are craftsmen (craftspiders?) called the Weavers, who create something called the “seal of binding” (and are definitely intimately connected to Hornet, though we have no idea how). The Mantis Tribe is a tribe of warriors with a reputation for being ruthless. They live deep in the Fungal Wastes and their means of greeting you is, “Travellers seeking death, welcome. May you find swift end upon our claws.” The Mantis Tribe is ruled by three sisters, the Mantis Lords, who rejected the rule of the Pale King but reached a truce with him. They are extremely territorial but allow safe passage to anyone who can defeat them honorably. They also protect the Wastes from Deepnest. (After Hallownest fell, their society still stands). The Hive is inhabited by sentient bees, ruled by their queen, Vespa. They have a hive mind connected to hers. They consider themselves completely separate from the kingdom of Hallownest despite existing inside it. The Moth Tribe are an ancient tribe of bugs that were particularly proficient in dream magic. The moths accepted the king’s rule and tended to the Resting Grounds, a graveyard for the bugs of Hallownest and a peaceful place for its ghosts to reside. There is only one living Moth left when the Knight arrives. There’s more, but I’m going to stop there, because the Moths are the most relevant to the overall plot of the game. You see, the Moths, like the Mosskin, had their own god. A much more powerful god. This old god, the Radiance, was a deity of light much like the Pale King, but instead of sapience she gave her worshippers power and “unity” through a groupthink hive mind. She created the Moths and rules the dream realm. When the Moths accepted the rule of the Pale King and the sapience he brought with him, they turned their backs upon the Radiance and eventually forgot her. This pissed her off. And that’s where our story begins. The Pale King did not manage to erase the Radiance entirely. For example, there was a statue of her on Hallownest’s Crown, on top of Crystal Peak. Angry at having been nearly forgotten, the Radiance invaded the minds of Hallownest’s citizens while they slept, slowly driving them insane. The result was The Infection, a horrifying plague that wiped out most of Hallownest’s population. The Infected bugs became bloated and covered in orange boils, their minds became enslaved to the will of the Light, and they turned especially aggressive and violent. In short, the Radiance created a zombie apocalypse. The king realized that something had to be done. There are three arcane forces in the world of Hollow Knight: Soul, the substance of life. (As a game mechanic, it is Mana.) The Knight collects soul by striking bugs, and uses it to heal and to cast spells. It can also gather Soul from Soul Totems, little idols that contain it. The Snail Shamans were particularly adept at using Soul spells, able to extract Soul from living bugs. The scholars in the Soul Sanctum studied it through… unethical means, and their leader’s hunger for power got even worse when the Infection set in. Essence, the substance of dreams. It was collected and used by the Moth Tribe to strengthen a magical weapon called the Dream Nail (a Nail is a sword). The Seer, the last of the Moth tribe, passes the Dream Nail to the Knight so that it can enter dreams and read people’s minds. The Knight collects Essence to awaken the Dream Nail. Void, the substance of emptiness. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but such is the case in this world—nothingness is tangible, and it is a powerful (possibly sentient?) force in and of itself. The Void resides in the Abyss, deep below Hallownest. An ancient civilization of bugs that existed before Hallownest, the relics of which still exist here and there (such as the Soul Totems), worshipped the Void. The Pale King thought that he could use the Void to his advantage in stopping the Radiance. He and she were both gods of Light, so maybe, the only way to stop her was to use darkness. “VOID, yours is the power opposed. But yours is potential, eternity potential, force that could deny Time. VOID, harness shall be placed upon you.” The king’s little catchphrase is “No cost too great.” This is because he sacrificed thousands, possibly millions of his own children to produce a “pure Vessel” that could contain the Radiance. He finally managed to create one, a literal “hollow knight” with a white shell but a body made entirely of Void, and therefore no sentience and no ability to be Infected by the Radiance. “No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering. Born of God and Void. You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight.” The Abyss is littered with the corpses of the innumerable failed Vessels. Their shades haunt the place. “Higher beings, these words are for you alone. Our pure Vessel has ascended. Beyond lies only the refuse and regret of its creation. We shall enter that place no longer.” The White Lady sealed herself away in the Queen’s Gardens so that she would not have any more offspring, despite feeling the urge to. “Do I seem prisoner here? If so, it's not by any choice but my own. These bindings about me, I've chosen to erect. There is some shame I feel from my own part in the deed, and this method guarantees it cease. I still feel that urge you see. I always will. A voracious desire to spread seeds upon the land, to propogate myself, to breed.” (The White Lady provides some of the most direct information in the game.) Once it grew to adulthood, the Hollow Knight was sealed inside the Black Egg and used to contain the Radiance. In order to ensure nothing would disturb it, the Pale King acquired three loyal followers, who agreed to fall into a permanent enchanted sleep to protect the Black Egg. These were Monomon the Teacher, Hallownest’s archivist, Lurian the Watcher, some sort of enigmatic protector of the City of Tears, and Herrah the Beast, the Queen of Deepnest. Herrah agreed to become a Dreamer in exchange for a child, sired by the Pale King, to continue her line. This child is Hornet. Unlike the Vessels, Hornet has a mind, a will, a voice, and a gender. The Hollow Knight has a Christlike quality to it, being the literal child of God who is suspended to bear the weight of the Infection so the people of Hallownest don’t have to. “MEMORIAL TO THE HOLLOW KNIGHT. In the Black Vault far above. Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal.” The Vessel worked… for a while. Eventually, the Vessel weakened and failed, “tarnished by an idea instilled.” It is heavily implied that the seemingly perfect Vessel ended up developing something of a mind and a will because it was treated as a child by the Pale King. It certainly has “a voice to cry suffering,” so powerful and full of agony that it makes it onto the soundtrack. The Infection was let loose, and caused absolute devastation, reducing Hallownest to an empty shell of its former self filled with shambling, zombified husks. The lore tablets praising Hallownest’s eternal greatness have an “Ozymandias” quality about them. It’s unclear how long Hallownest has been a ruin. A decade? A century? It’s a long enough time that most living bugs don’t remember Hallownest in its prime, but there are some that do, although they are particularly aged. (This would mean Hornet is significantly older than Elderbug.) The Pale King completely disappeared, along with his palace. Some societies of bugs, such as the Mantis Tribe, managed to resist the Infection, but only a few sapient and healthy bugs are left by the time the game actually takes place. Enter the Knight, the protagonist. The Knight is a Vessel that somehow survived and escaped the sealed Abyss. The Knight is also made almost entirely of Void, so whenever the Knight dies, it leaves behind a Shade made of Void on or near the spot where it fell. Once it comes back, it has to defeat its Shade in order to restore its Soul meter (and regain all its money, which is an unbelievably frustrating mechanic. No matter how much cash you have, if you die twice, it’s gone!). The Shade is an imprint of the Knight’s past life. Confessor Jiji refers to it as “regrets” that must be reconciled. The Knight has the ability to use magic spells, gathered from the Snail Shamans (all of whom are dead, save one). It uses the Dream Nail, given to it by the Seer in the Resting Grounds. It also is able to use charms, items that augment its abilities. (For example, by lengthening your Nail, allowing you to heal faster, strengthening your attacks, etc. Deciding which charms to use for which boss battles is like half the game.) A merchant tells the Knight that charms are “…[a] final wish, a dying bug's potent desire crystallised into these gorgeous, powerful trinkets. […] Just think of all the little bug souls that went into creating your collection! It's like a crowd of strangers in your pouch, or purse, or...err....wherever it is you keep them.” In true Metroidvania style, the Knight also acquires permanent abilities such as Mothwing Cloak (dash), Mantis Claw (wall jump), and Monarch Wings (double jump) that allow it to progress. The Knight’s purpose is obscure for the first third of the game, at least, and the player slowly figures out the Knight’s motivation as the game goes along. The Knight’s motivation is to kill the Dreamers to break their seals, and confront the Hollow Knight. After that, it has two options, as detailed by Hornet: “A difficult journey you would face, but a choice it can create. Prolong our world's stasis or face the heart of its infection.” To prolong the world’s stasis, the Knight has to defeat the Hollow Knight and replace it as the Vessel to contain the Radiance. There is way to get a better ending than that, however. To “face the heart of the infection.” To do that, the Knight must face the place of its birth and “drape [it]self in the substance of its shadow.” If the Knight can claim itself as the new King of Hallownest, enter the Abyss, gather the halves of a charm that will act as a key (PLATFORMING HELL, YAY!!!), and face the place of its birth… It will be able to command the Void as the Lord of Shades. How cool is that? With the power to command the Void, the Knight can enter into the Hollow Knight’s mind and face the Radiance herself, consuming her in darkness and destroying her. *Whew.* But wait. There’s more! I haven’t even gotten to the free DLCs yet. There’s four, but I’ll only discuss two, since those two make the biggest additions to the game’s lore. First is The Grimm Troupe, a Halloween DLC that provides you with a cool, spooky sidequest. I actually wish it were a bit longer and more involved! This DLC is centered around a sinister traveling circus called The Grimm Troupe, which the Knight summons by lighting a red torch. The members of the Troupe carry red torches and wear creepy white masks with vertical slits over the eyes. The Troupe Master is Grimm, a charismatic ringmaster whose attacks are Castlevania references. “In dreams I travel, at Lantern’s call, To consume the flames of a kingdom’s fall.” Grimm asks you to take part in a Ritual to help his progeny, the Grimmchild, grow and gain power through harvesting the flames of the kingdom’s nightmares and feeding them to it. The exact nature of the “Ritual” is unclear, at least at first, but Grimm fights you as a means of preparing for it. It’s revealed (subtly, in the usually cryptic way) that the Troupe are slaves to some strange entity called the Nightmare’s Heart. “The expanse of dream in past was split, One realm now must stay apart, Darkest reaches, beating red, Terror of sleep—the Nightmare’s Heart.” Grimm acts as a sort of Vessel of his own for the Nightmare’s Heart, or at least he is some sort of avatar of it. If the Knight faces Grimm in his dreams as the Nightmare King (one of the hardest boss fights in the game, not counting Godmaster), Grimm will die and be reborn, with the Grimmchild becoming the new “vessel” or avatar for the Nightmare’s Heart. (Once again, heavily symbolic, with the king having to be ritualistically sacrificed so he can be born again, etc.) Apparently this is how the Nightmare Realm sustains itself. That’s pretty much all we know. It’s all very demonic, but when God is literally infecting people and turning them into zombified husks in normal dreams, is that such a bad thing? The other DLC is Godmaster, a gigantic boss rush mode that comes with all of its own lore because that’s how this game works. It takes place in Godhome, a secret dream world inhabited by a strange cult with gold masks. In this DLC, all of the bosses of the base game and other DLCs (yes, all forty-something of them) become gods that the cult worships. The cult is seeking to attune itself to some ultimate “God of Gods” and achieve apotheosis, or something like that. Somehow, these guys are even creepier than The Grimm Troupe. The Grimm Troupe is spooky, but the Godseekers are just incredibly unsettling, not to mention arrogant and fanatical. If you dare to challenge the gods, you’ll face them in their pantheons. Each separate boss rush is a pantheon, and completing all four pantheons will open the Pantheon of Hallownest, in which you have to fight every single boss successively. Holy crap. And they’re harder versions of the bosses, too! Completing the Pantheon of Hallownest gives you a final True True Ending, but it seems completely out of my reach right now. The only reason I even entered Godhome was to fight the God Tamer and complete the Hunter’s Journal, because getting through two pantheons was still easier than finishing the Trial of the Fool in the Colosseum. Y’know, pretty much all the lore in Hollow Knight centers around creepy cults. All of it. Hallownest itself is the cult of the Pale King. The Radiance is mad that she lost her cult. And then there’s the mosskin’s cult of Unn, the ancient civilization’s cult of the Abyss. That's probably the Dark Souls influence talking. And, on top of all of that, there is still even weirder, completely unexplained secrets like the Vetruvian Grub and the secret room in Grimm’s tent. Although I’ve spoiled basically everything, I’ve come nowhere close to mentioning all that Hollow Knight has to offer. This is a game absolutely packed with content and dripping in lore despite its relative lack of a plot. I love this game for its lore more than even its gameplay, aesthetic, music, or cute art style. I suppose, if you’d still like to play it despite having all of it spoiled, I really recommend it. It’s such an experience.
The Philosophy of Hollow Knight
“Truth in Hallownest is always buried deep. How many layers will it pry through?” Spoilers for the entire game follow. You have been warned. A major piece of Hollow Knight’s existential philosophy is summed up by this video: “Coping With Death — Hollow Knight’s Hidden Existential Commentary” (by Rusty: The Superforge). Here’s my take on the ideas presented in that video, and what I think the philosophy behind Hollow Knight is. Hollow Knight unitizes two magical forces — Soul, representing life and substance, and Void, which represents vacancy and absence. Soul appears as a bright white liquid and is extracted from living things, while Void is a pitch black liquid that comes from the Abyss. The two forces seem to be completely opposed to each other, but the Pale King, a god of light, decided that Void could be utilized for his own purposes. “VOID, yours is the power opposed. But yours is potential, eternity potential, force that could deny Time. VOID, harness shall be placed upon you.” It’s implied that the King began working with Void before the creation of the Vessels. The player character is a Vessel, “born of God and Void,” and therefore has a white shell containing Soul and a black body made of Void. Soul functions as mana, and the Knight uses it to heal and to cast spells. The upgraded versions of these spells are Void-based, or combine Soul and Void powers. Every time you die, a “Shade” made of Void lingers in the spot where you died, and you have to hunt it down and defeat it to reclaim your money and restore your Soul meter. The Shade is a representation of death in-universe, not merely because it appears every time you die, but because it is what is left of you after you die. Shades are not ghosts, because ghosts are made of Essence and are ostensibly something different, but Shades do function as ghosts for Vessels specifically, because Vessels are made of Void. The Shade represents your past life, which you just lost. According to the Hunter’s Journal, “Each of us leaves an imprint of something when we die. A stain on the world. I don't know how much longer this kingdom can bear the weight of so many past lives...” In a more meta-sense, the Shade can come to represent frustration, failure, and even embarrassment for the player, because you are probably going to be sick of having to go find it and kill it every time you die to a boss or attempt to get through a tricky platforming section. You can’t just pretend that you never died, because your de-facto ghost is floating right there in front of you, and it has all your money! Death is (literally) costly in this game, and I found myself becoming paranoid of death in Hollow Knight during my first playthrough. However, you will die in Hollow Knight. A lot. You have to put up with the Shade, no matter how much you hate or fear it. Therefore, the Shade can be taken to represent acceptance of death and recognition of mortality. I’ll get back to that. If you attempt to reach the True Ending, you must acquire a charm called the Kingsoul. The Kingsoul is comes from the Pale Beings, the monarchs of Hallownest. One half is given to you by the White Lady, the Queen, and the other half is taken off the King’s corpse in the White Palace. This charm slowly recharges your Soul meter while you wear it. The Kingsoul, therefore, represents the power of the Pale Beings and the power to wield Soul, power over life. Kingsoul is not actually as useful as it sounds. It is acquired so late in the game that there is little left to actually do with it, and its high notch cost makes it impractical. The only thing it’s actually used for is to open the Birthplace, at the bottom of the Abyss. The Birthplace is where the Vessels were made, where the protagonist was born. It is filled with thousands of Vessel skulls and the lingering Shades of the dead Vessels. The Knight must travel to the bottom of the Birthplace, and use the Dream Nail (a weapon it uses to enter people’s minds) on its own reflection. The Knight enters its own memories, and relives the moment when the Pale King chose another Vessel over it. The other Vessel (the Hollow Knight) was chosen before the Knight could escape the Abyss, and when the Abyss was sealed, it plunged back down into darkness. This is a crucial moment. It is the Knight going into the darkness of its own mind, and coming to terms with the reality of its own existence. The Birthplace simultaneously symbolizes both birth and death — birth because the Vessels were created there, death because it is filled with nothing but their skulls and Shades. The Knight is faced with the polarization of the (supposed) perfection of the Pure Vessel, against the meaninglessness of the dead Vessels’ lives. All the Vessels — including the “pure” one sealed in the Black Egg — are nothing but failed experiments. As a result of this self-reflection, the Kingsoul charm transforms into Voidheart. While the Kingsoul represents power over Soul, life, and light, Voidheart represents power over nothingness, death, and darkness. The Voidheart is “An emptiness that was hidden within, now unconstrained. Unifies the void under the bearer's will. This charm is a part of its bearer and can not be unequipped.” Upon collecting the Voidheart, the Abyss bows to the Knight’s command. The Shades of its Siblings no longer attack it. Its own Shade also becomes passive. Void tentacles do not emerge from the water, allowing the Knight to swim in the Void itself. If the giant statue at the far right end of the Abyss is Dream Nailed after this charm is collected, it addresses the Knight as “Lord of Shades.” Voidheart unites the Void and allows the Knight to control it, which is the exact power that it needs to slay The Radiance, the moth god of light who is the source of the Infection. As explained in the video, there’s a couple more layers to what exactly the Voidheart is. My interpretation is this: Voidheart represents acceptance of the darkness within oneself. That darkness can be a lot of things — repressed memories, repressed aspects of the personality, fear, the inevitability of death, guilt and regret etc. It makes total sense that, like many heroes before it, the Knight has to descend into the darkness of the Abyss and accept all of this before it is able to conquer its final enemy. Only through self-acceptance can one acquire that kind of power. This interpretation is supported by Confessor Jiji, if the Knight retrieves its Shade from her after acquiring Voidheart: “Ooohhhh. My masters would be impressed... Rare it is for one to come to terms with their regrets so completely, yet you seem to have managed it. What darkness must one wade through to achieve such a thing?” This statement is incredibly significant, not just to the game’s philosophy, but also to me personally because it is my favorite concept. I think it’s important for every individual person to be willing to embrace the light (conscious) and dark (repressed) aspects of their personality, along with all the baggage that comes with it. Attaining that self-awareness gives you power over the darkness that used to scare you, so you can use it to do good. To do that, though, you have to wade through darkness. Along these same lines, I like the idea proposed in the video that Soul and Void are meant to work together, or that they each become more powerful when united with the opposing force. I also agree with Rusty's theory that Kingsoul and Voidheart are the same charm (and I think the animation makes that obvious). Once you accept the darkness, it becomes part of you and cannot be unequipped. You have stared into the Abyss, and seen it stare back into you, and you do not fear it. You become the Lord of Shades. In addition to that, I want to go into something else. I once joked that all of the lore in Hollow Knight is about cults, and that’s kind of true. It’s definitely true of the two major DLCs, The Grimm Troupe and Godmaster. Therefore, there is a subtle commentary about religion and leadership scattered throughout the game as well. The Grimm Troupe DLC centers on Grimm, the charismatic master of a sinister troupe of circus performers who are all clearly in some kind of spooky cult. Grimm’s sidequest involves feeding the Grimmchild, Grimm’s larva. It’s an adorable little thing that flits around behind you, makes high-pitched growling noises, and breaths fireballs at enemies in the cutest way possible. You must track down Grimm’s acolytes and feed the flame you collect from them to the Grimmchild. As the Grimmchild grows, Grimm fights you, but this was just the test run. The real deal is a battle in the Nightmare Realm, between you and Grimm’s dream-self, the Nightmare King. Once you defeat the Nightmare King (after an absolutely painstaking battle), Grimm dies. You awake to find the Grimm Troupe gone, and the Grimmchild’s eyes now glow scarlet. Not all players noticed what the Ritual of the Grimm Troupe actually was, but to me, it’s pretty obvious what this is — It’s a classic Golden Bough-style dying-and-rising god motif. “A spark of red lights darkest dream, Scarlet nightmares bright and wild, Visions dance and flames do speak, Burn the father, feed the child. Dance and die and live forever, Silent voices shout and sing, Stand before the Troupe’s dark heart, Burn away the Nightmare King.” Grimm is the avatar of a Higher Being known as the Nightmare’s Heart. We don’t really know what the Nightmare’s Heart is, or what it does, or why it needs to be sustained in this particular way. All we know is that it is the source of nightmares, which exist in a separate realm from the Dream Realm. (It’s also left ambiguous if the Grimm or the Nightmare’s Heart is evil or not, but if the ruler of the Dream Realm is the source of the Infection and the game’s main antagonist, then how evil could the Nightmare’s Heart really be?) In order for the Nightmare’s Heart to sustain itself, Grimm must die. You kill Grimm in the “dance,” and he is burned away by the Nightmare’s Heart, which is then reborn in the Grimmchild and the cycle continues. This motif comes from James Frazer’s massive work of comparative anthropology, The Golden Bough. A king or god is ritualistically sacrificed, or somehow dies, to sustain his people’s source of sustenance (either agriculture or game), and then is reborn so that the cycle can continue. There’s no perfect parallel anywhere in ancient mythology, but some gods like Tammuz and Dionysus follow this general pattern. The cycle of death and rebirth results in immortality, hence “dance and die and live forever.” Do the acolytes get immortality out of this, or the promise of some afterlife? Do the masks provide them with a sacred anonymity, allowing them to indulge in their own nightmares? Do they attain some sort of rapture? Does Grimm defy the social norms of both the Radiance and the Pale King? Am I reading too much into this? Whatever the Grimm Troupe is, one of the cultists, Brumm, is a bit fed up with it. Although he does not hate Grimm, he considers all the members of the Troupe bound in an eternal slavery. This includes the Grimmchild, who he says is bound in “invisible chains,” doomed to eventually die in the same way. He offers the Knight a choice to banish the Troupe and end the Ritual. Related to this is the Hollow Knight itself, sealed in the Black Egg. It is the child of a god (two gods, actually), it is suspended inside the Black Egg, and it bears the weight of the Infection so that the citizens of Hallownest don’t have to. It suffers so that everyone else can live. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it fails to contain the Infection. And that’s another philosophical layer to this game — “No cost too great.” Is that true? Was the Pale King at all justified in sacrificing thousands of his own children in order to contain the Infection? I mean, at least he had a pandemic response. But did he really care about his people at all, or was he just interested in keeping the kingdom from collapsing so he could further his own glory? Once he failed, he shut himself in his palace, made it inaccessible, and somehow died! And then there’s the conflict between the Radiance and the Pale King — she offers her followers unity and power at the expense of their individual thoughts, while the Pale King provides his citizens with sapience and an ability to think for themselves, in exchange for worshipping him. Is one of them better than the other, or are they both equally petty? And finally, there’s the Godseeker in the Godmaster DLC. The Godseeker cult is much creepier than the Grimm Troupe, and it’s probably because they’re not actually meant to be spooky like the Troupe are. They’re also masked in a way that removes their identities and individualities, but they come across as a band of religious fanatics. The Godseeker is constantly derisive towards the Knight, accusing it of blasphemy for having challenged the Gods. She seeks to attune herself to some highest godform, which ironically turns out to be the Knight itself, because of the aformentioned Voidheart. Once you complete all five Pantheons, she realizes that the little knight was the God of Gods she sought all along, and then becomes pathetically sycophantic. I’m not really sure what the Godseeker is supposed to be, but she’s certainly a commentary on a particular kind of insanity that comes with such devotion to one’s gods, one loses all sense of personal identity. Anyway… Hollow Knight is utterly packed with philosophical concepts and interesting ideas, if you are willing to pry through the layers.
The Most Lovecraftian Game
Fallen London is a text-based desktop RPG by Failbetter Games, set in an underground, fantastical version of Victorian London. The game has no plot, but instead follows your character as they experience all that London has to offer and gain notoriety. Much of the game revolves around learning the backstory of the world that it takes place in, and that lore is incredibly Lovecraftian. Major spoilers follow for anyone who might want to play. Trust me, if you have any interest in playing the game, I do not recommend reading what follows. It all begins with the Echo Bazaar. The Bazaar isn’t just a marketplace— in fact, it is a living thing. It is some sort of sapient entity. London is the Fifth City the Bazaar has stolen. There will be two more. The main form of currency traded in the Bazaar is called Echos, but the Bazaar particularly prizes Touching Love Stories. This is because it is in love with the Sun, who is a Judgement. The Judgements are some kind of malevolent deity, I think. They destroy anything supernatural, hence why devils and other such things cannot exist aboveground. The Bazaar is served by a group of batlike humanoids called the Masters, who are implied to be gods. The Masters are literally Alien Space Bats. They regulate trade in Fallen London. So, Mr. Wines manages the trade of beverages, Mr. Veils the trade of textiles, Mr. Cups the trade of pottery, Mr. Pages the trade of books and documents, Mr. Iron the trade of metalwork, etc. Despite the “Mr.” title being used for all of them, their pronouns are all “it, its.” The Traitor Empress (who is obviously Queen Victoria, despite never being mentioned by name on pain of death) made a deal with the Masters. They preserved the life of her husband in exchange for London. London is now underground, in a cavern called the Neath, bordering the Unterzee (Undersea) and not far from Hell. The Empress, meanwhile, is no longer human. In fact, none of the royal family are human. They are some form of humanoid abomination. Those that serve them dinner cannot look directly at them, or else they will go mad from the revelation. Speaking of going mad from the revelation, the most Lovecraftian thing in Fallen London is a storyline known as Seeking Mr. Eaten’s Name, or SMEN. But to explain that, we have to start with some other things. First, the Forgotten Quarter. This is an area of Fallen London that is the remnants of the previous four cities, or at least one of them. You can embark on archeological expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter, and learn some interesting stuff (if you don’t run out of supplies or actions or money). The Forgotten Quarter is where you find all your mysterious idols of forgotten gods, strange tablets, ruined cities, etc. I love it! The risk is, if you dig too deep, you can acquire a quality called Nightmares, which are exactly what they sound like. The higher your Nightmares rise, the more you go insane. If your Nightmares rise too high, you are banished to one of two locations. One is a strange, dreamlike jungle called the Mirror-Marches. The other is A State of Some Confusion, during which you stay in the Royal Bethlehem Hotel, a luxury resort for the insane: "A refuge? That night you dream of a tall building lit by cheery fires. A sign reads CLEFT FOR THEE HIDE IN ME. The walls are wrong. The walls are wrong." "You have lost your mind! Don't panic. You may be able to get it back. In the meantime, everything is gold and red and marvellous." "Masks in the firelight In the light of the camp-fires, the soldiers' faces are huge and grinning and savage, like painted demons. But you know that can't be real." "A lost secret You put a secret down. You did it just a moment ago! Someone must have stolen it!" "A lizard of distinction There's a lizard in your room. A bloody lizard! Who put it there? Why are you beset by lizards? Still it seems a distinguished sort. It has lunched with kings and ministers. Possibly on kings and ministers. It sits on your pillow to tell you these things. You can't sleep! On the up side, you don't dream." Another thing that can easily drive you insane is study of the Correspondence, which is (seriously, SPOILERS!) the language of the stars. It is written in strange sigils that you do not want to stare at too long. All of that comes into play with SMEN. The game actively warns you, repeatedly, not to pursue SMEN. It is information mankind was not meant to know. SMEN is staring into the abyss at the bottom of a well and knowing that yes, it is quite literally staring into you. Mr. Eaten was a Master. Then he was eaten. If you want to find out why, and you want to learn what his name used to be before he was eaten, then you have to give up everything. You lose your health, your wealth, your friends, your reputation, your progress, your stats, your rare items, your sanity, everything. You gain absolutely nothing if you seek the information mankind was not meant to know. And if you complete the storyline, your character becomes permanently unplayable. It begins with a quality called Unaccountably Peckish. “Why are you so damnably hungry?” For as long as you have Peckish, you feel a constant, gnawing hunger. And you start seeing strange, black-rimmed Opportunity Cards that can’t be discarded. If you don’t get rid of Peckish, and increase it deliberately, and become a Seeker of the Name… it gets nasty. A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely. Seeking the Name forces you to do increasingly horrifying actions, like eating teeth or folding pastry dough over your own face and baking you in a pie: "It's your mouth." "Can you stop dribbling?" she asks peevishly. Of course. You're salivating. It's difficult to stop. Soon the teeth in your jaw will reside cosily in your gut. Oh God. It will almost be as if you have two mouths. You will be able to consume—consume— "A special recipe. […] You ready the oven. You fold the pastry over your peacefully smiling face. You lay the table and tuck your napkin into your collar. You begin." "Police-whistles, and the smell of smoke. You need something rare. Something rich and red. If it were still moving, perhaps? Oh God yes." "For I was hungry, and I ate you. I was thirsty, and I drank you." […] Your memory is patchy. The cutlery. The difficulty with the tablecloth. That business with the mouse. If only it had moved faster. If only the sous-chef had been more cooperative." "The thirstless thirst. Drown each secret in wine. They scream like buried children. Drink them down; drink them deep. They will rise in you like the water below the well and flower like red spring. You are thirstier now. No. Hungrier." You mark your body with scars, your mind with memories of chains, and your soul with stains, seven times each. After you do that, you will collect seven candles. You will commit seven betrayals, perform seven rituals with Searing Enigmas. And that’s just to gather the first candle. Once you have gained all seven (and lost everything else), finally… you will go NORTH. You dream of sigils and candles and the NORTH. You are beset with maddening hunger. You are nothing but hunger… All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. SHALL BE WELL SHALL BE WELL SHALL BE WELL
Hades and Mythological Accuracy
Hades gets a lot right. Considering how often Greek mythology is misrepresented in popular culture, I’m very impressed with Hades’ attempt to remain faithful to its source material, or at least to acknowledge it. Just knowing the name “Zagreus” indicates the creators’ familiarity with it! Throughout my playing of the game, I’ve caught lots and lots of obscure references that demonstrate the creators’ familiarity with the source material, and I am always so happy when I catch them! I can’t remember all the specific lines off the top of my head, so here’s some more general things that impress me: This is probably one of the best portrayals of Hades himself that I’ve seen in recent years. This Hades is hardly evil or anything resembling the Christian devil, but he isn’t cute and sweet either. It’s become popular lately to portray Hades as Persephone’s loving husband who is kinder and more moral than all of the other gods. As much as I love the Punderworld webcomic, this isn’t an accurate portrayal. Mythological Hades was cold, often unforgiving, and so terrifying that the Greeks avoided invoking his name, instead using euphemisms. In my opinion, Hades perfectly toes this line between Satan-Hades and uwu-Hades. In the game, Hades is a stern, gruff, and melancholy old man, whose primary concern is doing his job. He runs a tight ship in his house like a CEO, while being constantly disappointed in his wayward son, and frustrated by the derelict state of his domain. He also seems to hate his loud, arrogant, and overbearing brothers. He’s technically the game’s main antagonist, but that’s using the term loosely. As much as he tries to thwart Zagreus’ escape attempts, he isn’t evil. He eventually begins to reconnect with his son (or at least gain a margin of respect for him), and learns to find some sources of happiness. This nuanced portrayal of Hades is relatively rare, and I think it does justice to the mythological Hades. The only thing that’s a bit off is that in mythology, Hades does not resent his lot. This is a very common misconception. I think it is mainly a result of conflating Hades with Satan, since Satan fell from Heaven and resents it very much. There is one source, the Thebaid by Statius, in which Hades is “hurled […] defeated from the mighty heaven.” This sounds very Christian to me, and I don’t know enough about the context of this source to judge whether it or this particular translation was at all influenced by Christianity. Regardless, it’s an outlier — for the most part, myth doesn’t imply that Hades resents being Lord of the Dead or that he is jealous of his brothers. This game has a little bit of that. Not as much as Disney’s Hercules, but a bit. If this Hades ever resented his lot, he has long since made peace with it, though he still thinks the Underworld is a dismal place and thinks his brothers got lucky in comparison. He seems almost as frustrated as Zagreus that he cannot leave it, and his attempts to thwart Zagreus are mostly to make that point — There Is No Escape. Perhaps the implication is that Hades also tried and failed to escape so many times over, eventually he just resigned himself to the Underworld. Zagreus is going to have to learn the same lesson, and if he wants to do that the hard way, that’s his problem. I think that this works in context, because it facilitates Hades’ character arc of learning to find happiness despite the circumstances, instead of being used as a cheap way to make Hades the villain. The Olympians, likewise, are portrayed neither as petty jerkasses nor as one-note stereotypes of their domains. They help Zagreus along the way and they’re all very friendly to him, but it’s clear that they’re a pretty screwed-up family and there’s a lot of problems going on in the background. They gripe with each other, and exact petty vengeance on Zagreus if he dares to choose the other god when presented with two available boons. They also work against him sometimes, giving his opponent Theseus boons as well. And yet, the gods aren’t brought down to the level of petty tyrants; they’re not humanized to the point where they lose their divinity. I like this, because too often the Greek gods are too humanized, to the point where they seem more like characters in a sitcom than, y’know, gods. I’ve even seen questions on Quora that wonder why anyone would worship them. Somehow, Hades succeeds in walking that line between giving the gods unique characterizations and having them still seem like gods. They are neither good nor evil, they just are. Although their characterizations are pretty surface-level, and don’t dive into the complexities inherent in each deity, the writers clearly understand that those complexities are there and reference them occasionally. The surface-characterizations are also wonderful by themselves! I love them! Poseidon is loud and blustery, Hermes is a fast-talker who knows a lot more than he lets on, Demeter is in an unusual aspect as a cold and unforgiving Lady of Winter, Ares is a warmonger but with all the class of a general, Dionysus is his usual laid-back and endlessly fun self… I feel like all their characterizations are accurate! Or at the very least, I like them. Although I wish that the complexities of their natures were delved into a little more, none of them feel as though they’ve been wrenched out of character. Also, a lot of care and attention was given to their designs and their boons, which play with the gods’ associations. Most of Dionysus’ boons have to do with drunkenness (and a poison effect), but not all of them — some of his most useful ones are healing boons. Demeter’s unforgiving winter-themed boons make sense, since the whole game takes place in the period in which she is grieving for her daughter, but she also has some healing-based boons reflecting her standard role as a goddess of abundance. Athena’s boons have to do with deflection, because her shield is one of her most famous attributes. In terms of accuracy, comparing the Olympians’ character designs to, say, the ones from Disney’s Hercules, is like night and day. There are also many obscure references to mythology that make me insanely happy whenever I see them. The best of these is Orpheus “Hymn to Zagreus.” Dionysus convinces Zagreus to play a prank on Orpheus, so Zagreus makes up a wild story about how he and Dionysus are connected, and Orpheus buys it. He writes a hymn to Zagreus to sing of his glorious origins. The “Hymn to Zagreus” tells of how Zagreus is really the son of Zeus, who came to Persephone in the form of a serpent, and how the baby Zagreus was dismembered by Titans. Zeus blasted the Titans into ashes, from which humanity sprung. Zagreus, being dead, ended up in Hades, but Zeus had saved his heart, which became the god Dionysus. Many players of Hades assume that Supergiant made up Zagreus for the game, but they did not. Zagreus exists in Greek mythology, but he is extremely obscure and only referenced in a handful of sources. His name references hunting, which Artemis points out in-game (it actually refers specifically to the capture of live animals). He is probably a Cretan deity, and very old. The only complete story about him is that one, in which baby Zagreus is dismembered and reincarnated as Dionysus. This makes perfect sense, because dismemberment is referenced in many of Dionysus’ other myths. For all intents and purposes, Dionysus and Zagreus are the same god. Zagreus is an older, darker, chthonic aspect of Dionysus, Dionysus as a god of life and death. Dionysus definitely isn’t just a wine god. I’ve written whole other answers on this, so I won’t go into exhaustive detail here. My point is that I am impressed that Hades’ creators included this. It shows their knowledge of and their respect for their source material. They didn’t hear the name Zagreus, hear some vague thing about him being Hades’ son (which is another can of worms) and make a game about it. Throwing in this literal Mythology Gag is a nod to their audience that they intentionally made Dionysus and Zagreus two separate characters, while also incorporating Zagreus’ most significant myth. In my opinion, inaccuracies are much more forgivable if they’re shown to be intentional. The “Hymn to Zagreus” is also in many ways similar to the Orphic Hymn to Dionysus, which is just wonderful because the latter’s melody is long since lost and I can actually sing the former! And, it hilariously implies that Orpheus founded an entire religion based on a prank which, honestly, sounds like something Dionysus would do. Mythological references are embedded throughout the game, and it’s always fun to pick up on something. For example, in the codex entry for Alecto, Achilles remarks, “I see it somewhat as a miracle that I myself avoided her barbed whip here in the Underworld,” because Alecto punishes people who do evil things “at the behest of their impulsive passions.” Achilles is referring here to his own actions throughout the Iliad, during which he spends most of his time petulantly sulking, and then kills scores of Trojans in a frenzied fit of rage after Patroclus dies. He treated Hector’s corpse with so much brutality that the gods almost intervened. The first line of the Iliad is “Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles” — the entire epic is about Achilles flipping his lid. This one line in Alecto’s codex entry references the whole epic without spelling it out, and also implies that Achilles regrets the cruelty and impulsivity of his actions while alive. His characterization in Hades as a calm and mature mentor figure, in contrast to the hotheaded young Zagreus, reflects this. There’s other insights into Achilles specifically throughout the codex, because he’s the one writing it. There’s a lot of little moments like these. Off the top of my head, I remember Artemis frequently mentions her friend Callisto. Dionysus disparages Theseus’ treatment of Ariadne, and also mentions that the satyr pests that Zagreus kills in the Temple of Styx aren’t the type of satyrs he hangs out with (I was actually wondering about that, so excellent foresight on the game’s part). And of course, this is the only piece of media I have encountered so far that calls the Minotaur by his proper name, Asterius (or Asterion). The fact that that’s in there speaks volumes, and helps to humanize the redeemed Asterius. Speaking of Asterius, apparently if you enter his and Theseus’ arena with the Yarn of Ariadne, they have unique dialogue. I have not gotten this yet, but I’m still impressed by the Developer Foresight and attention to detail. For the most part, Hades lines up with mythology whenever possible. When it deviates, it does so very deliberately. It acknowledges that it made Dionysus and Zagreus into separate people by throwing in the Orpheus prank. Its rewriting of Demeter into Hyperion’s daughter, and giving Persephone a mortal father, downplays the incest among the gods. (SPOILER: Another technical inaccuracy is that Persephone made up the pomegranate story to easily explain the situation to the Olympians, but this makes sense in context.) Eurydice isn’t a musician in mythology, but making her one in the game makes so much sense (and results in some really cool duets). Of all the characters, the most mythologically inaccurate is Sisyphus, who in myth is conniving and cruel. But the game acknowledges this too — Megaera and Thanatos both hate him, and wonder why Zagreus hangs out with him. Meg insists that he is a bad person. It’s clear that, like Achilles, Sisyphus experienced some character development since he died (rather than just changing his personality outright). His friendliness towards Zagreus may also be a nod to the only source that explicitly names Zagreus the son of Hades, a single line from a lost play about Sisyphus. I appreciate this so much, because often in other media, mythological inaccuracies are just there without any apparent reason, so it isn’t clear whether the authors changed it on purpose or just didn’t know better. This is common to the point where it’s an entire trope, Sadly Mythtaken. Hades averts this in spades, and that’s why I think it’s one of the best pieces of Greek-mythology-related pop culture that I’ve encountered.
Reviewing All the Castlevania Games I've Played
Ranked from best to worst, roughly. I want to preface this by saying that there is a big difference between Classicvanias and Metroidvanias in terms of how they’re played and how they’re experienced, so it’s not really fair to compare them to each other. This is therefore something of a combined ranking. Also, there will be spoilers. 1. Symphony of the Night. Yeah, yeah, I know. But seriously! This was the first Castlevania game I played, two years ago, and I’ve played it a bunch of times since. It deserves its title as one of the best PlayStation games of all time, and it really holds up well. I really love this game. It’s flawed, but it has a kind of raw authenticity to it that many of the later Metroidvanias do not, because it’s genuinely experimental and the rest are basically just copies of it. One of the ways it wins points for me is its beautiful gothic aesthetic, which is missing from many of the later games. Also, Alucard! Alucard speaks for himself. This game’s soundtrack is also one of the best Yamane soundtracks, and I’ve heard a lot of them by now. It has the most stylistic variety, and every single track is fun to listen to. 2. Rondo of Blood. Probably the best of the Classicvanias. It’s well-constructed, and, while difficult, not so supremely difficult that I couldn’t get through it on the PS4. I like that it allows you to choose between Maria and Richter. Maria is adorable, and playing as her definitely made certain segments of the game easier. (The ideal would be if you could switch off between them like in CVIII, but whatever.) Also, the different pathways leading to different levels is a neat gimmick, and foreshadowing things to come. 3. Lament of Innocence. I actually really liked Lament. Its story was pretty solid for a CV game, its graphics were pretty good for early PS 3D, and it had the same gorgeous gothic aesthetic as Symphony. The aesthetic really matters to me, so that was great. Also, the soundtrack is magnificent, with a distinctive style throughout and some interesting techno influences that still work. I listen to it all the time. This game still managed to feel like a Castlevania game despite being a rare 3D title. I’ve played as both Leon and Joachim and enjoyed both. Joachim in particular is an interesting feature, since he’s so unlike all other CV player characters. Overall a great game, but the camera very nearly ruined it. The camera always remained fixed in place in the corner of the room instead of following behind the protagonist, or else violently swinging around, and during boss battles like Walter’s it ends up being pointed towards the floor. The Succubus with Joachim was particularly brutal, since I needed to aim at her and she kept moving around, causing vertigo with the camera. Platforming was also an absolute nightmare, because you have to do very precise jumps from across the room from the camera’s vantage point. So I was basically taking blind leaps and hoping I got it right, and if I didn’t, I’d fall and have to do it all over again. At least in Hollow Knight, the precise platforming felt like something in your control! If the game had been mediocre, the camera would have ruined it, but the game is good, so it’s still worth it. 4. Castlevania Chronicles: I liked it better than CV IV, okay? This is actually my favorite remake of the original. I think it looks dynamic, it’s arranged cover of “Simon’s Theme” is utterly badass, and it’s got Ayami Kojima’s artwork. And Dracula tosses his wine glass! This is probably one of my favorite Classicvanias, so it’s all the way up here. 5. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Despite being very difficult, it’s pretty obvious why Dracula’s Curse is considered one of, if not the, best Classicvania. Yeah, it’s really hard, but for some reason I’ve played this one multiple times. It’s much more fun to play as Trevor, Sypha, Alucard, and Grant than just one character. The music is classic. The level design is frustrating as all hell (FALLING BLOCKS) but memorable. It’s such a massive improvement over the original’s format. Somehow, despite it being so hard, I actually have had enough fun with it to play it multiple times. That’s saying something. 6. Portrait of Ruin. I held off on playing this game, but suddenly became motivated to play it so that I could have played a bit of it before GoS died. It was significantly better than I was expecting. The unique portrait gimmick actually worked really well, and it still felt distinctly like a Castlevania game despite that unique structure and despite not having a Belmont (or Alucard) as the protagonist. Its soundtrack was also better than I was expecting! It’s not perfect, but it’s a solid game. I have only two complaints: One, Charlotte is kind of… gimmicky? Her spells often were too costly and took too much time to cast, so I didn’t use them that often. And, instead of her books firing projectiles or something actually useful, they were basically just weird melee weapons, which was disappointing. The other thing is that the final boss was fighting Dracula AND Death together! They freaking got me! They knew that experienced players would find a normal Dracula fight too easy, so they sprung THAT on us. And no, it’s not fair, since it’s not a good idea to have both Jonathan and Charlotte onscreen during a boss battle so it’s still basically two-on-one. I fought that bastard already, and it was one of the hardest Death fights in the entire franchise! 7. Order of Ecclesia. I heard that Ecclesia was good, and it is, although I’m kind of shocked that it’s the last CV game released in the main continuity. It felt much more like Simon’s Quest than any of the other games. It felt a little less like a Castlevania game for a lot of reasons, until a little girl suddenly mentioned dreaming about a man with a whip and reminded me what game I’m playing. I think it’s glyph system is significantly weaker than the soul system; it felt like an earlier, faulty version of the soul system instead of something that came later. (I wish there was a slashy-sword instead of just a choppy-sword and a stabby-sword.) That said, it was a lot of fun to play as a woman, the soundtrack and aesthetic were solid, and the story is probably one of CV’s best. Not that it was surprising, but I love Albus and I have to replay it with him. Being such a non-traditional game, I was kind of shocked to find an incredibly traditional-feeling Dracula fight at the end, especially since most of the Metroidvanias lack one. Very interesting game, certainly worth playing just for Albus, a female protagonist, and a pair of ebony wings. 8. Aria of Sorrow. I like Aria. Soma Cruz is a great protagonist and really fun to play as. The story is legitimately interesting, definitely one of Castlevania’s best, especially since it basically means that you play as Dracula in this game. It is SO satisfying to defeat that asshole who thinks he’s the Dark Lord and turn out to be the Dark Lord yourself. I love the idea of this sweet teenage boy actually being the Lord of Darkness and having an obscene amount of power, but choosing to be good anyway. That’s one of my favorite tropes (which is also a reason I like Alucard). There are a few things I don’t like, though. The aesthetic is way too pale, with a lot of gray and cream, which is disappointing. The music is also mostly mediocre, although I accept that it’s a limitation of the GBA. Also, the soul system necessarily requires a lot of grinding. 9. Super Castlevania IV. I was wondering why I didn’t like this as much as Chronicles, and then I replayed it and was like, “oh, that’s why.” The colors in this game are drab, the enemies are kind of weird-looking, and there’s that surreal midsection that is insanely hard. I hate those rising blocks. I also hate having to fight Slogra and Gaibon back-to-back before fighting Dracula. But, the versatility with the whip is great, and “Simon’s Theme” is probably the best thing to come out of this game. It’s definitely a solid remake, but it didn’t blow me out of the water. 10. Dawn of Sorrow. I’ve basically finished this game, but I haven’t really because I find myself grinding for health potions from a giant armor that hasn’t dropped them yet. This game introduced crafting weapons, which has the same disadvantage as Bloodstained in that you have to grind even more instead of being able to find better weapons in the world (which is one of the fun parts of Metroidvanias). But, I still like Soma as a protagonist, the game is fun to play, and I think the environments are better in this game than in Aria. The story I’m ambivalent about, but I think it’s a clever way of continuing the story of the first game without completely rehashing it (Dracula is absent? There’s a creepy cult!). The music is a hit or a miss — some tracks like “Dracula’s Tears” and “After Confession” are great, others are forgettable. Also, it didn’t totally feel like a CV game, probably because of its modern setting… until I suddenly step into the Silenced Ruins and remember what game I’m playing. Once I finish, I’m genuinely excited to play this game as Julius, especially since I know I can switch off with Yoko and Alucard, and Soma is the final boss. 11. Grimoire of Souls: I really enjoyed playing this, while it lasted. Its levels were cool, it was a lot of fun to play, I loved the dialogues between the characters, I liked playing as each one of them… It would probably be higher up if it weren’t killed. Shame. 12. Castlevania: Bloodlines. I liked this game more than I thought I would. I expected that having it spread across Europe would mean it wouldn’t feel like a Castlevania game, but it actually did. I liked playing as Eric! The music was pretty good, with “Iron Blue Intention” being unobjectionably the best track. I also thought that the Castle Proserpina, while infuriating, was really cool in its design. However, having to fight Death and Elizabeth and Dracula all in succession after having to go through that was pretty brutal. 13. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. I’m kind of shocked that this is the second entry in the CV series. I mean… what even is this game? It doesn’t feel even remotely like the first game, and it’s a kind of proto-Metroidvania in its structure (with an open world and needing specific abilities or items to continue). It just felt weird. Like, before all of the lore and the sheer variety of different kinds of games that Castlevania ended up with, why was this where their minds went for the sequel to the original? In a way, it feels like foreshadowing the future of the franchise. The game itself isn’t bad, but it has only three bosses that are too easy, and its four musical tracks get old pretty quick (except one — impossible for that one to get old!). I’m listing it higher than the original just because I found it easier, which helps me have more fun with it. 14. Castlevania I. The original. Speaks for itself, really. It’s a solid game, and I feel a little bad putting it this low on the list. I suppose it’s just… there’s not a lot to it. This was before all the lore, before the whip wasn’t just a whip but the Vampire Killer, before the Belmont legacy, before Alucard, before… everything. So, it’s just a simple game where you face a different movie monster after each level. And it is hard. It’s so hard, I struggled to enjoy it. 15. Harmony of Despair. Admittedly, I haven’t gotten far enough in this game to comment on it much, but that’s also part of the problem. It’s chaotic, it’s really difficult to find your way around the massive world, and I still have no idea how to heal. It is fun to play a co-op game, though, and the music in this game is excellent. All of the Harmony of Despair covers are fun to listen to! I’m motivated to keep playing this game just for that. 16. Dracula X. Dramatically inferior to Rondo of Blood. Music remixes weren’t as good, backgrounds weren’t as good, just pretty mediocre in general. The most memorable part of it was the final boss, which required fighting Dracula on platforms. What the actual hell. I did not ask to know what the Godmaster version of Dracula’s fight would be, thank you. I don’t remember how I got through that, and I never want to do it again. 17. Harmony of Dissonance. Definitely the weakest of the Metroidvanias. It feels like a knockoff of Symphony, despite being made by the same people. I’m sad about it, because I love Juste and think he’s underrated! He likes interior design! He’s got a great fashion sense! He’s the only Belmont who can do powerful magic! I also ship him with Maxim. But… I have to admit he’s basically Alucard-with-a-whip. This game utterly fails aesthetically. Its backgrounds and colors are ugly, and it’s got the weakest soundtrack that was either lame or intolerable. Yamane, my girl, what happened? Also, the two castles were not nearly as well-done here as in SotN. There was no purpose to them. That gimmick just forced you to cover all the same ground twice but with a palette swap and harder enemies, and it was extremely confusing to navigate. I love you, Juste, but this game isn’t that good. 18. Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge. It’s better than The Adventure, with better graphics and better music, and Christopher moves faster, but it’s still black-and-white and otherwise unremarkable. The four castles would be a cool idea if they were completely different environments, similar to OoE or PoR. The significant thing about this game is that it, not SotN, began the tradition of having a good character become an antagonist through being possessed by Dracula. 19. Castlevania: The Adventure. Poor Christopher. Everyone forgets about him, and that’s not his fault. It’s because he never got a Kojima design! And because he’s stuck with this game, which is… bland. It’s black and white, he moves slowly, the enemies aren’t used in any other CV media… Honestly, the only reason I played this game is because once I play CoD, I want to be able to say I’ve played every game in the main timeline. That’s all. Otherwise, there’s not much point to it. 20. Haunted Castle. Why did I play this game? This was by far the most grueling of the Classicvania games. There was no way to heal (since the only way to heal on an actual arcade machine would be to insert coins) and it was incredibly easy to die in the first five seconds with each hit doing about four points of damage, and you could only revive three times over the whole game before it kicked you back to the beginning. The only way I got through this was save spamming and raw determination. How did anyone manage to get through this on an arcade machine? The only good things to come out of this game were “Don’t Wait Until Night” and “Crucifix Held Close/Cross on the Breast/Cross Your Heart.” Those musical themes are good, but they’re not worth playing this game for.
The Most Powerful Belmont
I waited to answer this question until I’d played as a variety of Belmonts.* I’ve played as all of the canon ones: Trevor (Castlevania III) Simon (the original, Super Castlevania IV and Chronicles) Richter (Rondo of Blood and SotN) Juste (Harmony of Dissonance) Leon (Lament of Innocence) Julius (Aria of Sorrow) Christopher (The Adventure and Belmont’s Revenge) It’s worth noting that there’s two stages of the Castlevania franchise: pre-IGA and post-IGA. This makes a huge difference, because Koji Igarashi completely changed the nature of Castlevania’s gameplay. Pre-IGA Belmonts are all exactly the same. They all strut around the castle in their characteristic way, they all use the Vampire Killer whip, and they all have the same set of subweapons. There isn’t that much to distinguish them from each other. It’s impressive that Simon runs only on his own badassery and weapons, with no powerups or magic, and still manages to defeat Dracula twice (once while cursed!) That is epic. Trevor is my favorite Belmont, but his abilities in Castlevania III barely differ from Simon’s. There’s also Curse of Darkness, where he’s fought as a boss, and has a playable mode. (I haven’t played that game, so I can’t comment on his abilities or power level in it. Based on the wiki page, his playable mode is similar to Leon.) Trevor and Simon are out, because there’s little difference between them in their attack patterns, or even their design! As for Christopher, he unfortunately loses out as well. He can shoot fireballs from his whip, which is pretty cool, but this is only possible if you somehow make it through without taking any damage. In his first game (The Adventure), he walks slowly and has no subweapons, which is absolutely brutal. In the second game (Belmont’s Revenge), he moves faster and has actual subweapons, although he only has the Holy Water and the Axe, so he loses out again! (The second game looks and feels more like Castlevania, and has better music.) Still, that puts him on par with Simon, also having defeated Dracula twice. Christopher deserves better than this! The only reason he’s not more of a legend is becuase he didn’t get a Kojima redesign. I’ve got to give it to Richter Belmont. Why? Item crash! That ability alone makes him distinct from his relatives and gives him a great deal more power. It’s damn useful, even if it uses up so many hearts. If you crash without subweapons, he’s able to set his whip on fire and still do a hell of a lot of damage with it. Also, in SotN you fight him as a boss. A final boss, even! He was the first Belmont to appear as a boss, and the only one to appear as a boss more than once (PoR). Of the pre-Igavania Belmonts, Richter wins, hands down. On Richter’s wiki page, it says that he “is said to be the most powerful Belmont, and is described by [SotN] as ‘Master Vampire Hunter’.” Alucard says, "...Belmont's powers are supreme among vampire hunters. None other can defeat him." In response, Shaft says that he possessed Richter specifically because he was so powerful, and making him the lord of the castle would neutralize his threat but still be easier than killing him. It isn’t exactly true that Richter is unbeatable, as Alucard is capable of defeating Richter, and Richter could possibly be surpassed by his descendants (who obviously don’t exist yet). Still, the fact that he’s given that designation by a game speaks volumes. (This is taken up another level in Grimoire of Souls, where he’s directly referred to as the “greatest of all the Belmonts.”) What makes Igarashi’s Belmonts a little different are the RPG elements in his games, which give them a wider array of powers. Juste, Richter’s father (or possibly grandfather), is the first Belmont who can cast spells. He casts spells by collecting spellbooks, which transform his subweapons into element-based spells, in a similar manner to Sypha Belnades in CVIII. (Hey, Sypha is his great-great-great-something-grandmother.) Having Belnades magic in addition to typical Belmont skills definitely gives him an edge. Leon Belmont can also use different items and powerups to gain different abilities or item crashes. His magical abilities seem to be a lot more limited than Juste’s. He can only cast a handful of spells that are reliant on specific items, and Leon has to absorb MP through his Wonder Woman gauntlet instead of simply having MP. The orbs also only alter his subweapons, instead of his subweapons becoming magic spells. I’d say he’s not as powerful, but he’s the first among them chronologically. Finally, Julius Belmont might be the most powerful vampire hunter of the Belmont Clan by default, simply because he permanently defeated Dracula, and then is still going strong years later. He is also stated to be the most powerful vampire hunter in Aria, and he’s got skills handed down from every previous Belmont. He is also fought as a boss in Aria of Sorrow— that “Grand Cross” thing is ridiculous, and he was holding back. Richter is the first Belmont to use the Grand Cross move, but Julius’ seems more powerful. As for his playable mode, well. Soma may be the most powerful Castlevania protagonist (for obvious reasons if you’ve played), but Julius is absurdly powerful in comparison to Soma at the start of the game. He begins with a whopping 800 HP compared to 320 HP (although he doesn’t gain HP the way Soma does). That’s insane. Comparatively, being a Classic Belmont, Richter’s health is extremely low (even in SotN). Julius can one-shot most of the early monsters and kills bosses so effortlessly, he practically dusts off his coat and strolls right through. I progressed through the areas in the same order as the base game (even though I didn’t need to), and I didn’t come anywhere close to dying or running out of MP until I reached the Underground Reservoir. Julius also takes significantly less damage than Soma. Julius is limited in his subweapon ability — he only has four — but since he still uses MP instead of hearts (hearts restore MP) due to the way the game mechanics work, it’s hard to run out of subweapons. However, unlike Richter, he can’t one-shot bosses with item crashes. The only “crash” he can do is the Grand Cross move, which is less powerful in the playable mode as it is in the boss battle. It also counts as one of the four subweapons, the other three being the normal cross, the axe, and the holy water. So, it’s definitely between Julius and Richter, the last two in the game’s chronology. Whoever wins depends on your own interpretation. I’m still giving it to Richter. We don’t actually know how Julius defeated Dracula. For all we know, it could have been Julius’ cunning rather than power that finished him. In terms of raw power, I still think Richter wins, but barely. Whip it good!
Religious Commentary in Blasphemous
Blasphemous is set in a gothic fantasy version of medieval Spain, called Cvstodia, and its entire story and lore centers around a fictional religion that is undeniably based on Spanish Catholicism. The land has been afflicted by something of a holy curse that causes the sins of the people to physically manifest, twisting them into gigantic and monstrous forms. This sacred curse is called The Grievous Miracle, or simply The Miracle. The protagonist, the Penitent One, decides to put an end to The Miracle… even though doing so would be blasphemy. The game is visually inspired by Catholic aesthetics in everything from clothing to architecture. The Penitent One wears a metal conical helmet that’s inspired by a capriote. He wields a sword called the Mea Culpa, a physical manifestation of guilt. The Penitent One finds holy relics that give him special abilities, collects magical beads for his rosary and bones of saints for the ossuary, and uses prayers as spells. He explores a landscape riddled with ruined churches amidst graves and disturbing statues. All of the enemies you face were once people who were corrupted by The Miracle. Enemy designs include crucified victims carrying angel statues on their backs, six-winged angels, nuns that swing censers at you, monks that lunge at you with candelabra, flagellants, ghosts of immolated victims with bells, seated bishops with spears, and so forth. Many of them have execution animations, meaning that if you hit them in a certain way, you have the option to slay them in the most gory way possible. The bosses are usually gigantic, grotesque monsters, and the majority of them take up the whole screen. One is a man trapped inside a twisted monster whom you find lying in a Pietà position, one is an anchoress who poured boiling oil on her own face, one is a giant baby whose mother was burned at the stake… you get the idea. The Final Boss is, unsurprisingly, the head of Cvstodia’s theocracy (basically the Pope). Thematically, Blasphemous is a commentary on some of the uglier aspects of Catholicism, mainly the glorification of suffering. Blasphemous exaggerates it into the realm of absurdity, with its grisly imagery that it then glorifies into a position of sanctity. In place of Jesus, the people of Cvstodia worship the image of a young man known only as the Twisted One, whose limbs were bent around a pole until he turned into a tree. This was not an act of self-sacrifice on others’ behalf, but an act of penance. We never learn what he, or the protagonist, or any of the other penitents in the story actually did to deserve their suffering. We never learn what the source of their guilt is, and it’s pretty clear that it does not matter. Everyone is sinful, everyone is guilty, everyone deserves punishment. Even genuine kindness becomes suffering. A saint, Socorro, prayed that prisoners being whipped would be relieved of their pain, and The Miracle rewarded her for her compassion by forcing her to take their suffering upon herself. She sits in a holy shrine in the Mother of Mothers, where she’s whipped eternally and worshipped as a martyr by devoted pilgrims. The Miracle is called that because the Cvstodians literally believe that arbitrary suffering is a blessing, that it’s worthy of worship in and of itself. Christianity is (at least nominally) about redemption, salvation from suffering, giving refuge and showing kindness to all people regardless of whether they deserve it or not. Cvstodia’s religion has none of that. It’s a very cutting criticism on the devs’ part, because it shows how some Christians have a tendency to take the emphasis off of everything that’s actually good about Christianity in favor of shame and punishment. Another aspect of the game’s commentary on religion is the relationship that the faithful have to Church authorities: Spoilers: In the True Ending, the Penitent One sits on the Pope’s throne and stabs himself with Mea Culpa, turning into a tree and becoming the new Twisted One, ending the Miracle. He plays a much more straightforward Christ role than the Twisted One does, because he literally takes the sins of the people upon himself. In the True-True Ending from the Wounds of Eventide DLC, the Penitent One and Crisanta slay the High Wills, which are the analogue to God in this universe. They are petty and much more interested in their own glorification than in doing anything for the suffering people of Cvstodia. They are exactly as arbitrary, apathetic, and senseless as the manifestations of The Miracle would imply. After killing them, the Penitent One experiences a final communion with the Twisted One (in the image above) and dies. As undeniably Soulslike as it is to kill God, I sort of preferred the nature of God being more mysterious and up to interpretation before Wounds of Eventide’s release. I like the interpretation that The Miracle is not actually evil — it corrupts and tortures people because that’s what the Cvstodians genuinely want. Despite that, I think the ending makes an important point: My takeaway from the endings is that the holy authorities only have power if they impress you. As long as you’re awestruck by all the gilt and gold of the cathedrals, as long as you feel guilty and ashamed, as long as you fear excommunication and Hell, as long as you believe that holy things (people, places, icons, rules) are untouchable, they have power. If you’re not impressed by all that, then they don’t have any power at all; if you’ve made peace with your guilt and found absolution, then you won’t be fazed when they condemn you for desecration. All their threats and condemnations won’t stop you from going up and stabbing them in the face. /end spoiler Blasphemous takes from the same tradition of gaming as Castlevania, with a Metroidvania gameplay style, gothic imagery, a Final Boss that’s straight out of Castlevania III, and a very similar atmosphere to Castlevania’s Netflix adaptation. But Castlevania’s use of Christian imagery is purely cosmetic — crosses make good boomerangs and holy water makes good grenades to use against vampires, because we all know that vampires are vulnerable to consecrated items. The Netflix series’ commentary on the corruption within Catholicism was very heavy-handed and lacked nuance. It was clearly written by an atheist, and the strawman Bishop is basically Claude Frollo but without everything that made him interesting. (Amazing that Frollo, a literal Disney villain from a G-rated kids’ movie, manages to be a more mature character than one from a literal adult show.) But Blasphemous was written by actual Catholics, who created a game that is simultaneously a love letter to their religion and a scathing critique of it. I wasn’t sure if I’d like Blasphemous, because it’s very nearly too gory for me (the pixel art saves it from being too much), but I was very impressed by it, and it’s only gotten better with its various updates.
Salt and Sanctuary Review
I’ve been on a massive Metroidvania binge over the last couple years. I’ve played every indie Metroidvania I’ve gotten my hands on, especially those with Castlevania inspirations. So of course, I played Salt and Sanctuary. S&S is much more a Soulslike than Hollow Knight or Blasphemous, two other Soulslike Metroidvanias. Both of those games have you leave behind something when you die, have a bleak desecrated world with lore concerning gods and religion, and have a story that you need to piece together from item descriptions and scattered dialogue. But S&S also has the Souls mechanics of needing to use that easily-lost currency to level up, having a very complex leveling system that requires you to level each stat individually, and needing stats to be at a certain level to use items and armor. It also has similar status effects, poison mechanics, consumable items, etc. It’s Dark Souls in 2D. Salt and Sanctuary had one of the biggest learning curves of any game I’ve played. Everything about it felt counterintuitive. It took me until NG+ to be completely comfortable with it, and even then, so many aspects of it were just frustrating. I especially hate the mechanic that reduces your max health when you take damage, and reduces your max stamina when you use magic. Not even fucking Bloodborne has that, and it’s an actual FromSoft game. I definitely would not be able to handle Bloodborne without playing S&S first, so I thank it for that, but Bloodborne is actually kinder than S&S in some respects. I can’t tell you how many times I lost a huge quantity of salt from dying while trying to get back to the sanctuary to level up. Bloodborne gives you a lantern right after you kill each boss, so there’s no danger of dying and losing all your Blood Echoes on your way back to the Hunter’s Dream. As if the reduced stamina effect weren’t enough of a deterrent to using magic, magic also has an effect that forces you to alternate between fire and lightning spells or die. (There’s a ring that neutralizes it, but it also depowers your spells.) And it took me until NG+ to figure out that the blue potion restores your lost stamina instead of just filling up the stamina bar. Of course, being a Soulslike, S&S doesn’t explain how any of the mechanics work. I had to look up how to make new items available at the shops, and when I did, there wasn’t even that much available… shops became irrelevant in NG+. It also took me way too long to find out how to craft more powered-up weapons. Oh, and despite this being a Metroidvania, there’s no map. All that, and Salt and Sanctuary doesn’t really have that much to offer on its own. The art is okay but not stellar, the level designs have relatively little variation, the music consists of only a few looping tracks. As for the gameplay, S&S has many moments of leap-of-faith platforming when you literally can’t see where the next platform is, so you hope you’ll land in the right spot and end up unceremoniously plummeting to your death (and losing all your salt). It’s not the most frustrating platforming that I’ve experienced, but it makes certain walkbacks feel like they’re not worth it. I don’t mind hard platforming, but it bothers me when it feels like it’s based on luck instead of something that you can control by gaining skill. The boss fights are also a mixed bag, with some feeling too easy and others feeling unfairly difficult (I swear that The Third Lamb is the hardest boss in the game). They have simple movesets but are a pain in the ass because of that damn wounding effect. The Final Boss is almost anticlimactic for all the cool lore that surrounds him — he’s basically just a powered-up version of the first boss. He was really easy on my first playthrough, less so on NG+, though once I figured out where my attack windows were I was still able to take him down pretty quickly. The arena you fight him in is so damn dark that it’s genuinely difficult to see and telegraph his attacks, made worse by the deliberately fuzzy visuals. And to enter the arena you have to drop from a high platform, meaning that you take about half your HP’s worth of damage by default at the start of the fight. The lore is my favorite part of the game, because lore is always my favorite part. There are some really interesting aspects to the lore surrounding the religions in this RPG world. I like how there are different faiths that you can choose from, that all have different aesthetics and values and favor different builds. I like how they all carry different implications concerning the nature of the Final Boss. I liked wielding the bosses’ cursed weapons. Exploring the bizarre patchwork landscape of the island is interesting and fun, and there are some good NPC questlines that I missed the first time. It sends chills down my spine when the Masterless Knight says, “The Red Hall of Cages should not be here. It should be in Askaria. So why is it here?” But even despite having decent lore, it’s still a bit lackluster in comparison to other games, and it doesn’t quite make up for the learning curve. And who is that damned cleric? Don’t get me wrong — I do like this game. It was really satisfying to beat, it primed me for Bloodborne, and it’s a fine game on its own. But everything it does, I’ve seen other games do better. Hollow Knight and Blasphemous are also dark indie Metroidvanias with Souls influences that were created by small dev teams. Both of them have more streamlined gameplay, with more interesting artwork and music, superb worldbuilding, and climatic final bosses with more dynamic endings. Hollow Knight is a masterwork in almost every capacity, and Blasphemous fixed many of the early issues it had, improving dramatically. Both of them have more developed and interesting commentary on religion in my opinion (though S&S definitely has something on that front). The only thing S&S has that these games don’t is RPG elements. In fairness, though, S&S did come first. Salt and Sanctuary is a fun challenge for people who either really like Metroidvanias or really like Soulslikes, or both. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as an intro to the Metroidvania genre. There’s a sequel game releasing in May, and I do plan to play it, becuase I’m much more used to true Souls mechanics now and because I think it will be better than the first game. But I can see why it isn’t as popular as the other Soulslike Metroidvanias that came after it.
Elden Ring Review
I recently finished Elden Ring. It took me nearly six months. I started in July, but lost all my progress about 2/3rds of the way through, and had to start over. I did like it. I can completely understand why it’s considered by many to be the best game of this year. It was a challenge to overcome, but so satisfying to finally beat that damn Elden Beast and bring the game to a close. Favorite Thing: The Visuals Elden Ring is an absolutely stunning game. I can’t quite say I like its visuals better than those of Bloodborne, because gothic-Victorian is exactly my aesthetic, but Elden Ring’s rendering was certainly better and its environments were striking. I repeatedly stood up to take photos of my TV screen because of how unbelievably cool the visuals were. Other things I liked: I played a sorcerer, and that was a ton of fun, especially after having no dependable ranged attack in Bloodborne. Only a few spells were actually useful, but those that were made short work of bosses and made exploration relatively painless. The gameplay in general was smooth. I liked the amount of customization the protagonist has, and enjoyed dressing him up in cool outfits. Exploration was one of the highlights of the game — I love exploring and finding secrets in any game, and it was really satisfying in this one. Lore, I’m ambivalent on. Lore is typically one of my favorite parts of games, and I enjoy discovering little scraps of it (though I’m less interested in thoroughly dissecting it than in letting the mystery stand). However… Least Favorite Thing: The Story This is entirely my personal opinion, and I know it’s probably not going to be a popular one. I figured going in that, in comparing Elden Ring to Bloodborne, I’d have to make the impossible decision as to whether I preferred high fantasy or gothic horror. It turned out to be an easier decision than I expected. I vastly prefer gothic horror to bleak high fantasy. I know that George R.R. Martin is known for subverting tropes in high fantasy, specifically to make it more gritty and cynical. FromSoft is of course known for being bleak, but this is its first foray into true LotR-style fantasy. There’s been thousands of video games with a typical “heroic protagonist saves the world” story, so of course Elden Ring wasn’t going to be like that! I was expecting it to be bleak. In many people’s minds, this is part of what makes the game good. But in my opinion, bleak high fantasy doesn’t really work. Part of what makes high fantasy what it is, is hope — the promise that the world can be changed for the better. Bloodborne I completely expected to be bleak, given the subject matter. Oddly, the bleakness of the world was a source of motivation in Bloodborne — you have a job to do, so you may as well do it. “A hoonter must hoont.” Elden Ring’s bleakness steadily killed my motivation to play. **SPOILERS** Miquella was the kicker. When I found him, and it sank in what had happened to him, I was almost distraught. I cursed the game for telling a story in which almost all the people with the potential to do genuine good are horrifically screwed over, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I didn’t even bother to fight Malenia, partly because I don’t hate myself that much, but also because she doesn’t deserve to die. I increasingly came to see my protagonist as a ruthless conquerer who pursues their ambition above all else, including any hope of saving the world. Elden Ring made me feel despair in a way that Bloodborne couldn’t. I skipped out on entire questlines (for example, Sellen’s) because I knew how they would end. Almost every goddamn NPC dies, sometimes as a direct result of you helping them, which makes the entire questline feel downright pointless. Rogier, one of my favorite NPCs, has what amounts to a terminal illness. Diallos’ questline started off interesting but ended up kind of pathetic. I had to kill Blaidd and Alexander myself! At least Boc could be saved. If one or two or even half the questlines were like this, I’d have less of a problem. As for the endings, meh. I went for Ranni’s, and she’s very much the lesser of two evils in this scenario. The Shattering is indirectly her fault, leaving me wondering if I’d even be in this mess if not for her. But she’s certainly not the worst option, and her aesthetic is very cool, and I guess the world is technically better off in the end with her ending. “The end justifies the means”? Sheesh. I think I’m going to go for Duskborn next time. It weighs upon me that there would theoretically be a better solution, but it is permanently no longer an option. That’s a unique and interesting trope, but it’s one that I can’t personally enjoy. It sucks because story is usually one of the things I love the most in video games. Sometimes it’s the reason I play them. Elden Ring has a hell of a story, but it felt meaningless at times and depressing at others. That’s not an inditement of its writing, because I’m pretty sure that’s what they were going for and they succeeded. But my sense of accomplishment comes more from having finished the game itself (especially after that Final Boss that is everything I hate in a boss battle). For all the absurdity of Bloodborne’s ending, at least it didn’t depress me. Elden Ring is one of the only stories that I progressively lost interest in as it went along because of encroaching despair. I suppose I should take that as a lesson — it is worth continuing to pursue a goal even as the circumstances get worse and worse and worse, and you really feel the weight of despair. After all, the protagonists of any story don’t know that they’ll succeed, and press on despite the despair that they must be feeling (I’m reading RotK right now, and Tolkien writes this beautifully.) But I typically prefer stories in which the question is how a character will succeed, not if. It’s pretty impressive that a video game, in which success is almost a foregone conclusion by the nature of the medium, can make me feel that sense of uncertainty. Good writing, but I maintain — high fantasy should be about hope. For stories about humanity’s insignificance in the face of the cosmos and its eldritch gods, gothic/cosmic horror wins every single time.
Why Bloodborne is Scary
I haven’t played Demon’s Souls or any of the Dark Souls games, but I have played Bloodborne. It’s my understanding that Dark Souls is Dark Fantasy, but not necessarily Horror, i.e. it’s not trying to scare the player. Bloodborne definitely is trying to scare the player, and it usually succeeds. I’d say the success of Bloodborne’s horror comes down to three things: 1. Atmosphere. Bloodborne’s atmosphere is one of the most impressive and distinctive parts of the game. It drops you in the middle of a gorgeous gothic Victorian hellscape. The architecture is magnificent, the half-light is foreboding, and everything is awash in a sense of despair and decay. The overall vibe of the environment is very, very unsettling. It gets even more so as the story goes along (though I can’t really explain why without spoilers.) 2. Imagery. The environment may be beautiful, but the monsters are absolutely grotesque. You may not bat an eye at axe-swinging zombified villagers or your average werewolf. Believe me, it gets so much worse. Special mention goes to The One Reborn for being a horrifying mess of amalgamated body parts. If you’re an arachnophobe, then Rom the Vacuous Spider might give you a turn, but that’s nothing compared to a certain room in the Nightmare of Mensis. The Witch of Hemwick is literally covered in eyes. And if you have a problem with tentacles… good luck. You do actually get desensitized to the disturbing imagery after a while, just like your hardened Hunter, but then there’s always something else that comes along to shake you out of it. 3. Implications. Bloodborne’s world is hiding madness-inducing secrets underneath its surface, and the revelations might drive you mad. A lot of its horror comes not from jumpscares or gross-outs, but from the dark implications behind the things you see and experience. The horror sets in when you realize, “Oh my god, those things were human children.” If you pay attention to the lore, you’ll get more and more of those moments. Here are some of the scariest moments in the game, in my opinion. Note that there are spoilers beyond this point. One of the scariest moments in the early game is when you are killed by the Snatcher that suddenly appears in the Cathedral Ward after you go through Old Yharnam. Just the fact that it’s there is scary enough — what was a couple of innocent crows a second ago has been replaced with a looming Dementor-like thing that’s extremely hard to kill. If you try to kill it, it will grab you and seemingly suck the life out of you, and you will die. Then, instead of waking up back at the lantern like you’re supposed to, you get a first-person cutscene of being stuffed in a sack and dragged into a prison cell, while a muffled choir eerily chants in Latin. When you can move again, you have no clue where you are or how you’re supposed to get back to the Hunter’s Dream, so you start frantically exploring this new area to find a lantern. Yahar’gul is creepy even by Bloodborne’s standards. The enemies here are all very powerful by early-game standards — nothing you can’t handle if you’re experienced, but pretty brutal if you’re not. There’s also multiple Snatchers, which were bad enough the first time. The music is especially creepy because nowhere in the game (save the Hunter’s Dream and boss fights) has had music so far, and the music is diagetic — it gets louder as you go towards it, meaning there really is a choir singing this hymn to the Nightmare. (You’re probably hearing the ritual that creates The One Reborn.) Although the area is actually quite small this early in the game, it doesn’t feel that way if you don’t know where you’re going. It also throws off the apparently linear nature of the game so far. The first time you see an Amygdala is one of the game’s most notable scary moments. The game takes a turn for the Lovecraftian about halfway through, but it’s possible to encounter things that foreshadow the cosmic horror nature of the game. The Amygdala is one of those things. The first time you encounter one will probably be in the Cathedral Ward, when you pick up the hunter set with the top hat, see a purple portal open up, and are suddenly seized out of nowhere by this spiderlike alien thing. You might also have this experience if you’re unlucky enough to make use of the Tonsil Stone (damn you, Patches!). Both of these terrifying experiences are actually worth having, because they grant you access to the DLC and the Lecture Building/Nightmare Frontier, respectively. But if you don’t actively seek them out for that reason, then they’re easily one of the scariest moments in the whole game. You find out the hard way that the Amygdalas were there the whole time, you just lacked the Insight to be able to see them. Related to that, the first time you see a Brainsucker is pretty awful, as well. Brainsuckers only appear in a handful of places in the early game, but you only have to encounter one once to instantly know how awful they are. They make this horrible squelching noise as they walk (which, if nothing else, at least alerts you to their presence), they can cast a spell that traps you in place, and then they proceed to extend a long bloated tentacle to suck your brain out and drain your Insight. They seem very out-of-place in the gothic werewolf world of the early game, so encountering one is jarring. The high cost of dealing with these things also makes them much scarier than they actually appear. (Encountering Celestial Minions in the Forbidden Woods has a similar effect of “WHAT THE FUCK, THERE’S ALIENS IN THIS GAME?!” But Celestial Emissaries aren’t as dangerous and don’t steal your Insight, so they’re not as bad.) But even Brainsuckers are nothing to the madness-inducing experience of encountering a Winter Lantern. Seriously, fuck these things. Just seeing one of these things is enough to drive your Hunter mad, and that status effect is so frustrating that it makes dealing with just one Winter Lantern the absolute worst. Fighting multiple of them is practically impossible, even with Sedatives. Mercifully, they almost always appear in optional areas. There are disturbing implications involving the Winter Lanterns, too — they’re wearing the Doll’s dress, giving them just enough familiarity to really shake you. And we never learn exactly what they are. The Upper Cathedral Ward is one of my favorite optional areas (second only to the dark majesty that is Cainhurst), precisely because it is so freaking scary. It’s almost completely dark, even by the standards of this game, and it’s filled with werewolves, Brainsuckers, and some other weird things that you haven’t encountered anywhere else. If you haven’t been scared of the game before, you will be now. There is a very palpable terror in the experience of exploring this nearly-dark abandoned building, not knowing when multiple werewolves or Brainsuckers are going to jump out at you. Like the Hypogean Gaol, the Upper Cathedral Ward is one of the few areas in the game to have a unique soundtrack, which is sardonically entitled “Soothing Hymn.” It’s a creepy drone combined with a high-pitched wailing noise. It’s one of the most unsettling tracks I’ve heard in anything, and that’s saying a lot, because I listen to creepy music on the regular! “Lullaby for Mergo” also gets a shout-out for being one of the creepiest music box pieces I’ve ever heard, putting even Nox Arcana’s music box tracks to shame. It’s beautiful, and I love it. It’s a lullaby for a baby Eldritch Abomination. In the background is an uncomfortable sound that might be ragged breathing, or a sawblade. “Lullaby for Mergo” is another bit of foreshadowing that you can encounter early if you stand outside Gascoigne’s daughter’s house before talking to her. (There’s definitely some sort of implication around Mergo’s lullaby being Gascoigne’s favorite song, able to calm him out of Beasthood, but I haven’t figured it out.) In the DLC, the Research Hall is particularly notable for how horrifying it is. Like most of the game, it’s physically beautiful (contrasting with how grotesque the subsequent Fishing Hamlet is), but the context around it makes it worse than almost anything else you’ve experienced so far. This is where you finally see the darkest secrets of the Healing Church. You find an entire medical research lab full of imprisoned madpeople, all of whom have hideous bloated heads with no apparent faces. Throughout the game, it’s been relatively easy to distance yourself from the knowledge that almost all of the beasts you’ve fought were once human beings. Even if they were human, they’re certainly monsters now, and it’s your job to kill them. This remains true with the Innsmouth-style denizens of the Fishing Hamlet. But this? Most of the patients of the Research Hall can still speak. Some of them repeat Madness Mantras related to liquid or beg Lady Maria for salvation. Most of them don’t attack you so much as lash out at you in a blind panic. It’s even worse than your stereotypical Bedlam House Victorian mental hospital, because of the twisted Lovecraftian nightmare that the patients are trapped in. The muttering, the screams, and the weird crawling all gets to you. /spoiler In my opinion, Bloodborne’s horror successfully walks the line between subtlety and shock value. Cosmic horror is very difficult to get right, because it relies upon the audience’s experience of existential dread. Therefore, you spend most of the game immersed in a sense of unease. Playing Bloodborne is more often passively creepy than it is actively scary, so when it is scary, it hits that much harder.
Moonscars Review
I’m basically a connoisseur of dark Soulslike Metroidvanias at this point. I played Moonscars because it was recommended for people who liked Blasphemous, and it had a great aesthetic with an interesting premise. I regret to say, it’s mediocre. I really, really wanted to like Moonscars. It looks just so damn cool! The gothic architecture, the black mirrors, the gargoyles! But I learned the hard way that aesthetics do not carry a game. Moonscars’ biggest problem, in my opinion, is that exploration is unrewarding. That’s a cardinal sin for a Metroidvania. The whole reason I keep looking for new Metroidvanias to play is because it’s always fun to go in blind and explore an entirely new world! But Moonscars doesn’t give you much to explore. It may not even count as a Metroidvania, since Metroidvanias are non-linear, and Moonscars is almost entirely linear. You do need upgrades from specific bosses to progress, but you can’t explore the world organically. I swear to god, the screenshots of the game look cooler than the game itself, because the world looks more interesting when you’re soaking in the whole beautifully-rendered background. If you’re actually playing, you’re ignoring the background and just moving from room to room, fighting an almost identical set of enemies in each one, and then moving on. The environment and the combat are rarely integrated in this game, as they are in Hollow Knight or Blasphemous, both of which change the gameplay slightly depending on which area you’re in. The individual rooms in Moonscars aren’t particularly dynamic, so exploration consists entirely of fighting across platforms. Hollow Knight is still my gold standard for the Metroidvania genre, and it nails exploration. The Forgotten Crossroads alone feels gigantic when you first go through it, and is full of teases that make the world feel mysterious and wondrous: the intricate metal lift down to the City of Tears, the tram, an acid pool, a room full of pink crystals with a friendly miner, bright leaves showing you the way onward towards Greenpath, and of course, the Temple of the Black Egg. Hollow Knight constantly gives you doorways you can’t open, platforms you can’t reach, gaps you can’t cross, and weird stuff that makes you go “Woah, what is that?” Upgrades also open far more than just the next level, and there’s lots of potential sequence-breaking options, so you can explore the world in almost any order once you get past the first two levels. Moonscars is like if the entirety of Hollow Knight was the Howling Cliffs. Actually, not even that, because at least the Howling Cliffs has a few cool weird secrets like Joni’s Blessing and the Grimm Troupe’s torch. Moonscars doesn’t give you much in the way of secrets. Secrets consist of occasional breakable walls or hidden alcoves, and usually reward you with bone powder (this games’ Souls currency) which you’ll probably lose anyway the next time you die. The only other things to find are earrings that are randomly placed, very occasional bone cookies, and the real prize — health/ichor/damage upgrades, of which there are only a handful. Suffice to say, you’re not given much incentive to explore every corner of the map, and exploring is such a grind that it’s barely worth it. Progression within areas is mostly linear, too, so the areas don’t loop back in on themselves. Bloodborne, which Moonscars likely takes some inspiration from, is technically a linear game and not a Metroidvania, but it often feels like one because of its labyrinthine level design. It’s pretty easy to get lost in Central Yharnam or the Forbidden Woods if you don’t know where you’re going, so, you can end up in completely unexpected places, and exploration feels organic. One of the best moments, in my opinion, is a very out-of-the-way spot in the Forbidden Woods that brings you to the back entrance of Iosefka’s Clinic. That “Oh, I’m back here!” moment is essential to a Metroidvania ….This is Moonscars’ map: It almost never loops back in on itself. All of the areas are really stretched out, and there’s only five of them. I figured out pretty quickly that once I made my way through every room of an area, I would never have to return to it. That almost goes against the point of a Metroidvania. There’s little variation between areas, either. The level design is almost exactly the same. The High Castle has a spike puzzle at one point, and the Depths has one kind of cool section with large gears, but that’s it. The level design didn’t start getting more dynamic until the very last level, where it introduced some more complex platforming, but that involved me having to attempt one jump more than ten successive times. Maybe I was just bad at it. I loved the aesthetic of the backgrounds in each area, but you don’t really pay attention to the backgrounds as you play, and each room starts looking exactly the same. I don’t mind the monochrome aesthetic — that’s actually one of the things that I think works very well — but I’d like there to be more stuff in each area. And the enemies… oh boy. There’s only about sixteen different enemies in this game. I don’t know what they’re actually called, so here’s what I’m calling them: normal zombie, running zombie, chop zombie (small), chop zombie (big), burly zombie (small), burly zombie (big), kamikaze baby, octopus baby, jester knight, spike wizard, flying skeleton, bomb tosser, bomb dropper, flying healing wizard, flying damage wizard, and big bird thing. Oh, and the little spiders. Seventeen, then. Maybe I’m missing one, but you get the point. Those same enemies appear in every single goddamn area. There’s maybe two unique enemies that only appear in one location… I think the spike wizards are only in the High Castle. But still, the enemies you’re fighting are mostly the same no matter where you are. That means that exploration consists entirely of fighting through a series of rooms, fighting all of the exact same enemies over and over and over again. Another player might find that boring once they’d mastered each enemy’s attack patterns, but I found it embarrassing to be dying to the same enemies over and over and over again. On a certain level, I understand the need to reuse sprites, especially if you’re tight on resources, but come on. Hollow Knight was made by a small dev team, all of its characters were drawn by hand, and it has more than 150 unique enemies. Blasphemous has 38 unique enemies. Moonscars’ enemies aren’t even given aesthetic upgrades or slightly different movesets later in the game. I’m well aware that every game recycles enemy types, but doing something new with them is important. The best games will have the enemies exploit the unique design of each level. Bosses are the coolest enemies from a design standpoint, but there’s only six of them, and one area makes you fight the main boss twice for… some reason. It’s like they needed something to put there and didn’t want to create a whole new boss, so they just made you fight a really difficult and annoying boss all over again but harder this time. Bosses were often the most challenging enemies in the game for me, becuase I felt like they forced me to play a specific way. Dodging the boss’s attacks and finding little windows in which to hit (something I’ve gotten good at after all of these Soulslike Metroidvanias) did not work in this game, because normal hits did so little damage. The only way to hit and do enough damage was to parry and counterattack. Oh, except for the Earth Bowles boss — that one is invulnerable until you hit it with enough spells, impossible if you’re also trying to heal! I nearly threw the game down when I had to fight it twice, and I’m still amazed that I got through. The penultimate boss was the best one. That boss actually reminded me of a Castlevania boss or Blasphemous boss, especially in its second phase. One thing that Moonscars does really, really well is its combat, which is fluid, simple, and satisfying. I’m always a fan of swift sword-swinging! This game heavily relied on parrying, which I cannot do for the life of me in any game. Parrying required impeccable timing, because there was only a very narrow window in which you could parry successfully. I would prefer if enemies staggered more often, but that’s just me and my playstyle. Pulling off a parry, when I could do it, was very satisfying. Moonscars borrows the Soul mechanic from Hollow Knight, so you gain MP from striking enemies and heal (with a near-identical animation) by consuming it. You also cast spells using the same resource. My immediate reaction was that the healing would be costly enough to render the spells useless, but Moonscars builds in an extra mechanic to keep the spells usable. Once you use a spell, you retain all of the ichor (MP) you had before, but it’s now “corrupted.” So, you can’t use it to cast another spell, but you can use the same amount of ichor to heal. That’s great, because that made it easy to cast a spell and then immediately heal without having to recover ichor. . Moonscars also has a clever system of awarding useful buffs called “spite,” and gives you special attacks with various bonuses. And there’s no stamina bar, thank god! At the best of times, the combat felt almost like dancing. The difficulty balance, however, could be better. Single hits from enemies did so much damage that I had to use the Statue Gemstone just to survive the game. The Statue Gemstone increases your defense at the expense of speed, and while the defense boost is considerable, in my opinion it brings the damage level from “insane” to “tolerable.” I should not have to wear a specific item for the whole game just to make it fun, especially when I have to take it off every time I need to superdash! Even on the final level, a little running zombie should not be taking off more than half my HP with one hit! Maybe that’s just me and my inability to parry talking — I fight very recklessly in almost every game I play — but I would have more fun if difficulty was redistributed to things other than taking insane amounts of damage. Also, although I appreciated being able to use the same amount of ichor to cast and to heal, spells use up so much ichor that they still felt too costly to use a lot of the time. And that really sucked once enemies started requiring me to use magic to dispatch them. If spells were a third of the MP cost, that would be a lot better. Affecting the difficulty balance is one of the game’s unique mechanics, called Moonhunger. Lore-wise, Moonhunger is really cool. The Moon is a sentient entity, a goddess, and everytime Irma dies, the Moon becomes more and more ravenous. Eventually, the Moon glows red, and all of the enemies become more aggressive, with higher ATK and DEF. You can spend a Gland to restore the moon to its normal state, and it automatically resets after each boss, but after awhile I just forgot about Moonhunger. I died so often that it wasn’t really worth spending Glands, because there were so few of them, and it was better to use them to buy gemstones from the Moon Priestess. There were also some items, like the earrings, that could only be seen under Moonhunger. So, what’s really the point in nullifying it? Alterations to the game world can be very cool — I was kind of hoping that Moonhunger would be this game’s equivalent of Bloodborne’s Insight, which alters the game both gameplay-wise and lore-wise. I think that’s what it was trying to be, but all it actually does is punish you for dying. This game doesn’t know how to do anything with what it has beyond making it more difficult, and that makes it frustrating. I wish that the mechanic did more! I wish that the changes to the world were more palpable and interesting, because there’s a lot that could potentially be done with it. And that, I think, is a microcosm of most of the game’s problems. Everything that’s there is fine, but there needs to be just a little more of it, or it needs to be executed just slightly better. The story is both the strongest and weakest part of the game. The premise and the ideas behind it are really, really creative. It’s hard to do anything new with the Soulslike genre at this point, but Moonscars’ take on it felt original. The characters in the game are mostly “clayborns,” meaning that they were made from clay and imbued with life using “ichor,” by a godlike being called the Sculptor. The story centers around the protagonist, Grey Irma, attempting to find the Sculptor. Moonscars tries to utilize the same cryptic storytelling that FromSoft is famous for, but this doesn’t really work. FromSoft relies heavily on context clues, and there aren’t any context clues in Moonscars’ environment because every room looks the same and has the same enemies. It also doesn’t have anything along the lines of Hollow Knight’s lore tablets, and it doesn’t have much in the way of item descriptions either. You have to get all of the context through the dialogue. When you don’t know what’s going on, the dialogue is very hard to follow. Grey Irma isn’t a silent protagonist like the Knight and the Penitent One, so she talks to other characters about circumstances that she’s aware of but that we, the audience, are not. With almost no exposition, and no other means of acquiring context, the story is too opaque to figure out for most of the first half. I was able to piece together most of the story as the game went along, but a lot of the early parts of it did not have the emotional impact that they should have. For example, the first boss is an old friend of Irma’s, whom she has to kill. Why did she have to kill him? I still don’t know. We don’t know anything about these characters’ history or why they’re confronting each other, so we’re not invested, and there’s no emotional impact. I think it’s a “show, not tell” problem. Cryptic storytelling relies almost entirely on showing rather than telling, so if all the lore is given through dialogue that pretends you already know what’s going on, moments that should hit you like a freight train don’t have any weight behind them. If I knew why Irma felt the need to kill her friends, then that moment would have hit a lot harder! As it stands, the story is difficult to get invested in. When it works, though, it really works. I got the full force of the emotional impact when Irma realizes (spoiler) that she was never human at all, she is in fact a copy of a copy; the human she was copied from is an entirely different person./s Adalinka’s plotline had some good emotional moments, too, mostly because I could put some of the pieces together as the story went along. And Etalag the snarky old cat was by far my favorite character — cats make everything better! The game’s commentary on identity and finding one’s purpose in life is genuinely interesting, and has some really cool symbolism attached to it (like the clay moulds and the black mirror). I just wish it were better executed! We get a dump of lore right at the end before the final boss, and I remember thinking, “I really wish I’d known more of this sooner!” The characters’ stories should have been revealed more gradually and more indirectly. My final major issue is that the game is glitchy. It stutters, which is usually no more than an annoyance, but sometimes (especially when the large flying wizards are onscreen), it stutters to the point where it interferes with gameplay. That makes the whole game more annoying than it should be, and undercuts one of the game’s high points, which is the fluid combat. Also, when I first defeated the Final Boss, the battle didn’t actually end. He kept floating in the middle of the room while trying to stab me and doing no damage, and meanwhile I couldn’t move. I had to reload the game and restart the fight all over again. What was with that? I’m glad it worked normally the second time, so I could actually finish the game! The glitching further killed my motivation, and I was actually worried that something was wrong with my PS4, since I didn’t notice it at the start of the game. There’s a really good game in here somewhere. I think Moonscars is in dire need of optional content. It needs a DLC. It needs more stuff to do and to discover than just following the main plot or plodding through rooms of identical enemies. Maybe there should be an optional level in a Moon Temple or something like that, to give us more lore around the Moon Goddess. With a few optional areas, exploration could be much more exciting. It also needs more interconnectivity, even if that makes some areas longer. And more diverse enemy types. And maybe something akin to lore tablets. And better difficulty balance, with revamped Moonhunger. Even a few of these changes would dramatically improve the game. As it is now, it feels underdeveloped. Almost everything it does, other games have done better. Maybe I would have responded better to it if I’d approached it as being more like a Classicvania, a linear game where the challenge is to clear through all of the enemies and beat the boss of each level, and each hit takes off about half your health bar. If old-school Classicvanias are the kind of game you like, then imagine that as a Soulslike, and you’ll get this. Props to the creators for having tried. I really hope they’re able to improve it. If this game gets a patch to fix the glitching and a DLC to add more content, I’ll replay it.
